People don’t care if it takes 1 term or 10 terms, what they want to hear is that Democrats are working on both short and long term goals to address the problems they care about. They want to hear meaningful changes. What they got is a message that Democrats are hard at work rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic is sinking. There are many systemic issues in the US right now. The Democrats just needed to fucking pick one, start working on fixing it, and explain to people how they’re working on fixing it.
How about working to get Citizens United overturned? How about actually working on proper socialized healthcare instead of the bandaid that the insurance marketplace was? Working on getting rid of first past the post? Working on creating a federal right to abortion? Coming up with some way to keep the GOP from packing the supreme court with corrupt “judges” who treat the constitution like toilet paper? How about fixing our IP laws to be something sane like cutting copyright to 15 years? Just taxes in general, the 1% tax bracket should be paying 90% in taxes. Make capital gains taxes higher than income tax. These are just the things I can think of off the top of my head, I’m sure there’s dozens more people could come up with.
The problem with the Dems is that they’re never going to color outside the lines. Breaking the back of the corrupt judiciary is going to mean a constitutional crisis, and possibly some extreme extra-legal measures will be needed. The other reforms you mentioned mean opposing some of their most generous corporate sponsors.
And if you think getting rid of first-past-the-post is a magic solution, look at any developed country with proportional representation. That you get is another set of antidemocratic anomalies with the system: in PR systems that have coalition goverments, all the power is given to small centrist parties that can make or break a coalition. Imagine a Manchin/Sinema party that’s always in power, regardless of how the elections go.
People don’t care if it takes 1 term or 10 terms, what they want to hear is that Democrats are working on both short and long term goals to address the problems they care about. They want to hear meaningful changes. What they got is a message that Democrats are hard at work rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic is sinking. There are many systemic issues in the US right now. The Democrats just needed to fucking pick one, start working on fixing it, and explain to people how they’re working on fixing it.
How about working to get Citizens United overturned? How about actually working on proper socialized healthcare instead of the bandaid that the insurance marketplace was? Working on getting rid of first past the post? Working on creating a federal right to abortion? Coming up with some way to keep the GOP from packing the supreme court with corrupt “judges” who treat the constitution like toilet paper? How about fixing our IP laws to be something sane like cutting copyright to 15 years? Just taxes in general, the 1% tax bracket should be paying 90% in taxes. Make capital gains taxes higher than income tax. These are just the things I can think of off the top of my head, I’m sure there’s dozens more people could come up with.
Long-term goals are just a carrot on a stick.
The problem with the Dems is that they’re never going to color outside the lines. Breaking the back of the corrupt judiciary is going to mean a constitutional crisis, and possibly some extreme extra-legal measures will be needed. The other reforms you mentioned mean opposing some of their most generous corporate sponsors.
And if you think getting rid of first-past-the-post is a magic solution, look at any developed country with proportional representation. That you get is another set of antidemocratic anomalies with the system: in PR systems that have coalition goverments, all the power is given to small centrist parties that can make or break a coalition. Imagine a Manchin/Sinema party that’s always in power, regardless of how the elections go.