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Just a moment...
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/21/democrats-mike-johnson-motion-vacate-gottheimer
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/21/democrats-mike-johnson-motion-vacate-gottheimer
What a stupid move.
There's no way the republicans would give the same grace to Democrats were the situation reversed. The absolute best thing dems can do here is play hardball. Let the republican hardliners tear the party to shreds, watch the chaos, and campaign on it in the upcoming election "The republicans are completely dysfunctional, they want to eliminate abortions and their current speaker would like to eliminate birth control."
Protecting a christian nationalist speaker because his party is a mess is completely stupid.
Actually, this could be brilliant. First off, the man can't get anything done in the House. This House is well on it's way to being the least productive ever. As campaign fodder, that's pretty good ammo. If the resolution should pass then it'll keep him where he is and nothing will get done. I know, that ideally we want the House to get shit done, but considering the state of the Republican members, it may be better for the country and even the world if they don't.
On the other hand, Democrats coming out in support of Mike Johnson this way will make the far right wing skree loud enough to shatter glass. Even moderate Republicans reflexively oppose anything that the Democrats come out in favor of. It's like they have no choice. Supporting Johnson like this will probably increase the infighting in the party and make the far right want to kick him out even more. If they do kick him out, they'll then spend another month trying to elect a new speaker thus giving the Democrats even more campaign fodder.
I just don't agree. This is the sort of weak willed "problem solving" that makes everyone hate democrats. Regardless how far right and insane johnson is, you got moderate dems willing to compromise everything because they feel they might get credit for making things more functional (They won't).
The perfect example of this is the border bill where dems bent over backwards and gave republicans every thing they wanted. Yet, immediately, the rightwing narrative was "Well dems want this and they are weak on the border so this is just another example of how weak they are on the border".
Helping out Johnson will play out exactly the same way. The far right idiots won't care if dems are compromising. That's not something that drives them nuts. Quiet the opposite, they spin it as "Look at how weak the democrats are, they compromised which just shows how righteous our position is." They also simply lie (consider how many claimed credit for the infrastructure bill they voted against).
When you have bad actors like the republican party, you don't win by trying to play their game. Giving them power is what they want no matter how they get it. Fascists don't care about hypocrisy, they care about gaining power. Compromising with fascists gives them power.
Dems aren't winning anyone over by letting the republicans give them wedgies at every opportunity.
Yeah, I'm not sure why a Democratic politician would waste their time trying to appease leftists or try to play hard-ball. They already have registered Democrats in the bag -- they need to appeal to Independents and traditionally conservative voters, because those are the ones that are going to be deciding elections, or at least the upcoming presidential election.
It's advantageous to show as much aggressively moderate, bipartisan, and hawkish behavior right now, because that is exactly what reminds those voters of the old republican party, pre Trump. Hell, that's what Biden is all about. And it's gonna piss off leftists, especially on this site (and rightfully so), but what are we gonna do? Vote for Trump?
It's unfortunate, but the Democratic party has had to shift to the right in order to accommodate the extremism of Trump and his followers. Here's hoping we'll see a shift to the left if Republicans can somehow take hold of their own party, but we'll see.
I'm not even sure what that is supposed to mean. All I said was Democrats strategy is to appease swing voters, which it is. Look, Biden is having trouble messaging on the genocide in Palestine right now because he's in an election year trying to be as popular to swing voters and conservatives as possible right now. If it weren't an election year, I bet we'd be seeing stronger pushback from the US toward Israels atrocities.
Also look at the killed border deal. That was a pretty conservative bill that was about to be passed until Trump nuked it. Democrats are able to use that debacle against the Republicans saying "We want to govern and fix problems, you want to use those problems for political gain," but in the end, it was still a pretty conservative bill they were about to pass. Democrats messaging for the next 9 months is going to all be centered around the word "reasonable."
I think your stance might be off. The groundswell of voters doesn't come from those between modern day dems and gop. It's actually probably left of current dems. People want better salaries and health care. Oh and combating climate change. Court folks 18-35 and they'll crush them.
I think you're right in that the majority of people want better salaries and healthcare, enshrined abortion rights, etc, athough I don't think I'm understanding your last sentence.
But I don't think the "groundswell" of voters is left of democrats in the way you're saying, and my comments weren't really my "stance," they're just what is happening in politics right now. I mean, it is true that if not enough leftists come out to vote for Biden, it could be trouble for him, but what we're seeing right now from polls is that it's the independents and the on-the-fence voters that Biden needs to capture, and we're seeing him actively trying to thread the needle on topics such as Israel/Palestine.
It's funny, there was an episode on NPR politics podcast that came out today that pretty much outlined exactly what I'm talking about: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Lohgbw0EgGSRtIcc3edcM?si=P-w1lelBRBmTNzMShZ4KwA
The only way I can see this happening is if Republicans think that they have a big problem coming up from that FBI agent getting arrested, and they think Gym Jordan and some of his friends may end up facing their own charges soon. It's a long shot, but not really that implausible, is it?
They would do this not because Johnson needs protection to offer a Ukraine bill, but because Johnson may be losing his functional majority in the House soon (until the special election for McCarthy 's seat, ironically) and wants assurances that Democrats won't find a way to force a House vote to make Jeffries the Speaker for a few weeks.
Maybe Johnson and the GOP shouldn’t have fucked around and refused the deal they specifically asked for.