I hope I’m wrong, but I expect the difference being going from a small handful of aid trucks a day to zero aid trucks a day. That would be a big difference to the people of Gaza.

There are over a million Gazans still alive. That is a very large number of people barely hanging on from starvation that can still be mercilessly wiped out. You really sure about that 5% figure?

Doesn’t his Sec of Defense nominee have a Deus Vult tattoo? Yeah, that doesn’t bode well…

most Americans voted for a man they have every reason to believe is a rapist.

Minor quibble, but Trump won ~75 million votes by current count. Out of our population of 330 million people (including ineligible voters) that is 22.7%.

So no, most Americans did not vote for him.

I don’t fully agree with this, but I agree with enough of it that it doesn’t really matter. To add to it, now is the ideal time to push for reform in party leadership, after a major loss.

Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.

I just wanted to highlight this statement. He’s absolutely right.

Trump and his supporters use “unity” as a euphemism for conformity, expecting marginalized groups to suppress their identities.

How do dems manage that one?

Also not sure how dems enable fascist tactics, when one person-one vote is a primary platform position.

People like to focus on economic factors because they’re easily quantifiable. More vague factors disassociated from economic lifestyle are difficult to quantify, so harder to study and talk about. By way of example, though, when someone really hates black people, that’s not economic, it’s personal. It’s something else entirely. Men wanting power over women isn’t economic. Even immigration complaints aren’t really economic, that’s just an excuse to cover up much less defensible reasoning.

Not very much stock yet.

Accusations flying around on the internet based on whatever people’s imaginations can come up with is something we should expect at this point. Making shit up on the internet is about as easy as activities get, just in general.

If any actual evidence is presented, that’s when it becomes more worthwhile to seriously consider the possibility.

Let’s not forget other inflationary impactors. Russian energy coming off the broader market, Ukrainian food exports being offline for a year, a major shipping route through the Red Sea becoming more expensive to navigate, and even smaller things like a certain ship getting itself lodged sideways in a major global shipping artery for a little bit. Not even to speak of existing tariffs in the US that never came off.

Lots of individual factors stressing an already pandemic-stressed situation.

I understand the sentiment, but I’m not so sure it’s actually true. We’ll have to see how many left leaning folks came out for Harris, percentage-wise. Not counting Gaza uncommitteds, they’re a different story imo.

It’s all about the data though, nobody cares about sentiments or online complaints, it has to be hard numbers to actually convince people.

Yes, I think we can.

But remember, during WW2 the USSR and the US were able to cooperate to defeat fascism. We cannot be too picky when it comes to alliances when there’s bigger fish to fry. Ideological purity is not our friend, never has been. Even if that makes everything a confusing pain in the ass, which it does, that diversity of opinion is necessary if we are going to robustly pursue our goals and not get too stuck up our own asses and blinded.

It’s partly a coping mechanism. I agree its no longer politically advantageous, but in the free world people can say what is on their mind, and this is apparently it. If consequences stem from that, then that is also part of freedom.

Is what it is.

They believed some of Trump’s bullshit. I suspect this was because they were exposed to more of that bullshit than any counter-messaging. This could be due to isolation from traditional sources of information.

Ultimately, I have to pin that on the Harris campaign. I wanted the prosecutor to prosecute the case against the criminal. But to do that you have to show up to the courtroom. Where is the courtroom these days? It’s not on CNN or 60 Minutes, it’s wherever the jury is hanging out. That’s online. Trump showed up there a lot more than she did.

I’m ultimately glad, he was giving democrats a bad name. We could afford that a decade ago, but we no longer can.

There’s a mild reshuffling of the parties happening, with the Tulsi Gabbards switching to red and the Adam Kinzingers switching to blue, and I’m fine with it. It’s about priorities. Which parts of your platform and beliefs are more important than the other parts?

Fine, technically true I suppose. But when you gut something that comprehensively and change its thrust, I think it’s a little disingenuous to call it the same thing. It had all the workers rights stuff stripped out of it.

edit: Disingenuous on the bill author’s part, not yours. Though tbf, they did rename it.

No, not excuses, simply doubt. Manchin has a long record in the Senate as a moderate, Clinton-style dem. He’s even voted against abortion rights. Rather than corruption, I think he’s just semi-conservative, he even voted with Trump around 50% of the time during his first term. That is not typical for a democrat, it’s quite unusual actually.

Ah, that’s orchestration, which you just said was not happening. You are insinuating that most of them are neoliberals who simply put forward a chosen sacrificial scapegoat in some sort of planned scheme to deceive the American public. Strong claims require evidence, otherwise they are simply convenient ideas we can adopt to oversimplify a messy world and make ourselves feel better.

If that’s true, then the bill failed by a slim margin. It almost passed, and had the support of the majority of the democratic party, including passing the House of Representatives. This is an important detail.

No, that is a false claim. It was not passed by the Senate and never became law. We can certainly criticize our neoliberal factions, but we should do it factually instead of weaving whatever narratives we find most convenient. Unless you’re confusing it with the Infrastructure bill, which did pass. They were linked at one time, but were separated after both failing became likely.

https://ballotpedia.org/Build_Back_Better_Act