and I want to be clear - this means no aid to Ukraine either. We are broke as it is.
This is what most normal earthlings everywhere are saying. Now, what's the holdup I wonder?
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
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It might surprise some people, but democracy isn't actually decided by posts on twitter. You need to vote in elections, that's how voters are saying things.
The issue is, we aren't broke. Not even close
Uh, yeah we fucking are. The entire country operates at a loss, to other countries, to enormous corporations, to billionaires, and a trillionaire.
Our debt has crossed 100% of the gdp and our budgets are unbalanced to the tune of 2 Trillion dollars. We are paying more to finance the debt than we are paying for the military which costs more than 10 next militaries combined.
And there are absolutely no one proposing solutions.
Oh and the future economic outlook is nowhere near to what it was at the end of the ww2 when us was the last one standing and all future metrics are pointing down as China beating us in our own game. Just wait till they get chips too and comac releases cheap competitor to boeing.
People who think we aren't broke are delusional
You're funny. You think any of that matters when it's the government. It they were actually wanting to pay that debt off it could be paid extremely fast.
And yet we can afford $T tax cuts for the wealthy.
Or I know, maybe there’s a cause and effect here
When the lefists replace the establishment by voting in the primaries.
That's it. That's all we have to do. You know why Bernie never got a Presidtial nomination? Because most primary voters didn't support him. Know why Mandami won in New York? Because the primary voters supported him.
It's not fucking witchcraft. People need to show up to vote in the primaries instead of just bitching about the candidates in November. That's how you move the party left.
The fascists figured this out and it's how they've completely taken over the Republican party. We need to do the same thing on the left.
Added punctuation to make it appeal to centrist Democrats:
Medicare for All? No. Aid to Isreal! Healthcare over. War!
Uhhh.... Ro Khanna is a Democratic congressman. I'm from Canada and I know that FFS. He's the guy that got some of the Epstein files released and it's actually a crime that they haven't all been released.
Y'all are so conditioned into thinking the Democrats are bad that when an incumbent Democratic congressman says something you like you have to pretend it's a voter the Democratic party doesn't listen to?
and I want to be clear - this means no aid to Ukraine either. We are broke as it is.
So abandon all allies of the US? I guess you believe both Russian and Iranian propaganda. Is there any propaganda on the internet you don't fall for?
The US is actually the wealthiest country in the world. You're just so blinded by hatred for Israel you can't even consider simply taxing the wealthy. Hasan Piker is really earning the money Jeff Bezos is paying him I guess.
If course they won't listen. If the last forty years have proven anything, it's that the Democratic Party will never in a million years choose its base over its donors.
I really suggest everyone listen to Jon Stewart's interview with John Fetterman. Fetterman demonstrates what is the rough draft on how establishment Dems will talk about these policies and the people supporting them. It's not pretty.
Short answer is no. Democrats are equally beholden to AIPAC (Israeli) and corporate interests . Until you reverse the United Citizens supreme court case, you americans will continue to be controlled by the billionaires and Israelis.
This primary is proving the opposite. Progressive dems are winning by campaigning on being against AIPAC.
but Democrat “corporate centre” is against these progressives so my answer is still no.
As we all know, US politics wasn't controlled by oligarchs before Citizens United.
Honestly, I think this is overblown at this point. We're seeing now that giant ad budgets, while helpful, are not some silver bullet. El-Sayed was massively outspent by Stevens.
What people miss is that there is a certain saturation point for ad dollars. The parties love to spend as much money as possible, as the consultant class takes a cut of everything. But we're seeing now that mass TV ad spend just isn't what it used to be. You can persuade some people that way, but once everyone knows your name and general message, each dollar you spend is less and less effective.
The point is that in these big races, we can probably get 90% of the effect with 20% of the budget. This allows candidates to fund their campaigns mostly with small-dollar donations. You only need to take oligarch money if you want to have the massive ad spend.
And taking oligarch money has electoral consequences. We can't run populist left candidates. We have to run extremely unpopular centrist corporate candidates. They have to carefully choose all their policies to not offend their wealthy donors. The only hope this type of candidate has is through massive ad spending. But if we simply run more popular candidates, the need for ads is low enough that campaigns can be funded by small dollar donors and mass boots-on-the-ground voter outreach. Unpopular candidates also have trouble getting people passionate enough to volunteer their time for the ground game.
Of course it was, but it was MUCH more difficult for them. It is disingenuous to pretend that Citizens United didn't exacerbate an already bad situation.
In reality, there were two historical moments that changed the timeline: 1) RFK's assassination, which allowed Nixon to become president and took us down the Dark Republican path that led to MAGA, and 2) The 1974 Tax Code re-write, that first baked Trickle Down Economics into the tax code, created the Oligarch class, and gave them the disposable money to fund political manipulation.
"...RFK’s assassination,"
If only that was true. Typos are disappointing. 😭
It certainly made it easier, though.
But you have hit upon the problem: We have an oligarch problem primarily. Way more than we have a party problem. Or rather, solving the billionaire problem would be the necessary first step before we are able to solve the party problem. We have many other problems like fascist propaganda, which also need fixing. We're pretty fucked. But overturning Citizens United will certainly help. Not solve. Help.
What we had before Citizens United is what lead to Citizens United. Unless we overturn the structures that made the Citizen's United decision possible, we don't fix anything.
We need a new Reconstruction.
Rutherford B. Hayes believed the US was a corporatocracy.
Larry Lessig has been arguing since before the internet that the ownership class (including corporations and their lobbyists) get their legislature passed where the public does not. Representatives do not change how they vote according to the demands of the voters.
Reagan opened up Washington to lobbies and special interest groups. Before that, paying off your representative to pass legislation (or block it) was considered bribery and was an imprisonable offense.
So by Citizens United the federal and state governments were intrinsically corrupt.
This is why Election Reform, with the objective of taking money out of politics, is essential. Right now, it takes massive money to win a campaign, so politicians have no choice but to beg for more, and make promises in exchange. That leaves the workers on the outside.
But if money is taken out completely, everyone becomes electorally equal, and the only election currency is every American Citizen's single vote. That makes the rich guy's vote no more powerful than anyone else's, and politicians will be forced to work for the people who have the most votes, and the wealthy will be the smallest voting demographic, whose needs are less important to candidates.
As long as you vote blue no matter who, there is no need for the party to listen to your demands. If you don't vote because you're not happy with the candidates, they will blame you if they loose. Representative democracy is a scam and not by accident
Happy with mine in Canada. It helps if your country isn't shitty!
Here's my breakdown after listening to a lot of analyses.
Establishment (centrist) Democrats really would rather be rich than serve the public. Seriously. If they just pass the clauses written for them by corporate lobbyists, they not only get campaign contributions and dark money, but a cushy high-paying job after their political career ends, and they get to join the ownership class. (Thank Reagan for allowing all this to become legal.)
The superdelegates in the Democratic Party are all old guard establishment Democrats.
Also Blue Dog Democrats argue that the Republicans will assert some of the more extreme ideas that the SDA are considering (e.g. abolish police, abolish prisons) which will scare their voters away. The thing is, if their voters are engaged with the far-right propaganda machine (e.g. FOX News) and are dim enough to take Republican talking points seriously, then they're not going to vote blue anyway. They need to vote red to prove their manhood, own the libs, lock immigrants in torture cages and deny gender affirming care to trans folk.
Harris made this mistake (among many) during her 2024 campaign, trying to get never-Trumpers and Liz Cheney Republicans. All those are still too racist and detest working class folk to dare vote Democrat.
Regular Democratic voters want a platform, things like universal healthcare, a jobs guarantee, higher education for all, support for Palestine (and no support for IDF), immediate action on the climate crisis. A platform draws more apathetic Democratic voters to the polls.
Independents want a better economy, and if they're not racist then they vote against the incumbent when inflation is high and jobs are down. Right now, inflation is high and jobs are down. (If they are too racist they're IINOs and actually Republican -- some Rs like to pretend they're independent if they're ashamed and in mixed company.)
Blue-no-matter-who Democrats see the Republican party and the MAGA movement as an existential threat to the United States, specifically to democracy as an institution (lower case) and the preservation of civil rights. They fight their platform battles during the primaries, and then vote against Republicans (that is, for the non-Republican everyone else is voting for -- usually the Democratic candidate, but not always).
To BNMW Democrats, the immediate issues are overhaul of SCOTUS (more than merely adding new bench seats and term limits) and federal restoration of free and fair elections (eliminating gerrymandering, voter suppression and top-down election fraud). Until these things happen, the Republican party, and the captured SCOTUS will continue to be an existential threat. As Larry Lessig points out, we've been kicking this can down the road for a long, long time, and now we're paying the price.
~ We know independents and non-voters outnumber both Democrats and Republicans
~ We know MAGAs are getting dissatisfied, between inflation, the war and the Epstein files. But MAGAs are easy to manipulate
~ We don't know how big each of these factions are, nor how determined they are to vote. There are local trends. I'm BNMW and know several, but I am afraid we're actually a tiny bunch.
~ We know that whites in the south are (generally) staunchly Republican
~ We know blacks nationwide (generally) vote Democrat. Especially black women
~ We know municipal areas vote Democrat, and because they're dense, they win popular elections (they dominate Governor and US Senate races)
~ We know rural areas vote Republican, and they get a boost from the EC. They're also useful for gerrymandering
~ We know the VRA is gutted and the southern states acted quickly to gerrymander and otherwise suppress the black vote. That will affect House seats and state assembly seats, also the race for President in 2028
~ We know that billionaires are investing hundreds of millions (that's huge) in key elections to push them red. In 2024 Musk's $250M contribution made a critical difference for Trump. In elections since, campaign money has helped less.
We expect the Democrats will take the House in November, but they will only get fifty Senate seats, leaving the majority to the Republicans. This will inhibit saving Social Security, and allow Trump to confirm bench appointments (including SCOTUS seats if Thomas or Alito retire). If Mitch McConnell remains undead (and still not voting) that will make things interesting... but hopefully the public is pissed off enough to give the Democrats that key one-more Senator.
Should be MediCAID for all.
I’d settle for proper universal healthcare no matter the name. Medicare for all is not the ideal. I’ll take what we can get though.
Why? Just curious, because I thought the idea was having both systems consolidated under medicare. What's the tangible distinction?
Not sure, but I think Medicaid pays for more than medicare does. My retired parents still have copays for stuff.
I could be wrong, but I think your Medicare benefits are still somehow tied to your previous employer. My friend's dad likes to brag about how he paid into some special program that now he has $0 copays, but only if he gets his care at a hospital. As a result, he goes to the ER for everything because he gets free healthcare that way.
And then he complains about welfare queens and homeless people not knowing how to handle money, and that young people don't want to work and that's why social security is collapsing.
If the voters are already committed to voting democrat, the party doesn't need to care about what they think.
But many aren't, because the Democrats suck, too. Not that they'll vote MAGA, they just won't vote at all.
That's going to be a big problem with MAGAs, too. A lot of them hate the direction of their party, and won't vote at all.
Our future elections may not be about which party earns the most votes, it may be which party doesn't turn off their voters the most.
Israel will never let this happen
I wish people would stop saying Medicare for all. My wife is preparing to go on Medicare, with the help of a professional due to the ridiculously complicated sign up process that varies by locality and this shit is expensive. I want mine covered by the taxes I already pay and the taxes they should force corporations and rich people to pay.
We can solve all kinds of problems by making the single richest person pay all medical bills in the country.
When #1 is down to #2, they're tied for richest and can share the remainder. Repeat as needed.
I like your idea.
And release the Epstein files
No.
And enough regulation that we can eat fruits and veggies without fear of explosive diarrhea. And the capacity to afford said fruits and vegetables.
Unpopular, but truth: The company in question also had issues under Obama, did not donate, and did also not receive significant punishments then. And you're gonna hate this even worse: Outbreaks like this happen. They have and will. And our food system is safer than it was decades and decades ago. Just because it is much safer doesn't mean things like this won't happen - they will.
That said, we can always continue to work to make things safer.
But this outbreak is not an indication that the system is overall broken in any way whatsoever.
It's like expecting fender benders to not happen. And people die in auto accidents. We accept that risk as a part of driving, and we understand that safety improvements over the years have made accidents more survivable. And yet we drive, take that risk, and know that it could be worse.
Similar with food. It is, overall, very safe. But these things will happen. And yes, we should continually improve safety.