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Never back down, never go along with authoritarians.
Yes, people are desperate for the Democrats to fight back
...and what we get is #Schumer and just enough other complicit fools to destroy us all.
@TCatInReality I don't think voting against continuing the operations of the US government is the salvation from self-destruction that you think it is...
There are plenty of ways to vote to keep the government funded. This was a vote to slash funding for whole swathes of the gov while funding others.
IMO, Dems had no reason to be complicit in that.
@TCatInReality No, there aren't plenty of ways to keep the government funded.
There is a single legal way. Congress votes to appropriate money. Other than that one specific way, there is no other way.
This was not a vote to slash funding. That is literally false, that is factually not what this was a vote for.
You're off talking about things that just aren't true. You're spreading misinformation here. And anyone with a basic knowledge of how the US government functions would know better than to believe this kind of nonsense.
No, what you're saying is not true, it's not how the federal government works and it never has been, even if certain politicians are promoting that story for political gain and certain media outfits are getting clicks from putting that kind of story out.
But it's not factual.
There are plenty of bills Congress could pass - maybe a clean CR, or a bill that is actually negotiated with Dems. Schumer didn't hold out for either. That's what I meant.
The budget bill they voted to proceed with has several budget line items reset to $0. It's true, check it out. That's what I meant about slashing gov.
And technical, this was a vote for cloture (a vote to have a vote). IMO, it's pendandic to say I'm lying what the vote was about.
@TCatInReality it wasn't up to Schumer, though. He's not the king of the Senate. He's just one of 100 senators.
We seriously need to stop letting senators use majority and minority leaders as scapegoats for their own positions.
It wasn't up to Schumer to hold out or not. It was up to every single Senator to decide whether to shut down government and accept that blame, and it's not crazy that they didn't want to do that.
And yes, technically this was a vote for cloture. I wasn't going to bring that up, but now that you mention it, that just proves that it wasn't what you said.
I don't have the time or interest to discuss the role of party unity or party leadership. Sure, sometime people break with the party.
But in this case Schumer *led* on Dems voting with the GOP. He absolutely gets a larger part of the blame, IMO.
As for the difference between voting for cloture vs voting for the budget, go ahead - be pendantic.
Have a good day.
@TCatInReality to me that comes across as saying you don't have the time or interest to discuss how the world actually works, how the US system actually functions in reality. And I think that's a big problem.
And yeah I see that a whole lot on the Republican side. I see Republicans constantly chirping about being part of the team when really, that promotes a false understanding of how all of this works, it buys into this very antisocial norm about how the US system of government is set up.
If you don't have the time or interest in speaking back against these norms that do such a grave disservice to the democratic principles underlying the US system of government, well, what's the point then?
I would encourage you not to play their game. I would encourage you to prioritize the interest in speaking out against this misframing about how the world works.
Parties formed almost immediately on the nation's founding and they are found in parliaments around the world. They exist because voting blocs work amazingly well. And a voting bloc uses party leaders and discipline.
You might see it differently. But I think hundreds of years in hundreds of countries shows this is a very realistic view how politics works.
That's why I'm not interested in discussing further. That and you repeatedly called me a liar. I'm done.
It's really important to realize that different forms of government, the US representative system versus parliamentary systems in particular, have fundamentally different mechanisms when it comes to voting, when it comes to what they present to voters, so if you lump them all together you're missing vital differences between how those different systems work.
In many parliamentary systems the parties are put first as fundamental elements, but in stark contrast, in the US system parties form to market to voters, as voters, voting in their districts for their particular representatives, form the fundamental movers.
The two systems are fundamentally opposite. And the difference is so important to keep in mind as you talk about the realities of the US system. The contrast with parliamentary systems is not only academic but it is fundamental and it is practically strategically vital to recognize.
It does nobody any good to ignore the way the US system actually works, especially in contrast with parliamentary systems. And anyone who's not interested in that distinction just isn't really interested in facing realities of where we are in the world today.
