What would successful Democratic Resistance look like?

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Shatner
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What would successful Democratic Resistance look like?

Post by Shatner »

For most of the Obama years, the Republicans of Congress have engaged in an unprecedented amount of organized opposition to Democratic legislation. At least until 2018 the Democrats are going to be the minority staring down what I can only assume are a lot of really enthusiastically delivered, retrograde Republican legislation.

In some weird, hypothetical setting where the Democratic party became determined to stymie the majority party, what would that look like? Would it have to be Scorched Earth: Blue Edition, or are there some other, less unsavory means available for holding back flood?

Let me reiterate that this is all pie-in-the-sky thinking. I have very low expectations as far as what Democratic resistance is actually going to be for the upcoming years, I'm just curious what theoretical avenues are even available to 'em.
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Post by Kaelik »

Resistance is different depending on what you control, since they control nothing at all, it basically amounts to forcing the Republicans to cloture everything in the senate and vote against everything that sucks so that when the tax decreases and the grossly political justices end up fucking over the country, they can point to it later and say "I was against that."

The reason the Republican resistance was so god fucking awful is because if you control a house of congress, you can pass legislation with compromises in it where you give the President something he wants, and in exchange you get something passed that you want. But the Republicans flatly refused to do that, so what we got was no legislation at all. Likewise, the usual thing that happens when one party has the Senate and the other the Presidency is that they appoint some kind of moderate version of a justice, say a Garland instead of a Kagan, and then they actually vote him in.
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Post by tussock »

Mostly there's convincing moderate Republicans (a lot of people) to help tone shit down a bit, by providing veto-proof numbers of votes for more centrist legislation that their most crazy folks won't vote for and President may veto.

The Republicans do not need to cooperate on that at all, and Trump wants control over a lot of the party to fight against that sort of thing, but it's possible if he were to try and start WWIII or something that moderate Republicans could impeach him, for instance.

Or filibustering. The Dems could filibuster all sorts of racist bullshit in the Senate. The Republicans can just take the nuclear option and change the rules to prevent that, if they want.


Basically, if the Democrats get annoying enough to do much, the Republicans can block them from doing anything at all. But if a fair number of Republican Senators want to stop something, the Democrats can help them stop it.
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

If we're talking real resistance, I'd like to see a vigorous pre-inauguration effort to charge Trump with treason for conspiring with a foreign power to subvert our democracy. If that works, combine it with the evidence for overt vote suppression and FBI tampering to try to get the election annulled. Hard-core history-making shit.
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Post by Kaelik »

tussock wrote:Mostly there's convincing moderate Republicans (a lot of people)
Zero is not a lot of people.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by Shatner »

angelfromanotherpin wrote:If we're talking real resistance, I'd like to see a vigorous pre-inauguration effort to charge Trump with treason for conspiring with a foreign power to subvert our democracy. If that works, combine it with the evidence for overt vote suppression and FBI tampering to try to get the election annulled. Hard-core history-making shit.
Huh, what would happen if Trump got booted pre-inauguration? Would it just default to Pence as president-elect? Do we get a do-over on the election? Indulging in the fantasy right now, I'd love to see a do-over election for many reasons.
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

In general, if the president-elect becomes 'unable to serve' before the inauguration, the vice-president-elect takes his place. That said, it's not plausible that Pence wouldn't be part of the case. However, even if Pence also went down, I'm pretty sure that just puts Paul Ryan in the oval office.

I don't know what mechanisms might exist to annul the election, I assume that if standing or whatever could be found it would be handled like Bush v Gore and go before the Supreme Court.
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Post by Berkserker »

Kaelik wrote:
tussock wrote:Mostly there's convincing moderate Republicans (a lot of people)
Zero is not a lot of people.
You do realize that attitude is pretty self-defeating, right? It's like racism and sexism charges. Opposing Obama was racist no matter why you opposed him, opposing Hillary was sexist no matter why you opposed her. There's a lot of people who just don't care anymore.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Berkserker wrote:
Kaelik wrote:
tussock wrote:Mostly there's convincing moderate Republicans (a lot of people)
Zero is not a lot of people.
You do realize that attitude is pretty self-defeating, right? It's like racism and sexism charges. Opposing Obama was racist no matter why you opposed him, opposing Hillary was sexist no matter why you opposed her. There's a lot of people who just don't care anymore.
Supporting Trump is racist sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-everyone-not-the-1% no matter why you supported him. His entire platform was nothing but bigotry and robbing the poor to give to the rich.

Every person who voted Trump said in so doing that they would rather their leader be a serial rapist who actively despises every woman and every foreigner and will gleefully see every homosexual and every not-cisgender person tortured to death for his own benefit than the most qualified candidate in history standing on a platform of making America a truly better place. They might not have admitted to doing so but it is what their actions caused. When someone tells you they will cut off their own nose to spite you, generally you believe them.
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Post by Chamomile »

If your plan is to actually persuade people to vote for your candidate next time, "you and everyone like you will never, ever be welcome in the society we hope to build" is a pretty shitty opening gambit.
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Post by Kaelik »

Berkserker wrote:
Kaelik wrote:
tussock wrote:Mostly there's convincing moderate Republicans (a lot of people)
Zero is not a lot of people.
You do realize that attitude is pretty self-defeating, right? It's like racism and sexism charges. Opposing Obama was racist no matter why you opposed him, opposing Hillary was sexist no matter why you opposed her. There's a lot of people who just don't care anymore.
The attitude of acknowledging that the Republican Senators and House Members are all insanely non-moderate is not "self defeating" it is reality, and it is the only possible path to not being self defeating. We are in the situation we are in now because Obama totally believed that the moderate Republicans would appoint his justice, and totally believed that the moderate Republican Comey would just do his FBI job and not interfere with an election. He was wrong on both counts. It turns out that if you thought some government official was a moderate republican, you were wrong, and they are actually willing to burn the country to the ground to avoid a center left president. Lindsay Graham, is to my knowledge, the single only Republican who didn't support Trump, and he is self confessedly not moderate. If you think you can work with the "Moderate Republican" Senators to prevent Trump from appointing a 12 year old son of David Duke to the Supreme Court who promises to make being black unconstitutional, you will be surprised again, when 51 Senators vote to change the rules for cloture, and then vote to invoke cloture, and then vote for the 12 year old KKK kid as Supreme Court Justice, because they aren't moderate, and they will never be moderate, and acting like they are moderate will just get you burned again, just like every other time democrats tried to pretend that Republican officials could be moderate in the last 24 years.
Last edited by Kaelik on Fri Nov 11, 2016 7:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by violence in the media »

Chamomile wrote:If your plan is to actually persuade people to vote for your candidate next time, "you and everyone like you will never, ever be welcome in the society we hope to build" is a pretty shitty opening gambit.
Isn't that essentially the gambit the Republicans use against anyone that falls outside of whatever they perceive as "normal" or "mainstream"?
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Chamomile wrote:If your plan is to actually persuade people to vote for your candidate next time, "you and everyone like you will never, ever be welcome in the society we hope to build" is a pretty shitty opening gambit.
It is literally the strategy that Trump used.

There are already way more than enough people that a sufficiently exciting candidate would've caused a Dem landslide. We need to reach more of them. We don't need to reach for votes from any demographic defined by their hatred of other identities.

Assuming they don't straight up repeal the 19th.
Kaelik wrote:...because [Republicans] aren't moderate, and they will never be moderate, and acting like they are moderate will just get you burned again, just like every other time democrats tried to pretend that Republican officials could be moderate in the last 24 years.
That seems a long time - go back that far and you include when the so-called Party of Lincoln was... actually literally the party of Lincoln.

"Since the Southern Strategy" would've been indisputable though.
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Post by Chamomile »

violence in the media wrote:
Chamomile wrote:If your plan is to actually persuade people to vote for your candidate next time, "you and everyone like you will never, ever be welcome in the society we hope to build" is a pretty shitty opening gambit.
Isn't that essentially the gambit the Republicans use against anyone that falls outside of whatever they perceive as "normal" or "mainstream"?
No, the Republican gambit is to gerrymander the elections and back "Both Sides!" propaganda so that a lot of people believe that the Democrats are just as bad so as to convince swing voters to just give up and stay home. The Republican refusal to negotiate with or acknowledge the humanity of their opponents is so crippling to their ability to win democratic elections that they're dismantling democracy outright to remain in power.
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Post by Kaelik »

Omegonthesane wrote:
Kaelik wrote:...because [Republicans] aren't moderate, and they will never be moderate, and acting like they are moderate will just get you burned again, just like every other time democrats tried to pretend that Republican officials could be moderate in the last 24 years.
That seems a long time - go back that far and you include when the so-called Party of Lincoln was... actually literally the party of Lincoln.

"Since the Southern Strategy" would've been indisputable though.
Just out of curiosity, do you know how time works? I ask, because 24 years ago, was not in fact the civil war.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Kaelik wrote:
Omegonthesane wrote:
Kaelik wrote:...because [Republicans] aren't moderate, and they will never be moderate, and acting like they are moderate will just get you burned again, just like every other time democrats tried to pretend that Republican officials could be moderate in the last 24 years.
That seems a long time - go back that far and you include when the so-called Party of Lincoln was... actually literally the party of Lincoln.

"Since the Southern Strategy" would've been indisputable though.
Just out of curiosity, do you know how time works? I ask, because 24 years ago, was not in fact the civil war.
I swear I read it as saying 224 years. Maybe you caught it after my page loaded and before I hit Quote, maybe I'm just tripping balls. Either way, oops.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Fri Nov 11, 2016 8:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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Post by Berkserker »

Chamomile wrote:If your plan is to actually persuade people to vote for your candidate next time, "you and everyone like you will never, ever be welcome in the society we hope to build" is a pretty shitty opening gambit.
QFT. You're not going to get anywhere calling the undereducated whites racist, sexist hicks who should kneel for their betters. You'll get somewhere with them by promising to look out for their interests. Guess who spoke to them when nobody else would. As opposed to, y'know, casually joking about shutting down the industries they work in through regulation.

If we're going to talk historical trends, the Democrats used to be the party of the blue-collar worker.
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Post by Kaelik »

Berkserker wrote:
Chamomile wrote:If your plan is to actually persuade people to vote for your candidate next time, "you and everyone like you will never, ever be welcome in the society we hope to build" is a pretty shitty opening gambit.
QFT. You're not going to get anywhere calling the undereducated whites racist, sexist hicks who should kneel for their betters. You'll get somewhere with them by promising to look out for their interests. Guess who spoke to them when nobody else would. As opposed to, y'know, casually joking about shutting down the industries they work in through regulation.

If we're going to talk historical trends, the Democrats used to be the party of the blue-collar worker.
Wait, Trump spoke to blue collar workers? I mean, yeah, technically he did, he told them "I promise to raise your taxes, raise the cost of living, and crash the economy while I continue to get rich off watching you fucking die from no healthcare and no jobs" but I mean, talking to them is different from looking out for their interests.

Unless you mean their interest in making brown people miserable, in which case.... oops, I guess if that's the only interest they have, then yeah, guess they are racist.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by Berkserker »

I guess that's one way of interpreting what he said. Something of a misinterpretation, I think, but eh. And it's not so much 'making brown people miserable' as 'immigration reform'. I can understand the confusion on your part. A lot of people think the entire concepts of 'borders', 'nations' and 'nationalism' are completely outmoded. Maybe you're one of them. Maybe you aren't, but you think the benefits of illegal immigration outweigh the costs. I'm not a mind-reader, I'm not going to try to figure out what you're thinking on my own. Whichever of the two it is, I disagree with you, and enough of the electorate, in a proportion spread just so, disagrees with you. Perhaps some of that is spite and racism, but I'm sure there are more than enough folks like me who don't believe the advantages of having a lot of illegal immigrants outweigh the disadvantages.
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Post by Kaelik »

Berkserker wrote:I guess that's one way of interpreting what he said. Something of a misinterpretation, I think, but eh. And it's not so much 'making brown people miserable' as 'immigration reform'. I can understand the confusion on your part. A lot of people think the entire concepts of 'borders', 'nations' and 'nationalism' are completely outmoded. Maybe you're one of them. Maybe you aren't, but you think the benefits of illegal immigration outweigh the costs. I'm not a mind-reader, I'm not going to try to figure out what you're thinking on my own. Whichever of the two it is, I disagree with you, and enough of the electorate, in a proportion spread just so, disagrees with you. Perhaps some of that is spite and racism, but I'm sure there are more than enough folks like me who don't believe the advantages of having a lot of illegal immigrants outweigh the disadvantages.
Yeah, you are a fucking idiot. Ignoring for the moment that it's probably like 90% racism, if you believe higher taxes, no healthcare, higher standard of living, and fewer job is worth.... They took ur jobs?

Then you are a fucking idiot. I mean, people who think Trump spoke to their interests are either definitely racist, or definitely idiots, or making more than 100k a year right now and have short term thinking problems.

Because that thing where he's going to raise taxes on you, cut taxes on himself, and then laugh his ass off while the economy tanks and you end up unemployed, even before we get to the part where tariffing countries, if he could actually accomplish it, would just raise the cost of goods without creating jobs.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by Berkserker »

Well, you're not attracting much of anything with that brand of honey.

Now, speaking to specific points, yes, the tax plan could be better, but I'm pretty sure we all know that it'll be unrecognizable by the time it actually gets through the house and senate. It's not as though Hillary was going to do any better over a potential Hillary presidency, especially as ugly as 2018 is looking for the Dems. Really, that applies to Obamacare as well. Seriously, 2018 could potentially get ugly for the Dems.
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Post by Kaelik »

Berkserker wrote:Well, you're not attracting much of anything with that brand of honey.

Now, speaking to specific points, yes, the tax plan could be better, but I'm pretty sure we all know that it'll be unrecognizable by the time it actually gets through the house and senate. It's not as though Hillary was going to do any better over a potential Hillary presidency, especially as ugly as 2018 is looking for the Dems. Really, that applies to Obamacare as well. Seriously, 2018 could potentially get ugly for the Dems.
You have a very curious version of delusion.

On the one hand, you think the Republican House and Senate is going to prevent Trump from cutting taxes on the rich.

On the other hand, you seem to believe that raising taxes on the poor and lowering taxes on the rich is somehow better than doing nothing at all.

On the third hand, you seem to believe that when the economy inevitably collapses and all those people who totally voted Republican are worse off in 2 years, things will be bad for the Democratic party.

Also you rely on trite and factually incorrect cliches in place of arguments.
Last edited by Kaelik on Fri Nov 11, 2016 11:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by Chamomile »

People who voted for Donald Trump because they read and understood his platform are a lost cause. What they want is in fact antithetical to what Democrats want on a fundamental level. The thing is, Donald Trump produced propaganda and people who weren't predisposed to hate him paid attention to it and may have decided to believe it.

Example: The Trump campaign put a lot of effort into convincing former Bernie supporters to vote Trump, and any Bernie supporter who actually did that didn't do it because they hated Mexicans, they did it because they felt betrayed, because they wanted to believe there was at least one candidate who wouldn't throw them under the bus, and since Bernie supporters were intimately familiar with the current fad of completely baselessly accusing people of sexism or racism, it was easier to believe that the accusations against Donald Trump were lies. And Trump's core supporters were there to tell them that this was so, that the racist things Trump had said were taken out of context or that Trump was a progressive sleeper agent who was lying to get elected and his only actual platform was election reform.

I'm certain that some number of Bernie supporters actually voted for Trump under this logic. You can call them idiots for letting spite dictate their vote, and you can call them complicit with racism and sexism for quietly ignoring the evidence for it because they didn't want it to be there, and both of those things will be true, but they will also further convince these people that they don't have any place in the "inclusive" society you're claiming to build. I'm not sure whether it'd be a wise idea to run a narrative of "cleaning house" to try and win those people back, because what data is available suggests that the number of Bernie supporters who actually defected rather than just deserting is very low. Probably the political capital lost in excommunicating some scapegoats wouldn't be worth the benefit. It's still counterproductive to spit bile and hatred at them. They left because they felt abandoned, so obviously further attacking them will not help.

This is one specific demographic, but the same goes for every other swing voter who voted for Trump and not Hillary, and it also goes for all those people who voted third party or didn't vote at all, because even if you're not attacking them directly, these are still people who left the Democratic banner and they are not going to be encouraged to come back to it if they see it operating under a siege mentality.

If you want to make someone regret voting for Donald Trump, or even just not voting for Hillary, you should be attacking Donald Trump, not the people you are trying to convince.
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Post by Kaelik »

Okay but like Chamomile, you get that you are a delusional insane person who is yelling at a windmill right?

No one said we need to light the voters on fire and purge the party. Just one person who is literally always wrong said "we need to team up with the moderate republicans in the house and senate to only pass good laws for the next 2 terms!" and then someone else said "You are an idiot, there are no moderate republicans in the house or senate." And then you decided to go on a crazy rant about how it's alienating to voters to call them racist monsters to their face, even though literally zero people said we should.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by Chamomile »

Omegonthesane wrote: Supporting Trump is racist sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-everyone-not-the-1% no matter why you supported him. His entire platform was nothing but bigotry and robbing the poor to give to the rich.

Every person who voted Trump said in so doing that they would rather their leader be a serial rapist who actively despises every woman and every foreigner and will gleefully see every homosexual and every not-cisgender person tortured to death for his own benefit than the most qualified candidate in history standing on a platform of making America a truly better place. They might not have admitted to doing so but it is what their actions caused. When someone tells you they will cut off their own nose to spite you, generally you believe them.
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