You wanna eliminate poverty, eliminate wealth. You want to live within the means of the planet, enforce the strategy of doing less with much less. Capitalism is parasitism. You cannot salvage a sustainable system by continuing to burn through energy and make more shit. It just does not work that way, period. The D brand is the shadow of the R brand. Zero sum mentalities are losers, then, now and forever. Life has never been a game. No being ever wins. Statues and books and monuments do not breathe. Grandiosity about being some awesome animal has boxed us into this corner, the only corner left that has not been ground into bits, burned to a crisp or toxified to the point of cancerous failure. To pick some arbitrary 'side' in some pissing contest does nothing. Stop looking at life and the planet as something that we own and can master and understand. We cannot control even our most simple behaviors. De-growth, building down, slowing down, getting off the high-horse of massive ego, conceding that we humans have zero answers based upon this 4k year-old paradigm of usury, and learning to cooperate would be the only jump start I can get behind. I am old, like you, but I am not dead. There is as much plastic in the brain of a 30 year old as mine. All of us, like it or not, are staring into the maelstrom. Business as usual, regardless of tweaks, is futile.
Democrats are being paid to lose and it’s extremely obvious. When you have corporate donors who our legislators are working for and not the American people, the two party system is working as planned.
Democrats aren’t losing on purpose, they’re stuck playing defense with outdated strategies while the GOP, backed by billionaires and dark money, plays to win at all costs. If anything, it’s the right that’s been supercharged by money, including Elon’s, not the left.
You’re giving them too much credit when reality proves that they only work for their corporate donors. They’re not trying to win. It is written across the board that when they go on the media to answer questions, and only have Word salad like Hakeem Jeffries has all the time, they don’t care about winning and they don’t care about fighting for Americans. It is plain as day.
What Americans need to do is stop adhering to whatever party they’re in and start looking at the two parties objectively and seeing what they are for who they are . Paid to lose. System is working as planned and that’s why they’re not concerned.
That’s an easy narrative, but it ignores a lot. Democrats have delivered major wins: the ACA, student loan relief (even if pared back), climate investment via the Inflation Reduction Act, a child tax credit that cut poverty, and protections for same-sex marriage. That’s not “paid to lose.” Is the system influenced by corporate money? Absolutely, both parties are. But oversimplifying the whole Democratic Party as a controlled opposition dismisses the work of progressives within it who are fighting hard. The answer isn’t apathy or false equivalence, it’s pressure, participation, and primarying the ones who aren’t showing up enough for people.
A few real progressives who are really fighting for Americans are individuals who are not embraced by the rest of the party. It is those who aren’t taking corporate money. See the difference? Some politicians are owned and the good ones are not.
And you need to defend them, rather than see what they’re doing objectively, makes you biased.
People need to step away from their loyalty and indoctrination. See the two party system for what they are. They’re not working for Americans when they’re not being paid by Americans. They’re being paid by their corporate donors, therefore they work only for their corporate donors.
The ACA was a huge transfer of money to private insurance companies! And poor people don't need a tax credit: They need financial help NOW. Like during COVID, which literally pulled people out of poverty. Look: The Ds coasted on FDR's successes for decades. Then they started getting assassinated. And the League of Women Voters used to hold debates. Then it was turned over to the corporations known as the DNC & RNC. Bubba doubled down and said big government is over! Even Obama said he's Republican lite! Sigh. (Tho I loved his Iran deal.) My point is: examine how we got here. The Republicans had a plan to shift the country right; privatize & financialize everything; and, as Reagan said, Make America Great Again (as if it had been that way for everyone.) Democrats didn't stop them; it was too lucrative, for those at the top. Including them. We need a CtrlAltDelete.
Yes. The zero-sum game with no winners. Taking is just losing by another name. The massive hoarding complex Thom spoke of a few days ago is the most powerful addiction going. OCD, PTSD and ADHD all rolled into one. 'Honey, have you seen my last million? Cannot remember where I put it. I need to go get another one, so see you in a few. Don't wait up. You look really nice in that Skims i just bought you, but I gotta go.'
You are spot on. Unfortunately, most hardcore Democratic voters don't understand this or neoliberalism. That is why they still think Obama was a great president when in fact he and Bill Clinton actually continued Reagan's neoliberal policies and got us where we are.
Calling Obama a neoliberal oversimplifies what actually happened. He wasn’t pushing Reaganomics, he inherited a crashed economy, two wars, and a GOP Congress dead set on blocking him. Despite that, he passed the ACA (the biggest expansion of healthcare in decades), regulated Wall Street with Dodd-Frank, ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and pulled unemployment down from 10% to under 5%. He wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t a corporate sellout either. Most of his more progressive plans (public option, major climate action, etc) were gutted by Republican obstruction, not a lack of vision. In fact Trump took over and looked good economically because he had Obama’s foundation.
Obama wasn’t a corporate sellout? Huh? He bailed out the Wall Street banksters and oversaw the foreclosures on millions of families. He spent critical time of his majority in the House and Senate crafting a major subsidy of the for-profit healthcare system (aka Obamacare) and kept the two disastrous wars he inherited going while adding Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen to the tally. Obama was a disaster especially when you consider how eager the country was for change after the disaster of the Bush/Cheney years. He caved to his corporate funders—most especially Wall Street and the Pentagon.
So first off - most of the Wall Street failures occurred because of deregulation by the GOP - that's a pattern that goes back to the 1880s, 1920s, 1950s, 1980s and Georgie Porgie.
But if you knew anything about history (globally, not just US) you would know that had the US government sat back and allowed the US economy to crash, which is exactly where it was headed, we'd have been thrown into a depression, not just a recession. The actions by Obama and the Fed are what allowed most Americans to keep their homes, their cars, etc. Had there been a depression, that would not have been the situation - and most people would have lost their entire life savings. You would do well to read about Germany between WWs and the Great Depresssion
Obama refused to authorize cramdowns of mortgages by the banks that would have left hundreds of thousands in their homes instead of on the street due to foreclosures. Considering many of these mortgages were fraudulent from the start, due to banks rigging mortgage securities to fail, this would have been justice and not a bailout of homeowners. Also, many, if not most, of the foreclosures were with counterfeit, robo-signed documents, not legal chain of title. Obama and his corrupt Attorney General, Eric Holder, knew this but failed to prosecute except for a slap on the wrist plea deal with the mortgage companies. All of this led to the slowest post-recession recovery in history and paved the way for Trump. Hekuva job, Obama!
Obama didn't have any authority to reduce principal balances. Not a POTUS power. That requires judicial bankruptcy laws / application which are controlled by Congress
1) The mortgages were not fraudulent. The low/no money down environment was created by lowered regulations by the GOP led Congress under the George W Bush administration. Stop blaming Obama for an issue that started well before he was even elected
2) Banks don't 'rig' Mortgage Backed Securities. MBS have been around for decades before Obama. MBS are exactly like FHA, VA and other mortgages. Non-agency based MBS have been around since 1977 - Obama was 16 years old then - They are bundled and sold as pools of asset backed bonds in order to REDUCE risk. MBS still exist today and the entire mortgage industry wouldn't exist unless the debt was sold to bond buyers. Generally MBS payback between 95-98% of the original face value.
3) Where much of the issue came was when mortgage bonds were split into IO (interest only) and principle only bonds. POs were very stable because that is where the asset value was used to offset loses. But IOs were where all the risk came. IOs were created and allowed by Congress and the IRS in 1983 under REAGAN. Obama wasn't even in the picture.
4) These deregulations incentivized underwriters to not guarantee the quality of the bonds they created, so when paybacks began to fall, there was no insurance to cover loses.
5) The idea that electronic signatures were created under the Obama administration or that there was anything that the US Attorney could have done is ridiculous. Since the laws had been deregulated, there were no laws being broken. We didn't yet live in a nation like today where the POTUS can just make things up and start taking people to court or withholding funds because he didn't like them. Rule of law still existed
6) To suggest that Obama and Holder had the power to force cram downs is also just plain stupid. That isn't a Presidential power - to force principle reductions on private entities. Bonds were owned by private owners (institutional buyers, individual, corporate, international) - and the payers were generally individuals or small companies today. As an aside, today more homes are owned by corporations than at anytime in US history. Can you imagine what would happen if one of these were to go sideways?
7) The Federal Reserve's action to purchase MBS created a floor for their value and prevented massive depreciation of the #1 asset of most Americans. It wouldn't have just been no interest down homes that would have lost value, ALL homes would have lost value. Given that this asset is what powers many other purchases the entire economy would have crapped out. It was actually the SMART move of the Federal Reserve to purchase these bonds, hold them - and actually has profited from them over time.
Don't for one minute assume I haven't. I have read and can name all the books by scholars on WW2 and the great depression, that I have spent nearly 3 decades studying. What you have done is simplfy what happened in 2008 and Obama's handling of it. Also you seem to have very little if any understanding of neoliberalism. While Ronald Reagan started deregulation in the 80s with neoliberalism, Bill Clinton happily jumped on the band wagon. Obama did indeed need to bail out Wall Street to avoid a depression but he did nothing for the working class. He continued the neoliberal policies. You would do well to read about neoliberalism and the corporate takeover of the democratic party.
Neoliberalism doesn't exist. Neoliberalism" is a vague, non-academic label that lacks a consistent, canonical definition and is often deployed more as a rhetorical device than as a meaningful analytical framework.
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Bockman, Johanna. "Neoliberalism." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2017. This entry provides a comprehensive overview of the concept and its critiques, often highlighting the definitional ambiguities and the varying ways it's been deployed.
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Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Updated Edition). Oxford University Press, 2023.
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you prove my point. Obama was a neoliberal. The ACA was actually a republican plan written years before by the Heritage Foundation and proposed by then Senator Bob Dole. It was not passed because Democrats hated it as it is a handout to the Insurance companies. Obama didn't even try to push Medicare for All when the Democrats were in control on Congress. Regulated Wall Street? He bailed out Wall Stree. He was in fact a corporate sellout. A good economy for whom? The wealthy yes but not the rest of us. Same with Bill Clinton, gutted Glass Steagall. President Clinton and President Obama did little to strengthen the Fairness Doctrine. President Clinton in fact signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This allows for media-cross ownership, allowing for single media companies to own multiple media outlets, something Democrats now criticize. I suggest you actually do some research on neoliberalism and the part of Democrats
Yeah, he passed the biggest gift to insurance companies EVER. And, healthcare costs have gone up substantially since it was passed:
Healthcare Spending Growth Since the ACA
Total Health Spending: In 2010, U.S. healthcare spending was approximately $2.6 trillion. By 2023, it had increased to about $4.9 trillion, marking an approximate 88% rise over 13 years.
As someone who doesn’t know which figures are right and which are wrong, or exactly who the fuck to blame for the disaster that is mine and my wife’s health “care” (feels more like health destroy), let me add a little human cost to this debate.
Without Obamacare, we would have no way to access healthcare. That’s just a fact. Without the ability to be treated for “preexisting conditions”, without insurance to cover the surgeries we have needed, or now to treat my chronically ill wife who has an undetermined autoimmune disorder, one or both of us would probably be dead. But the premiums - one year they were over $800 a month - have contributed to bankrupting us, and the monetization of healthcare has gotten so much worse that we STILL can’t afford to get many of the treatments we need. Essentially, we are given just enough medical care to keep me, at least, able to continue to work at a grocery store, a job I love but one that demands hard, physical work that my 60 year old body finds more and more difficult to do. I feel like we’re stuck on a merry go round of misery, unable to access or even imagine healthcare that would be truly responsive and effective. And yet I see people every day in my store who have plenty of money, women dripping in diamonds and gold, men in fancy golf shirts and manicured hands, who clearly don’t have the same issues that we do. The difference is money, and that is ALWAYS the fucking difference. This income inequality, this system by which 75% of the folks in this country are desperately trying to survive while the rest of the population enjoys all the benefits and privileges that our country provides, is destroying our society and democracy. This income inequality is the reason trump got elected, even though he is just going to make it worse. If we don’t find a way to address this problem, it WILL destroy us.
During the 2010-2016 time period where mandates existed, per capita healthcare costs rose 3% - the lowest rate seen in 50 years. After the mandate was removed it went up to 4.3-4.5%.
COVID let to a 10% increase- mostly treating the unvaccinated- who shoulf have been moved to the back of the line. The in 2021, it magically fell back to 4.5%.
2023 saw 7.5% increase because of Medicaid expansion- millions of people had put off healthcare without insurance
I know the conservative policy is to allow millions to go without insurance causing lost work, lost pay, lost school days, and chronic untreated disease because let's face it it - some think most people are cattle
Healthcare inflation did not change with ACA. Saying that the increase in healthcare costs are attributed to that is sloppy.
It did significantly reduce the number of uninsured- as we are the ONLY advanced nation that doesn't cover everyone- ever wonder why the US has a poor life expectancy in comparison?
The GOP mandate was the biggest driver of increased costs by allowing healthy individuals to opt out except during emergencies which has led to a bad risk pool and additional expenses.
Exactly.....healthcare inflation did not change with the ACA, but it was supposed to have controlled costs. I was on the streets, going door to door selling Universal Healthcare for the Obama administration. I'll never forget the day he caved int to the insurance companies. He gave them a HUGE gift and screwed people like my poor sister (and millions like her) who couldn't afford to pay the fees to insure her and her two daughters, but was mandated to do so. Of those people who became insured, the only ones who truly benefited were ones who then qualified for Medicaid; not the ones who were forced to go through the marketplace to buy insurance they couldn't afford. My sis had to file bankruptcy to rid herself of debt just to be able to afford the insurance that was forced on her. I know she wasn't the only one. And, at the time there was no way to understand that the mandatory insurance would never become a thing. She lived in fear of it for over 2 years.
“We could rebuild American manufacturing so people can make things that pay living wages… We could build energy systems that work for communities instead of just shareholders. We could have healthcare that doesn't bankrupt families.”
Isn’t this a lot of what BIDEN did during his four years???
With the major legislation that Trump is now working to undo?
What we need are candidates who aren’t multi-millionaires, who have LIVED in poverty. Deja Foxx comes to mind. Check out the net worth of people in Congress (if they haven’t found a way to manipulate the numbers). 90% of them have totally lost touch with the reality of the bottom half of the country. They belong to the No Amount of $ is Enough club. They focus on re-election (getting richer) as their #1 goal. I’m sick of getting 10 emails from Dems every time Trump💨 , full of !!!! and asking for 💰.
I had to stop reading this dribble mid-page. How do you think China is financing its super fast ascent to the leadership of the world’s economies? Where did all the capital and scientific/technical know how come from? Did Chinese and Indian capitalists relocate their production to use cheap, cheap American labor here in the USA? Did Musk keep his largest Tesla assembly plant in the SF Bay Area or did he put it in China? What was the con-man’s big lie about lowering taxes? - 1) That tariffs will tax corporations who don’t come back home to America, where in TRUTH, tariffs are an anti-competitive tax on American consumers - what a smoke screen for unconstitutional emoluments and heinous criminal presidential pardons; 2) That you can run a nation of 350M people, and raise their standard of living by heaping more debt on them so that the elite class doesn’t have to pay more than a pittance in taxes, by destroying centralized federal government and saving money by increasing unemployment under a guise of demanding efficiency, and forcing the large majority of Americans to bear the burden and responsibility for the cost (taxes, price inflation and dollar devaluation) that ensues even after the “fake reformists” have castrated the only institutions with enough political power to address the problems about which you complain; 3) When Nixon tore down the bamboo curtain back in the 1970’s to begin normalizing trade between the U.S. and Communist China, it meant the beginning of the process of destruction of the American post-WWII economy, which later Ross Perot explained, in reference to NAFTA dramatically increased business profits by enlarging the reserve labor base, causing a large sucking sound as money and jobs left America; 4) Why didn’t the Republicans who were easily bribed by corporate lobbyists (and many Democrats too), insist that business off-shoring of production would have to pay income taxes at the ordinary rate to the U.S. Treasury without the benefit of “capital gains” tax favoritism (because, after all, they’re no longer using that tax loophole to create good paying jobs that “produce” GDP here in America, but only to enrich the non-producing passive investors and stockholders, or to buy back stock to increase the price/value in market trading), and without reduction/credit for foreign country taxation abroad? I mean if you really want to capture that production and keep jobs here in America, and realize sufficient government revenues to serve the basic needs of a large middle economic class, it will require control over the elite class. If they won’t play according to those rules, you deny them the American marketplace and then see to it that the government subsidizes one or more competitors staying here in the USA, thus driving non compliant CEO’s out of business, and you deny them patent and copyright protection and contract clause protections in our Courts.
What I want is a Democratic Party that fights harder and smarter. I agree, one that doesn’t just tweak the system but is willing to challenge monopolies, rebuild working-class power, and treat basic needs like housing and healthcare as rights. BUT I also want that fight to be rooted in reality, not fantasy. We need policy, not performance. Vision, not vengeance.
We won’t beat extremism by mirroring it… we’ll beat it by offering a serious, bold, humane alternative. The time for half-measures is over, but so is the time for reckless destruction. I want something better. Not just different. Better.
For the most part I agree. The problem is basically that the courts allowed money into politics back in the 70s (Lewis Powell and company) and it has been downhill with neo-liberalism ever since. Reagan was the first president elected under the new money regime that allowed the wealthy to pick leaders they want. Trump is their latest cover. Democrats are scared because they think they have to play the money game too. They don't, and a few understand that. Like you, I am fed up with Democrats that play the money game. Mark Warner does. So does the Democratic Governors association. Bernie Sanders doesn't. AOC doesn't, as well as some of her close colleagues. Overall though, money rigs the system, and Democratic leaders are caught in the rigging.
Be careful what you wish for. The Tea Party was started by people who wanted to hold government responsible but it was taken over by the Koch brothers and look where we are today.
I was waiting for someone to talk about Bernie Sanders. Let's listen to what he has to say. He has an entire Sanders Institute full of respected, credible experts and planners. He's very clear on what we need to do. The lie was that he couldn't win. Bullshit. Where I live in rural Appalachia, people in 2016 were trying to choose between Bernie and Trump. Not between Clinton and Trump. Clinton was seen, correctly, as a symptom of the problem. I was a Sanders delegate to the dem convention and watched in horror as his name was not even mentioned by anyone on stage. My 20 year-old child was asked by a Dem party official, "how do we get our message out to people of your generation?" my child said, "talk about things that matter to us with real plans. cost of housing, healthcare accessibility and cost, living wage, climate change, racism, authoritarian violence, broken immigration system." the official laughed and said "no I meant what social media do you use?"
too many concrete suggestions to even start to describe them, but they are here :
My daughter was a Sanders delegate in 2016. What the dems did to him, and this country as a result, was literally criminal. And your daughter's conversation with the D official tracks: don't actually LISTEN. Don't actually DO anything. Just be sure to have a well-crafted word salad "message."
Corbin, good news, news you can use. Just yesterday i learned in addition to Matt Stoller's anti-monopoly efforts, a second similar idea has been circulating since 2017. It's called the Captured Economy. Captured Economy is the most positive, useful, practical spin on the half-baked useless Abundance Economy idea. So it's between Matt Stoller and Ezra Klein, proably a good place for many.
I first heard Steve on The Realignment podcast #556.
Here's where Google says to find Steve and his topic:
Steve Teles and his "captured economy" seems to be the most insightful and useful critique of the bland Abundance Economy.
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/review-the-captured-economy "Today’s distribution of wealth is not the sole result of a fair market process, rather regulations restricting competition and construction have redistributed wealth upwards."
The Captured Economy argues that systematic breakdowns in democratic governance have allowed wealthy special interests to capture broad domains of the policymaking process and twist the rules for their own benefit. Steadily worsening “upward redistribution” via “regressive regulation” has contributed significantly to the American economy’s twin woes of stagnating growth and sky-high inequality.
There is an old saying, you can fool most of the people, most of the time.
Well we are living an era where we are living proof.
Americans have been living under a false premise for decades.
How many people still believe that the biggest reason American's have lost economic standing is because we offshored manufacturing jobs, but in reality, domestic relocation of jobs to the south and sunbelt and introduction of automation has driven a much larger impact.
You can pin point the very year that wages started falling behind to the year that Reagan took office. Right to work laws, deregulation, and corporatizing of nearly every activity in the country has led to consolidation of negotiating and financial power. All this has resulted in is a small number of people being able to leverage the assets of the nation for their own purpose, to generate huge personal wealth while turning the majority of Americans into the working poor.
As we continue to tear down our Federal government and structure it around a single person (POTUS) all we are doing is removing real representation and granting the ability of one person to hand out fiefdoms while attacking their enemies. We are no different than the failed empires and kingdoms. And in this world that moves much faster than the 14th century, the American downfall will come quickly and swiftly. And it is exactly what we've asked for.
I've used this analogy. The house is burning down. The Left, the Right, and the Liberal is standing in the living room as the flames climb the walls and arch across the ceiling. The Left is standing there with a glass of water saying, "Hey! We need to put this fire out!" The Right is spraying flames from a flame thrower, laughing maniacally, screaming "Owned LIbs!" Meanwhile, The Liberals are calmly saying, "what we need is just less fire."
You don’t politely reform a burning house—you grab the hose or get the hell out of the way. The Democrats are standing around in matching outfits debating sprinkler pressure while the arsonists livestream from the roof. This isn’t about left or right anymore—it’s top vs bottom. And until someone starts naming the landlords, hedge funds, and pharma pirates strangling everyday life, they’re just offering prayer candles in a blackout. Blessed be the ones ready to run—not from the fire, but into the revolution.
I love how you make this the democrats FAULT. You have great points, in fact I agree with 25% of your article. But the whiny white rich assholes and now the rePUGliCON caucus have been fucking their constituents for decades. The democrats build great things for their time in office except where the criminal party rules like a king. Then the rePUGliCON caucus get voted in somehow and boom. There is data on this so…😡
But there is data that shows that this isn't so. There's no question that the Democratic Party is a kinder, gentler, more thoughtful, caring party. However, at the same time, they have not only been complicit but also actively participated in the dismantling of our means of making a living. They have been pushing the same narratives that immigrants are bad, globalization is good, and financialization is good. They've taken part in privatization and the militarization of police forces. The Democrats have not been the party of the people for a long, long time. But it can be again.
I think of the Democratic Party establishment as the kindly slave masters. They treat their slaves decently without brutalizing them and they talk of granting their freedom but never actually do. In this way, they achieve complacency from their slaves. The Republicans are the cruel slave masters who brutalize and terrorize their slaves into submission. Either way, they’re t in some degree of servitude.
You absolutely nailed it. This country has been a slow moving train wreck and our 2 political parties have not been working for us, but they are working for the lobbyists and corporations that fuel their reelection. I wrote the Republicans off in the mid 70s, but had some hope for the democrats, only to be completely disappointed.
Can we nominate people to be arrested? :-) I nominate the entire evil slimey parasitic Democratic Party elite. Donald Trump is terrible, but better the enemy out in the open than the one hiding in the back closet down the hall.
Another contribution to the "Sports Mentality". The title should be "Congress Fails" or something like that. Breaking people into boxes or TEAMS is not working and causing more problems every day. I suggest we stop talking about TEAMS and start talking about the people elected, as individuals. The Sports Mentality is killing Democracy.
You wanna eliminate poverty, eliminate wealth. You want to live within the means of the planet, enforce the strategy of doing less with much less. Capitalism is parasitism. You cannot salvage a sustainable system by continuing to burn through energy and make more shit. It just does not work that way, period. The D brand is the shadow of the R brand. Zero sum mentalities are losers, then, now and forever. Life has never been a game. No being ever wins. Statues and books and monuments do not breathe. Grandiosity about being some awesome animal has boxed us into this corner, the only corner left that has not been ground into bits, burned to a crisp or toxified to the point of cancerous failure. To pick some arbitrary 'side' in some pissing contest does nothing. Stop looking at life and the planet as something that we own and can master and understand. We cannot control even our most simple behaviors. De-growth, building down, slowing down, getting off the high-horse of massive ego, conceding that we humans have zero answers based upon this 4k year-old paradigm of usury, and learning to cooperate would be the only jump start I can get behind. I am old, like you, but I am not dead. There is as much plastic in the brain of a 30 year old as mine. All of us, like it or not, are staring into the maelstrom. Business as usual, regardless of tweaks, is futile.
Democrats are being paid to lose and it’s extremely obvious. When you have corporate donors who our legislators are working for and not the American people, the two party system is working as planned.
Democrats aren’t losing on purpose, they’re stuck playing defense with outdated strategies while the GOP, backed by billionaires and dark money, plays to win at all costs. If anything, it’s the right that’s been supercharged by money, including Elon’s, not the left.
You’re giving them too much credit when reality proves that they only work for their corporate donors. They’re not trying to win. It is written across the board that when they go on the media to answer questions, and only have Word salad like Hakeem Jeffries has all the time, they don’t care about winning and they don’t care about fighting for Americans. It is plain as day.
What Americans need to do is stop adhering to whatever party they’re in and start looking at the two parties objectively and seeing what they are for who they are . Paid to lose. System is working as planned and that’s why they’re not concerned.
That’s an easy narrative, but it ignores a lot. Democrats have delivered major wins: the ACA, student loan relief (even if pared back), climate investment via the Inflation Reduction Act, a child tax credit that cut poverty, and protections for same-sex marriage. That’s not “paid to lose.” Is the system influenced by corporate money? Absolutely, both parties are. But oversimplifying the whole Democratic Party as a controlled opposition dismisses the work of progressives within it who are fighting hard. The answer isn’t apathy or false equivalence, it’s pressure, participation, and primarying the ones who aren’t showing up enough for people.
A few real progressives who are really fighting for Americans are individuals who are not embraced by the rest of the party. It is those who aren’t taking corporate money. See the difference? Some politicians are owned and the good ones are not.
And you need to defend them, rather than see what they’re doing objectively, makes you biased.
People need to step away from their loyalty and indoctrination. See the two party system for what they are. They’re not working for Americans when they’re not being paid by Americans. They’re being paid by their corporate donors, therefore they work only for their corporate donors.
The ACA was a huge transfer of money to private insurance companies! And poor people don't need a tax credit: They need financial help NOW. Like during COVID, which literally pulled people out of poverty. Look: The Ds coasted on FDR's successes for decades. Then they started getting assassinated. And the League of Women Voters used to hold debates. Then it was turned over to the corporations known as the DNC & RNC. Bubba doubled down and said big government is over! Even Obama said he's Republican lite! Sigh. (Tho I loved his Iran deal.) My point is: examine how we got here. The Republicans had a plan to shift the country right; privatize & financialize everything; and, as Reagan said, Make America Great Again (as if it had been that way for everyone.) Democrats didn't stop them; it was too lucrative, for those at the top. Including them. We need a CtrlAltDelete.
Yes. The zero-sum game with no winners. Taking is just losing by another name. The massive hoarding complex Thom spoke of a few days ago is the most powerful addiction going. OCD, PTSD and ADHD all rolled into one. 'Honey, have you seen my last million? Cannot remember where I put it. I need to go get another one, so see you in a few. Don't wait up. You look really nice in that Skims i just bought you, but I gotta go.'
You are spot on. Unfortunately, most hardcore Democratic voters don't understand this or neoliberalism. That is why they still think Obama was a great president when in fact he and Bill Clinton actually continued Reagan's neoliberal policies and got us where we are.
Calling Obama a neoliberal oversimplifies what actually happened. He wasn’t pushing Reaganomics, he inherited a crashed economy, two wars, and a GOP Congress dead set on blocking him. Despite that, he passed the ACA (the biggest expansion of healthcare in decades), regulated Wall Street with Dodd-Frank, ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and pulled unemployment down from 10% to under 5%. He wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t a corporate sellout either. Most of his more progressive plans (public option, major climate action, etc) were gutted by Republican obstruction, not a lack of vision. In fact Trump took over and looked good economically because he had Obama’s foundation.
Obama wasn’t a corporate sellout? Huh? He bailed out the Wall Street banksters and oversaw the foreclosures on millions of families. He spent critical time of his majority in the House and Senate crafting a major subsidy of the for-profit healthcare system (aka Obamacare) and kept the two disastrous wars he inherited going while adding Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen to the tally. Obama was a disaster especially when you consider how eager the country was for change after the disaster of the Bush/Cheney years. He caved to his corporate funders—most especially Wall Street and the Pentagon.
So first off - most of the Wall Street failures occurred because of deregulation by the GOP - that's a pattern that goes back to the 1880s, 1920s, 1950s, 1980s and Georgie Porgie.
But if you knew anything about history (globally, not just US) you would know that had the US government sat back and allowed the US economy to crash, which is exactly where it was headed, we'd have been thrown into a depression, not just a recession. The actions by Obama and the Fed are what allowed most Americans to keep their homes, their cars, etc. Had there been a depression, that would not have been the situation - and most people would have lost their entire life savings. You would do well to read about Germany between WWs and the Great Depresssion
Obama refused to authorize cramdowns of mortgages by the banks that would have left hundreds of thousands in their homes instead of on the street due to foreclosures. Considering many of these mortgages were fraudulent from the start, due to banks rigging mortgage securities to fail, this would have been justice and not a bailout of homeowners. Also, many, if not most, of the foreclosures were with counterfeit, robo-signed documents, not legal chain of title. Obama and his corrupt Attorney General, Eric Holder, knew this but failed to prosecute except for a slap on the wrist plea deal with the mortgage companies. All of this led to the slowest post-recession recovery in history and paved the way for Trump. Hekuva job, Obama!
Obama didn't have any authority to reduce principal balances. Not a POTUS power. That requires judicial bankruptcy laws / application which are controlled by Congress
1) The mortgages were not fraudulent. The low/no money down environment was created by lowered regulations by the GOP led Congress under the George W Bush administration. Stop blaming Obama for an issue that started well before he was even elected
2) Banks don't 'rig' Mortgage Backed Securities. MBS have been around for decades before Obama. MBS are exactly like FHA, VA and other mortgages. Non-agency based MBS have been around since 1977 - Obama was 16 years old then - They are bundled and sold as pools of asset backed bonds in order to REDUCE risk. MBS still exist today and the entire mortgage industry wouldn't exist unless the debt was sold to bond buyers. Generally MBS payback between 95-98% of the original face value.
3) Where much of the issue came was when mortgage bonds were split into IO (interest only) and principle only bonds. POs were very stable because that is where the asset value was used to offset loses. But IOs were where all the risk came. IOs were created and allowed by Congress and the IRS in 1983 under REAGAN. Obama wasn't even in the picture.
4) These deregulations incentivized underwriters to not guarantee the quality of the bonds they created, so when paybacks began to fall, there was no insurance to cover loses.
5) The idea that electronic signatures were created under the Obama administration or that there was anything that the US Attorney could have done is ridiculous. Since the laws had been deregulated, there were no laws being broken. We didn't yet live in a nation like today where the POTUS can just make things up and start taking people to court or withholding funds because he didn't like them. Rule of law still existed
6) To suggest that Obama and Holder had the power to force cram downs is also just plain stupid. That isn't a Presidential power - to force principle reductions on private entities. Bonds were owned by private owners (institutional buyers, individual, corporate, international) - and the payers were generally individuals or small companies today. As an aside, today more homes are owned by corporations than at anytime in US history. Can you imagine what would happen if one of these were to go sideways?
7) The Federal Reserve's action to purchase MBS created a floor for their value and prevented massive depreciation of the #1 asset of most Americans. It wouldn't have just been no interest down homes that would have lost value, ALL homes would have lost value. Given that this asset is what powers many other purchases the entire economy would have crapped out. It was actually the SMART move of the Federal Reserve to purchase these bonds, hold them - and actually has profited from them over time.
Don't for one minute assume I haven't. I have read and can name all the books by scholars on WW2 and the great depression, that I have spent nearly 3 decades studying. What you have done is simplfy what happened in 2008 and Obama's handling of it. Also you seem to have very little if any understanding of neoliberalism. While Ronald Reagan started deregulation in the 80s with neoliberalism, Bill Clinton happily jumped on the band wagon. Obama did indeed need to bail out Wall Street to avoid a depression but he did nothing for the working class. He continued the neoliberal policies. You would do well to read about neoliberalism and the corporate takeover of the democratic party.
Neoliberalism doesn't exist. Neoliberalism" is a vague, non-academic label that lacks a consistent, canonical definition and is often deployed more as a rhetorical device than as a meaningful analytical framework.
Peck, Jamie. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Venugopal, Rajesh. “Neoliberalism as Concept.” Economy and Society, vol. 50, no. 2, 2021, pp. 140–161.
Dawson, Michael C. Hidden in Plain Sight: A History of the U.S. Black Freedom Struggle. University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Laruffa, Francesco.
"Making Sense of (Post)Neoliberalism." Politics & Society, vol. 52, no. 4, 2024, pp. 567–590.
Di Giovanni, Adamo, and Lana Parker.
"Three Case Studies of the Language Used to Justify Recent Neoliberal and Neoconservative Curricular Reform." Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, no. 206, 2025, pp. 1–20.
Boas, Taylor C., and Jordan Gans-Morse. "Neoliberalism: From New Liberal Philosophy to Anti-Liberal Slogan." Studies in Comparative International Development, vol. 44, no. 2, 2009, pp. 137–161.
Davies, William. "Neoliberalism: A Bibliographic Review." Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 31, no. 7-8, 2014, pp. 309–317.
Flew, Terry. "Six Theories of Neoliberalism." Thesis Eleven, vol. 122, no. 1, 2014, pp. 49–71.
Kiely, Ray. "Globalization, Post-Fordism and the Contemporary Context of Development." Critical Development Theory: Contributions to a New Paradigm, edited by Ronaldo Munck and Denis O'Hearn, Zed Books, 1999, pp. 63–84.
Mudge, Stephanie L. "What Is Neo-Liberalism?" Socio-Economic Review, vol. 6, no. 4, 2008, pp. 703–731.
Rutar, Tibor. "What Is Neoliberalism Really? A Global Analysis of Its Real-World Consequences for Development, Inequality, and Democracy." International Sociology, vol. 38, no. 6, 2023, pp. 651–671.
Bockman, Johanna. "Neoliberalism." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2017. This entry provides a comprehensive overview of the concept and its critiques, often highlighting the definitional ambiguities and the varying ways it's been deployed.
Connell, Raewyn. "Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science." Polity Press, 2007.
Ong, Aihwa. "Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty." Duke University Press, 2006.
Ferguson, James. "Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order." Duke University Press, 2006.
Kelly, John D. "The American Game: Capitalism, Decolonization, World Domination, and Cricket in the Caribbean."
Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Updated Edition). Oxford University Press, 2023.
Plehwe, Dieter, and Quinn Slobodian, editors. Nine Lives of Neoliberalism: Thin Ideology, Thick Description. Verso Books, 2020.
Varoufakis, Yanis. Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present. Melville House, 2020.
you prove my point. Obama was a neoliberal. The ACA was actually a republican plan written years before by the Heritage Foundation and proposed by then Senator Bob Dole. It was not passed because Democrats hated it as it is a handout to the Insurance companies. Obama didn't even try to push Medicare for All when the Democrats were in control on Congress. Regulated Wall Street? He bailed out Wall Stree. He was in fact a corporate sellout. A good economy for whom? The wealthy yes but not the rest of us. Same with Bill Clinton, gutted Glass Steagall. President Clinton and President Obama did little to strengthen the Fairness Doctrine. President Clinton in fact signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This allows for media-cross ownership, allowing for single media companies to own multiple media outlets, something Democrats now criticize. I suggest you actually do some research on neoliberalism and the part of Democrats
Yeah, he passed the biggest gift to insurance companies EVER. And, healthcare costs have gone up substantially since it was passed:
Healthcare Spending Growth Since the ACA
Total Health Spending: In 2010, U.S. healthcare spending was approximately $2.6 trillion. By 2023, it had increased to about $4.9 trillion, marking an approximate 88% rise over 13 years.
ama-assn.org
Per Capita Spending: Spending per person rose from roughly $8,400 in 2010 to $14,570 in 2023, a 73% increase.
As someone who doesn’t know which figures are right and which are wrong, or exactly who the fuck to blame for the disaster that is mine and my wife’s health “care” (feels more like health destroy), let me add a little human cost to this debate.
Without Obamacare, we would have no way to access healthcare. That’s just a fact. Without the ability to be treated for “preexisting conditions”, without insurance to cover the surgeries we have needed, or now to treat my chronically ill wife who has an undetermined autoimmune disorder, one or both of us would probably be dead. But the premiums - one year they were over $800 a month - have contributed to bankrupting us, and the monetization of healthcare has gotten so much worse that we STILL can’t afford to get many of the treatments we need. Essentially, we are given just enough medical care to keep me, at least, able to continue to work at a grocery store, a job I love but one that demands hard, physical work that my 60 year old body finds more and more difficult to do. I feel like we’re stuck on a merry go round of misery, unable to access or even imagine healthcare that would be truly responsive and effective. And yet I see people every day in my store who have plenty of money, women dripping in diamonds and gold, men in fancy golf shirts and manicured hands, who clearly don’t have the same issues that we do. The difference is money, and that is ALWAYS the fucking difference. This income inequality, this system by which 75% of the folks in this country are desperately trying to survive while the rest of the population enjoys all the benefits and privileges that our country provides, is destroying our society and democracy. This income inequality is the reason trump got elected, even though he is just going to make it worse. If we don’t find a way to address this problem, it WILL destroy us.
During the 2010-2016 time period where mandates existed, per capita healthcare costs rose 3% - the lowest rate seen in 50 years. After the mandate was removed it went up to 4.3-4.5%.
COVID let to a 10% increase- mostly treating the unvaccinated- who shoulf have been moved to the back of the line. The in 2021, it magically fell back to 4.5%.
2023 saw 7.5% increase because of Medicaid expansion- millions of people had put off healthcare without insurance
I know the conservative policy is to allow millions to go without insurance causing lost work, lost pay, lost school days, and chronic untreated disease because let's face it it - some think most people are cattle
Healthcare inflation did not change with ACA. Saying that the increase in healthcare costs are attributed to that is sloppy.
It did significantly reduce the number of uninsured- as we are the ONLY advanced nation that doesn't cover everyone- ever wonder why the US has a poor life expectancy in comparison?
The GOP mandate was the biggest driver of increased costs by allowing healthy individuals to opt out except during emergencies which has led to a bad risk pool and additional expenses.
Exactly.....healthcare inflation did not change with the ACA, but it was supposed to have controlled costs. I was on the streets, going door to door selling Universal Healthcare for the Obama administration. I'll never forget the day he caved int to the insurance companies. He gave them a HUGE gift and screwed people like my poor sister (and millions like her) who couldn't afford to pay the fees to insure her and her two daughters, but was mandated to do so. Of those people who became insured, the only ones who truly benefited were ones who then qualified for Medicaid; not the ones who were forced to go through the marketplace to buy insurance they couldn't afford. My sis had to file bankruptcy to rid herself of debt just to be able to afford the insurance that was forced on her. I know she wasn't the only one. And, at the time there was no way to understand that the mandatory insurance would never become a thing. She lived in fear of it for over 2 years.
ACA was a deal with insurance companies.
“We could rebuild American manufacturing so people can make things that pay living wages… We could build energy systems that work for communities instead of just shareholders. We could have healthcare that doesn't bankrupt families.”
Isn’t this a lot of what BIDEN did during his four years???
With the major legislation that Trump is now working to undo?
Came here to say this too.
What we need are candidates who aren’t multi-millionaires, who have LIVED in poverty. Deja Foxx comes to mind. Check out the net worth of people in Congress (if they haven’t found a way to manipulate the numbers). 90% of them have totally lost touch with the reality of the bottom half of the country. They belong to the No Amount of $ is Enough club. They focus on re-election (getting richer) as their #1 goal. I’m sick of getting 10 emails from Dems every time Trump💨 , full of !!!! and asking for 💰.
I had to stop reading this dribble mid-page. How do you think China is financing its super fast ascent to the leadership of the world’s economies? Where did all the capital and scientific/technical know how come from? Did Chinese and Indian capitalists relocate their production to use cheap, cheap American labor here in the USA? Did Musk keep his largest Tesla assembly plant in the SF Bay Area or did he put it in China? What was the con-man’s big lie about lowering taxes? - 1) That tariffs will tax corporations who don’t come back home to America, where in TRUTH, tariffs are an anti-competitive tax on American consumers - what a smoke screen for unconstitutional emoluments and heinous criminal presidential pardons; 2) That you can run a nation of 350M people, and raise their standard of living by heaping more debt on them so that the elite class doesn’t have to pay more than a pittance in taxes, by destroying centralized federal government and saving money by increasing unemployment under a guise of demanding efficiency, and forcing the large majority of Americans to bear the burden and responsibility for the cost (taxes, price inflation and dollar devaluation) that ensues even after the “fake reformists” have castrated the only institutions with enough political power to address the problems about which you complain; 3) When Nixon tore down the bamboo curtain back in the 1970’s to begin normalizing trade between the U.S. and Communist China, it meant the beginning of the process of destruction of the American post-WWII economy, which later Ross Perot explained, in reference to NAFTA dramatically increased business profits by enlarging the reserve labor base, causing a large sucking sound as money and jobs left America; 4) Why didn’t the Republicans who were easily bribed by corporate lobbyists (and many Democrats too), insist that business off-shoring of production would have to pay income taxes at the ordinary rate to the U.S. Treasury without the benefit of “capital gains” tax favoritism (because, after all, they’re no longer using that tax loophole to create good paying jobs that “produce” GDP here in America, but only to enrich the non-producing passive investors and stockholders, or to buy back stock to increase the price/value in market trading), and without reduction/credit for foreign country taxation abroad? I mean if you really want to capture that production and keep jobs here in America, and realize sufficient government revenues to serve the basic needs of a large middle economic class, it will require control over the elite class. If they won’t play according to those rules, you deny them the American marketplace and then see to it that the government subsidizes one or more competitors staying here in the USA, thus driving non compliant CEO’s out of business, and you deny them patent and copyright protection and contract clause protections in our Courts.
What I want is a Democratic Party that fights harder and smarter. I agree, one that doesn’t just tweak the system but is willing to challenge monopolies, rebuild working-class power, and treat basic needs like housing and healthcare as rights. BUT I also want that fight to be rooted in reality, not fantasy. We need policy, not performance. Vision, not vengeance.
We won’t beat extremism by mirroring it… we’ll beat it by offering a serious, bold, humane alternative. The time for half-measures is over, but so is the time for reckless destruction. I want something better. Not just different. Better.
Here is an example of what I think would be better: https://www.americasundoing.com/p/beyond-medicare-for-all-building
For the most part I agree. The problem is basically that the courts allowed money into politics back in the 70s (Lewis Powell and company) and it has been downhill with neo-liberalism ever since. Reagan was the first president elected under the new money regime that allowed the wealthy to pick leaders they want. Trump is their latest cover. Democrats are scared because they think they have to play the money game too. They don't, and a few understand that. Like you, I am fed up with Democrats that play the money game. Mark Warner does. So does the Democratic Governors association. Bernie Sanders doesn't. AOC doesn't, as well as some of her close colleagues. Overall though, money rigs the system, and Democratic leaders are caught in the rigging.
Be careful what you wish for. The Tea Party was started by people who wanted to hold government responsible but it was taken over by the Koch brothers and look where we are today.
I was waiting for someone to talk about Bernie Sanders. Let's listen to what he has to say. He has an entire Sanders Institute full of respected, credible experts and planners. He's very clear on what we need to do. The lie was that he couldn't win. Bullshit. Where I live in rural Appalachia, people in 2016 were trying to choose between Bernie and Trump. Not between Clinton and Trump. Clinton was seen, correctly, as a symptom of the problem. I was a Sanders delegate to the dem convention and watched in horror as his name was not even mentioned by anyone on stage. My 20 year-old child was asked by a Dem party official, "how do we get our message out to people of your generation?" my child said, "talk about things that matter to us with real plans. cost of housing, healthcare accessibility and cost, living wage, climate change, racism, authoritarian violence, broken immigration system." the official laughed and said "no I meant what social media do you use?"
too many concrete suggestions to even start to describe them, but they are here :
https://sandersinstitute.org/
My daughter was a Sanders delegate in 2016. What the dems did to him, and this country as a result, was literally criminal. And your daughter's conversation with the D official tracks: don't actually LISTEN. Don't actually DO anything. Just be sure to have a well-crafted word salad "message."
Corbin, good news, news you can use. Just yesterday i learned in addition to Matt Stoller's anti-monopoly efforts, a second similar idea has been circulating since 2017. It's called the Captured Economy. Captured Economy is the most positive, useful, practical spin on the half-baked useless Abundance Economy idea. So it's between Matt Stoller and Ezra Klein, proably a good place for many.
I first heard Steve on The Realignment podcast #556.
Here's where Google says to find Steve and his topic:
Steve Teles and his "captured economy" seems to be the most insightful and useful critique of the bland Abundance Economy.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Captured_Economy/mYY0DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA1&printsec=frontcover
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Steve Teles and Brink Lindsey on *The Captured Economy* | Conversations with Tyler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VjeTH85INY
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"The Captured Economy" Steven Teles, Hayek Lecture Series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iCvZRs8udQ
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The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality
https://www.amazon.com/Captured-Economy-Powerful-Themselves-Inequality/dp/019062776X#:~:text=For%20years%2C%20America%20has%20been,emerita%2C%20Western%20Michigan%20University%2C%20CHOICE
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First 26 pages: The Captured Economy - https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Captured_Economy/mYY0DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA1&printsec=frontcover
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Review: The Captured Economy
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/review-the-captured-economy "Today’s distribution of wealth is not the sole result of a fair market process, rather regulations restricting competition and construction have redistributed wealth upwards."
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/review-the-captured-economy
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"Rent-seeking elites will fight every effort at reform. Unless you rent-proof politics, elites will win."
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/review-the-captured-economy
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The Captured Economy argues that systematic breakdowns in democratic governance have allowed wealthy special interests to capture broad domains of the policymaking process and twist the rules for their own benefit. Steadily worsening “upward redistribution” via “regressive regulation” has contributed significantly to the American economy’s twin woes of stagnating growth and sky-high inequality.
https://capturedeconomy.com/about/
There is an old saying, you can fool most of the people, most of the time.
Well we are living an era where we are living proof.
Americans have been living under a false premise for decades.
How many people still believe that the biggest reason American's have lost economic standing is because we offshored manufacturing jobs, but in reality, domestic relocation of jobs to the south and sunbelt and introduction of automation has driven a much larger impact.
You can pin point the very year that wages started falling behind to the year that Reagan took office. Right to work laws, deregulation, and corporatizing of nearly every activity in the country has led to consolidation of negotiating and financial power. All this has resulted in is a small number of people being able to leverage the assets of the nation for their own purpose, to generate huge personal wealth while turning the majority of Americans into the working poor.
As we continue to tear down our Federal government and structure it around a single person (POTUS) all we are doing is removing real representation and granting the ability of one person to hand out fiefdoms while attacking their enemies. We are no different than the failed empires and kingdoms. And in this world that moves much faster than the 14th century, the American downfall will come quickly and swiftly. And it is exactly what we've asked for.
I've used this analogy. The house is burning down. The Left, the Right, and the Liberal is standing in the living room as the flames climb the walls and arch across the ceiling. The Left is standing there with a glass of water saying, "Hey! We need to put this fire out!" The Right is spraying flames from a flame thrower, laughing maniacally, screaming "Owned LIbs!" Meanwhile, The Liberals are calmly saying, "what we need is just less fire."
You don’t politely reform a burning house—you grab the hose or get the hell out of the way. The Democrats are standing around in matching outfits debating sprinkler pressure while the arsonists livestream from the roof. This isn’t about left or right anymore—it’s top vs bottom. And until someone starts naming the landlords, hedge funds, and pharma pirates strangling everyday life, they’re just offering prayer candles in a blackout. Blessed be the ones ready to run—not from the fire, but into the revolution.
Virgin Monk Boy
I love how you make this the democrats FAULT. You have great points, in fact I agree with 25% of your article. But the whiny white rich assholes and now the rePUGliCON caucus have been fucking their constituents for decades. The democrats build great things for their time in office except where the criminal party rules like a king. Then the rePUGliCON caucus get voted in somehow and boom. There is data on this so…😡
But there is data that shows that this isn't so. There's no question that the Democratic Party is a kinder, gentler, more thoughtful, caring party. However, at the same time, they have not only been complicit but also actively participated in the dismantling of our means of making a living. They have been pushing the same narratives that immigrants are bad, globalization is good, and financialization is good. They've taken part in privatization and the militarization of police forces. The Democrats have not been the party of the people for a long, long time. But it can be again.
I think of the Democratic Party establishment as the kindly slave masters. They treat their slaves decently without brutalizing them and they talk of granting their freedom but never actually do. In this way, they achieve complacency from their slaves. The Republicans are the cruel slave masters who brutalize and terrorize their slaves into submission. Either way, they’re t in some degree of servitude.
You absolutely nailed it. This country has been a slow moving train wreck and our 2 political parties have not been working for us, but they are working for the lobbyists and corporations that fuel their reelection. I wrote the Republicans off in the mid 70s, but had some hope for the democrats, only to be completely disappointed.
Can we nominate people to be arrested? :-) I nominate the entire evil slimey parasitic Democratic Party elite. Donald Trump is terrible, but better the enemy out in the open than the one hiding in the back closet down the hall.
Another contribution to the "Sports Mentality". The title should be "Congress Fails" or something like that. Breaking people into boxes or TEAMS is not working and causing more problems every day. I suggest we stop talking about TEAMS and start talking about the people elected, as individuals. The Sports Mentality is killing Democracy.