Why are the Democrats so spineless?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/03/democrats-opposition-trumpOpen linkView original on lemmy.world401
Comments100https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/03/democrats-opposition-trumpOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
Not just them, anybody with fucking power. Where is the military right now? Theres a fucken coup happening in plain sight.
I thought this was what the second amendment was for... Well regulated militia and stuff...
Have you done anything like that yet?
Not my country, not my lifestyle. But when all those gun nuts give a militia protecting the democracy for an answer to the question why the second amendment is necessary you have to wonder if they started maching by now. Because if not, that argument might be bull.
It's easier to call for someone else to be brave than it is to be brave.
I'm not calling anyone to be brave. I'm calling them to put their money where their mouth is. Twice now, but you seem to not understand.
You are using synonyms in this context. That's twice you've pretended they're different. I don't know why you don't understand.
You no understand, me see this. Me not bother anymore. You sleep tight.
I'm not a vegan, nor claim or aim to be one. But if I went about loudly proclaiming that I was, using this to justify my actions, and then it became public knowledge that I am in fact not a vegan, then it would be the same hypocrisy. When a group claims to need weapons to quell a threat to democracy, and then proceeds to ignore the threat when it arises, then they are hypocrites. Hope that helped understand the point - let me know if it did 👍
I get you, but being a vegan requires zero risk of injury or incarceration.
Like I told the (much less pleasant) other user, it's no surprise that people are less brave than they'd like you to believe. That's just... human nature.
Sure, it was them who acted tough for the rewards when there were no risks and now are reluctant to actually take those risks. And this is textbook hypocrisy that deserves to be called out.
well, no, not a coup, a constitutional crisis, but not a coup
It's not a coup unless it's from the Potomac Valley region of the US. Otherwise, it's just a sparkling crisis.
The Four Loko of coups
Eh more bud light than four loko
It's a distinction without a difference. It's an unlawful seizure of power.
Idk man I’d say it falls under the definition of coup. With extra steps sure, still a coup tho imo
Unlawful seizure of power is a coup . . . oh . . . wait . . . Trump has complete immunity . . . nevermind
The dems have no coherent message and strategy because they are an attempt to unify basically everything that isn't the far right under one banner. That means that different politicians under it, and different voters that vote for them, want fundamentally different things. Taking a firm, party-wide stance that satisfies the left wing of the party would risk driving off the segment that is just "conservatives that dont feel comfortable with how openly bigoted the republicans are", and vice versa. But trying to please everyone by committing to nothing and running on good vibes eventually results in people getting frustrated with voting for a party that doesn't advance what they want.
And yet Republicans have successfully runs on being everything the left is not under one banner successfully for two decades now, taking over the entire federal government.
That's because the Republicans aren't afraid to tell their base they'll do it all regardless of it contradicts with something else, even if they know it's controversial, and they push all of it through and let's everyone know they tried to push it through. They show to their members they have their backs regardless of how stupid it is.
Meanwhile on the Democrat side, you don't have a single mainstream leader that's willing to do that and actively squashes anything that might upset the moderates or their donor resulting in no one feeling like the Democrats will actually fight for them because they won't.
In this tumultuous and historically dangerous time, what are the dem centrist leaders pouring their efforts into? This corporate whoring BS to crack down on illegal streaming. And not much else. I hope the check the movie industry cuts to the DNC is worth it.
https://politics.slashdot.org/story/25/01/30/028201/democrat-teams-up-with-movie-industry-to-propose-website-blocking-law
Only because they pretend the far left are about "woke" social policy stuff and absolutely refuse to even consider left economic policy.
Ask people what progressives stand for lately and they will say trans rights and wokeness.
I do wonder if everything on the far left seeming to be about "trans" this and that is an attack by centrists and fascists to portray all of the progressive left's agenda as being about issues that are critical to only 1% of the population.
Are trans issues Important? Yes. But are trans rights issues the most critical issues of our time?
No. Not even close. Trans rights doesnt rise to importance over class struggles affecting all of us or state sanctioned mass murder in Gaza.
Are they more important than .. school vouchers, school lunches, and oil drilling issues? yes.
Are they more important than gun violence in schools?
I'd argue no.
Womens reproductive care rights?
Fuck No.
I think the progessives have been trapped by cleverly malign marketing tricks, many of which are from our own dem coalition partners. Centrist bad actions within the DNC to limit progressive influence needs to be reckoned with.
I was just asking a friend this last Friday. The party is led by out of touch boomers, backed by moneyed interests, and refuses to change. They'd rather not rock the boat or be the cause of a division in our society. Yet here we are, more divided than ever and growing by the day.
At least it wasn't by their hands?
There are plenty and too many to list here.
The thing about wedge issues is that it doesn't matter if someone gave it a whack, the divide was already there.
The fascists aren't fascists because Big Scary Putin brainwashed them with a magic crystal, this is what they want.
Easy answer: because they are led by centrists who stand for nothing much beyond being in the middle so something can get done. The very nature of centrism is to not be in favor of either side of a political spectrum. Everything is negotiable, lately even the current value of human life abroad, which will come back to our shores. Centrists sure as hell cant lead much of anywhere coherent, or win elections. They can be proud of something like an infrsatructure bill, and they feel like that should be enough to get voters to the polls for them. Its just not. Anything uncontroversial enough that the right wont object to is not going to animate the left either. They can't win on road-building and post office branch naming.
Parties need money to exist. Without voter funding from people and groups who want to get specific things done, the only funding they can get is from corporations who want dirty favors, so centrists inevitably become the dirty corporate favor party too. Or, "whores" if you will. Its whore or starve for these folks.
When their idea of "starve" is to live the normal middle-class lifestyle they've actively deprived us of.
because they're paid to be.
"look, there are good billionaires. We're going to take money from the good billionaires, we won't accept money from the bad ones."
The new DNC "leader"
just saw that clip today.. this guy is exactly what you expect of the dnc- they're signalling they haven't learned a thing. hope democrats are looking forward to jd vance and co.
As a lifelong Dem, thats just inspiring right there. "You'll all service the clean Johns only, not the diseased ones. Some trickle down goodness to you poors may or may not happen in the process. Now everyone put on your knee pads and get on your knees. The boss billionaire is entering the building."
Lmao because they are just as beholden to corporate money as the right
I think that's mostly true, I see Democrats as the power brokers. Basically they hold power between the people and corporations and attempt to maintain order. This was the mo of Republicans until Trump.
I think that they probably believe they're doing the best they can, but the reality is they serve corporations first, us second.
They're bought-out by capitol, just like the Trump Troop.
Money. They want money.
They're not spineless. They just have different values than you.
They certainly had a spine when standing up for Netanyahu.
It's almost like they're all part of the same club, despite calling themselves different political parties.
It's almost like there can be things that exist in this universe which have one side, and then you can flip it over and it has another totally different side, but it's still the same object regardless of which face it's showing.
Because none of these scenarios happened on The West Wing so they have no idea what to do
Luckily for us it should not matter. Days of free and fair elections are over. If you understand what that means please let people know. The sooner we can separate ourselves from the controlled opposition real opposition can emerge.
We are talking about a 30+ years project here. Governments die, ideas do not.
The Democrats are spineless because a bunch of them are still capitalists and don't want to mess with the status quo and disturb the money faucet that funds them. They're just as bought and paid for as Republicans, they just try to hide it behind virtue signaling and empty words.
They're paid to.
I guess the debate is if that’s indicative of how well they represent the voters.
There's a protest planned for today near you. If you'd like to attend below is a bit of info.
Some more media mentions, mostly local and brief:
edit:
BONUS:
The exact same reason, regular folks with zero chance to ever be rich in the USA, defend inheritance tax like their lives depends on them... the are ignorant and/or think they are just about to "get there" and don't want to limits to apply to themselves
Fat right only understands bullying and clearly that's the only thing that works. Supporting Trump and other far right idiots should be an equivalent of wearing a "dunce hat". Shaming actually works.
All these people want is for their external trauma to match their internal one and I say let them have it.
Unleash AOC. Put her at the front with backing she deserves from the party.
That was an excellent oped. Ibreally cant find any fault in it. The wet noodles running the party rihht now are a detriment to America. They simply are not up to the fight. They need to get in the mud or cease to be a party.
I mean yeah, but the better use of time is covering the takeover.
In related news, frog with all legs removed becomes deaf.
and the greens. why have the greens not put an end to this.
Whatever. Voters gave all the levers of power to the rebuplicans. Now don’t come asking for democrats to come to the rescue when they have no power at all.
The DNC wouldn't know what to do with power if they had it.
What are you talking about, they give it immediately back to the republicans when they have it in the name of compromise. Even to the point of doing it before the negotiations happen
Its not like they did anything when they did have the power.
What does The Gaurdian expect Democrats to do, without the Constitutional power do it?
In the last election The Executive Branch (Presidency), The Legislative Branch (Both houses of Congress) had their control swing Republican, couple that with Trump having already packed The Judicial Branch (The Supreme Court) with a Republican majority, and that's the whole ball game.
Democrats seem spineless, because not enough of The American People cast votes in Novembers election to give them to power to do or stop Republicans doing litteraly anything all.
Elections have consequences. More Arab and Latino Americans cast a vote for Donald Trump in Novembers election than have ever voted for any Republican candidate before in American History. Leftists on the other hand spent the Spring and Summer of an election year, on nightly news, marching on every major American city, and taking over University commons across the country, protesting Jews, in support of Islamofascist terrorists, chanting "From The River To The Sea", and telling anyone that would listen they weren't going to vote for "Genocide Joe", which I imaging not only freaked out Middle America, but All of it, with the kicker that Democratic youth vote was the lowest on record this past election, while Republican youth vote was the highest.
Donald Trump won his second term as President of The United States by 2.3% of the vote, and the Left suppressed the Democratic Youth Vote.
Funny that the anti-electoralists and protest vote crowd were just fine with enabling the installation of another nazi state but in the US that would provide more support to the ongoing genocide and expand it to other areas like LGBTQ+ people and aiming to start another world war. The least that they could do is take responsibility for their actions but, I don't see that happening.
Well here's a serious answer: Allowing Trump to return to power is collateral damage, and really bad collateral damage but it was simply unacceptable to allow Harris to win the election with that mess of a platform. One would hope for a mass movement to resist Trump during or after election seasons, but American leftists are too spineless to do anything other than complain so the end result is... this mess.
So first I'm not American, so I didn't do anything, but that aside:
The GOP is obviously a lost cause, but the DNC doesn't have to be. Allowing the DNC to succeed in the election after their attempt to shift to the right again would set the precedent that they can do whatever the fuck they want and people will still vote for them. Then your two options become the fascist GOP or the now actively harmful DNC, and there's nowhere that can lead other than GOP fascism. Between the choice of Trump now or JD Vance in 8 years, Trump now is the better choice if it will allow you to avoid JD Vance in 8 years. Which leads to my other point:
The ideal scenario would be mass Democrat protests (and other direct action such as strikes if and when protesting fails) when the DNC nominated Harris without a primary that would lead to the nomination of a competent candidate or at least a better platform for Harris than the monstrosity she ran with. I mean Republicans in her cabinet? Border wall? Just yikes. Anyway the American public chose to stay silent here. The less ideal but still workable scenario would be a Democrat mass movement riding the wave of Abandon Harris and the Uncommitted movement to, again, force the DNC to relent on their unpopular platform. The American public either stayed silent or actively ridiculed these movements, telling them to "hold your nose and vote for her". From that point onward there was no happy ending and the only thing to be done was damage control. With that in mind let's think about how the damage could be controlled: One way would be, as you said, to vote for Harris and try to avoid the current situation. That allows you to bet on Trump dying or being convicted before 2028, but in the case he wasn't he was 100% going to win in 2028 because Harris's platform put to action was going to piss off everyone to the left of Dick Cheney, and her being a black woman would piss off everyone to the right of Dick Cheney. Also, even if Trump was out of the picture before 2028 you'd run the risk of the GOP nominee being an actual good politician riding the Trumpist wave to destroy the country worse than Trump—who is fundamentally limited by being dumber than a sack of potatoes— ever could. Standing in the face of all this would be a DNC that learned from their 2024 victory that being outwardly rightwing corporate stooges works. The short of it is: The problem with a Harris 2024 victory was that nothing Harris was going to do in her term was going to prevent a Trump/Trump clone from winning 2028. "Let's cross that bridge when we get to it" doesn't work when American leftists have proven time and time again that they don't know how to cross bridges. The other option is... well, you're living it right now. Again, nothing is going to happen without a mass movement against Trumpism and for progressive economic policy so if nobody does anything (which seems to be the case) y'all are toast but that was going to be the case no matter who won the 2024 election.
The DNC isn't leftist, just to make that clear. By leftists I mean actual American people with leftist values, and as for what they can do... well, there are many things but you can ask the French or the Spanish. Spaniards went on a general strike in October where
Now I'm not talking about solidarity with Palestine here, but this is one way to make your government do something it doesn't want to do. So why are we not hearing of Americans going on strike to stop the Trump government from ruining the country?
See above.
Um, we've been doing far more than complaining... Who do you think is organizing on the ground right now, and have been for years? I mean, not like the Dems helped, or even moved out of the way of that organizing...
I mean, I really did enjoy getting tear gassed by Democratic party cops for daring to protest against police.
Hello my partner in the democratic party, The floor is yours. Sprawl out on your belly and continue pounding the floor with both fists like the rest of your hostage taking ilk. If your side wanted to win, a win was in your grasp with a single announcement from Harris, she chose not to make that announcement. You never contest that point, why not? So yes we're here in the wilderness with you. Difference is, we progressives (whose votes you absolutely needed to win) have been here a while. Check out my camp chair and marshmallow stick, cool eh?
Say, what outcome are you hoping to achieve with this increaingly boring and pointless messaging ? Are you trying to get progressives to join a future genocide? I think history has shown pretty conclusively that thats not going to work. Anything else you need, party-brother?
I have a declaration of universal human rights that you might have never seen before, to pass the time. Or the works of Emmanuel Kant. Some stuff from MLK.
How was arresting your voters for protesting genocide helping keep Trump out of power?
Uh... Why do y'all forget that there's a ceasefire going on right now? There's a ceasefire that Trump was at least part of achieving, so while Israel is still up to their normal levels of Apartheid, the capital Gaza genocide is over, or at least paused.
The genocide is not over just because they paused killing in Gaza and restarted killing in the West Bank.
By that definition Palestine has been under genocide for 50 years. Which, okay fair enough but that has nothing to do with the claim that Trump is worse than Biden for Palestine.
Yes. 70+, to be more accurate.
No. He had nothing to do with it, aside from promising he'd publicly give Bibi free reign if he won, which was better than not publicly giving Bibi free reign while still giving it to him.
The way I saw the last election was like this:
People were demanding the Dems to stop supporting genocide, but Kamala was not going to make any changes on that front.
However, any other option would wind up allowing Trump to happen, which is just objectively a worse scenario.
It's like we all saw a horrible fire headed our way and we needed to choose which bus to get into. People advocating for the blue bus knew it wasn't the most ideal bus since they were helping throw gasoline on an external fire in another place. But the red bus wanted the fire and was the cause of the fire and clearly wasn't going to stop throwing gasoline on that external fire anyway. People were protesting that the blue bus needed to stop helping put gasoline on that or else they won't help people get on the blue bus. And now we're stuck with the red bus and we're all on fire.
Granted, the protesters weren't necessarily the strict cause of us being stuck with the red bus and us all being on fire, but they sure didn't help. And them acting morally superior is childish considering they didn't help us try to get out of our own fire and the external fire is not any better due to the red bus, so their protest effectively did nothing anyway as everyone else already knew was going to be the case.
Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?
So voting for the people who started the fire is your solution?
In the hopes they had lied about their stated plan to keep that fire burning as long as the Israelis wanted?
When they knew they'd lose the election by stoking that fire and they continued to stoke it anyway? But its the voters who are to be blamed huh. Harris could have won by admitting Israel was engaged in a genocide, about two weeks before election day.
No I dont think your suggestion is logical at all. Its a tired argument and its hostage taking by the DNC. I dont negotiate with far right wing terrorists-- whether they are democrats or republican or other. Sometimes when given an impossible choice of two murderous outcomes, the correct response is to make no choice, and stand up to smash all the people and systems that made this vote "neccessary".
Now that the election is over, will you lay on the ground bitching or will you get whats needed done? Its time for you to stop talking about the past and start being a decent human being pushing for a brighter future. Remember when doing the right thing was something we all did? When will that start being present in your mind again?
Doing the right thing is making sure we can stand longer to keep fighting for what's right, not throwing a fit when you can't get 100% of what you want. No matter how much you throw a fit, it was not going to help, but you could have done something to make things not worse. All throwing a fit accomplished was virtue signaling.
Now we're worse off and stand even less of a chance of making progress.
I don't understand how people thought it was a good idea to throw a fit because the choice was between "the same shit" or "even worse shit". We needed help avoiding even worse shit. You did not help with your virtue signaling.
That sounds suspiciously like just blind acceptance that we have no power, will never have any power, and sort of like a suggestion that I should just lay back and enjoy it. And if thats true we need to burn the system to the ground-- no matter the short term pain-- not lend our support to it so it continues year after year. If you're right, it has to end.
You're clearly misrepresenting my argument. I'm literally saying that the power we do have is elsewhere. Trying to assert we have immediate power over the current presidential election by throwing a fit is ridiculous.
If you want change, then we need to change our first-past-the-post voting system. Until then, throwing a fit about our limited choices is ignorant.
Then you're literally living in a dreamworld. Politicians dont care what we think except during an election. They dont even care about your patheticly small donations. This been proven without a doubt. FPTP benefits the DNC, so they would never change it unless they are leveraged to do so. What were you going to do, write letters to interns? hold a sign on the steps? It didnt work for Defund, and that was a much more potent cause. You as a dem voter have two short moments of power and leverage, and those were when you voted in the primaries and general.
You were conned into doing exactly what you were told and missed your chance to have any power. If 80% of the dems had voted uncomitted in the primary you bet your ass Biden/Harris would have acted, and Biden stil would have won the primary. But I bet you didnt vote uncomitted did you?
Plenty of time to do the right thing later, you think.
How many times do you expect people to put their deeply held morals aside, to help elect amoral people seize power?
Well the guy who explicitly stated he just wants to see the whole place razed got the ceasefire Biden "tried" and failed to achieve for 15 months, which I'd say helped Gaza.
Sure, in the same way Reagan "got the hostages released" -- by colluding with another fascist to make each other look good, so they can gain power and execute their agenda (and their enemies) later.
You've been played and you don't even realize it.
Okay I won't deny that this possibility exists—though I don't think it's likely either—but okay, and? Muslims in America wanted one thing: A Gaza ceasefire. Biden didn't give them that, but Trump did. Therefore the idea that Trump was going to or is funding the genocide harder than Biden did is simply false.
Trump says Palestinians have ‘no alternative’ but to leave Gaza -- President in effect endorses ethnic cleansing of territory before hosting meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu
I fucking told you so.
I'll wait till I see what Egypt and Jordan have to say about this. If they accept, which is necessary for Trump's plan and exceedingly unlikely, I'll eat my words.
Hamas was never the ones stopping the deal from happening; that was always Israel, whom Trump told in no uncertain terms to end the war or else. I won't deny the possibility that Hamas was also pushed along by Trump, but remember that Hamas wanted to give up the hostages in exchange for a ceasefire. That was the whole point of taking hostages back in October 7th, and they accepted the deal when Biden first presented it in May.
He also approved them moving the violence to the West Bank.
Okay, and? I think you're misunderstanding something here: The problem with Biden and Harris after him was never that they were just Zionists; all American presidents who were contemporary with Israel were Zionists. The problem was that the level and scale of cruelty they accepted and supported in the Gaza war was unprecedented. Even the Zionist American government would normally not allow Israel to commit genocide on such a scale. See: Reagan during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Tell me he's worse than Biden when he allows something on that scale; otherwise he's just a regular US president aiding regular crimes against humanity.
In my defense I wrote this before the "let's flatten Gaza" stuff. I am, however, taking solace in the fact that what Trump is trying to do is geopolitically impossible.
Well state governments, for one, should be doing a lot more to resist Trump's rampage. I mean that fucker withheld FEMA money from California right? Why is nobody saying anything about that?
Admittedly I don't know much about the nitty gritty of states rights in America, but again at least say something when the Trump-led federal government interferes in your affairs. The two examples that come to mind are the FEMA money thing and Trump opening wholly unnecessary dams in California.
Maybe if the Dems stopped tossing people into prison for protesting genocides, or for protesting police abuse of authority, there might be more people able to vote for a Dem?
American voters and the left in particular told the democrats to eat shit and fuck off. Suddenly they want to be saved by these same democrats they called fascists?. How does any of this make sense?
The democrats should just take 4 years off and let the American voters reap what they sowed. They’ll be ok they have money and property. It’s the voters who get what they asked for.
Why help or fix anything if the voters are just gonna tell you to fuck off and give the republicans all the credit? It benefits them far more to let the republicans wreck everything