481
‘What is this, the Soviet Union?’: Senators rip Trump’s call to limit doll purchases
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
481 points (99.2% liked)
politics
26814 readers
2636 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Kamala Harris targeted Republican women for a good portion of her campaign, and dropped a lot of the very popular Democratic platform, resulting in millions of Democrats sitting this one out.
Do you think this is because they are stupid? Why would they do this if not to take a knee? And I still thought that Trump would lose, I couldn't believe that he would be re-elected. I'm never cynical enough.
Imagine if she ran on a $15 an hour minimum wage increase, helping many millions of our poorest Americans, with over 60% voter support (not Democrat). Our consumer economy would get millions of new consumers participating.
Ds and Rs are now 30% each, independents are 40% of the voters. Both parties know that they cannot win without a majorly popular independent issue. Why was this ignored?
Oh, almost forget, yes, I know, BoTh SiDeS and so on.
To be extremely clear. THAT WAS ONE OF HER POLICIES
Democrats run on $15/hr, win in a landslide (2020), and throw up their hands because they don't have Joe Manchin's permission to raise wages in the US Senate.
Republicans run on ending abortions and now abortions are fully illegal in a slew of states, with a national ban on the horizon.
I didn't watch her every appearance, but I did watch quite a lot, and minimum wage seriously got very little time compared to her pursuit of Republicans. Reporters and politicos who did watch everything agree. Abortion was in the forefront regarding their D platform, which has about as much support as higher minimum wage (over 60%).
If she had replaced her R outreach with campaigning for higher wages, and continued as she did with the abortion issue, she would have received many more D and independent voters. She needed them both to win, the "R strategy" was weird and stupid and in my opinion I think she was paid to do exactly what she did.
Her campaign undeniably made a fortune from somebody (over a billion dollars). Not only did she make more than anybody ever, she did it in just a few months. It's a radical and preposterous increase, right in the open, in public.
She immediately knew reaching out to Rs was a massive waste of precious time and that she would lose if she did so. It's a mathematical certainty, bOtH pArTiEs know that they need to court independents instead of their opponents to win a fed election.
I voted for her, this is not a Trump defense, he also is paid to do exactly what he does by "donors" (like Saudi Arabia and Musk and Bezos and Walmart and Russia and that guy from the Hercules sitcom).
And you're every so politely ignoring the states run by dems having higher min wages, to pretend that it's only Republicans getting shit done. Notably just like there isn't a $15 min national wage, there's also not a national abortion ban. Your comparison is poorly cherry picked.
I can't speak for everyone, but I thought thoroughness would be pedantic. I could have gone into much more detail, or at least typed out "FEDERAL minimum wage", but I had thought this was taken for granted in any FEDERAL election. So what do you do? Accuse me of "pretending" and "cherry picking", that's not nice.
So, for future reference, a President can only sign a federal minimum wage increase, they are unable to raise state, city, etc. minimum wages. I'll be sure to type that out into great detail next time. Ha, I'm kidding, ain't nobody got time for that.
You know my post would have had to be pages long for the wage increase if I went into detail, you could easily write a fat book about it.
Remember, 40% of voters are independent, Ds and Rs are at 30% each. It's to your advantage to be cordial, whatever party you are; hostility will NOT win elections. Not an accusation, just sharing a factoid (hint hint)
For the comment higher towards you I really did mean that as a general clarification. I would've worded it more strongly otherwise. I wasn't entirely sure if you realized it or not given your wording, so I wanted to make sure less familiar people reading on that were more clear.
The cherry picking comment was not to you, it was to their person it's replied to. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you just misread the comment chain
Which states have a living wage?
$15 isn't a living wage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_minimum_wage
No shit.
Of course, this is well known in politics circles. That is why I said, "a good portion of her campaign was targeting Republican women voters." (bold added for emphasis)
To be totally transparent, SERIOUSLY, THIS Is NOT A JOKE OR SOME KIND OF WORD TRICKERY OR CONSPIRACY, WITH NO CLAIMS MADE OF A CERTAIN PERCENTAGE OR EXCLUSIVITY OF POLICIES.
I think the 2 of your's disconnect is over what 'ran on' means. Most people would take that to be the main emphasis of the campign messaging,
Not the total platform and all its contents.
Yes, my opinion is she "ran on" abortion and R outreach primarily.
Abortion was a good issue, but any "R outreach" time spent was wasted. Spend that time on Democrats and independents instead.
One might argue the sides are Labor and Capital, but we only have representatives from the Capital Party to choose from every year
Agreed! Our "labor party" sold out a long time ago; our current choices are secular or theocratic capital.
Are there some fundamental differences between Dems and GQP? Sure, some, but as a person who has taken an outside view of politics through expanding my political knowledge and understanding, when it comes down to it they only have surface level differences. When Madami was running for Mayor of New York the Democrat establishment threw every nasty thing they could to STOP him. Get this straight, they would have rather a MAGA win than an avowed Democratic Socialist. THAT tells me what I really need to know about the majority of the Democrats in the party.
At this point, the difference is mostly in stability. It's highly unlikely that Harris would have slapped a bunch of tarrifs around willy nilly, and she probably wouldn't be blowing up a bunch of ships near Venezuela (I wouldn't rule it out, but I would assume that the false flag operation would be more subtle).
US voting is 100% picking the lesser evil, at least for now. The current hope would be that democratic socialists gain enough standing to take over the democratic party, so that voters have meaningful choice. In an ideal world, we'd repeal things like citizens united as well
It's nice to find someone who understands nuances in conversation
I have been an Unafilliated Independent since I registered to vote in 1977. Neither party can win without me, but they can't count on my vote. If they want my vote, they have to EARN it, and they even seldom try.
In the nicest possible way, and only judging from this post, you are part of the problem. Hear me out:
They don't actually need you. Either party. There's a solid base of voters who are going to vote blue or stay home, or vote red or stay home. If you require being courted, then you're either effectively random, staying home, or lean towards one side over the other.
You're possibly upset that none of your choices are good. That's pretty true. 'both sides' have reasons to not vote for them. You need to help fix that: pick a side, whichever one you lean towards, and go make the choices better.
Local politics (the ones at the precinct, county, state levels) decide how we choose our candidates in the larger races by deciding who represents us on those larger stages internally to the party. Example: the general public was not polled for the dnc chair election, it was only people put into dnc leadership, who were voted for, several steps down, by people at the precinct level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Democratic_National_Committee_chairmanship_election
Is there corporate bullshit here? almost certainly. Can it be overcome? Only if people are paying attention and care to get involved. Voting only in November elections and expecting the candidates to cater to you specifically will not resolve the problems.
The candidates don't need to work for your vote. You need to work for better candidates. Or shut up and vote for the least harm.
Unfortunately, our two party system has resulted in the current good cop/bad cop dynamic for many years. Since the Supremes decided that money is free speech and corporations are people, regular voters have lost a massive amount of influence.
Your ideals are good, but look around, you're living in a political fantasy, not reality. None of this is secret, it is now done right out in the open.
... and so much more
In my opinion, you need to face that voting is absolutely no solution and that it is for entertainment purposes only, like answering a poll or survey. I don't know the solution, I only know that voting isn't it.
You had a longer answer; I was just getting some real Ken Bone energy there...
There are always those lame party hacks that have to try to tell me that I MUST join a team. No I dont, and I won't.
I ALWAYS vote, and it's always for the lesser of two evils. I've NEVER voted for a candidate I liked much. It's just that these days, one of the evils is beyond proverbial, and is truly Evil.
But that doesn't make me a Democrat, and registering as a Democrat won't change a thing, except give them some sort of bragging rights that they don't deserve.
Nope, as long as there is a HUGE swath of America out there that refuses to identify with either party, those parties WILL care, and they do, for the simple reason that NOBODY gets elected without us.
I've always been curio, what does that mean in the US ? When someone says they're a registered democrat or republican. It seems to be different to party membership in Australia
Pretty sure it means you get to vote in the primaries, aka the election to choose who's in the election
You don't have to vote for the party you're registered for.
This is coming from a non-American, but that's how I understand it
Me too, and have been since I turned 18 in the late 80s. No exceptions, always registered Independent, I have a strong dislike for BoTh PaRtIes. I'm an issue voter first and anti-incumbent voter second.
Good to meet a fellow member of the majority!|
In the 50s, we were only 20% of the voters, so Independents have doubled in the last 70+ years.
I think we're growing, too. A lot of people had been giving the Dems the benefit of the doubt, until they just folded up and let MAGA take everything right back, and didn't put up a fight at all. It was a disgusting, shameful performance, and all those MAGA appeasers need to go. There's a small handful that can stay, but the rest need to be replaced by new Democratic Warriors who will actually do their jobs, and fight for us.