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Fascinating. It sounds like your theory is that the Democrats floated the public option and the BBBA, just so they could go through an elaborate ruse following by killing it on purpose after months of work and preparation, only to introduce second weakened iterations of both of them (the ACA and IRA) which still did massive amounts for the country, and they went through all that just so their second version could... look wimpier by comparison to the initial version they shot down on purpose, maybe? IDK.
I'll say this: If the average when put together, of brand X plus the Republicans actively trying to blow up the Washington Monument or kill all the Guatemalans or whatever the fuck, like a bunch of Batman villains, is a little trickle of sustained significant progress, I would say that the contribution to the average of brand X is probably significant and positive. To me. I wouldn't look at that as a "well I guess there's no difference between the two, and the lack of progress is DEFINITELY the Democrats' fault, citation trust me bro" situation.
By way of example: The half a trillion dollars worth of student loan forgiveness passed. It got done. It was on the books, and then the Supreme Court told them no you can't do that. Are you saying Biden controls the Supreme Court in secret and he passed it knowing it wouldn't really happen? I feel like I'm stepping into some kind of Q universe where that's exactly what you're going to say, like John Roberts is Hunter Biden in a silicone mask or something.
The shit Democrats passed in the last few years is:
That's off the top of my head; people have made these massive lists of accomplishments but sometimes it's hard to tell which ones are substantive. All of those to me are pretty substantial.
I mean, I do commend you on coming up with a framing that makes it pretty easy to say "yeah but what about all the things they DIDN'T do" like the existence of some good thing that would have been theoretically possible somehow invalidates getting some particular good thing done in the real world. And also I commend the framing where you're asserting SO FIRMLY Goebbels-style that anything they're failing to accomplish is deliberately on purpose and definitely not the fault of the party that's in lock step voting down things they are trying to accomplish. Your presentation is such that it's easy to fall into "well he MUST know what he's talking about, he is so confident in his presentation that that wouldn't be clearly just completely made up."
Both fairly solid arguing techniques. Bravo.
(Oh also recovering from Covid as if it hadn't happened which basically no other 1st world economy has been able to do)
(Also, did the Democrats float the public option? I remember a bunch of left-wing people at the time talking about single payer, but I don't ever remember it ever being acceptable to the Democrats and no one really hoping for it, just saying fuck this would be so easy if our country's government wasn't so awful but I hope we can get some health insurance of some description at least.)
I don't consider it implausible that politicians would break their promises, no. I voted for the public option. I voted for Obama because his plan had a public option and no individual mandate. What we got passed by reconciliation along party lines. It had the individual mandate. It had no public option. It passed along party lines in reconciliation, meaning that Democrats abandoned so much to get the support of Republicans, who didn't vote for it anyway. It had a medicaid expansion that was optional, so my state didn't accept it. Biden said he was going to revisit the public option. To my complete lack of surprise, he didn't.
I voted against Trump in 2020, since after the ACA I didn't believe a promise from a Democratic candidate. Turns out, my distrust was founded. BBB was a bill of goods designed to be abandoned, just like the public option. They put on a hell of a show abandoning it, but at the end of the day, there were enough no votes to kill it, just like with the public option. In both cases, it died without Republicans touching it.
The wimpy remaining bills are something, yes, but the primary function seems to be something for centrists to point at when they're ordering progressives to be happy with their presidents' signature failures.
I have never said both parties are the same, and i provided examples of Democrats finding the votes to kill progressive legislation.
A few things about this, It didn't pass. It never came to a vote. It was an executive order. Centrists didn't want it. Biden, in the only surprise of his presidency so far, listened to progressives on student loans, but only after years of pressure. Centrists insisted his hands were tied until he signed it. And we've discussed this before. I consider student loans to be the high point of the Biden presidency. But if it were before the Senate and not an executive order, Manchin would have killed it.
And I just got to the paragraph where you call me Goebbels. Conversation's over. Godwin.
Wait, hang on. I may have misunderstood you.
If your central thesis is that Democrats in congress are mostly an uninspiring pile of centrist bullshit, and that Biden has to contend with them as well as the GOP in order to get progressive things done that he is trying to accomplish, then I will 100% agree with you. I thought you were including Biden in the centrist fakery.
Your description of getting behind Democrats because you wanted good things to happen, only to see the reality that comes to pass be mostly watered-down corporate-friendly garbage, sounds pretty accurate to me. It sounded like you were blaming that on Obama and Biden, instead of Manchin and the Republicans, is why we are disagreeing. But if you’re saying we need to get rid of the GOP in congress, and replace Manchin and Sinema with actual liberal people, as the solution, I will 100% agree.
IRA? NLRB with teeth? Trillions of dollars worth of corporate tax increases? Those were not surprising to you?
I said that super confidently asserting something which seems to me to be the opposite of true, and relying on the assertion itself to be the explanation of why people should believe it, is a Goebbels tactic.
Like I say, I actually agree with you about the massive gap between what Democratic presidents get done and what they should be getting done. Where it falls apart for me is where to assign the blame for that.
Conversation's over. Godwin.
I think Godwin’s Law died out around the time the actual Nazis came back. It’s actually sort of difficult to talk about some elements of politics and media in the present day without referring to the historical parallels, and one particular parallel is absolutely significantly more parallel than the others.
But you don’t have to justify to me, man. You can abandon the conversation at any point you feel that that’s what you want to do. All the best.
Which is why you chose to call someone to your left a nazi.
You just wanted to call me a fucking nazi.