It doesn't really need to be said here because I think we're all on the same page, but felons and excons should both have full enfranchisement. On the level of what constitutes a felony, about half of people serving a felony sentence were only convicted for a drug or property crime and were not violent. Regardless of that, the state of capitalism right now drives people to desperation - desperation all the way up to murder or robbery in an attempt to make a living in an increasingly desperate society. None of that should mean stripping people of the right to vote - if we're going to disenfranchise people for the harm they cause, then strip the right to vote from billionaires, landlords and cops before you disenfranchise a homeless person or a drug dealer.
Link to tweet: https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1366824014145064964
All of your criticisms of Obamacare are correct, and I share them, but it also led to millions of people getting healthcare who didn't have it before. Mitt Romney and John McCain are clearly in the minority among Republicans on the issue -- there have been countless challenges to every aspect of Obamacare, and it's been hollowed out by a bunch of Republican states. Hell, look at the votes for and against Obamacare when it passed -- literally zero Republicans voted for it in both the House and Senate.
Think of how libs view Obamacare. The persuadable ones will have some issues with it, but they'll generally view it positively. And if you try to sell them on "both parties are the same" they'll point to the vote totals, the legal challenges, and all the votes to repeal and look at you like you're from Mars. You'll get the same response if you try "the leadership of both parties is the same."
So did Bush Jr's Medicare Plan D extension.
They play the same role for the GOP as Sinema and Manchin play for the Dems. They throw cold water over the leadership, every time it starts talking about doing something to undermine Capital. And Obama/Romneycare was, at the end of the day, all about propping up Capital. The private insurance industry needed big subsidies to remain solvent or premiums would continue to spike and millions more people would lose access to private insurance. At a certain point, this would undermine the entrenched industry over the long term.
So long as the bill had the votes to pass, Republicans didn't have to sully themselves by breaking ranks.
As soon as Obamacare was in serious threat of repeal, Murkowski and Collins and McCain jumped ship.
The fact that there was (another) serious attempt to repeal it shows that these politicians are the exception, not the rule.
There's just no way you're going to get an appreciable number of people to look at any of a thousand party-line votes and convince them that the two parties (or even just their leadership) are the same. This isn't even debatable -- it's empirical. We know that approach doesn't work because all sorts of fringe parties have tried it for decades and every single one of them failed. That approach will fail for us, too.
On the other hand, the DSA has been growing and winning elections with an approach of "Republicans are obviously worse, mainstream Democrats are bad enough that we need to force them out, but some Democrats we can work with." There's evidence people will actually buy into that.
The attempt wasn't serious. Republicans leveraged reactionary sentiment to capture Congress and the WH, then did everything except what they'd promised to do while running for office. You'll notice Mitch's hand-picked Federalist Society judges also aren't racing to repeal Obamacare from the bench.
People don't pay attention to the votes, they pay attention to their personal lives. One of the fictions of modern America is that "my home town is nice and good unlike the scary state full of Other Team people". But as shit like the Texas power grid failure start looking the same as the California power grid failure, or the New York COVID fuckups strongly resemble the Florida COVID fuckups, it does become easier to sell the idea that both parties are staffed by corrupt, incompetent, elitist assholes all running from the same CYA playbooks.
Abbott and Cuomo have far more in common than anyone would care to admit. And if you don't believe me, forget the party-line votes. Look at the donor lists. They're all taking money from the same people.
DSA is good and they're doing good works. But they're going to keep coming up against the glass ceiling imposed by the Democratic Party leadership. Eventually, they're going to have to branch off of the Dem Party and run candidates from the outside if they want to take big statewide offices like Governor or Senator.
Which was it?
Sure, but "more in common than you'd think" doesn't mean "the same." People are smart enough to pick up on that.
Maybe, or maybe they'll get enough power within the party that Democratic leadership has to accommodate them.
As soon as the party ostensibly in favor of repeal was in power, you ran into these defectors who made repeal impossible. Thus, repeal was never under serious consideration, any more than a full blown Public Option was on the table for Obamacare.
No. Cuomo has nipple piercings and a pair of functional legs. He lives in New York. And his greasy accent causes my skin to crawl in a slightly different manner than Abbott's grating drone.
Can fuck the DSA just like Blairites fucked Corbyn, sabotaging their own party for a decade rather than risk another FDR.