Yeah I generally agree, but I suspect that every politician that attends national security meetings is constantly being told that Israel is a necessary partner. Combine that with a strong Christian and Jewish Israel lobby and even a good person may recognize that they can’t gain power to do all the things they want and also oppose funding Israel at the same time.

It’s the paradox of political power, it’s why if I went back into politics I would do activism instead of elected office, with activism you have the freedom to put your energy where you want without compromise. In politics compromise is fundamental, even necessary, even when dealing with unquestionably immoral things. Personally I think being afraid to spend your political capital means you have failed, but id also probably lose if I ran for office.

Have you met voters? Pretending like voters are any better would be pretty hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.

How they gonna nominate someone that has only ever said they will never run for president. Dumbest take I have ever seen on lemmy. Michelle would never be president, she doesn’t want it.

It’s impossible to appeal to everyone. 6 in 10 Americans believe Israel has a right to continue it’s fight with Hamas. 6 in 10 Americans are also sympathetic to both sides of the conflict. The Dems are attempting to thread that needle. And while I don’t agree with the unconditional support of Israel. The US is heavily invested in partnership with Israel and foreign policy has always shifted painfully slow. Despite all the death in the world, the US is involved in the least death it has been involved in since the WWII. We’ve been constantly at war since WWII. And shifting from the US being constantly at war to only arming our allies is at least some improvement.

One things certain, if Trump wins authoritarians will be emboldened worldwide and the amount of death will increase much much more, including here.

When he was in front of the Senate confirmation hearing he was absolutely embarrassed. He knew everyone was watching while he was accused of sexual harassment. He basically stopped interacting with the media because he was so furious with how he was portrayed publicly. Dude hates being publicly shamed. Doesn’t mean he’s wise enough to stop doing shitty things.

The only thing Thomas likes more than money is respect. He would never take Oliver money because it would publicly embarrass him. He hates embarrassment more than anything.

I tried… I’ve both worked and volunteered in the party for thousands of hours. Most of the people working in the party want progressive policy, but we don’t live in a country that gets enough votes from progressives, so politicians predictably play it safe. You can’t wave a magic wand and poof, you have all the votes you need for progressive policy. Politicians are paid to represent their constituents. If even 5 percent of Dems won in a conservative district, or a district where only conservatives show up, then those districts wants and needs will not pass the most progressive policy. So people in the party work to pass what they can pass, that makes them practical, not anti-progressive. People with brains do what they can with what they have.

The more Dems we can get into office the more opportunities we have to move the needle left. You don’t move the needle left with constant infighting within the left. You move the needle left, by the left wing uniting and gaining a clear mandate. We haven’t had a real left wing mandate in my lifetime and people act like Dems should magically pass progressive policy without the votes, then they whine and stay home because the party without enough power to accomplish anything, predictably didn’t accomplish anything. It’s and endless self fulfilling prophecy and it’s incredibly moronic. I’m just so tired of seeing your endless doomsaying all overy lemmy, fucking do something instead of bringing everyone down with your lies and toxicity.

Politics is a zero sum game, they saw the money better spent on winning. Your framing of it is dishonest. Again, I don’t agree with doing that, but it’s pretty easy to understand why they did it, it worked.

That would be convincing if they hadn’t spent money buying ads for maga candidates during that same election cycle.

I agree, that was an awful strategy. Even if it helps in the short term, it boosts fascism in the long term. It did mostly gain us seats though… https://www.npr.org/2022/11/11/1135878576/the-democrats-strategy-of-boosting-far-right-candidates-seems-to-have-worked

So your answer is no then? Representatives don’t get as much contact as you think. Apply pressure wherever and whenever you can, even if that legislator does nothing in the years to come, every person applying pressure moves the needle. Doing nothing does nothing. Legislators like to keep their jobs and will suddenly have a change of heart if they feel their job is threatened. That takes hundreds of people in each district making their dissatisfaction known. Be the change you wish to see.

Parties pull funding when it’s clear there is no path to victory, so they can ensure victory elsewhere. That’s not them “rather have a maga chud” that’s strategic. You would be just as angry if they wasted money on a loss. I’ve seen your views all over lemmy, whatever narrative says the party did wrong, that’s the narrative you’ll take. Volunteer for the next candidate that runs, prove to the party that they have support and maybe funding will actually stick around. You’re an open book, no action, all anger.

I think you’re making a values judgement instead of a logical one. No one was claiming the USA wasn’t a democracy when only male white land owners could vote. It was just a flawed society, but still a democracy.

By definition, can you really be a democracy if you are an apartheid regime where two thirds of your “residents” have low to no rights in gotingnor determining their future?

The population of the Palestinian territories is, closer to 1/3 of the whole of Israel/Palestine. But the answer is yes either way. The people of Israel have a fully functioning democracy, and have had for some time. If they use that democracy to create a brutal militarily controlled territory, Israel is still a democracy, even if their territories are not or even if their territories have limited self determination. Democracy is just a form of government, that form of government exists for the people living in Israel proper whether or not it exists for their territories.

Just the first image on a search. But chart aside, saying something is a democracy doesn’t make a country good or bad. Israel is fundamentally a democracy by any argument. That doesn’t make their current far right government good. I think arguing about whether it’s a democracy or not just undercuts your larger argument. Israel let’s any citizen, regardless of ethnic origin, vote. Their Islamic citizens largely support the same wars the Jews do. Saying they don’t let Palestinians vote is sorta like saying the USA didn’t let Iraq vote while we were slaughtering them. Or more close to home if we started a war with Mexico. Even when the USA had slaves we were a democracy. We are still a democracy even when we do bad things. People are shit, and we vote.

Not the person you’re responding to but it’s close according to this graphic, basically Israel and Cypress.

IIRC: He helped close down the poorest school in his city district instead of funding and fixing it. Championed broken windows policing that in part led to things like George Floyd and poor people I know getting massive fines for things like chipped paint on their house, leading to foreclosures and a debtors system with the city. Worked to kick out small businesses in favor of corporate chains. Tried to push poor people into neighboring districts and suburbs. Etc. Nothing he ever put his hands on helped people. I think it was very likely he was being paid under the table by business interests to do this stuff. If not, he is still a royal piece of shit.

When the revolution comes, he’s on the short list of people to punch in the face.

Don Samuels is a corrupt garbage human, it should never have been that close regardless of your view of our Israel policy.

The fact that someone else manages it is entirely the point. In a 401k a politician can insider trade, in a pension they typically can not.

If you say the state should have done more after the fact I agree, but that’s not all on Walz it takes votes and political will across the party, it was never really there. The truth is politicians don’t yet see a way forward to get this stuff passed without sacrificing literally all other issues when they eviscerate their own political capital. Police accountability is only popular until white liberals get scared of a would with less police and back away from their own morals. It’s why Frey is still there. I agree it should have ended Frey as he probably had more wiggle room at a city level than state politicians did. Frey is a complete coward. Thinking about it more, maybe Walz could have done more, I’m not sure politics are always that simple.

It’s a black mark against Frey, if it’s even a black mark at all. Walz ordered the national guard as soon as the city signed off on it, which IIRC was the process. I also think to some extent they were monitoring and making sure they wouldn’t be making matters worse by getting too aggressive too early. Had they called in the national guard on day one everyone would be saying he is an authoritarian instead. Bad things happen, no matter the response the person at the top will look bad in all outcomes imo.

Frey on the other hand can eat a dick for the rest of his handling of the situation.

91% of Jamaicans are of black African heritage. Of those 15% are lighter skin black. Harris’s grandmother on that side was dark skin black and her grandfather on that side was lighter skinned black. The reason he is lighter skinned is because someone in his lineage in the late 1700’s was likely raped by an Irish slave owner, they have genealogical research on her ancestors. Years ago colonial jamaica separated light skin a dark skin black people under slavery and ultimately it resulted in 2 different black racial groups in Jamaica. All this information is readily available with a Google search. Race is just a social construct. But within that construct she is, black, brown, white. Ethnically Jamaican, Indian, Irish. Hope this helps…