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this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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This right here tells me you haven't been paying attention to the details. There are 0 times in modern history where this was possible. The closest was the first few months of Obama's term, which is when they hammered out Obamacare. And it would've had a public option if not for needing Lieberman for the 60th Senate vote. It was removed in return for his vote.
There were not 60 Democrat senators at the time willing to overturn the filibuster. Some of those senators were further right than Manchin. This is also why abortion couldn't be signed into law -- you didn't have 60 senators in favor of abortion.
That was the only time in modern history where Democrats had 60 Senate votes, and they used it to pass the furthest left healthcare policy possible at the time. And Democrats were eviscerated in the following midterms because it was seen as too far left.
Aside from all that, there is no serious third party in the US. None of them are actually trying to win. It's a grift, they just want your money. If they actually wanted to win, they wouldn't spend so much on the presidency. They'd be building up a powerful ground game to win local across the country, and then take state legislatures and governorships, and then take Congressional seats, and finally the presidency. A president without any allies in Congress is powerless, and all the third parties try to do is win a presidency without any allies in Congress. And then you have their ridiculous beliefs, like WiFi causing cancer and vaccine skepticism.
Third parties align much more closely with Republicans culturally. They trick voters so they can get money and power, they adopt feel-good phrases and policies they'll never enact, and they give anti science conspiracy theorists a platform.
This reply sort of makes the point for the OP though -- the American system appears to be broken at levels so fundamental that it's not worth engaging with, much less saving. It's amazing the evil that people are comfortable shrugging at.
You're not wrong. Our government is inherently conservative in how difficult it is to change things. It's a flaw by design, unfortunately. Still, as broken as it is, there's people I still care about a lot. There's a lot of good people worth fighting for. So even if it's fundamentally broken, I'm going to keep maintaining hope that we can fix the fundamentals. If I'm lucky, maybe my grandkids will get the government that I wish we had.
Not to mention, liberals in the past struggled against worse odds to get just basic dignity. Things must've seemed more hopeless for women's suffragists and civil rights marchers. But through tenacity, they succeeded. Abolitionists succeeded, gay people succeeded -- and then for some fucking reason Republicans decided to bring it back up again when it was seemingly settled. But LGBT rights will succeed once more.
I guess being almost 30, talking about how things were when I was kid isn't quite as impactful as it used to be, but still over my lifetime, a lot has changed with gay rights. In middle school, gay jokes were all insults and slurs. It was all "I love you dude, no homo". Now though? Gay jokes are homoerotic insinuations that you and the guys are all banging. We say "I love you dude, full homo" to laugh at how ridiculous the "no homo" era was.
Where I'm going with this, we've lived to see real progress. And it's progress that was previously unimaginable and just a dream. Civil rights, voting rights, they all seemed like much more hopeless causes in the past. What we face now is no less serious, but certainly less difficult. And we owe it to our forbearers to keep carrying their torch.
I'm about fifteen years older than you, and I think what I'd say is, for the United States -- and a lot of developed countries -- the the majority of progress has been made on issues that matter the least in the grand scheme of things.
Like, I agree, a moderate decline in the number of homophobic jokes from culture is a good thing -- but compared to the lack of action on an existential crisis like the climate, or the active encouragement of wealth hoarding, and the deterioration of your once-vaunted democratic norms...? I mean, that's like saying, "At least my executioners were polite!"
Most of that applies to developed countries generally. For the United States specifically, you folks don't have universal healthcare, you have a tremendous problem with guns, you have tremendous problems with education, you've made precious little progress on race issues, you're backsliding on women's rights, and -- to circle back -- it's not like the actual legal situation of LGBTQ folks is great and getting better.
Basically, from the outside, it looks like your nation's vast resources are being applied to everything except improving the lives of your citizens.
And I know someone will say -- "the United States isn't homogeneous -- it's huge and there are a bunch of different states, so things aren't bad EVERYWHERE! Don't trust the news you see!" But, really, that just makes the United States looks like an orange that is slowly rotting. Some parts of it are still orange and healthy-looking, but vast swaths appear to be deep in decay.
Edit: And I really want to say, this isn't sourced from smugness or intended as an insult. It's despair for your situation. And despair for a lot of the rest of us. Because, unfortunately, the end of the United States as a functional democracy is going to pull the keystone out of the modern world, and drag all the rest of us down with you. I desperately want your country to get its shit together, while simultaneously doubting you're capable of doing so at this late date.
That was well said, and I agree with almost everything. My only disagreements would be extent to which we've made progress on certain issues -- I think race has improved considerably, and the Inflation Reduction Act was the largest government investment into green energy in the West at the time -- but when it comes down to it, I agree it still isn't enough.
The cultural change for being more pro LGBT and in favor of diversity is also more important I think than you're giving credit for. Change is going to come from the people at the end of the day, and a cultural change is necessary for that. I've seen a petrochemical company in a big oil and gas corporation get absolutely terrified: consumers demanded better sustainability, which made companies like Coke pledge to stop using single use plastics by a target date, which made the petrochemical companies start looking for innovations and sustainable improvements, because single use plastics were the lions share of their profit.
I went on a bit of a tangent there, but this is the sort of thing I like to keep in mind. You're spot on with your description of our situation, and even if it isn't happening in every single part of the US, it's still happening overall to a very large degree. Like you said, we need to get our shit together, and it won't be easy. But if I give into despair, then the conclusion is inevitable, and as you pointed out, that sinks more than just the US. To keep hope, I look at silver linings and try to think of historical contexts. And in that regard, I think we can turn things around. I think we're on the cusp of the Republican Party's destruction, and when that happens, we can start putting in serious work to fix our country. That's my hope, at least.
They were eviscerated because it was a lukewarm attempt at healthcare reform.
Obama didn't even dare say the words "universal healthcare" once - something that majority of Americans supported at the time. The words "public option" was only said during his election campaign. As soon as he won the election, he downplayed it and pretended like it wasn't important. He could have easily put pressure on these senators by giving public speeches, running a campaign to try. But he didn't. And nobody will. Because that's not actually something any Democrats as a whole want to pass. It's not just the Manchins. Why aren't the Dems as loud as the Republicans? Why don't they say crazy things? The Republicans get things done. Look at the Supreme Court.
The fact is, the Democrats are a conservative party. They don't want change, they don't want reform.
The 3rd party as we know it today is a joke, I agree. But again, I repeat, there was a real movement in the early 20th century to have a socialist/communist presidential candidate. All it takes today is a real grass-roots movement that spreads online and we could elect someone who actually wants to change things for the better. Look at Trump essentially pulled off a coup against the GOP. Real change for the better is possible, but it will never happen going through the DNC.
And what happened as a result? Did Congress start working on more comprehensive reform? Did we get universal healthcare and a public option?
No. The exact opposite, things moved further right. Now Republicans had to agree for any bill to get passed. Nothing got done, unless Republicans agreed with the bill. Which meant legislation had to become a compromise that the right would accept.
The same people who were unhappy with the lukewarm attempt then continued to not vote for Democrats, because things weren't getting done and bills were further right than they wanted. Was that their goal, in the end? To drag the country to the right? Did they not foresee that if Republicans won, things would become more conservative?
Democrats were eviscerated in 2010 because a bunch of idiots cut off their nose to spite their face. And then they got angry when the consequences of their actions came around.