For a long time, I thought the Democrats were fighting valiantly but just overwhelmed by the oligarchy and the Republicans. Then I saw that the Democrats keep losing fights they should win and figured they must be just weak and ineffectual. Then I kept seeing them backing off without putting up a fight at all and decided they were gutless cowards. Finally I noticed that enough of them keep voting with the Republicans to always make sure the Republicans more or less win almost every fight, and that they keep starting from a Center position and bargaining to the Right, and eventually after enough of that it became impossible to ignore the only conclusion that actually fits the facts: The Democrats are not over matched, they aren’t weak, they aren’t cowards…they’re complicit.
Most people wouldn't, which is why this argument is a non-starter for me. When people say Dems should've played dirty to stop the Republicans, I just roll my eyes. It would never work, because the majority of people who vote Dem would never support that kind of politicking under normal circumstances. But now we're at the precipice, and we are slowly finding out that even the most milquetoast Dem voters are willing to support the dirtiest tricks just to get out from under the grip of this techno-fascist bullshit.
I just hope we can find our way back to some kind of sanity once the dust settles.
Supporting dirty tricks won't get us back to sanity though. Either our system runs following its own laws which desperately need to be modified to shore up civil liberties and restrict corporations and money in politics or people lay down their lives. We can't get out of this pit by digging deeper.
I don't see any legal or legislative way out of the mess we're in when the current government (and about a third of the country) doesn't believe in the law or the rules of legislation, and the so-called "opposition" party is weak and feckless at best, and complicit at worst. We either either get our hands dirty or have a civil war. I'm open to ideas that don't involve wither one. but I can't think of any.
oh civil war is an option that may or may not work but dirty tricks won't get us to a system based on rules and law it will just be based on who dirtiest the most tricks. I see a legislative and legal way out. impeach trump for breaking the law, reversing like a ton of the crappiest laws of the last 30 years. More laws and amendments to enshrine civil liberties and to clearly limit executive power. laws to limit money in politics and make clear that coporations are not persons. stuff like that. its still possible it can be done but unlikely. dirty tricks for good though is impossible to fix the system.
Sorry, I should've been more clear. I meant a legal or legislative way out that's realistic. Even when we had the numbers to impeach Trump twice, we still didn't have the numbers (two thirds) to convict him and remove him from office. The Schumer-Pelosi gang of octogenarian Dems isn't going to control Congress with those numbers ever again. It'll be at least a generation before the Democratic party has that kind of power (if it ever happens), and Trump will be long in the ground by then.
There are two ways to ratify a Constitutional amendment. The first way is to get two thirds of both the House and Senate to vote in favor of the amendment, and then to ratify it you need three quarters of all state legislatures to approve it without changing the wording, otherwise the whole process starts over. The second way is to have two thirds of all states petition Congress for a Constitutional convention (34 states), and again have three quarters of all states approve of the amendment word-for-word (38 states). No amendment has ever been approved by the second method.
For perspective, in the 111th Congress of 2009 following Obama's historic crushing win against McCain, the House was 255-D and 179-R, and the Senate was 57-D, 41-R, and 2-I (who caucused with Dems). This was the strongest the Dems had been since the 90s. To get a Constitutional amendment passed and ratified in 2009, Democrats would've had to convince 33 Republican Representatives and 9 Republican Senators to vote in favor of an amendment, and then assuming that every single Democratic state legislature is 100% on board, they'd have to pray that all 8 split legislature states and at least 3 Republican state legislatures approve it for ratification without changing a single word.**
For even more historical perspective, the last time Democrats controlled enough of Congress and state legislatures to theoretically pass and ratify a Constitutional amendment without any Republican support was between 1937 and 1939, and they still didn't do it (though they did get a ton of New Deal stuff done).
Nothing would make me happier than for the midterms to turn into an alcoholic moment of clarity for the American working class, where "we the people" finally sober up and vote every one of these feckless do-nothing weakling scumbags out, and elect people who will impeach and convict Trump and all his cronies, and amend or straight up rewrite the Constitution to enshrine laws in favor of the people, instead of the monied class. It's just not realistic.
I agree. You can't fix the system with dirty tricks. But you can crush Fascists with dirty tricks. It's not ideal, but it may be the only way to get them out. But like I said, coming back from that is the hard part. Once people in power get used to playing dirty, they never willingly stop. They have to be stopped.
**someone check my numbers in this paragraph, it's 4am and I may not be mathing properly
Crushing fascists with dirty tricks may stop one fascist but only by replacing it with another. I think its less likely to work than legal or legislative methods in the long run and similarly revolutions have a very small chance of working. Unfortunately we don't have any good realistic, slam dunk options but we do not we cannot let facism just waltz in so Im guessing it will be a bit of everything and we each have to prepare for what we might have to do. For my part im trying to come to peace with taking a bullet if the guns are trained on me for resistance rather than live in a non democracy.