Yeah like I vote dem because the alternative pretty explicitly wants me dead, but I’m an engineer who is still struggling in a medium cost of living area.

It’s like the Dems are afraid to acknowledge their strengths. Your opponents are committing crimes against democracy and promising brutal oppression of women and minorities as well as their political opponents. I think that the only major issue with their financial strategy right now is that it’s too far right, but don’t fucking run on it. Run on the fact that your opponents are fighting for unpopular opinions

My bad, am I mixing up inflation and cost-of-living? I'm trying to understand the economy jargon better.

The point still stands that the rate of inflation is down but we still have to deal with that long period of time AKA 2022 where it didn't dip below 7.5%.

Right but your wages are shit now because they didn’t keep track with corporate profits. Inflation is only bad for you because it somehow didn’t cause any inflation in labor costs. So the question you should be asking is, why is everything but your labor costing more?

The problem is the wealthy. And it will be, if history is any guide, until the only thing left for people to eat that aren’t wealthy, is the wealthy.

Member those dudes beating down the door of a barricaded senate that only stopped because one of their zerglings took a bullet to the neck? I watched a live broadcast of the gallows they had set up and the chants of "Hang Mike Pence." Member how a former President is literally facing criminal charges for trying to fix the election in Georgia?

ANY OF THIS RINGING A BELL?!?

Or are you one of those "alternate facts" types? Feel free to join my block list.

Maybe it looks that way if you've only been at this a couple decades. Given how things have changed slowly over the last 40 and relatively abruptly with the Trump era, I think Democracy has been under fire for a long time.

The problems are that: too few have been aware of it, too many have been apathetic about it. Too few have voted, and too few have been involved beyond the absolute bare minimum of voting.

But the real failing is that the growing corruption -- regulatory capture, lobbying, campaign finance, rise of oligopolies in ever more markets, etc. -- has left us with neither major party primarily beholden to anyone but the ultra rich and mega corporations.

So I would argue that our realistic choices (since with our election mechanism, we are essentially locked into a choice between only two parties) are ...

Democratic -- incremental progress socially but mostly status quo economically and little interest in addressing the root problems I mentioned along with failing to address the seriousness of the rising threat of the right wing, loosely similar to the attitude of liberal centrists in the German Weimar Republic of 1930-1933. (I am fully aware that Democratic party is a hodge podge including some left leaning groups but the centrists run the show, I think we can agree)

Republican -- long term (40+ year) plan to undermine education, suppress voters, dismantle government safeguards, challenge (by ignoring) fundamental checks and balances, along with regressive social policies (particularly race, sexual orientation, reproductive freedom, gender expression).

If one is actually aware of the GOP's gerrymandering, active voter suppression, undermining of news media, rejection of the concept of truth and fact, conspiring to overturn the presidential election, anti-intellectualism, stochastic terrorism, active persecution and suppression of marginalized people, criminal activity, and brash corruption, one cannot interpret as anything but a directed, coordinated, doggedly persistent attack on American democracy.

Only one of these two groups severely degraded the operation of the government in the last decade and one of these groups is driven to further establish a theocratic, nationalist, authoritarian, regressive—in short, fascist—rule.

To look at the last twenty years and term "democracy on the ballot" as trope or hyperbole just shows how bad "the new normal" had gotten by the 2000s.

All this has been going on ever since the GOP transformed into a reactionary party in backlash to the Civil Rights era and especially following Nixon's resignation.

Mike Pence could've (likely illegally) decided to reject the votes from contested states or taken an alternate slate of electors. The President, the highest elected official in the land, told Mike Pence to reject the results of a democratic process even though all legal challenges had been laughed out of court.

I'm sure that happens every election though.