Quote (Goomshill @ 23 Mar 2020 01:13)
I think this is one of the real dangers of having a party solely populated by a marriage of cynical pragmatists and fanatics. The fanatics are willing to burn down the house to get their way, happy to let the imperfect teabag the good to death. The cynical pragmatists will push an old lady in front of a bus if its in their rational self-interest. Ever since Wellstone got splattered across a field, nobody has had my interests in mind. And right now, Democrats are being given an opportunity to obstruct any federal response to the crisis. Even if McConnell was willing to bring in Rand Paul in a hazmat suit and go nuclear in the senate to make that vote pass on party lines, Pelosi can swat it down in the house. If the neoliberals pragmatists and fanatic progressives alike decide that defeating Trump is more important than keeping America functioning, they have the power to shut it all down. And they might be 'right'. A prolonged crisis, higher death toll, starvation and riots and breakdown of society and total economic collapse would most likely result in Trump losing his reelection, no matter how much he blames the Democrats. He'd just look pathetic. They could get Biden to push his own proposed super strong response and list all the many ways he would have averted the crisis if he was president, nevermind that he opposed the lockdowns and travel bans and hasn't spoken a word with Pelosi to get this stimulus passed.
But could the Democrats really get away with a situation where we have an escalating crisis in the public health sector and the labor market, Trump is proposing leftist welfare state policies like UBI or paid sick leave to alleviate it, and the Democrats keep rejecting these proposals on the grounds of... well, what?
Would "
... something something... EVIL BIG CORPORATIONS!!!111oneoneeleven" really be enough justification for them to keep obstructing amid an ever-increasing crisis without turning the public against them? Could they really get away with denying Trump the policies which they themselves had been calling for all those years?
I just dont buy your take that the Democrats could benefit from a situation where there's a national crisis and the Republican president is trying to pass
popular relief measures. Imho, the more promising approach for them is to point out the plentiful mistakes of Trump's coronavirus response and to point out any liberal policy that the GOP now wants to pass. They can frame it in the sense of "we've been right all along - now that a real crisis forces their hand, the Republicans finally admit it by passing the stuff we've been urging for".
On the other hand, the situation is dangerous for the GOP too. If they insist on
unpopular relief measures which bail out the big corporations while leaving employees and the small- and medium-sized businesses out in the rain, then they will get crushed, and deservedly so.
If we think of politics as a game of chess, then the coronavirus has made the position incredibly "sharp".
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 22 2020 07:46pm