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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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You believe it's the Dem's that do the sabotaging, and that they are compromising to...themselves? Interesting.
For some of their more conservative members, they've certainly done so in the past, but I'm pretty sure that @SeattleRain@lemmy.world is just talking about the self-defeating obsession that Democrats have with appearing non-partisan. Yes, they do need to compromise to an extent to get something through the house at the moment, but they have essentially self-sabotaged in the past when they had the majorities to not need to do so, yet insist on negotiating with the Republicans anyway because they hope moderate Republicans will give them credit for not ramming legislation through in a one-sided fashion.
This really only works when the other party is engaging in negotiations in good faith, which the Republicans do not. As a result, the Democrats give the GOP initiative on steering bills and policies as they like, winding up with compromised legislation that doesn't please their actual base, while also not getting credit from the Republicans they're hoping to sway in some sense.
For an easy example of this, look at talks about eliminating the filibuster earlier in Biden's presidency. Manchin and Sinema made it a dead idea, but even before that, Biden has been opposed because of his obsession with reaching across the aisle in an age where trying to do so only serves to stop his agenda dead in its tracks. Rather than get their elbows out and bully the two hold outs into falling in line (which was supposed to be what Manchin was good for, at least. I kept hearing, "He disrupts things, but he falls in line when it counts," but pretty much never saw evidence of this), they just shrugged and collectively let the agenda die or get neutered, because to do otherwise would not be bipartisan.
I appreciate one of the most concise explanations of that perspective I've ever read! This is actually the one I'd like to believe, but not the one I do. I disagree with the idea that "both sides are the same," but I won't go so far as to imagine Democrats are truly concerned with integrity to the degree that they'd sacrifices strategy. I'm afraid they're just people, and people are all fucking stupid in their own way. It's just some are fucking stupid and malicious.
I don't think it's necessarily being so concerned with integrity as to deliberately self-sabotage, but rather that this was a potentially viable strategy 40-50 years ago, and many of the eldritch horrors in party leadership, Biden included, just haven't gotten the message that the situation has changed in the interim. Part of Biden's campaign pitch was that he's worked in Congress for so long and has the relations that would let him reach out to the other side to get stuff passed, and he just gets taken advantage of when trying to do so. The Republicans have long since moved on to a strategy of "Ram through whatever you can while you're in power, and obstruct, obstruct, obstruct when you aren't." They generally aren't concerned at all with what non-GOP voters think of them and their actions, which lets them just bulldoze their way through the process while racking up points with their base for being effective at advancing the agenda, regardless of how hypocritical/immoral they are in the process. Just see Mitch McConnell when Obama tried appointing a justice to the Supreme Court near the end of his term versus his response to Trump doing the same.
I would also say there's just a fundamentally different level of at least the appearance of integrity necessary on the Democratic side, and Democratic voters are less willing to accept that the ends justifies the means. This is clearly illustrated just by looking at the fallout for pretty much any Republican having a sex scandal, versus it happening to a Democrat. In his initial scandal, Anthony Weiner didn't even engage in a criminal act, having sent a 21-year old woman a sexually explicit photo. In less than a month, Nancy Pelosi had called for an investigation into it and he'd resigned his seat. In contrast, Trump has been found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case and has had heaps of sexual assault and harassment accusations brought against him, yet the party of family values, good, Christian morals, and law and order is still completely behind him.