Over the years here and elsewhere I have made the most extreme statements

[Cirsium]

63. You seem confused

Of course the Democratic administrations are better than the Republican administrations. No one here said otherwise. That's a pretty low bar. We hold the Democrats to a higher standard. The "two sides" are not equivalent, and your arguments here are yet another variation on the "both sides" crap we get from corporate media.

Yes, the Democrats try to build an apartment complex, and after obstruction and compromise we wind up with an outhouse. But, hey, "it's better than we would have gotten from a Republican admin!"

Meanwhile, Republicans set 100 apartment complexes on fire, and we put out half of the fires. Hooray! "Hey! Would you rather that all of them burned down? Is that what you want? Why are you criticizing our Democrats??"

Yes, we win more battles. That is because the Republicans cause more emergencies. But we are losing the war.

There is an important asymmetry between the two major political parties. The filibuster disproportionally disadvantages those with ambitious legislative agendas. It rewards the destroyers. It is easier to burn things down than it is to build things.

How a biased filibuster hurts Democrats more than Republicans

The standard case against filibuster reform has some force — Democrats paid a price during the Trump administration for their Obama-era decision to abolish the filibuster for lower-court judgeships — but it misses an important asymmetry between the two major political parties. Above and beyond its downsides for whichever party controls the Senate at a given time, the filibuster disproportionally disadvantages those with ambitious legislative agendas. And any way one measures it, the contemporary Democratic Party is more legislatively ambitious than the contemporary Republican Party.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Congresses controlled by Democrats held more committee meetings, considered more bills and passed more bills than Congresses controlled by Republicans. Democratic presidents, moreover, generated significantly more policy proposals than their Republican counterparts.

...

The “structural bias” of the filibuster against Democrats becomes even clearer, and more disconcerting, in comparative perspective. A supermajority requirement for the passage of ordinary legislation is not the norm either in U.S. state legislatures or in other countries’ national legislatures. And even without the filibuster, the U.S. lawmaking system already contains more veto points — more distinct phases when a bill’s progress can be halted — than that of any other advanced democracy. Different actors in four institutions (the House, Senate, executive branch, and Supreme Court) can effectively kill legislation. Yet whereas most of these other veto points are hard-wired into the Constitution, the filibuster can be changed by a simple Senate majority at any time.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/583180-how-a-biased-filibuster-hurts-democrats-more-than-republicans/

I suspect that what we are seeing on these threads is advocacy for moderate or even conservative political positions, and attacks on progressives, disguised as party loyalty.

Party leadership does respond to pressure, all of the time. The only question is pressure from whom and pressure to move in which direction. Some on these threads argue against those rank and file Democrats bringing pressure to bear on the leadership, implying that they are being disloyal or counterproductive.

Should we just leave it to the wealthy donors and corporate lobbyists to pressure the Democratic party leadership?