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.