the DNC is held together by trading good PR for actual progressive action. same goes for the GOP and conservative action, or more recently batshit crazy space lasers.

one would have hoped that Pelosi could have pushed through, ummmmmmm, something with Biden in office. but so far its been the party of status quo keeping status quo while Biden undoes a few executive orders and tried, and failed, to make action on student loans. i do like the plan b for student loans tho, if that works out. something beats nothing.

there's just a lot of reasonable goals on the table imo and they didnt really get it done, Ukraine has some bearing on that as did Jan 6th, but we didnt get much.

I dunno where you get your news from but the Dem majorities were quite legislatively productive from 2020-2022. Compare it to the last few trifectas in 2016 or 2008

i get my news from left winged, right winged, and center sources. i try and mix it up.

perhaps i have forgotten, but that productivity could largely be summed up to "the infrastructure bill". assuming we dont count things like increasing the debt limit and a slight redefinition to same sex marriage codification, as well as massive defensive spending.

not saying you're wrong, perhaps i forgot something in there, but i dont see any of the really progressive aims met at all outside of a try and fail on student debt.

edit: upon further review i paged the SENATE, not HOUSE, rollcall from that time period. but still open to any corrections of stuff i missed.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Oct 4 2023 08:58am

Infrastructure, covid relief, chips, inflation reduction act are prob the big four.

With how legislation works without a senate supermajority, you don't get that many tries a year since you're relying on reconciliation.

Given that i'd 100% agree with the statement that they were productive, i'd just add that in terms of progressive aims there's still not much of anything. but i dont think you'd disagree, given your initial comment was that Pelosi destroyed the progressives in her own party.

and if we contrast that to her movement under Trump it brings me back to my previous point on opposition leadership being DOA deckchair shuffling, ala McCarthy v Gaetz infighting. Pelosi under Trump and McCarthy under Biden are more similar than different imo.

i'm glad we got infrastructure, i just dont like the actual plan all that much. and i like the chips to counter china, just curious how it plays out.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Oct 4 2023 09:30am

some of those videos are hilarious

you can't govern a caucus of 200 by capitulating to the most extreme members. McCarthy proves that you need to govern to the middle and get the dissenting voices into line.

Running the opposition majority means you have to negotiate with the party in power. McCarthy refused to do that hence he got caught with his pants down, staring down a government shutdown. He pulled some weird shit to try and blame the dems by springing a CR on them at the last minute and hoped they wouldn't vote for it then take the heat.

Really hoisted himself on his own petard.

Pelosi had a far bigger margin in 2018, the squaddies didn't have the votes to out her. Many of the less belligerent progressives were also put in line by their much greater hatred for Trump, the incumbent president at the time, whom they didn't want to give any wins.

Pelosi then had a similar margin to McCarthy's from 2020, but that's when their party had trifecta control and the ability to actually get something done, which imho had a disciplining effect on the far-left fringe of her caucus since they didn't want to threaten their short window of opportunity.

McCarthy is in a much more difficult position since he had a similarly razor-thin margin, but no chance of actually getting any Republican legislative priorities passed. He had neither a stick nor a carrot to make Gaetz and his posse fall in line.


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On a broader note, this difference in leadership difficulty/caucus cohesion between Democrats and Republicans is caused by a fundamental asymmetry between the two parties: Democrats have a large set of shared ideological positions, virtually all of them agree on the general direction in which they want to steer the country. Their disagreement largely comes down to how far and how quick they want to go down this path. Republicans, on the other hand, have much deeper ideological divisions within their ranks, the direction Trump or Gaetz want is very different from the direction a Romney or a McConnell want.

Additionally, Republicans generally want to reduce the scope of (the federal) government, so they're rather happy with obstruction and gridlock. By contrast, Democrats want to proactively pass legislation, want the government to shape and change the status quo. This shared goal means that neither mainstream liberals nor hardcore progressives have an interest in obstruction.

really this leads me back to saying she should have been burned, because when given the chance to at least try and appease the progressive wing she did nothing. we can say its to maintain unity in the caucus, and I'm sure that plays a part, but its also self serving. she could have pushed something minor like term limits, increased scrutiny on trading, etc. but that would hurt her personally.

At least Gaets and company are actual opposition to the mainstream Republicans, as opposed to AOC and squad who preach opposition but always vote with the Democrats.