seeing a bunch of "joe actually supports court reform now, we just need to get him the house and senate" and lmao. no he doesn't, and you know he doesn't, because dick durbin is allowed to be a useless piece of shit about the courts without any pushback from the dems above him
"what did you expect us to do about manchin" better question: can they not get in line an *illinois* senior democrat that they themselves have made the senate whip and the *chair of the judiciary committee* on 'stop giving a shit about blue slips' and 'do more about SCOTUS than stern letters'
it is not the places where democrats have tough blockades that show their true behavior, it is where there is nothing getting in the way but themselves. if they can't wrangle dick fucking durbin on blue slips/getting more aggressive about the courts, pretty clear they don't *want* to
as is, at best, joe's shift is "if you give us frankly *insane* majorities in the senate and house, like 70-75 votes in the senate, and a majoirty in the house so big that there is negative risk in doing something about the courts, we'll finally seriously consider it. maybe"
"bwehhhhhhh but manchin. manchinnnnn!" pelosi wasn't willing to get richard neal (d-ma) in line on "don't fucking slow walk getting trump's taxes" while she had control of the house, schumer wouldn't tell chris coons (d-de) to shut up and sit down about his valentine's vacation
and apparently nobody of significance is interested at all in telling dick fucking durbin that he needs to get his ass in gear about at minimum ditching the "not a law, not even a codified senate rule, just an old tradition" blue slips.
joe ain't gonna do shit for court reform.
in terms of "getting change via the electoral process" on these high fronts where senior dems control the levers of power and refuse to budge on how they've used - or haven't used - them, you're still stuck with "wait for them to die of old age" regardless of congress majorities.
~*the democrats*~!
i swear american electoral politics are the number one place where a bunch of people sincerely end up at a belief of "don't pay attention to what they *do*, pay attention to what they *say*"
people might reasonably think "okay if we get enough in though we can influence them-!" and i think them reacting with a shrug to an attempt on their lives by a mob in order to try to coup the government for the republican shows that no, you can not in fact influence them with enough numbers
they don't react to people trying to kill them, they're not gonna react to a 20 percent increase in the size of the left flank in the senate. all you've got is the inevitable icy grip of time
To some degree I think you have to organize and mobilize anyway to maintain the structures needed to seize power when an opportunity presents but damn is it ever demoralizing
people should organize and build power! but in terms of the specific changes to use the specific levers of power through specifically electoral means, it really is just "they have to keel over from old age eventually, i guess".
I literally just saw a post where someone was saying that with AOC and other "Progressives" (LMAO! Is this real?!) around, Biden's for sure gonna go more left, this time around.
How fucking deluded do you have to be?
The democrats' behavior at work fully betrays that not one of the leadership actually believes this election is high stakes.
We're all free to STRENUOUSLY DISAGREE WITH THEM about that, but we can't pretend it isn't true just because their fundraiser email subjects are shrill and panicky
the massive contrast between leadership going "eh, it is what it is" (clyburn even calling it "anticlimactic") about the roe overturn and the emails being out the fucking door immediately about abortion shows just how obviously those emails are not representative of the leadership's actual interests
