The "Green Bay Sweep"--One Year Later

[hollodero]

(01-20-2022, 10:18 PM)Dill Wrote: Two central terms of comparison would be use of the filibuster to block voting rights legislation and a large number of "independents" and other non-committed who don't see why minority civil rights should be an issue for them, if it is an issue at all.

Liberals tend to get "sidetracked" on the filibuster once they grasp how it has been used to block civil rights legislation. The nothing that filibusters is neutral and tends to favor "both sides" is one version of that "both sidesism we both deplore.

I don't really think so. The filibuster is a tool for the minority party, not one for the republican party necessarily. I get Manchin's point that once the dems are in the minority again, they would miss the filibuster dearly.
(What I think he gets wrong though is the notion that the republicans will uphold the filibuster. I am willing to bet that is one of the first orders of business when they regain power there, to get rid of it and blame it on the democrats.)

Why I used the word sidetracked is just that I really hear soo much more about Manchin and Synema than I hear about the actual voting rights bills. The two get painted as collaborators and seemingly are the worst sinners of them all for not wanting to go that route. This, imho, is just way too much focus on these two and way too little focus on what they all, inculuding those two, want to achieve. Going after Manchin put all pressure away from the Republicans, and the Democrats rather are percieved as battling among themselves. It's not a good look, and also the shaming of a senator that holds a democratic seat that is unlikely to be a democratic seat to begin with imho is not a wise course of action.

(01-20-2022, 10:18 PM)Dill Wrote: This is why I am thankful we have posters from outside the U.S., who have not normalized and adapted to this astonishing state of affairs. Their registered shock is a salutary reminder of what used to be normal, and still is in successful democracies elsewhere.

For 50+ million Americans right now--and maybe 70-80+ in 2024--Trump's openly attempting to subvert an election is not a serious objection to his running again.

So we are in this crazy, strange situation in which we have hard public evidence of Trump's attempt to subvert the election, and no evidence what so ever that Biden stole the election. Worse, the proffered evidence, like conspiracies promoted by Giuliani and Sidney Powell, flip over into more evidence of Trump malfeasance.  And yet the party which actually tried to steal the election has been able to convince tens of millions that's what the other side really did, and so, as you say, cannot lose by more than 5% if they lose at all. 

You and I spent four years aghast at what Trump did and said, but his supporters had spent 8 years before that believing that Obama was equally outrageous and an existential threat to the nation--though the threat appeared at the time, and still does, to be wholly manufactured. Imagine if the cartoon history below of O's administration was factually correct. How is a vote for THAT president's Sec. of State any riskier than one for an outsider, a successful businessman, untainted by politics?  



That is in part why MAGA world is ready to "take back" the nation with illegal means. They believe libs have already done that. TRULY believe it. Party leaders believe otherwise, but not the mass of MAGA voters. And in contrast to previous elections, voters can no longer just vote out some official not getting the job done and try the other party's alternative. No matter how bad the GOP candidate is, you can't vote for the far more terrible party of treason and lies, who gave us an illegal president who was not born on U.S. soil. 

Something has happened to break their judgment, undermining trust in government (including the FBI,CIA, and CDC) and academia--all outside authority--rendering every false equivalence a credible trump of pro-democracy candidates and policies, and it happened between 1974 and 2016--and especially after 9/11.  I'm including here many "independents" as well, who have difficulty seeing much difference between Trump and every president who came before him.

I don't know if folks really believe all that from the bottom of their hearts or just take such positions in the interest of being a good team player. Maybe it's a little bit of both. In general, I think your frontiers have just hardened over the last few years, that reality and facts really do not matter any more. You don't need facts, you need talking points repeated amongst your own peers, and it does not matter any more to convince anyone but your own. Which goes both ways, but of course is way more extreme on the Trump/GOP side of things. I even feel that being egregiously fact-free is actually not problematic, but a bonus for many. It makes the libs go so crazy, and that is the main objective.