Tag: democratic party

i feel like what this election really showed me is that politicians, esp dems, don’t seem to know what they’re doing? i’ve always felt that these people were highly intelligent, educated, ambitious people, and therefore there is no way that i could ever know better/fully understand why they make the decisions they make. but reading your posts/general politics, i’m suddenly like. WHAT THE FUCK. what are they thinking? don’t you all have multiple degrees? aren’t you all mostly career politicians?

broadlybrazen:

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. And I think Dems have one huge structural problem that isn’t even within their control: the biggest problem for Democrats, and indeed the country, is the destruction of the Republican party. 

you cannot be functional in a two-party system where one party is for governance and the other one literally wants to set the planet on fire. you have this absolute nightmare wherein political conversation within the party is divided between dealing with legitimate inner conflicts, criticisms, re-alignments, strategies, etc, and the certain knowledge that if the party doesn’t win then *everything fucking dies*. 

you cannot be functional or cohesive when you are in the dangerously idiotic position of being the ONLY institutional power saying things like “don’t poison the water and land and air.”  you cannot be functional when you are in the mindboggling position of being the ONLY people at the table saying things like, “science is real.” 

quoting from twitter: democracy isn’t designed to handle when you’re unable to define a spectrum of compromise…democracy isn’t designed to handle one party having to go balls-to-the wall on every single issue, every single time. I mean…Dems have no other choice right now, but the reason it looks completely dysfunctional is because this IS completely fucking dysfunctional.  

it is normal & healthy for a political party to wrestle with itself; in other circumstances, I wouldn’t worry overmuch because in healthy environments, such conflict helps the organization grow, help keeps it dynamic and flexible. 

But it is NOT normal & healthy for a party to be stuck as the “come with me if you want to live” option. it is NOT normal & healthy for a party to be stuck as the “come with me if you want even 0.01% chance of dealing with manmade climate change before we destroy all of humanity’s future.” 

like, every single administration in the US has a maximum shelf-life of 8 years. you can’t have that kind of turnover & remain functional if you don’t have a certain amount of continuity and functionality that remains at all times – and we DON’T, because the Republican party fundamentally does not give a single shit about governance and they’ve been getting steadily worse for a few decades. Trump is the most extreme and frightening result of this shit. 

[cut for longwinded example]

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