| ▲ | soupfordummies 5 hours ago |
| At what point is congress gonna grow a spine and retake their power? Every day the goalposts just get moved a little farther. |
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| ▲ | delecti 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| On this subject, they won't, because they mostly want this war too. Most members of both parties have taken AIPAC money. Most of them are also glad somebody is finally attacking Iran, especially without them having to sign their name on a use of force authorization or declaration of war. |
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| ▲ | watwut 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Republicans in congress support it. It is not about congress not having abstract spine. It is about republican congressmen actively supporting all of this. |
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| ▲ | nielsbot 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Plot twist: The Dem leadership (Schumer, Jeffries, et al) also supports this. That's why their main complaints have been procedural: "Why didn't you come to us first with your plans?". And why they slow-walked the vote on a war powers act. | | |
| ▲ | rootusrootus 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | The dems have no power against a unified GOP front, and they already look pretty weak on issues like this. They are trying to figure out how they can mollify their base while attracting enough centrist voters to retake Congress later this year. I don't care for the dem leadership but I feel a little sympathy for them. Catering to their loudest supporters is a pretty big reason they are the minority party right now. | | |
| ▲ | overfeed 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Catering to their loudest supporters is a pretty big reason they are the minority party right now. By "loudest supporters" - are you referring to the donor class? Money is speech, after all. The Democratic party has an identity crisis: it's failing to balance special interests and their traditional constituents - post-Goldwater/ southern-strategy. Instead of activating their base, they seem to be courting the political center that has been hollowed out by Maga and polarization, incidentally matching the desires of their donors who abhor any kind of populist leftist politics, including anything in instituted by FDR. | | |
| ▲ | rootusrootus 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > By "loudest supporters" - are you referring to the donor class? No, I don't believe so. I'm talking about the people who convinced them that culture wars were the right way to do battle with a conservative opponent despite that being automatically an uphill battle. The dem leadership focused on issues that polled well with a small group of loud people on a crusade, and largely ignored bread & butter issues that resonate with people less politically inclined. But centrist votes are counted just the same as partisan ones, and more plentiful. | | |
| ▲ | overfeed 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The dem leadership focused on issues that polled well with a small group of loud people on a crusade Which dem leadership? The only crusade I remember was Kamala Harris going on a national tour with Liz Cheney and brightly signaling her rightward shift. Somehow, "Republicans for Kamala" failed to save her campaign in the swing-states. |
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| ▲ | hdgvhicv 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Where trumps Republican Party have spent the last 10 years not catering from their loudest supporters? Either the majority of Americans want this war, in which case the Dems have to be quiet, or they don’t, in which case the dems should be making it the number one issue. Sadly I suspect the answer is not in the side of the Hollywood version of post ww2 America. Now is the time to insert the “are we the bad guys” meme. | |
| ▲ | dontlikeyoueith 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Catering to their loudest supporters Name one instance of this actually happening. I'll wait. | | |
| ▲ | Saline9515 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm pretty sure that before they made it a central topic, most Americans didn't care about transgenderism, which after all affects a very tiny population. Especially compared to other issues, such as paid maternal leave, for instance. | | |
| ▲ | appointment 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I assume you are aware that "they" are the Republicans? The Harris campaign avoided talking about it whenever possible, while Republican groups spent $200 million on anti-trans ads. |
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| ▲ | russdill 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And bonus, they don't have to go on record voting for all the things they support but know are immensely unpopular. | |
| ▲ | alecbz 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How can you tell the difference? | | |
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| ▲ | dlev_pika 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Best case scenario is when they lose the majority |
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| ▲ | aryonoco 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If you believe, like I do, that there are a lot of parallels between the US of today and the Rome of yesteryear, you might find the answer by reading Tacitus. It turns out, long after Rome had become an Empire and was only a Republic in name only, most Senators still thought of it as a Republic and that this extraordinary state of affairs with the Senate just being a glorified rubber stamp body would soon come to an end and that, they will very soon restore the Senate to its former rightful place, just as soon as this current very limited crises was over. As it turns out, they were never able to do that again. It’s so interesting to me that nearly all of the Founding Fathers had read Tacitus and were keenly aware of this and explicitly tried to design a system to prevent that from happening. To their credit, their system lasted a good while. |
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| ▲ | losvedir 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think they have 60 days from when hostilities begin, right? |
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| ▲ | krferriter 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No. This war has been illegal from day one. The 60 window without prior authorization only applies if the US is attacked. The US was not attacked. | |
| ▲ | 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | rootusrootus 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Approximately never. We are in a situation where Congress is unusually beholden to their constituents for once, because those people care deeply about Donald Trump. So this is what they want; not just the war, but everything -- they want all the power to rest with Trump. |
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| ▲ | feb012025 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think you're mistaken about who congress is beholden to at this particular point in time... The war has record low approval ratings, even among Trump's base. | | |
| ▲ | dlev_pika 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I’m just hoping Schumer doesn’t advocate for merging with IDF, if the GOP loses the majority | | | |
| ▲ | rootusrootus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The war has record low approval ratings, even among Trump's base. The war does, Trump does not. He maintains very strong support among the base, and that is the part keeping the GOP politicians in line. It is why some of them just resign instead of enduring the threats from his supporters. | | |
| ▲ | feb012025 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's the special interest groups. Specifically Israel's lobbying efforts. No need to try to obfuscate it at this point. |
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| ▲ | varispeed 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| If everyone is somewhat implicated in Epstein files, then everyone is afraid of Putin / Netanyahu who might pull up the files. It's funny how they are so scared to face justice, but also interesting how American law enforcement became so corrupt. Protecting pedos on such a scale? |
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| ▲ | pfannkuchen 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | There's a very strange problem with this whole thing where, of course, whatever these powerful people have done behind closed doors that is illegal and exploitative and harmful is terrible and they should be put to justice. However, if the direction of the country is being seriously altered via blackmail, IMO that is many orders of magnitude worse than anything they could have done. Like we are currently bombing yet another middle eastern country for no clear reason. I would personally be open to some kind of Epstein jubilee where we absolve everyone involved in order to nullify the blackmail. Like it's not great, it's terrible for the victims and for justice, but at the moment we are getting terrible from both ends, could we at least reduce it to one end? | | |
| ▲ | pjc50 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That creates a far worse problem down the line because they will just do it again, more publicly. Really the rot set in with the pardons of Nixon and Oliver North. | | |
| ▲ | pfannkuchen 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Can you justify that assertion? How would they do it again, more publicly? It's not like a blackmail ring is that easy to set up, it seems to have taken a lot of heavy lifting to get this one going. | | |
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| ▲ | BLKNSLVR 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If their actions have made this level of blackmail possible, then said actions are the worse thing because that's what made this scale of blackmail possible. Their actions are the foundation for everything that came after. | |
| ▲ | bdbdbdb 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We always talk about what these powerful people "have done", as if it's all over. Surely Epstein's death did not bring about the end of billionaire sex trafficking? Someone stepped in. These guys are still raping people on private planes and private islands | | |
| ▲ | pfannkuchen 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | But why are we focusing on the raping, and not on what the American government is doing that has no clear rational motive without “Israel has captured the government” and a very clear rational motive with “Israel has captured the government”? If the American government continues to perform actions that are blatantly against the interests of America and Americans, the impact of that on Americans is going to be (and may be already) massively massively worse than the person to person level crimes we are focusing on. Does it just feel so bad thinking about it that a lot of people have a hard time even going there mentally? I really don’t get it. | | |
| ▲ | BLKNSLVR 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I can't shake the feeling that Trump's continual needling of Europe is intended the destroy NATO. And this is a desire of Putin's. I know it's conspiratorial, and I hate that, but it's one of the only things that makes any of the actions of the US in the last year make any semblance of sense. I don't like to think that, but it remains, for me, a valid scenario. |
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