The key word there is “right to.” If someone is willing to have a plea deal or move quickly to trial, they can. But if you want, and have the resources to pay for a lawyer, you can delay the process out for a very long time. Just because you have a right to a speedy trial doesn’t mean you have to exercise that right.
Even a peaceful division of the US would be something they would seriously benefit from. The US permanently divided against itself, each side easy to manipulate into a military conflict against the other. We would have nukes pointed at each other within a decade. It would be like the splitting of India and Pakistan, along with all the accompanying human rights atrocities.
3 of these guys marching down the street: a joke.
3,000 of these guys marching down the street: a nightmare.
It’s about having a coherent message.
What exactly were Kamala’s biggest goals? In other words, if she could accomplish just three things in office, what would those three things have been? Can anyone answer that question? Does anyone know?
Because you certainly can with Trump. He wanted to deport millions of people, raise a bunch of tariffs, and exterminate trans people. Those were the three things he ran on.
What Democrats repeatedly fail to understand is that having a policy paper on your website is NOT THE SAME THING as actually having policy positions. You can’t just point to something on your website, written by a staffer, as what you support.
I voted for Kamala, but I still to this day have not a damn idea what the woman actually stood for. Sure, she had official policies, but she never had any core issues that she hammered on again, and again, and again. She never had an effective ‘elevator pitch’ for why she should be president, other than just that she isn’t Trump.
Democrats need to pick 3-5 things for an election cycle, 3-5 major policy positions. And then they, all of them, need to repeatedly and endlessly hammer home those things.
I also took my husband’s name when I got married. I personally am not a big fan of hyphenated names. For those that like them, fair enough, but they’re not for me. To me, the problem with hyphenated names is that while they seem a way to avoid the “whose name do we give the kids” problem, they just kick the problem down the road a generation. If you have a hyphenated name, and you marry someone who also has one, are you both going to start using a 4-part surname? How about the generations after that, are they going to use an 8, 16, or 32-part name?
Of course not. At some point, now or in the future, someone is going to have their surname dropped. It either happens when you get married, or it happens when your children or grandchildren themselves get married and have to decide which names to drop. Rather than putting that burden on your kids or grandkids, I think it’s better to make those hard decisions yourself. Better to just come up with a shared name for both partners and move forward together.
My crazy prediction is that trump will try to duplicate the burning of the Reichstag. Except, in typical fashion, he will do so in a comically inept fashion. He’ll try to burn down the Reichstag, and he’ll actually succeed! Unfortunately, he’ll burn down the Reichstag…the actual Reichstag, not the US capital, but the present-day German parliament building.
People demanded unity.
Who are these ‘people’ that demanded unity? Centrist Democrats reflexively dash towards the center. It’s just part of their belief system; they’re personally centrist and fundamentally opposed to major transformative policy. No one ‘called’ for Biden to be some big unity candidate. That was his choice, not the peoples.
Honestly, I at this point wonder if progressives would be better off running as Republicans. Trump has largely, at least on messaging, distanced himself from a lot of traditional Republican economics. His base doesn’t really care much about traditional Republican policies like tax cuts or even deregulation. It’s mostly just driven by grievance and raw rage against vague elites. Mostly that is directed against cultural elites, but that same movement could be directed against wealth inequality. And the Republican Party has proven itself much more receptive to new ideas than the Democratic Party has. The Republican Party can be taken over by charismatic figures, while wealthy donors and special interest groups largely control the DNC. This isn’t likely to change any time soon. The existing Democratic leadership has more to gain by losing as a centrist than seeing a progressive win and force through change in the DNC.
I say progressives should try running as Republicans. Call yourself a “radical Republican,” hearkening back the historical radical Republicans in the post-Civil War era. Say you were going to stick it to the wealthy, give the little guy a shot, and not do any DEI. Hell, repeatedly hammer the nepotism and social advantages the wealthy have as “wealth DEI.” Rail endlessly against big business and elites. Vow to not appoint anyone who went to an Ivy League school to any position in your administration. Promise not to even talk to a single Wall Street Banker.
Exactly. And in a first-past-the-post system like the US, parties are constantly running the calculus of which interest groups to bring in or kick out of the big-tent coalition. You can call for raising taxes on the rich; that will help you with progressives, but it will cost you with the wealthy. You can be for LGBT rights; that will help you with LGBT folks and progressives, but that will cost you with conservatives. Parties constantly balance these issues to try and maximize their chances of winning elections.
The Democrats made this calculation on Gaza. It wasn’t some spontaneous act. They actively ran the numbers; they did the market research. They estimated that being 100% pro-Israel would gain them more moderate votes than it lost them in progressive and Muslim votes. They thought they would lose some Muslim voters, but they figured rebuking Israel would cost them too many middle class white voters.
Well, the Democrats fucked up. The middle class white voters they signed the Gazans death warrant for never showed up. And enough Muslims and progressives stayed home that they lost the election.
If the blame can lay anywhere except the DNC themselves, then the blame lies with middle class white moderates. No serious person should expect a group of people to show up to vote for a coalition if that coalition deliberately kicks them out of the coalition. But the Democratic Party bent over backwards to appeal to suburban white voters. Yet they still voted for Trump.
The Democrats deliberately and intentionally chose to throw Gaza supporters out of Kamala’s coalition. They did this hoping that it would net them more votes than they lost. Ultimately it failed, and yet, still, there are people now blaming those who were kicked out of the party, instead of the people who run the party.
I’m honestly not too worried about this. Trump can already effectively run for a third or any number of terms. The Republican party is now a full-on cult of personality around Trump. To stay in power, all Trump has to do is have one of his fail sons run as his successor. During the campaign, have the actual candidate largely in the background, and make it clear to all voters that his son will be running as a formality only; Trump will remain the real power behind the throne. And, once elected, Trump can continue to maintain power through the power he personally has on the party. If his son ever goes against his wishes, Trump can get on TV and immediately turn the base against the nominal president. His son may formally be president, but he’s not getting anything past MAGA congressmembers without the blessing of Trump himself.
Then I guess Obama gets two more terms, because Republicans obstructed him.
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Because at some point it becomes a distinction without a difference. At some point you’re sitting there deciding between Hitler or Mussolini. Mussolini might objectively be the better choice, as his crimes are fewer than Hitler’s by pure magnitude. But given that choice, a lot of people will just refuse to participate.
People don’t vote based on pure logic. That’s not how human beings operate. Don’t make your voters feel like they need to go to confess their sins to a priest after voting for your candidate, and maybe then you won’t have people refusing to vote for them.
The logic is that it’s simply a shit campaign strategy to run on a message of, “yes, I will abet genocide, but my opponent will abet it even harder!”
It’s just a zero-IQ, complete brain death of a strategy. The Democratic party is meant to appeal to people who care about others, who want to do what they can to make a positive difference in this world. And Kamala’s brilliant plan was to appeal to those bleeding hearts with a message of, “yes, I’m fine with genocide, but the genocide will go even faster if my opponent is elected!”?
What dirt-fucking moron thought that was a good idea?
One key note is that Israel is worse at protecting civilians than Hamas is. By their own numbers, the IDF kills more civilians for every enemy soldier they kill than Hamas does. Hamas is actually a far more ethical army, in terms of civilian casualty ratios, than the IDF is.
The harsh truth is that the only reason we call Hamas a “terrorist group” and the IDF “an army” is classism. The IDF kills 10 civilians to destroy one Hamas fighter with a laser-guided bomb? That’s just collateral damage. Hamas kills 10 civilians to kill one IDF soldier with a truck bomb? That’s terrorism.
The definition of terrorism should be amended:
terrorism (n): violence committed by a group representing one demographic group against a wealthier demographic group.
I’m glad all that AIPAC money was worth it. Good thing Kamala had the fundraising edge over Trump. It sure did her a lot of good.
It turns out that while, “vote for my candidate. She may be Mussolini, but at least she’s not Hitler. She’s the objectively better choice!” may be objectively true, it’s a shit campaign strategy and message.
Don’t ask people to vote for something they consider cartoonishly evil and then be surprised when they refuse.
Enjoy your Trump administration, all you dems who honestly expected LEFT WING VOTERS to just be OK with a genocide.
The idea isn’t for women who are already in relationships with partners who support women’s rights. The idea is more, for single women, to refuse to start any relationship at all right now. Which honestly, in an era where basic women’s healthcare is under attack, maybe starting a relationship right now isn’t the best idea. Will your women’s rights-supporting boyfriend agree to become abstinent when the birth control you’re using is taken off the market due to conservatives? Or will they want to move to the pull-out method or just accept the risk of being pregnant?
If you’re a single woman, honestly, right now, maybe staying single through these next four years isn’t a bad idea. It has nothing to do with the actions or beliefs of a potential partner, and everything with the fact that being a woman in any straight sexual relationship when conservatives are ascendant simply has a lot of unavoidable risks with it. The religious crazies in power believe that the only veto a woman deserves over being pregnant is the choice to have sex or not. And they seek to take away any way for women to prevent getting pregnant besides not having sex. These Christian nationalists, who were just elected, believe that the only choice women have should be pregnancy risk or abstinence.
You need to have a reality check here. The United States federal government, and the majority of state governments, will be telling every woman of reproductive age, “be abstinent or risk pregnancy. Any other tool to prevent pregnancy is morally wrong.”
The government is literally trying to coerce women not to have sex before marriage. The government is literally trying to coerce women not to have sex before they’re ready to become a mothers. The people soon to be in charge of the government literally believe that the only just use of sex is pregnancy. And they rule accordingly.
In what universe would you expect this to not result in a complete collapse of pre-marital sexual opportunities for straight men? It’s not about punishing men. It’s not that you do or do not have the right views or beliefs, or that you are a good or bad person. It’s simply that for women, in this world that is being created, having sex before marriage simply isn’t safe.
Sexual liberation was possible only due to the availability of effective contraception, birth control, and abortion. If you turn the contraceptive landscape back a century, sexual norms will have to return there as well. You are NOT going to have a world where there’s no access to contraceptives where women are still perfectly happy being in sexual relationships before marriage.
Men, I hope you’re ready to put a ring on it. Otherwise, you ain’t gettin’ any. Sorry, you wanted this world; you voted for it.
Seriously. We have these $7500 tax credits on expensive luxury EVs, but you don’t get that level of support if you’re interested in a more modest vehicle.
Here’s an idea for a tax credit. How about a $2k tax credit for e-bikes? That will pay for the entire cost of a decent entry-level e-bike. E-bikes really are what is needed to make active transport approachable in the US’s sprawling suburbia. You could even sell it to people as, “get an e-bike. Use it on whatever trips you can. No risk to you.”