This is really quite simple - they want to remove the few marginal protections offered by ACA. Namely, pre-existing conditions. Republicans believe insurers should not assist you if you are sick but haven’t been paying them for long enough beforehand. Just like these dying pregnant women who are now forced to attempt waiting to give stillbirth instead of get abortions, all of us will have to wait until insurers have collected enough money from us before they will pay their 60-80% to make vital medical care almost affordable.

As a concept, it’s a shit plan. In reality it will be extremely bad for all but the richest among us. America is truly barbaric to its own people.

8 years later, still riding that click-generating wave of “can you believe how racist this guy is?!”

Merrick Garland is a failure of epic proportions. It is a small silver lining that the Repugs blocked his Supreme Court nomination, not that their picks were better.

Under the democrats’ watch with Biden as president, we have endured the following:

• let the repugs rush through ACB to Supreme Court in 2020, refusing to use the same legal principle applied by the republicans in 2016 to delay (which they leveraged to appoint Gorsuch instead of Garland)
• Biden announced early in his term he considered gays to be a security risk in the military, perpetuating harmful don’t ask don’t tell policies.
• RECORD oil and gas drilling, even more than Trump’s term, by a wide margin (over 50% more drilling permits)
• ended tax rebates for electric vehicles, but banned imports of affordable EVs from China, continuing Trump’s trade war
• overturn precedent to end abortion rights, instead of codifying Roe

If you look at the actual policies and bills proposed by elected officials, they consistently work on behalf of their donors, even when it’s harmful to their constituents. When asked about such actions, Pelosi has said they prefer to “lean to the green.” Fundraising appears to be the only concern of DNC leadership. Voting does not line their pockets - infer from that what you will.

Democratic strategists began emulating republicans’ pandering to corporations for donor money in the 80s, and Dems have been consistently losing seats at the state and local level since then. The reason why is quite simple - they are abandoning populists policies which benefit the working class, and instead are embracing pro-corporate policies. Consider Trump’s historic $2T tax cut for the rich and corps - Biden could hardly bring himself to agree to roll back half of it, and he still hasn’t implemented a rommback successfully. This leaves some of the most profitable companies in the world paying only 21% income tax. Most of us are paying more than that, especially when you consider that many of them utilize offshore accounts to pay effective taxes under 10% in most years. How are we going to pay for this theft of public resources by these corporate entities? This is not sustainable, and yet, here we are.

These are all facts. I’m sorry you don’t recognize them as such, or at least don’t “see them the same way.” If you actually care about these issues, it might be time to question the motives of DNC leadership with a bit more scrutiny.

Which makes it even dumber that Dems prioritize fundraising above the wishes of their constituency. Just look at how far to the right Kamala has been dragged by the donors, and marvel at the Dem strategists’ head scratching as to why she’s slipping in the polls. This system is totally broken for all but the rich and corporations.

Would be interesting to see that play out fully. Here’s hoping we get the chance to do so in the next few years. Its so heartbreaking that so many women are suffering/dying because of these regressive policy positions.

Look, republicans suck ass, it’s true. But if Dems had codified Roe into law either time they had the supermajority (two chances in the last 20 years), then the corrupt SC wouldn’t have been able to do jack shit. If dems had any integrity, they would shoulder a significant amount of the blame for this issue, because they had their chance and deemed it “not a priority.”

I believe he also chucked rolls of paper towels at them. Many people, smart people, are saying they were quite good at absorbing all that hurricane flood water.

ca-CAW!! 🦅

Point taken, but there is a whole lot of “it depends” to consider here. How ceremonial would you call Dick Cheney’s tenure as VP?

To be fair, W and Biden are very different presidents. Still, Cheney proved a determined VP can achieve much of their agenda if they so desired.

Afaik this is precisely what the captcha data was intended for - training AI models. Originally leveraged machine learning. LLMs are a slightly different paradigm but same purpose and results here.

This would be the typical Dem strategy - extremely targeted so as not to accidentally open the floodgates for additional impactful legislation to get passed. Just barely enough to campaign on for the next election cycle.

But hey, I’ll take a smidgeon of hope for something more.

I think I agree with you, but this is phrased a bit weird across your comments. Normally there are chosen “detractors”, a-la Manchin/Sinema. It’s their job to kill this stuff and constantly be the scapegoat, and they get special deals as a reward.

However, if the chosen ones can’t or won’t fulfill this role, there are always corpo establishment dems ready to step in and kill meaningful legislation (ie, your blue dog Dems comment above.) They don’t openly advocate for doing this though, and do prefer to hide behind the scapegoats instead.

It’s more than name and shame that is required. Just doing that will enable the media to dull the impact and sweep it under the rug at the next 24 hour news cycle, nobody will hardly know.

What is needed for these corrupt politicians to come around is to go to their home districts and campaign loudly against them, and in favor of legislation which will help the voting working class. This will force them to play nice, or cost them their seats if done correctly.

Still waiting to see W, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz convicted of war crimes for all the torture they oversaw at those cia black sites, among other things. Absolutely villainous.

Never know, those bone spurs might act up again and prevent him from appearing.

Great, so it’s up to people of good conscience to spend their time organizing to raise money and awareness in order to try and hold this sheriff accountable for voter intimidation. Instead of, you know, law enforcement. Wonderful system.

Literally 0% chance to change for good if all that happens is bearing witness to corruption and wrongdoing.

This is doing something. It’s hitting on the root of so many problems which have arisen in the US since the corporate takeover of government began in 1978 in partnership with the Supreme Court. I applaud AOC for this!

bit of an overgeneralization there mate

I strongly suspect his dementia-riddled brain will be too far gone for another run in 4 years. Hope so anyway.