They had the super majority at the start of that term. They couldn’t have pushed something as complicated as the ACA through, but they could have moved on something small like affirming Roe. Besides, the Republicans always find a way to ram through legislation without a super majority (and I’d suspect we’re about to see them abolish it entirely), but the Democrats never do.

For example, when the Senate parliamentarian tells the Democrats that they can’t pass a $15 minimum wage through a simple majority, the Democrats give up. When the parliamentarian tells the Republicans they can’t do something, they ignore them, and one time, they just flat our fired the guy.

You can argue about whether the Republicans are being unethical or underhanded, but at the end of the day, they achieve things, and the Democrats don’t. The Democrats will tell you that they need 60 votes to do anything and that the parliamentarian won’t allow them to pass non-budgetary items without one, but Senate filibuster rules can be changed, and the Parliamentarian has no real authority. Playing by the rules while your opponent cheats isn’t noble, it’s stupid.

Yeah, sports is a great analogy. Just because you don’t like basketball, doesn’t mean you won’t like soccer, and just cause you don’t like turn-based RPGs, doesn’t mean you won’t like 2D platformers. It’s all about finding what you vibe with.

Lots of good advice here, but I would just add, start with your interests and work out from there. You like puzzle games? Portal is a great physics puzzle game, so you might like that. It’s also a 3D platformer, so you’ll find out if you like games with a lot of running and jumping. It’s also technically a first-person shooter (not in the sense that you shoot enemies, but you do shoot a portal gun at walls), so if you don’t like that aspect of the game, you’ll know that FPSs aren’t for you.

Doesn’t have to be the type of gameplay either. You like designing things? Maybe try the Sims or Animal Crossing. Like horror movies? Maybe start with something simple but creepy, like Limbo. Detective stories? Something like Strange Horticulture might be up your alley.

The most important thing is to look around and see what catches your interest. Read some reviews, watch some gameplay footage, and find something that’s right for you. Don’t just say, “I’m going to do video games now,” and buy a Call of Duty or Dark Souls because, “gamers,” like them.

Yeah, that’s exactly what they did to Phillips. I don’t even like his politics, he’s a neoliberal centrist, but he was worried about Biden’s electability and his entire platform was, “I think there should be a real primary, will other people please run too?” They forced him to step down from his leadership positions and suddenly he had a primary challenger for his seat. He decided he’s going to retire from politics when his term is finished.

There was literally only one serious opponent, and his name was Dean Phillips. He couldn’t get ballot access in all 50 states, and the Democrats drove him out of politics afterward.

I was about to downvote until I saw the community.

You understand that’s Biden’s favorite morning show host, right? I don’t disagree with your assessment of him, but you might want to consider that his opinions may be much more aligned with the Democratic leadership than you think.

I think its important to ask the people saying that to name specific examples of HOW they were too left leaning.

They’ll usually blame one of those marginalized groups they claim you hate if you don’t support them. Joe Scarborough blamed Democrats’ support of trans rights. After months of being told that I needed to back the Democrats for the safety of LGBTQ+ community, it was amazing to see how quickly he threw them under the bus.

I’ll also add that you need to primary basically anyone that has been in politics for more than 15 years. There is just too much, “common sense,” in this party that is just wrong. In 2016, it was smart to run a centrist campaign that tried to move moderates away from Trump, and it failed. In 2024, they ran the same fucking campaign, and it failed.

There are well intentioned people that somehow still think that the 1992, third-way strategy will deliver gains through incrementalism, and it’s just not going to happen. Primary them, so that they at least have to contend with the new political realities. Trump picked up working class voters across across all demographics, not just the white working class. Everyone wants change; offer real change.

Then it sounds like the center really fucked up, doesn’t it?

Sooner or later, you will get trapped somewhere forever. Over the course of an infinite lifespan, the odds that a building collapses on you or a tunnel caves in on you basically become 100%. Someday, you will fall into the hole that you will stay in until the sun explodes, and then you will drift in the void until the heat death of the universe.

Democrats will still blame Stein if they lose, and even though their explicit strategy is to pick off disaffected Republicans, they’ll never blame Chase Oliver. It’s just like in 2016, when Hillary used the exact same strategy, and they blamed Stein, even though Gary Johnson took home a much higher percentage of the vote in most swing states. They don’t care about spoiler candidates; they just want to punch left, especially when they need a scapegoat for a loss.

It’s the only site with a similar post/comment structure and a large enough user base to be viable, so in that regard, it’s the only alternative. Culturally, it’s much different. It’s far more left-leaning and hasn’t fallen victim to the same salf-importance and group-think that Reddit users have. It also doesn’t have the same wealth of knowledge Reddit built up over 20 years, though, and it’s prone to petty infighting between communities and instances (and even admins).

Ultimately, I prefer it to Reddit, and never feel the urge to go back. I’m not convinced that Federation is a silver bullet for all of social media’s ills, but I think Lemmy is an interesting project, and I’m interested in seeing how it develops.

Slightly further away in the sequel trilogies, but slightly closer because it was a prequel.

In the lead up to the release of Episode 1, the Sci-Fi channel ran some bumpers of fans waiting in line arguing with each other. One of them said something to the effect of, “Given that this is a prequel, and that we know the universe is expanding, shouldn’t the crawler read, ‘A slightly less long time ago in a Galaxy slight less far away…’” 25 years later and that still pops into my head sometimes.

Those are the vibes that I’ve been getting in the last month and it’s scaring the shit out of me.

Super weird that your reaction to an article about how Kamala Harris is losing crucial Muslim support in Michigan is, “Nice try , Russians!” How brain-poisoned have you become that you’re rejecting inconvenient information?

Yeah, earlier in her campaign, I was optimistic that she was just trying not to undermine Biden’s foreign policy, and that she would eventually take an at least slightly more critical position on Israel. So far, though, she’s seems entirely committed to Israel’s escalating violence, and she won’t even make the smallest gesture towards the Palestinian community. I didn’t expect her to denounce Israel, but staying lock-step with Biden on this is looking like political suicide.

No, this is literally where the U.S. falls on a global political spectrum. The Democrats would be considered center-right in most other nations. Even by their own historical standards, they’re center right; if you took a Democrat from 1975 and transported them to 1995, they’d ask you why the party had adopted the Republicans’ fiscal policies.

You:

Wikipedia agrees with me

Wikipedia:

Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole or certain social hierarchies…Ideologies considered to be left-wing vary greatly depending on the placement along the political spectrum in a given time and place…In addition, the term left-wing has also been applied to a broad range of culturally liberal social movements, including the civil rights movement, feminist movement, LGBT rights movement, abortion-rights movements, multiculturalism, anti-war movement and environmental movement as well as a wide range of political parties.

Anyway, we’re done here.