this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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That's their excuse, yes. In reality, though, they can do filibuster carveout exceptions for every bill (including one to remove the filibuster entirely) and appoint someone who's NOT a coal baron fox to guard the energy and natural resources committee hen house.
They CHOOSE to let him get in the way of mitigating climate change.
You can't do a filibuster carveout unless you've got 50 votes + 1 to do it. You can't do it when you don't have even that. Actually getting what we need means electing enough Democrats so that we can do stuff even when a few (Manchin, Sinema, maybe a couple others) are bought. That's why it was so easy to act in the House and so hard in the Senate.
Another copout.
The most effective way to elect a lot of Democrats is to nominate a lot of candidates that Democrats and the usually ignored left are EXCITED about, rather than "well at least THIS corrupt enemy of progress doesn't want to abolish the ACA and income taxes" shills.
That's not the priority of the geriatric (and one young one acting like a typical boomer) leadership of the private corporation masquerading as a political party, though. They're not trying to maximise the number of Democrats elected or the number of progressive policies passed.
They're trying to maximise campaign donations and other legal bribes as well as clinging to their own power and money. Those are their true goals and Manchin is excellent for those things. That's why they keep rewarding him for standing in the way of the things they pretend to want to do.
The structure of the US Senate inherently favors the Republicans; it was designed that way by admitting a bunch of low-population states in the late 1800s. Same for the House, where the gerrymandering favors Republicans.
That means that the actual path to power for Democrats means not just energizing their base, but making common cause with a bunch of low-information and moderate voters.
That's why you see a real effort to win over moderates.
Nope. There are tens of millions more democrats and disenfranchised leftists than Republicans and disenfranchised nazis. Even in most of the "red" states.
It's true that the deck is stacked in favor of Republicans, but not so much that a coalition of the "always votes, blue no matter who" groups and the neglected millions to their left wouldn't have WAY more than the numbers needed to take 60-65% of both houses every. single. time.
The Dem leadership wouldn't want that, though. They'd lose their main excuse for kowtowing to their owner donors. Might even have to enact real systemic change that benefits regular people more than the already rich and powerful! 😱
The way you address that is by working with groups like the Environmental Voter Project to turn non-voting environmentalists into voters or the DSA to get people who will do the right thing past the primary in left-leaning districts.
Mobilization isn't some instant thing that's going to happen on its own just because existing elected officials change thier tune
And it's ESPECIALLY not some thing that's working at all when existing officials both elected and unelected are working non stop as well as spending tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars each election cycle to retain the status quo by, amongst other things, rigging primaries against left-leaning candidates in all districts.
You keep saying to unrig the system by moving pieces belonging to the party leadership that rigs it on the board owned by the party leadership that rigs it, stubbornly refusing to admit the blindingly obvious fact that the status quo will continue until the corrupt people at the top have been removed from their positions.
This isn't a project where a single example of a courageous politician suddenly solves everything. It's one where winning is a multi-decade project, so to get there we need to change the incentives so that even middling cowardly politicians will do the right thing.
Both the Environmental Voter Procject and the DSA are doing that though conflict expansion (to bring in people who weren't previously involved) and shifting the Overton Window (to make the unthinkable possible)
Correct. It's one where hundreds of cowardly politicians (and unaccountable unelected officials) too focused on their own wealth and power (and on not upsetting the status quo that's so lucrative to them) to ever help regular people.
It's also one where tens of millions of gaslighted and gaslighting regular people make up all kinds of excuses for the hundreds of cowards no matter what they do or don't do, forever.
It's also late in my time zone and I've frankly had enough of today, so I'm gonna head to bed. Sweet dreams about a better and more honest world when you get that far.
@VikingHippie @silence7 @climate
The silver lining of ecological degradation is that no amount of political posturing or businesses (ignorance) greenwashing will prevent the climate from deteriorating.
The planet's biosphere is the ultimate "authority", the ultimate power. As such, it's the ultimate "judgement" regarding how human cultures can, & can not, survive.
The planet is, what it objectively is. Ecological limiting factors are the ultimate long-term regulators.
Nature finds a way
Complaining about the problem doesn't do anything. What does something is changing the incentives that politicians face; that means giving them both a carrot (the opportunity to earn votes) and a stick (in the form of credible negative consequences) for corruption, which has completely broken down in that it's well-neigh impossible to prosecute any Republican unless they do something so extreme as to attempt a coup.
I've been working on the carrot because it's a key part of the process, and will continue to do so.