this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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That's not their purpose, they just need to look the part. They are comfortable in the 'my hands are tied' position. They can propose bills they know will not make it. When they have a supermajority, like they had not long ago, they are in trouble. They have no choice but to stop proposing bills and find reasons to say they are 'sabotaged'. They played this game for centuries, still works.
The last true supermajority I'm aware of only lasted 72 days, back in 2009. It's when the Fair Pay act was signed, Affordable Care Act, and a few different attempts to reform Wall Street. They were certainly not as life-changing as I'd like, but I'm admittedly pretty far to the Left of the average US voter.
The even stronger supermajority before that was in 1965, and that got the creation of Medicare & Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, Freedom of Info Act, etc.
The Dems are a weak centrist party, and the leadership is center-right at best, but even so - those two times where they had a supermajority in the Senate gave us some good to at least quasi-good stuff. I'm totally on board for bashing the Democrats, but it's hard to convey the amount of damage the truly undemocratic Senate has done over the decades, and I think we can't avoid the reality that there was a lot that got done in that brief period when the Republicans couldn't stop them. The ability to block legislation in the Senate is just incredible. Things just can't get passed, unless it's something the Republicans will agree to - so it's far easier for shitty stuff to get passed. Unfortunately, there are enough right wing democrats that will go along with the shitty stuff the Republicans propose, in no small part because their constituents actually like it. We're losing the propaganda war, because those with capital have far more power to wield.
So there's a lot of problems to fix - deeply undemocratic institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College, the entirety of the GOP, weakass right-wing Democrats, and the voters themselves. Unfortunately, yeah...the interests of Capital have intervened and made sure to cripple Education and control the media landscape, so to get back to my main point, since I'm losing the thread here - I'm agreed that the Democrats are shit, but we can't ignore reality that when they've had actual full control of the Federal government, things were at least going in a decent direction.
The senate doesn't actually need a supermajority to end a filibuster; they approve the rules that set how many votes are needed to break a filibuster with a simple majority.
Similarly they can replace the parliamentarian at will, as republicans have done in the past, but chose to keep a parliamentarian that prevented them from using budget reconciliation to fulfill their promises to the voters.
Well sure, the Democrats could kill the filibuster with a simply majority (if they could get 51 senators on board) but they filibuster a lot as well, to prevent some Republican legislation. So I can see why they're too pragmatic - or cowardly - to remove it. Not the best source/graph, but a source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-are-so-many-democrats-considering-ending-the-filibuster/
As for the parliamentarian: they haven't been removed in a while, and the one before that also served for a pretty long time...I think the Democrats (again, cowardly or pragmatically) are simply trying not to escalate and make the parliamentarian a puppet of the current simple majority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentarian_of_the_United_States_Senate
I'm all in favor of nuking the filibuster, mind you: which would make the whole budget reconciliation thing a moot point. but I can understand the desire for some in the party to retain it as a tool. Fat lot of good it's doing us now, of course.
2020 Election: The Democrats gained control of the Senate after the Georgia runoff elections in January 2021. This flipped the Senate from Republican to Democratic control. The Senate was tied 50–50, but with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote, the Democrats technically controlled the chamber.
The Supermajority: A supermajority in the Senate requires 60 votes to overcome filibusters and pass most legislation. This means that, while Democrats technically had control with 50 seats plus the Vice President's tie-breaking vote, they did not have a full 60-vote supermajority.
However, there was one brief moment when Biden’s party had a 60th vote, which occurred after Senator Al Franken resigned and was replaced with Senator Tina Smith in 2018
At best their 'accomplishments' you mention were limited, while vastly more dammage was done in other fields.
They celebrate 1 step forward while simultaniously going 3 steps back somewhere else.
The drone king was one of the worst and harmful presidents ever.
That party can not and does not want to be fixed, it's working as intended.
Correct - technically, but not practically - because they absolutely can't get anything substantial done with the Republicans and right-wing Democrats, as they didn't have a filibuster proof supermajority.
That...just isn't true though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115th_United_States_Congress They had at most 47 votes, right? Also...recall who was president in 2018. Certainly not enough congressional control to override the inevitable veto.
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that many of the accomplishments were limited. I'm not saying they are going to save us, and while I want to wrest control from the right-wing leadership in the Democratic party, I'm not terribly optimistic that it'll happen in my lifetime. IMHO we need more coordination and cooperation on the Left to organize enough to do what the Tea Party did on the Right with the GOP...the major difference is that the folks in power in the GOP weren't ideologically opposed to the Tea Party, unlike the corporate Dems v. the "Actual Left", so maybe that's a fool's errand, especially given the power structures in place, and the inherently anti-democratic system of government re: SCOTUS, Senate, Electoral College, etc.
Look: I don't think we disagree all that much: I'm just trying to acknowledge nuance and correct misinformation. So...what do you suggest we do about the Democrats being at best speed bumps to real progress?
While you acknowledge that they are shit I fundamentally disaggree with you on trying to fix that party.
There is no reason to do that. As long as people don't vote 3rd party it's their own fault, I have zero sympathy for them.
they actively work to ensure don't make it. Manchin, Sinema and others like them are greatly valued by Dems for their role as scapegoats.
They in this case being libs in liberal democracies, not democrats specifically.
One way to resolve the contradiction between the capitalist class, which the state represents, and the masses, whom the state requires to maintain power is for the masses to believe their representatives want what's best for them, but are powerless to implement it due to foreigners or nature or some other group, or are trying and it will happen some indeterminate time in the future.
What's this today? Been in the fediverse for barely 2 weeks only to be dissapointed by the same manufactured consent from its users (minus the bots).
All of a sudden I see anti-capitalist posts and based comments.
The 'libs' in Europe would be the shamelessly named socialist parties.
Invariably being horrible and keeping the status quo with only difference that they now and then throw a bone to the beloved working class and have their larping day on the 1st of may, sing the internationale like they mean it.
You're on .world. It leans right-wing, essentially trying to be reddit 2 and having de-federated from the explicitly Marxist-Leninist lemmygrad.ml and Communist/Anarchist hexbear.net
I know about these 2 also just learned they defederated (and what that means).
Any more tips?
.world defederated from them, meaning .world accounts cannot see their content. They still have very active posting, just not in your view.
I know it's tough, but consider making another account on an instance that is defederated with as few instances as possible. Then you can pick and choose which instance you yourself don't want to see anymore.
You can block instances, communities, and users in your settings menu.
Any recommendations for such an instance? Or recommendations on where to find such information?
You're already on one, though if you want even broader lemm.ee works. I, however, instead recommend checking out instances and their local feeds directly by picking from here, sorted by most active, then scrolling by local.