> both sides - ever wonder why it seems like neither political party has a message aside from “at least I’m not the other guy”?
This is pure cynicism. It is both lazy and false.
Democratic goals:
- address climate change
- extend the social insurance programs that are foundational to the welfare state: social security, the ACA, medicare, etc.
- election integrity: ensure equal access to the ballot, eliminate gerrymandering, eliminate the electoral college
- legislative reform: eliminate the filibuster
- education: address educational debt
- address inequality through tax measures and public expenditures
- appoint liberal judges
- preserve access to abortion and contraception
- reform policing, making it more community based, less punitive, more accountable in the case of police wrongdoing, etc.
- etc.
Republican goals:
- facilitate resource extraction
- privatize public assets
- roll back environmental protections and regulations of all sorts
- roll back the social insurance programs that are foundational to the welfare state: social security, the ACA, medicare, etc.
- reduce taxes, particularly on the wealthy
- roll back commitments to international agreements and organizations
- enshrine Christian morality and customs in law
- roll back protections for historically disadvantaged groups
- reduce ballot access for constituencies that tend not to vote Republican
- preserve the electoral college and gerrymandering (see previous point)
- prevent the teaching of anything touching on diversity or historical prejudices or injustice
- appoint conservative judges
- prevent access to abortion and contraception
- reform policing, making it more lethal, more punitive, less accountable in the case of police wrongdoing, etc.
- etc.
This lists could be much longer. There are thousands of passionate politicians and activists for both parties who work on these things all the time. However, people are more motivated by negative partisanship than anything else. It turns out listing good stuff you intend to do on behalf of your voters is much less motivating than detailing the perfidy, real or imagined, of the other party and promising to punish it.
False equivalence is the way you create oligarchy, not how you fight it.
I generally agree with criticizing of "bothsidesing" the US poltical climate. That is intellectually lazy and simply not true. Conservatives mainstream Nazi propaganda [1] and the liberals are really just an inefective center right party that likes the aesthetics of social causes without having to do anything.
> Democratic goals: ...
This is propaganda I'm afraid. The goals of the Democratic Party are to systematically erase any progressive element from the party (eg Bernie, AOC) while positioning themselves as being not as bad as the Republicans for pure fundraising reasons without ever actually having to do anything.
Roe v. Wade was handed down 49 years ago. There have been multiple opportunities since then to codify this in Federal law. Most recently Obama the candidate campaigned on doing this as his #1 priority. Obama the new president, who had a super-majority in the Senate and thus didn't even need to repeal the filibuster (which he should've anyway) decided it wasn't that important. To the contrary, Obama actually made abortion less accessible [2].
The Democrats are absolutely feckless and are quite happy to do so as long as they can maintain office. The Republicans are straight up monsters but they are effective in that they give their base what they want.
Example: compare whipping efforts by the GOP and disciplining its members (eg Kevin McCarthy and Madison Cawthorn) vs the Democrats. If the GOP was faced with a Manchin or Sinema they would be primaried and stripped of key committee positions (most notably Manchin's on Energy) to bring them into line.
Don't for a second think the Democrats actually want to do anything.
> If the GOP was faced with a Manchin or Sinema they would be primaried and stripped of key committee positions (most notably Manchin's on Energy) to bring them into line.
The Democrats have 50 seats in the Senate. The Republicans have 50 seats. The Democrats have control only because Kamala Harris provides a tie-breaking vote. Sinema and Manchin are actively being courted by the Republicans ceaselessly. So if the Democrats try to whip them into line they can just withdraw their support from the Democratic caucus and then Mitch McConnell has the power. This isn't to say that the everything the Democrats have done to try to control the situation has been perfect, but these are the parameters they're working with. The story that the Democrats are feckless and happy to achieve nothing is the propaganda. It is spread both by idealists working with a fantasy notion of US politics and agents provocateurs who prefer the left stay cynical and demoralized.
Another element of this fantasy version of politics: the "Obama had a super majority" story, which echoes endlessly. Obama had this super majority for a number of weeks. First Republicans prevented the seating of Al Franken for months. Finally he was seated. Several weeks later Ted Kennedy has to withdraw entirely from his job because he was dying of a brain tumor. Then he died. During this time the legislative priority was passing the ACA. They wasted vast amounts of time with the Republicans playing a Lucy-and-the-football delaying tactic. But ever since defeatists trot this out as though Obama could have passed virtually everything during this brief window and the fact that he didn't proves his fecklessness. This is the propaganda. The Democrats have failed to achieve more not because they as a party don't want to achieve anything but because they are a relatively disunited party with different people pulling in different directions and they have only had very brief moments when they could exercise significant power. This is why everyone but Sinema and Manchin want to reform or abolish the filibuster: they realize that it prevents their ever achieving anything because at this point the Republicans will never work with them except on trivial matters.
Use Occam's Razor. It isn't secret cabals and epicycles that govern the political universe. It is exactly what you see: disunited people, some of whom are corrupt (Sinema and Manchin, e.g.) or stupid (Sinema and Manchin, e.g.), working with brief windows of opportunity within the campaign cycle. If you actually want leftist ideas enacted, working with a fantasy version of politics is worst way to go about it. It may make you feel individually virtuous and important, which is a great temptation for everyone, but it doesn't get anything done.
P.S. Obama could not abolish the filibuster. This is something the Senate has to do by amending the rules they are organized by. They can do it with a simple majority, but it has to be a majority of senators. And Obama's chief priorities when he came in were the ACA and enacting carbon pricing, not codifying Roe v. Wade into law. He managed to achieve one of these things largely because Nancy Pelosi gave up the House's more progressive plans when Ted Kennedy was gone and she realized further negotiation was fruitless. And despite herculean efforts on the part of all the Democrats in power at the time (well, except certain assholes), the circular firing squad devotees paint them all as feckless.
> Obama had this super majority for a number of weeks
Even that is an exaggeration. There was never a Democratic supermajority.
He was able to cobble together a super majority on one issue. One of the Senators making up the supermajority that passed ACA literally spoke at the RNC convention and endorsed Obama's opponent[1].
This is pure cynicism. It is both lazy and false.
Democratic goals: - address climate change - extend the social insurance programs that are foundational to the welfare state: social security, the ACA, medicare, etc. - election integrity: ensure equal access to the ballot, eliminate gerrymandering, eliminate the electoral college - legislative reform: eliminate the filibuster - education: address educational debt - address inequality through tax measures and public expenditures - appoint liberal judges - preserve access to abortion and contraception - reform policing, making it more community based, less punitive, more accountable in the case of police wrongdoing, etc. - etc.
Republican goals: - facilitate resource extraction - privatize public assets - roll back environmental protections and regulations of all sorts - roll back the social insurance programs that are foundational to the welfare state: social security, the ACA, medicare, etc. - reduce taxes, particularly on the wealthy - roll back commitments to international agreements and organizations - enshrine Christian morality and customs in law - roll back protections for historically disadvantaged groups - reduce ballot access for constituencies that tend not to vote Republican - preserve the electoral college and gerrymandering (see previous point) - prevent the teaching of anything touching on diversity or historical prejudices or injustice - appoint conservative judges - prevent access to abortion and contraception - reform policing, making it more lethal, more punitive, less accountable in the case of police wrongdoing, etc. - etc.
This lists could be much longer. There are thousands of passionate politicians and activists for both parties who work on these things all the time. However, people are more motivated by negative partisanship than anything else. It turns out listing good stuff you intend to do on behalf of your voters is much less motivating than detailing the perfidy, real or imagined, of the other party and promising to punish it.
False equivalence is the way you create oligarchy, not how you fight it.