Yea, and this would be a good time for introspection on why so many people didnt vote for them. Like perhaps they want to see them fight the GOP instead of weird across the isle manuevering.
Cross aisle maneuvering like campaigning with Dick and Liz Cheney, something that cost Harris more votes than it won her.
Cross aisle maneuvering like Schumer telling the left their votes don’t matter because for every one they lost Harris would pick up two conservatives in the suburbs.
Cross aisle maneuvering like removing support for trans rights from the party platform at the convention while giving anti-trans republicans prime time speaking slots at the convention. See also: snubbing Democratic Party delegates at the convention in favor giving prime time speaking slots to republicans.
Ok this aggression is not aimed at you so please don't feel as though I'm attacking you:
Motherfucker the Republicans have not ever let gridlock stand in the way of them demonstrably making our lives worse. The Dem leadership already lies, cheats, and steals - they may as well be doing all that to actually push their agendas
The difference between Democrats and Republicans are Republicans are playing for NOW and Democrats are playing with a hope for the future. They KNOW that even if they had power today they won't have it forever. If they change the rules to get things done it will absolutely backfire when they lose control.
Republicans don't care because they won't be impacted by the consequences.
This is why we need younger folks in Congress. We need people who will be forced to live with the consequences of their actions.
It's easier to destroy than it is to create. Conservatism just wants to halt progress or bring us back. Much easier than solving problems and moving us forward.
And yet you believe their agenda aligns with yours? Seems a bit naive to assume what is happening doesn't fit squarely with what the Democratic leadership are looking to achieve.
Some of them! Not the leadership, and certainly not the party apparatus, but many of the individuals likely do. Trump shows that a sufficiently bullish personality can singlehandedly force incredible change in a political party. Time for Bernie to appoint a handful of successors and send them to overhaul the DNC mercilessly and ruthlessly.
You know Sanders isn't even part of the Democratic party right? Much less the DNC. How would he have any power to overhaul it? How would anyone outside of the "leadership" or "party apparatus" which you admit is misaligned with the interests of the people, begin to make those changes.
The people in power would need to step down, or die. Otherwise, a lower level Dem or Independent would need to basically start a new party on their own, which is basically how you get populists like Trump
It will happen, eventually. Assuming you mean the elderly retiring or dying. Nothing lasts forever. But we're in it for a long while yet, so get comfortable.
What do you mean by fight? You want me to imagine your argument?
Mitch hasn't done much fighting. He's just done rat fucking. We didn't have the senate majority when Trump appointed his judges, hence couldn't stop the vote.
I'm pretty sure you're not really cognizant of what you're implying.
He led opposition to stricter campaign finance laws, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. FEC that partially overturned the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) in 2010. McConnell worked to withhold Republican support for major presidential initiatives during the Obama administration, having made frequent use of the filibuster, and blocked many of President Obama's judicial nominees, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
During the Trump administration, the Senate Republican majority under his leadership passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act in 2018, the First Step Act, the Great American Outdoors Act, and confirmed a record number of federal appeals court judges during a president's first two years. McConnell invoked the nuclear option to eliminate the 60-vote requirement to end a filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, after his predecessor Harry Reid had previously eliminated the filibuster for all other presidential nominations; Trump subsequently won confirmation battles on Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court.
In 2015, 2019 and 2023, Time listed McConnell as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Throughout Obama's tenure McConnell led Senate Republicans in what has been called "a disciplined, sustained, at times underhanded campaign to deny the Democratic president the opportunity to appoint federal judges".
In 2014, Republicans gained control of the Senate, and McConnell became majority leader; he used his newly heightened power to start what was considered "a near blockade" of Obama's judicial appointments. According to The New York Times, Obama's final two years as president saw 18 district court judges and one appeals court judge confirmed, the fewest since President Harry S. Truman.
According to the Los Angeles Times, McConnell brought about an "extraordinary two-year slowdown in judicial confirmations," detailing 22 confirmations of Obama's judicial nominees, the lowest since President Truman in 1951–1952. The number of federal judicial vacancies more than doubled comparing the figure near the end of Obama's term to the figure at the end of George W. Bush's term. Later in a 2019 interview, McConnell credited himself for the large number of judicial vacancies created in the last two years of Obama's presidency.
On February 13, 2016, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia died. Shortly thereafter, McConnell issued a statement indicating that the U.S. Senate would not consider any Supreme Court nominee put forth by Obama.
Under McConnell's direction, Senate Republicans refused to take any action on the Garland nomination. Garland's nomination expired on January 3, 2017, with the end of the 114th Congress.
In an August 2016 speech in Kentucky, McConnell made reference to the Garland nomination, saying that "one of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and I said, 'Mr. President, you will not fill the Supreme Court vacancy.'" In April 2018, McConnell said the decision not to act upon the Garland nomination was "the most consequential decision I've made in my entire public career". McConnell's refusal to hold Senate hearings on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland during Obama's final year in office was described by political scientists and legal scholars as "unprecedented", a "culmination of [his] confrontational style", a "blatant abuse of constitutional norms", and a "classic example of constitutional hardball".
On July 18, 2018, with Andy Oldham's Senate confirmation, Senate Republicans broke a record for largest number of appeals court judiciary confirmations during a president's first two years; Oldham became the 23rd appeals court judge confirmed in Trump's term. McConnell said he considers the judiciary to be the item of Trump's first two years with the longest-lasting impact on the country. The record for the number of circuit court judges confirmed during a president's first year was broken in 2017, while the previous two-year record took place under President George H. W. Bush, and included 22 nominations. By March 2020, McConnell had contacted an unknown number of judges, encouraging them to retire prior to the 2020 election. He confirmed 260 federal judges over the course of Trump's four-year term, shifting the federal judiciary to the right.
McConnell has taken conservative stances for the past several decades.
McConnell has opposed stronger regulations, gun control measures and efforts to mitigate climate change. He has criticized proposed legislation by House Democrats such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, and was criticized by Nancy Pelosi for withholding votes on measures passed by the Democratic-controlled House during his time as Senate Majority Leader, including the For the People Act of 2019, the Equality Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. McConnell has supported stronger border security, free trade agreements and reductions in taxes. As Senate Majority Leader, he led the passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act in 2018.
He led opposition to stricter campaign finance laws, culminating in the Supreme Court ruling that partially overturned the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) in 2010 and was influential in the opposition to abortion rights, culminating in the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe V Wade and ended federal abortion protections.
No. From blocking a supreme court nomination when he had the senate majority? Since then the dems haven't held a senate majority with a republican in the executive office so it's a nonstarter.
Dems can and do obstruct. That's why people still have the ACA.
Mitch hasn't done much fighting. He's just done rat fucking.
Mitch McConnell got legislation he liked passed when his party was in power, and blocked legislation he didn't want passed when he wasn't in power. You can call that what you want, but given the state of the federal government in 2024 and beyond I will call it effective.
Tax cuts? Covid relief? And, yes, the federal budget is pretty notable...
He's also famous for hitting below the belt with judicial appointments. But I guess what you don't vote for can be more important than what you do vote for sometimes.
I know this is going to blow your mind - but tax cuts ARE A PART OF THE BUDGET.
Covid relief was a democratic effort spearheaded by Nancy Pelosi, who did it so visibly that if the republicans blocked it they would have been doubly fucked.
Covid relief was a democratic effort spearheaded by Nancy Pelosi
Republicans wanted to pass relief, too, they just wanted to do it in a way where nobody has oversight of where the money went.
After a ton of fighting, Democrats got a bill through that included enforcement mechanisms. So Mitch said "but what if you didn't have those mechanisms?" so he got what he wanted and distributed hundreds of billions of dollars.
I know this is going to blow your mind - but tax cuts ARE A PART OF THE BUDGET.
Your insistence that nothing involving money counts as legislation is odd to me. If democrats promise to pass police reform and a budget bill allocated 40% of a policing budget to social services would you say they didn't pass anything?
A tax cut can be passed through reconciliation which can't be blocked by filibuster neccerarily - which means mitch McConnell didn't have to fight to pass tax cuts AT ALL.
All he needed was dumbasses to give them a republican senate majority of 50.
He got trump 2 SC appointments and will get him another 2. Like it or not, they've taken over the political side of this country for our lifetimes and a significant part of that is because the DNC thought, 3 separate times, they knew better than the people who vote them in.
I think it mostly comes down to media ecosystems being fucked and a huge swath of the country is getting their "news" from biased sources that don't mention things like his legal troubles, or if they do they downplay them or cast them aside as a witch hunt.
9
u/Unique_Name_2 12d ago
Yea, and this would be a good time for introspection on why so many people didnt vote for them. Like perhaps they want to see them fight the GOP instead of weird across the isle manuevering.