For the second time in the less than four months, the US Senate has resoundingly voted in support of continuing the genocide in Gaza by rejecting two resolutions aimed at blocking some $9 billion in weapons to the Israeli government.
For the second time in the less than four months, the US Senate has resoundingly voted in support of continuing the genocide in Gaza by rejecting two resolutions aimed at blocking some $9 billion in weapons to the Israeli government.
Yeah pretty much. Now to slightly correct myself, while their history of curtailing civil rights under the cover of counterterror is certainly fucked up what really makes everyone suffer isn’t what Democrats do; it’s what they don’t do. Democrats are neoliberals working under a mostly neoliberal status quo so frankly they don’t need to do anything except maintain that while occasionally giving the working class breadcrumbs to dissipate activist energy, and now you should ask yourself: What is the (pre-2025) status quo? Is that not one under which everyone suffers? Real wages (until Biden) keep falling, people can’t find homes to live, homelessness is at an all-time high, the climate crisis isn’t going anywhere, etc etc. Most of the time Democrats aren’t malevolent actors, but they’re seatwarmers who via their very existence and addiction to power (and donor money) prevent the working class from seizing political power and effecting real change. They also fight anything resembling such organization (see: Bernie 2016 and 2020, Jamaal Bowman). Democrats have coopted leftwing politics and turned them into capitalism that will fuck you slightly less, so rather than a tug of war between progress and reaction you have reaction pulling and “progress” condemning it in strongly worded letters. Biden breaking the railroad strike (you’ll see people saying that he gave them their demands later, but that’s untrue) was also pretty horrible.
As for giving legitimacy to fascism you have surveillance laws, bombing brown people in the Middle East (both during Obama and Biden’s terms), going after anti-Zionist protesters, adopting the Republican stance on immigration (including Trump’s stupid border wall), never actually going after the fascists and of course touting bipartisanship and compromise with the fascists.
Edit: These are both non-exhaustive lists, as I only follow the general beats of American politics. You’ll get far more exhaustive ones from American leftists.
I completely agree with all of this. Although, there are some outliers within the Democrat ranks (aside from the obvious ones who are all progressive’s). I’ve been watching people like Jamie Raskin, Mark Kelly, Chris Murphy, Adam Schiff, Elizabeth Warren, and even Chuck Schumer (from time to time, and yes, fuck him for playing politics with crucial votes, not a fan of his) consistently fight against the oligarchy in various committee hearings and on the senate floor. I really think people would have a completely different perspective on a lot of sitting dems if they would watch cspan every now and then. That’s not an exhaustive list, and again, it doesn’t include any of the progressive caucus, who are all badasses. The reason I asked is because I’m growing increasingly tired of the narrative that all dems are seat warmers. A lot of them have been fighting a huge raging oligarchy monster for years and, IMO, that pushback is a growing movement. We just need more people to see that there ARE dem’s fighting for working class rights and there IS strong messaging coming from a good chunk of the democrat party. We need to stop lumping them all together and give more support to the ones who are actually fighting for us.