Democrats refuse to understand the game they’re playing, more at 11
I’m all for “Don’t explain with malice what you can explain with stupidity.” Not here though.
This is one of the biggest differences between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats will enact laws and policies with no thought of when they will begin or who will be the majority at that point. Republicans specifically enact laws and policies that will hurt the general public at specific times, knowing that they will now than likely not be the majority when they begin.
This means that Republicans are constantly taking credit for things Democrats do, and Democrats are constantly getting blamed for things Republicans do. But Republican voters are too ignorant to know they’re being lied up and Democrat politicians are too spineless to call them out on it.
IMO Democrats are often clueless, but not in this case. Without a super majority in the Senate, Democrats are often forced to accept Republican conditions to get legislation to pass and those conditions are designed to allow the GOP to take credit for legislation without actually voting for it.
Democrats gotta quit with their legislation that takes effect years later. Republicans have been taking credit for their achievements for decades.
That’s not how legislation works. Almost all legislation takes years to take effect. You don’t move a country on a dime (not without breaking it badly in the process, see everything that Trump does).
Why? It’s one thing if it’s a bridge, or a new emissions regulation
But so what if you don’t give pharma companies a long runway? They’ll make less money, they’ll miss their numbers, and their stock price will dip
There’s a middle ground between the reckless destruction of trump and carefully tweaking things years from now so no one loses money in the short term
We have big problems… Problems that need to be addressed quickly. We require solutions that cause measured damage
investment is an important way that money flows around an economy. safer investments tend to move money slowly… if people think conditions can flip on a dime, that adds risk and more risk leads to people making otherwise safer investments (this goes double: more risk usually means more reward, so if you increase baseline risk then you’re negatively effecting both sides of the equation)… we do things like grandfathering in laws because of someone in good faith invests in something it’s good to have reasonable expectations that they’re not going to have the risk calculation changed underneath them - otherwise you have to take that risk for all classes of investment, and that’s far worse than the small (probably ~10 year) loss from not catching out the practices you’re trying to change in existing activities
Right, but who is going to handle enforcement and how? What departments are going to need to oversee it? Are you going to have to partner with states? Will your new policy affect minority groups and how are you going to mitigate harm or prevent them from being excluded from the benefits? Do you need to do implementation consultations? Broad policy legislation needs details worked out, they need people to do the real work of turning words on a page into actions. These aren’t just busy work, you’re affecting the lives of good honest, working people, and it’s really easy to dismiss their concerns until you, your family, or your community are the one who is getting sacrificed for the sake of efficiency. It’s not always about obstructionism, poor implementation can cost real lives. Do people weaponize the procedures to drag things out? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean the process itself isn’t vital and fuck Ezra Klein for putting it out into the world that due diligence is somehow keeping us from dealing with real issues. You don’t deal with the vandals at the gates, by burning down the city before they can get to it.
Like I said, there’s a middle ground between recklessness and waffling over every aspect instead of acting
Right, but who is going to handle enforcement and how? What departments are going to need to oversee it? Are you going to have to partner with states? Will your new policy affect minority groups and how are you going to mitigate harm or prevent them from being excluded from the benefits?
How to handle enforcement is certainly critical detail. A law without enforcement is just a piece of paper
Making sure programs go to people that need them is obviously the point… But does everything need study on how it’ll affect minority groups?
The perfect is the enemy of the good. There’s something to be said about doing something simple and easily explained rather than attempting to iron out every last detail before even attempting moving
Like Medicare drug prices… Sure, availability for minority groups is a massive concern for all aspects of Medicare. Forcing a reduction in drug prices unilaterally might cause pharma companies to limit production in way of resistance… But what if we then turned around and started pushing legislation to force licensing of drug patents if availability drops?
What I’m saying is we should still do necessary diligence - in this case, enforcement mechanisms are central to making this a real law instead of a virtue signal
But if we get in the habit of exercising power over corporations in general (especially in the mess we call healthcare), two imperfect actions would do more than one carefully balanced attempt at perfection
It’s all situational obviously. No amount of rules will fully fix complicated problems, some changes have more necessary diligence than others, but exercising power can do more to influence outcomes than endless consideration of every factor
And I guess that’s what I’m really pushing for. We need to do more action and less consulting. Problems will crop up, damage will be done, but they can be better fixed with progressive politicians who continuously take imperfect actions to respond as problems arise
But does everything need study on how it’ll affect minority groups?
Yes. Full stop, yes. I don’t know how to explain to you that we are not post-racial, we are not post-homophobia, we are the furthest thing possible from post-transphobic, etc. If you cannot muster enough humanity to protect your community, at least protect yourself. People can and will weaponize the administration of even the best intentions to hurt their neighbours. You fall in to a minority category to someone, and the target is going to fall on you for the next group to “Sacrifice for stability” at some point. Everyone is happy to see someone else thrown into the volcano, right up until it’s their own children being fed to the flames. Stop it. Please think this all the way through.
We consult, because we know damn well who it’s going to be weaponized against first and no one is better than anticipating how than the people on the receiving end of the past 250 years of bigotry. What you are suggesting is purposefully closing your eyes and running blind at the problem, and ignoring the fact we can see you trampling people to get to where you’re trying to go. That’s not going to fix the biggest problem in the American system which is no one can trust anyone. Ever. You are literally self-sabotaging your own objectives by suggesting it.
You want to speed up the process, you do that by creating real consequences for people who try to weaponize the process. You want to keep people from going all NIMBY at a consultation, I promise that if you start dropping $100k fines on people for every time they misrepresent the facts in a town hall (and a couple orders of magnitude higher for the politicians and 10% of gross revenue for every corporation), you’re going to get a lot fewer people running their mouths if they’re going to lose their house if we can prove they’re full of shit. There’s a fucking reason “THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS” is one of the big 10. It’s about time we start treating it with the same degree of seriousness.
Yes. Full stop, yes. I don’t know how to explain to you that we are not post-racial, we are not post-homophobia, we are the furthest thing possible from post-transphobic, etc.
You misunderstand me. I’m not saying we shouldn’t care about minority issues, I’m saying that we don’t need to waste time polling them before calling an evacuation to avoid a forest fire
Yes, they’re probably going to have more trouble evacuating because as a group they’re more at risk. We should absolutely send people in to help them, what’s the point of civilization if we don’t protect the vulnerable?
But we should not delay the general evacuation. We need to get things moving, then send help to the stragglers as the situation develops
This doesn’t apply to everything… But Medicare drug prices are not something we need to carefully measure. They’re either on Medicare, and will benefit along with the rest of society.
Or they should be but they’re not, and if they’re not being enrolled in Medicare that’s a situation where we need to talk to them and ask why before moving forward (but we don’t need to do environmental studies there)
You want to speed up the process, you do that by creating real consequences for people who try to weaponize the process. You want to keep people from going all NIMBY at a consultation, I promise that if you start dropping ＄100k fines on people for every time they misrepresent the facts in a town hall (and a couple orders of magnitude higher for the politicians and 10% of gross revenue for every corporation), you’re going to get a lot fewer people running their mouths if they’re going to lose their house if we can prove they’re full of shit. There’s a fucking reason “THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS” is one of the big 10. It’s about time we start treating it with the same degree of seriousness.
This I high key agree with. We should go back to pressing perjury as well. The big 10 are guidelines for a functional society in antiquity - not all of them apply to modern day, but this and not murdering each other are the foundation of any society
We can do more then one thing at a time…I think what you say would be very difficult currently, but I full throat support it. It’s not low hanging fruit, but it would be very consequential
But I think exercising power is low hanging fruit - without that we can do nothing. We need to pass laws, enforce them, and then pass more laws to reverse or fix what didn’t work.
The climate apocalypse is upon us already. We need to act, then act some more. We need to be willing to make mistakes, then go back and correct them even as we continue to push forward
Yeah, I’m not implying that the big 10 are perfect in every scenario, but I think we can all agree no murder, no stealing, and no lying are pretty much table stakes for any healthy society and every human belief system has at least those.
I understand your urgency when it comes to climate, I really, really do, I’ve been in that fight for a very long time and the fact that it’s even a fight is demoralizing in itself. That said, I don’t think recklessness is helpful here. We need community buy in because the solutions aren’t going to be quick. It took a long time to get here, and it’s going to take a long time to get back to something tolerable. If you go swatting flies with a shotgun and what you are going to get is sabotage and opposition, and you will give people every reason to never work with you again, on anything. You’re going to get more done fast by taking the time to do it right the first time. Yes, now is the perfect time to panic, but panic isn’t going to accomplish anything.
Same arguments come when we’re talking housing, when we’re talking infrastructure (electric, transport, data, etc.). Yeah, we did a lot under FDR… and you know exactly why and how and it resulted in widespread civil unrest by the '50s and '60s. Backlash moves a lot faster these days. I have a way better idea. Tell people you’re going to do it right, and then deliver. People are sick and tired of hearing values statements, they want to see your values being lived with your own two hands. The fastest project is the one accomplished where people truly believe they can trust you to think the problem all the way through; no shortcuts, no quick patch jobs. You get some leeway for being human and making mistakes, but if you miss something obvious, you undermine trust. Any agenda not grounded in good faith, in building trust, is just another Republican talking point waiting to happen. It’s why they are winning because the one thing they can count on establishment “Democrats” as a whole to never be is trustworthy. The party’s absolute refusal to make any platform point non-negotiable means you can never count on “Democrats” to actually stand unified by anything. An individual might, but we all know that as a party, the platform isn’t worth the paper its written on. There is a big, flashing, animated sign pointing out exactly what is wrong here and every time they keep learning the exact wrong lesson. I’d like to believe that the DSA Dems have learned the right one. Forget “Abundance”, America lives or dies on trust.
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When Mamdani was running, EVERY NY Democrat was savage in their criticism, but when he won, they ALL showed up to his inauguration, to bask in his glory.
This is what politicians do, they’re all scum. If my child told me they wanted to be a politician when they grew up, I’d consider myself a failure as a parent.
i think that aspiring to be a politician, and even becoming a politician isn’t so bad… there are a few people i know that went into politics and they legitimately did it to make a difference
many get corrupted and i reckon it pretty much requires abandoning morals to become one of the “top” politicians, but there are plenty of staffers in the world that don’t and do legitimate good at the expense of their own standing
if they get into it with eyes wide open as to the reality and for the right reasons, credit to them: it’s what they do after that that matters
public service is still noble, even if most politics has become a perversion of that
And the people who need to see this be said will not see it and if they do they will hand wave it. The Democrats suck at messaging.
The billionaires run a massive far-right propaganda machine. The messaging isn’t at see what your Republican officials are doing for you! it’s at if you don’t vote R, you’re effeminate and a traitor. You have to vote R to own the libs, kick out the immigrants and stop the transgender menace.
The people who respond to that kind of messaging don’t actually care that they’re suffering so long as marginalized people are suffering more than they are.
