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Wigglytuff

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You should either address how not engaging with other arguments is productive for changing people's minds or you should explain why trying to change other people's minds isn't important.
I believe in the rehabilitation of people that previously held morally shit political beliefs (such as Trump and Ron Deathsantis being good for this country, we don't need to go over this one again do we?). I grew up in Shitfuck, Iowa. My family and I were quite possibly the first time a lot of those people, particularly the older ones, had ever seen an Asian person. Realistically speaking, how the hell do we expect them to hold anything other than regressive views or at the very best, "I don't see color" views on race? They've never known anything else. They'll never see the impacts of their beliefs and they're white; they'll certainly never feel it themselves. Until relatively recently, I myself held less extreme but still problematic and, considering my race, self sabotaging beliefs because that's the environment I grew up in. I don't think I should be retroactively punished/ostracized for just that and neither should they.

That, however, is not the same with actively changing those beliefs. We're not obligated to do that (though if MrHands et al want to, they are welcome to provide entertainment for the rest of us in their likely futile attempts). Most of Shitfuck Iowa was born in Shitfuck Iowa, went to school in Shitfuck Iowa, got married in Shitfuck Iowa, and will die in Shitfuck Iowa, with maybe the occasional trip to Des Moines (where they complain about the "libtards" the whole time). Realistically speaking they're gonna die long before they allow their beliefs to be changed. I know this because I'm not welcome there as a member of the community anymore. My views no longer tolerate theirs and, conversely, they no longer tolerate me.

Beyond whether we're obligated to change minds, I question if that's even what we should spend our limited effort and resources on. My views didn't change because some radlib on smogon dot com was talking my ear off, my views changed because my environment changed. Analytically speaking, I think this holds true too - in response to Roe v Wade being overturned, young people, particularly young women, have come out in the second highest turnout in 3 decades. On the older side of things, there was a significant switch in the 50+ voting demographic from Republican to Democrat between July this year and November, where abortion was the second highest voter concern.

I can't help feel like our efforts would be better spent trying to get younger voters (the 2nd highest turnout in 3 decades being 27% is pretty sad), who are by default more left leaning, to go vote, rather than trying to convert Florida Trumper who thinks mass shootings are just a normal part of life and are the price we should pay so he can fellate his gun.

"Change my mind" is a meme and it's no more apparent than now. This rhetoric is way overdue, if you want engagement with fake Mr.E, do it yourself.
 
The US had been in Afghanistan for 20 years under four different presidents. Bush set up the occupation, Obama started drawing down troops, Trump wrote up the plans for the withdrawal, and Biden completed it (after delaying it for some time, to Trump's dismay). There are many different elements to be blamed for the Afghan war. The Afghans, the Taliban, the US, any number of the hundreds of politicians worldwide that influenced it, fuckin' Bin Laden. But blaming JUST Biden? Yeah sorry, that's ridiculous. Two decades of training, funding, and fighting and the Afghan resistance collapsed within days. Doesn't matter how we pulled out, it was clear another decade there wasn't going to change anything.
Yes and it was 20 years of idiocy, they did the right thing by pulling out, but the way they pulled out was fluster cluck. Biden scrapped Trumps withdrawal plan and even if it was still Trumps plan it was Biden's decision to go ahead with it and it would still count as a foreign policy disaster against Biden. I don't really care about what government is or isn't in charge of Afghanistan, it was still Biden's failings that got Americans and and pro American Afghan people who helped America killed.

I'm sorry but nobody with a straight face can say that the withdrawal procedure from Afghanistan was anything other than a disaster.

Ukraine was invaded under Obama in 2014 and has been fighting a low intensity conflict with Russia ever since. Trump withheld aid to Ukraine as a way to Blackmail Zelensky for dirt on his political rival. Biden passed the lend lease act and has done more to help Ukraine than literally any other nation.
Ah so Putin caused trouble both times Biden was involved in power, remember a lot of the Obama team is also working with Biden currently. Poland and the Baltic states have done way more to help Ukraine than the US is on a relative basis. The US could be doing a LOT more.

A dictatorship invaded a democracy. I'm not sure you know what a fascist is.
Dictatorship =/= fascism, democracy =/= not fascism.

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Democracy ^ Shocking I know

What has the US not given Ukraine? Ukraine doesn't have the logistical infrastructure or trained soldiers to operate NATO weapons like Abrams, F35s etc and training takes many months or even years. Should Biden send them an aircraft carrier or nuclear submarine with no one to crew them?
They needed arms way earlier in the conflict but the US, despite knowing an invasion was coming still dragged its feet in sending equipment.

Europe and NATO are more united than they have been since the fall of the Soviet Union, what on Earth are you talking about.
:totodiLUL: We've got the EU's chief diplomat is raising concerns with Washington and the energy crunch hasn't even hit properly yet.

https://www.politico.eu/article/vla...ift-west-eu-accuses-us-of-profiting-from-war/

Accusing your supposed ally of profiteering sure seems like unity to me.

He was democratically elected.
As if the US hasn't been pushing on the scales in LatAm since forever.

Yes, Taiwan is an island. While China is unlikely to actually try and invade, so was Russia in Ukraine. China has made threats, and Biden is the first president in a long time to outright have the balls to say we will step in if fighting happens. With how raw Russia is getting fucked by Western armed-Ukraine I think it's safe to say Biden has made his stance on Taiwan perfectly clear, far from the usual unambiguity most presidents have.
China can make threats all they want, they haven't had a war for 50 years, they're hopelessly inexperienced for it and if they fail the CCP fails, the risk is enormous and it's highly unlikely to happen. I don't know why people think that Russia invading another nation was unlikely, they've had consistent wars for their entire history.
 
This is very likely a troll account given how on the nose it is with its claims but fuck it I'll take your bait. First thing, if you're gonna push tankie bullshit, at least use more original points than these as they've been disproven over and over again constantly. Like this is literally just copy paste of Richard Medhurst, Chomsky, Aaron Mate, and Kim Dotcom (I would know, I used to unironically agree with these people a lot). Ukraine was an (admitting very flawed) democracy that was improving slowly but steadily post 2014 (after Russia attacked them first and stole their land btw, this war is a blow-up of an 8 year old conflict) and Russia invaded them on the excuses of 1.) NATO expansion / West bad, 2.) Ukraine are nazis. NATO is a defensive alliance and the very select few times they went outside this basic idea include Serbia after they committed a literal genocide in Srebenica and woulda done the same to Kosovo and going into Libya to handle Gadaffi after he committed various human rights abuses (not agreeing or disagreeing with these interventions, just pointing them out). This analysis of NATO expansion that's propgated by pro-Russia narratives is also shallow given Russia did this expansion to themselves by doing bullshit and being an awful neighbor with things like invading Georgia and Crimea in post-Soviet history and having a ton of bad blood with Eastern Europe. If he wanted NATO to stop expanding so damn bad, he coulda just not been an awful neighbor. As for the nazi claim, there were issues of Ukrainian nazis and it's an issue the country should be doing more to solve, but the claim itself is severely overexaggerated in terms of reach and justification of an entire country-wide invasion (especially since Russia's soverentiy was never in question during the process. Also, no don't 'what about the US...' it isn't relevent here and you'd call foul if I did the contrary). Also, not a good look to claim to curing of nazism from a region with the most Jews in Europe and a Jewish leader to the point of invasion when your own fucking embassy posts shit like this (it's antisemetic given the way Zeleknskyy's nose is drawn) and the country's de-facto #2 says stuff like this. As for the sanctions being a disaster for the West, no, not really. Europe's economy is getting hit quite hard, there's no doubt on that much, but they've at least secured a full gas tank for the Winter, are finally beginning to do a bit more with renewables (very slowly though), and their issues are only as they are because Europe was fucking stupid and didn't diversify their gas resources in the hope it'd make Russia stay forced to be integrated with the West (that did not happen). Russia's economy is beginning to feel the pinch when the topic of things like semiconductors or missles is the focus. And before you say "the rouble is so high in value now vs the euro falling", a majority of other currenies outside the rouble and US dollar are losing value due to waning economies and the dollar is becoming a big safe haven. For the rouble, Putin had to do a lot of measures like only allowing oil payment in roubles to make that happen. As for China influence infecting Europe, the sanctions and events in general are also making Europe more skepical of China (less extremely than Russia though, sadly), with Lithuania going so far as to allow a Taiwanese office (by the name of Taiwan and not just Taipei) and breaking the One China Policy as a result, Germany announcing a need to not be so reliant on China (although I'll be honest, believe it when I see it for this one given what happened to them over Russia), and NATO considering China a challenge as per their message at the Madrid summit and the US doing more to fund Taiwan. Everyone's economies (whether it's the US, Europe, Russia, or China) are gonna hurting for a good while given the invasion with everyone contracting in terms of olive branches and cautious alliances. Didn't even mention Russia's own allies, notably Armenia, not wanting to work as closely with Russia anymore with what happened around a week ago at the CTSO summit. Not trying to say "Oh Ukraine easy victory lmao they're a perfect poor little nation who has never done wrong ever" cause that simply isn't true either, and they wouldn't have been able to do what they are had it not been for NATO stepping in to help, but get off the tankie kool aid the Russian government are clearly the fascists (I don't believe the Russian people themselves are fascists, the Russian people are not bad people so I'm not taking the Russophobia angle as some tankies like to hash out when anything Russian is critiqued).


Is it "Ukraine bad and the West bad for giving Ukraine weapons that they shouldn't have and are making NATO fight against Russia alongside nazi fascists" or "lmao, look how slow they are giving weapons to Ukraine, the West is stupid and incompetant"? You can't just throw both at the wall, it's one or the other if really truly oppose the idea Russia isn't the bad guy.
There's been open display of Stepan Bandera hero worship in Ukraine for years but you're trying to tell me that they don't have a nazi problem? :totodiLUL:

Russia invaded after the US backed Maidan putsch in which they started massacring people including the burning of 47 people in Odesa, things aren't so black and white and all sides have blood on their hands here.

Ukraine is bad, the West should give weapons, the west has been incompetent in supply, Russia is bad for invading Ukraine, the sanctions are idiotic and will crash the European economy. All of this can be true at the same time.

Also no, there's nowhere near enough gas in Europe to get through winter, Finland has already admitted that there will be blackouts this winter and in the UK prices have gone nuts again hitting £1200 per megawatt hour, clear signs of distress and we're not even in the depths of winter yet.
 
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You keep calling them a tankie. I'm not about to come out hard in defense of them on that front, or tankies in general, but they did criticize Lula specifically for being "pro-China", which sounds like a decisively non-tankie thing to say. Turns out large portions of the right also support the Russian invasion for a variety of fucked up reasons that I won't pretend to entirely understand even based on their own internal logic. I don't think any of these talking points are coming from a leftist or even pseudo-leftist/red fascist perspective, not that it really matters much in the big picture.
 
This is gonna be my last post as I can tell this is going in circles and I'm not gonna waste each other's time. I'll leave it to MrHands. Although imagine using Politico for news on Europe, one of the most Euro skeptic news site out there.

I literally said they did and they should be doing more to solve it. I said the problem did not justify a country-wide invasion as it did not threaten Russia's sovereignty, please do not twist my words to say things they do not. I stand by what I said and argue that Ukraine's issues in this area are one to be solved in a domestic sense.




The idea that Ukraine's 2014 revolution was caused and backed by the CIA is yet more tankie disinformation to push the idea that Russia surely could not have pushed Ukraine closer to the US / EU with their own actions. https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/in-2014-a-u-s-and-eu-backed-maidan-putsch-took-place-in-ukraine. Even if the US murdered in Odessa, that doesn't really change the fact that Russia is still largely at fault for the 2014 revolution and should not have tried to pillage Crimea in a land grab.


If Ukraine is so bad in your point of view, then why should the West supply weapons in your point of view? You yourself said Ukrainians are the fascist nazis. The US has been giving Ukraine fair supply, although I argue most parts of Europe (aka everyone outside the UK and Poland) have been incompetent as they failed to provide proper weapons. Also, if Russia is bad for invading, it's quite convenient you leave that out of your initial post and just leave it at "Ukraine are the fascists", just an interesting decision to do so, especially since things, as you say, are not so black and white. As for sanctions being dumb, I disagree with this notion and sanctioning should be done in this case to hit the Russian economy and reduce their ability to fund the war. The only reason Europe has the potential to be in a lot of trouble in some parts (Germany and France will fare better than the UK and Finland since the former was dumb enough to sell their reserves for quick capital gain without oversight and the latter is so energy intensive) is because of their own incompetentance in energy management despite the US telling them so over and over again. Replacing Russian energy will not be easy for Europe, and their economy is likely to have issues but it won't be a collapse of the continent, and it's not like Russia is gonna be doing much better in the future anyway. Given how they're having issues with things that I mentioned in my first post, this shows the sanctions are beginning to work.
The US has a long history of running colour revolutions in other countries and the US establishment has numerous ties to Ukraine, trying to deny that the Maiden wasn't a US ran colour revolution is laughable.

If you have the opportunity to use a non ally as your proxy to fight your geostrategic opponent why would you not? The US wins regardless of what happens in Ukraine, to start with they get valuable intel on how the equipment works in the field, what stuff needs more production, what stuff isn't so good, how to improve things ect. secondly you lessen Russia's ability to wage war in the future, which, in theory, helps with the Asian pivot. The sanctions are a terrible idea as you crush your (supposed) allies as collateral, Europe won't forget what is being done to it by the US. France might fare better if they actually get their NP back up and running properly but saying Germany will fare better than anybody when they're the biggest losers here is laughable, their economy is based upon industrial exports and they're now experiencing forced deindustrialisation which will punch a huge hole in their economy and it's highly unlikely they're going to be able to pivot to a more consumption based economy. Also it's not just some parts of Europe, because of the EU the whole grid is connected, if somebody has problems everybody has problems.
 
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Chou Toshio

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OMG guys, the Ye shit burning down the whole right is the most hilarious shit ever.

Trump getting burned for meeting Ye & Fuentes... Tim Pool's audience turning on him for not embracing the antisemitism... Ben Shapiro fighting Ye on Twitter... Ye demanding Elon to unban Alex Jones on Twitter... Alex Jones out-crazied as he desparately flopped in trying to tamp down Ye's open Nazism-- Kanye:"There's loooootts of things I LOVE about Hitler!!"-- on InfoWars live stream...

Just the natural evolution of Republican politics.

Damn I just hope Ye finds a way to burn Desantis too. This shit is wild, this 2024 Republican Primary is going to be the funniest spectacle ever.
:totodiLUL::totodiLUL::totodiLUL::totodiLUL::totodiLUL:

 
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Turns out large portions of the right also support the Russian invasion for a variety of fucked up reasons that I won't pretend to entirely understand even based on their own internal logic.
Don't confuse anti-Biden for pro-Russia. This is the kind of stuff that gets posted on /r/politics on Reddit all the time with no sources, but it's demonstrably false that Republicans are pro Russia.

70% of Americans consider Russia the enemy, up from 41% pre-invasion. This includes 72% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans. The remainder shows 24% see Russia as a rival and just 3% as a partner (down from a pre-war high of just 7%).

Opinion on Putin is low and Zelensky is high. 6% of Americans have positive views of Putin, 72 have positive views on Zelensky.

Meanwhile support for Ukraine remains bipartisan. While the number of Republicans who think we are giving Ukraine "too much" support is growing that number is still a mere 32% with 11% of Democrats agreeing, yet the net total results in about 80% of Americans thinking support to Ukraine is either just right or too little.

Lend lease passes the US Senate 100-0 and House 417–10. While the 10 were all Republican, I think it's unfair to label the party pro-Russia.

I could go on, but generally while Republicans tend to be less pro-Ukraine (but still the vast majority are in favor of more support vs less) they are certainly not by any means "pro Russia". If there is any resistance at all to Ukrainian assistance it generally boils down to 1) budget concerns and 2) knee-jerk resistance to supporting anything Biden does.
 
Hoisted by your own refusal to actually read what I said...
1) The only Wikipedia I sourced was one showing the lend-lease vote, which is objective fact. Wikipedia is easy to read but if you want to read up on the actual govt website here you go.

2) I don't think any numbers I posted could reasonably be considered "large portions" unless you want to confirm your own biases. My sources were Pew Research Center but there's also Gallup if you want a secondary source. Or like, just Google it. Pretty much all surveys confirm a united American opposition to Putin, Russia, and their invasion in Ukraine.
 
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1) The only Wikipedia I sourced was one showing the lend-lease vote, which is objective fact.

2) I don't think any numbers I posted could reasonably be considered "large portions" unless you want to confirm your own biases.

You are wrong, GG.
Any portion of your party being far-right neo-Nazis parroting Kremlin talking points is too large of a portion (like this chick, this guy, and this guy, just to name a few examples, look at me using Wikipedia sources in a political argument like a true liberal lmao), and even by your own fucking numbers, you've got 31% of them believing that Russia isn't the enemy. If 31% of people vanished off the face of the Earth, would you consider that a large portion? I would. How about the 20% that want to cut support? 6% who openly support Putin? Yes, and yes. Imagine reaching this hard just to... what, defend the Republican party? Do you feel personally attacked when I mention that a large portion of conservatives are pro-Russia?
 
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If 31% of people vanished off the face of the Earth, would you consider that a large portion?
31% of Republicans consider the support sent to Ukraine by the US to be excessive. You picked the highest number you saw to try and squeeze out some validity to your claim but I don't think you actually read what I said.

large portions of the right also support the Russian invasion
This is not the same as "supporting the Russian invasion". I linked to Pew Research sources that show a grand total of 3% of Americans see Russia as a partner, and this include Democrats and Independents.

6% who openly support Putin?
5% of Democrats support Putin, 7% of Republicans do. Did you assume that 6% was only Republicans?

Do you have any actual sources? Because it seems like in opposition to what you're claiming actual real world polls and opinion sources show that you are wrong.
 
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Warnock won the Georgia runoff leaving the Senate 51-49.

Usually during a mid-term the current president's party gets smashed by a wave of opposition votes. The predicted red wave not only didn't materialize, the Democrats actually came out of it with more Senate seats than they started with. The Republicans got their cheeks clapped.
 
Warnock won the Georgia runoff leaving the Senate 51-49.

Usually during a mid-term the current president's party gets smashed by a wave of opposition votes. The predicted red wave not only didn't materialize, the Democrats actually came out of it with more Senate seats than they started with. The Republicans got their cheeks clapped.

Conservative american jews are gonna fume about this election result in Georgia lol, they hate Warnock (and well most democrats). Anyway, i'm obviously happy about this as queer person even though i live in Germany. One Trump endorsed anti LGBTIQ+ bigot and violent women beater less in Senate, who can barely speak more than three sentences properly. Senate & House already have enough republican lunatics such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert who turn american politics into both a constant clown show and platform for violence against minorities.
 
It’s hard to consider this cycle anything but a clear success for the Dems. They defended every senate seat and added one, defended numerous governorships, flipped AZ gov, have a trifecta in the MI state legislature and won the PA state house, and the net seat change in the US house is +9 (small by midterm norms, typical is 30-60 seat swing). I guess the Dems lost NV gov and more NY house seats than they would have liked?
 

Luck O' the Irish

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I've seen some takes, some on here some not, that view this cycle as a repudiation of Trumpism. I think that's correct depending on how you define Trumpism. To me all "Trumpism" really is is Donald Trump likes being able to say and do what we wants and have a bunch of people clapping and cheering in response. The thing is while his base feels that same sort of grievance only Donny really has the juice. Frankly even the big man feels a bit washed. If he had come out saying "Ron DeStupid" instead of Ron DeSanctimonious or whatever desantis would have been thanos snapped from existence.

As other users have pointed out (users which, for the first time I can recall where I read and find myself in complete agreement!) at this stage I think only Trump has a chance of winning in 2024 for republicans. And that's not to say DeSantis has no chance at winning the primary. The types of voters who would lean DeSantis/anyone else will fall in line whoever wins. If Trump loses he will throw a HUGE hissy fit and stop the steal would find a new group of villains entering the stage in the Trump Cinematic Universe. Trump is the only politican in the US who has inspired a not insignificant number of people willing to die/kill for him. I think the whole thing will probably shake out like it did in 2016, where the right wing media apparatus tries to wean the base away from Trump. I think there is a chance of success there. Ultimately I don't think its unreasonable to suspect the type of guy who believes Trump should be God Emperor of the United States would be unwilling to hold his nose and vote R like every normal (tm) republican.

One thing that fascinated me about this cycle was the extent to which Dems strategy was to help the extremist Republicans win their primaries so the Dems could have their candidates running against a bunch of crazies-- and it worked in most instances. I thought (and still think) this is dangerous and cynical. Particularly with the fall of Roe it feels insanely disingenuous to both be the party of "we will make sure this never happens" and also boost that in a pseudo-Machiavellian manner to increase your own chances of winning. I think there's two reasons this worked out-- first i already described above (anyone other than trump doing it is a dice roll) and that Republicans drastically overestimated the amount of people in the general populace who are ready to slurp up the grosser slop the TCU has been churning out. This was a cycle where I think had the Republicans just been beating the drum of inflation the red wave materializes. Instead the material was racist caravan tv ads, election conspiracies, We Hate Trans People, and "the wokes are letting (read: making) your children shit in litter boxes in the school hallway." People without brain poisoning (ie: people who push and believe those points, and also people who are disturbingly fascinated by how this is what the other sides' talking points are, such as myself) are mostly repulsed by that. The obvious takeaway is that the perception of being extremist (either left or right wing, fwiw) is a pretty quick way to become electorally radioactive. The only real concern I have moving forward is that democrats view this as a viable strategy to use again vs Trump, and that they allow the concept of "progressives holding us back" as a means of avoiding pursuing good policy
 
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Chou Toshio

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Thoughts on Kyrsten Sinema leaving the Democratic Party?

I say good riddance— the moment the Georgia runoff was finished literally the first thing on half the country’s mind was good we don’t have to give fucks about bitchass Sinema anymore.

might make annoyances like forcing Dems to do control agreement with the Republicans that’ll slow shit down but nothing was going to get done anyway. What we can definitely say is she ain’t getting shit for important/influential assignments anyway.

Anyway I can’t wait for her to get rid of her in 2024. Her odds of getting the signature requirements and needed resources without the Democratic Party infrastructure, and how much Dems hate her (and will hate her much much more now) she will split the Conservative voter base far more if she runs.

If she eventually does become a Republican I honestly can’t see her winning in a fascist primary— but even if she totally worked on rebranding it out now, making that flip and expecting to beat the next Democrat seems like asking to get massively spanked imo.

Thoughts? Thoughts on connection to Georgia runoff?
 

Bughouse

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The signature requirement for Sinema is not frankly that high. For 2022 it would have just been 43,492. if Lisa Murkowski can win a freaking write-in senate campaign, Sinema can get 40k signatures...
https://azsos.gov/elections/running-office

she won't have problems with resources either because she serves corporate interests.

she won't actually become a republican because 1) if she was going to do that, she would have already, and 2) then she'd get primaried and lose too. have you seen the types of candidates republicans vote for in primaries to put up state wide in arizona?

she's basically trying to play chicken with the democratic party. she was absolutely going to get a strong primary challenger before. but now they can either stand down and not run anyone against her like they do with Angus King (or Bernie Sanders for that matter) or like they did with independent Evan McMullin in Utah in this race (and I think they've done it in Alaska too prior to introduction of ranked choice voting there)... or they can get into a very messy 3 way election in a state without ranked choice voting or runoffs and genuinely risk replacing sinema with kari lake or whatever wacko they run.
 
The whole furor around Kyrsten Sinema seems like sour grapes to me, from start to finish. Democrat politicians were obviously mad that she was blocking legislation in a closely contested Senate during the first half of Biden's term, which is fair. What I don't get is the amount of vitriol average people on social media/the Internet have for her - Reddit, Twitter, and a bunch of people in this thread seem to have real hate-boners for a politician from a state that they (presumably) are not from just because she doesn't vote along party lines. I get hate for MGT or AOC - they're very outspoken, and widely considered wackos by the opposing political side. But I don't think Sinema's a fascist or a wacko, she's just a Blue Dog. I can't imagine hating a politician for being a centrist - disagreeing with them, sure; being pissed they blocking legislation that I want passed, also sure. But she's a politician playing a game, and if it works for her over in Arizona, then it works. If it doesn't work next time she's up for election, then that's the way it goes as well. Ditto for Joe Manchin - the amount of vitriol for him on social media when he was blocking the BBB bill. Like I said, really odd that normal people have any sort of emotional investment into these Senators.

That said, I agree she'll probably split the vote when she goes up for reelection. A bold strategy on her part.
 
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The whole furor around Kyrsten Sinema seems like sour grapes to me, from start to finish. Democrat politicians were obviously mad that she was blocking legislation in a closely contested Senate during the first half of Biden's term, which is fair. What I don't get is the amount of vitriol average people on social media/the Internet have for her - Reddit, Twitter, and a bunch of people in this thread seem to have real hate-boners for a politician from a state that they (presumably) are not from just because she doesn't vote along party lines. I get hate for MGT or AOC - they're very outspoken, and widely considered wackos by the opposing poltical side. But I don't think Sinema's a fascist or a wacko, she's just a Blue Dog. I can't imagine hating a politician for being a centrist - disagreeing with them, sure; being pissed they blocking legislation that I want passed, also sure. But she's a politician playing a game, and if it works for her over in Arizona, then it works. If it doesn't work next time she's up for election, then that's the way it goes as well. Ditto for Joe Manchin - the amount of vitriol for him on social media when he was blocking the BBB bill. Like I said, really odd that normal people have any sort of emotional investment into these Senators.

That said, I agree she'll probably split the vote when she goes up for reelection. A bold strategy on her part.
It's not just that she was torpedoing legislation, it's that she was doing it after stonewalling Democrats on input and making all of these sad performances for Republicans that were never going to vote for her. She even refused to campaign for other Democrats in Arizona, which afaik is completely unheard of in contemporary politics. There's also the fact that her entire political career has been completely inconsistent in her values and positions. The only thing she has going for her is the potential to try pocketing some money from Republicans by running as a spoiler next year.

Manchin was straight up demanding concessions he would personally profit from for BBB. What he was doing was extremely unethical and hurt his party's performance in the midterms for no reason. Dude deserved all that vitriol and more imo, in Canada, he would have been kicked out of caucus and his political career would have been considered over by now.
 
It's not just that she was torpedoing legislation, it's that she was doing it after stonewalling Democrats on input and making all of these sad performances for Republicans that were never going to vote for her. She even refused to campaign for other Democrats in Arizona, which afaik is completely unheard of in contemporary politics. There's also the fact that her entire political career has been completely inconsistent in her values and positions. The only thing she has going for her is the potential to try pocketing some money from Republicans by running as a spoiler next year.
So when she was voting the way Dems wanted her to, she was staying in her lane and being a good little Senator, but now that she stonewalls Democrat legislation, she's obviously a grifter, a huckster, and a cheat?

Again, if I was a Democrat politician I'd be hopping mad at Sinema, but it's crazy to me that anyone who isn't making a living off politics would give two shits about whether Sinema shows the "proper amount" of support for other politicians and their policies. There's a big difference between being mad that policies you support won't go through and smearing the character of any politician responsible. And while smears are part and parcel of politics at the party level and during elections, I think its silly for voters to get too wrapped up in that stuff. It's pure, basic tribalism and partisan politics. What a crazy coincidence that the two Dems who were stonewalling most legislation are also the two accused of being corrupt grifters by other members of the party they are in.

Manchin was straight up demanding concessions he would personally profit from for BBB. What he was doing was extremely unethical and hurt his party's performance in the midterms for no reason. Dude deserved all that vitriol and more imo, in Canada, he would have been kicked out of caucus and his political career would have been considered over by now.
Manchin doesn't owe a thing to his party. He owes things to the voters of West Virginia. I'm no an expert on Manchin or WV, but it does not seem surprising to me that the state would be pretty conservative liberals who voted in a conservative Democrat. Will this hurt his reelection prospects? Probably. But maybe West Virginians like what he is doing and will vote him in again.
 
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If you're a senator and you're not making as much money as you can in your cushy job then you're doing it wrong.

Manchin is a coal baron and his daughter is a literal demon that price gouged epipens btw
 
Manchin is a coal baron...
There's nothing wrong with being a coal baron, and it's not surprising that a state who's economy ran on coal for a long time elected a coal baron.

...and his daughter is a literal demon that price gouged epipens btw
Not only is what his daughter does completely irrelevant to his politics, but I don't believe in smearing someone's character because of their kids' character. If people think Joe Manchin is corrupt, they should focus on that, not on moralizing about perceived sins of the family. I'd imagine you don't think Hunter Biden's indiscretions matter when talking about Joe Biden's politics (correct me if I'm wrong). I certainly don't think they do.
 
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