I'd argue FDR was a populist. It just depends on what kind of populism and to what end.

Those are my conclusions as well, though I want to note anyone who paid attention to her campaign rather than getting it second hand or third off of vibes would not have made the claim that she “straight up said she wouldn’t have changed anything”.

A lot of voters in the middle aren’t taking the time to understand why things seem to keep not changing (somewhat understandably so, but also unfortunately given the need for an engaged electorate in a healthy democracy). Both parties are being sticks in the mud, but one in particular is doing a lot more to keep change from happening than the other.

In the usa we have an overemphasis on the president, but we’ve slow walked ourselves into a dysfunctional congress that just can’t do anything. The point of democracy is to let the best ideas win, and part of that is being able to try those ideas out, and respond when they don’t work. Having a senate with two votes per state regardless of population, that are only replaced a third at a time, with an archaic but also recent rule that effectively requires 60/100 vote to pass almost anything meaningful, is just a recipe for failure.

End the filibuster as it is today. If you want a filibuster, force people to talk for it the way it worked for the first ~150 years of our country at least.

This basically. Change election after change election but nothing changes except the country keeps getting worse and more corrupt.

You can see the same thing playing out in Brazil

Because Joe Biden was too old and shouldn’t have started to run for President again and because Kamala Harris was a bad candidate? Or do you mean something else? You can complain about Trump, but the people had a choice.

You don't have to assume they're stupid, it's just that they're entirely surrounded by a bubble of increasingly protofascist craziness framed as reasonable opinion. Turn on Fox News sometime, or open Twitter.

And this is where you have to admit that the Democrats just ran a terrible candidate in '24. You might believe she was the better choice but she just did not appeal to the middle, and you need them to win.

You assume those voters believe Jan 6 was an insurrection. Many of them don’t. Whether thats a fault of the media/bubble they’re in or gross naivety/negligence is a different discussion.

If you go with the presumption Jan 6 was a mob that got out of hand (not my position, just one of the perspectives), then the idea that he wasn’t able to enact his agenda due to the opposing party, coupled with the shenanigans of the other option (no democrat primary for Kamala being one, with democrat party having done similar in the past with Bernie), then claims that the democrats are spinning Jan 6 and risking another term with him seem more reasonable.

Whether I or you agree with those premise is separate from what the zeitgeist is for much of America

The unrest will get more and more pronounced until affordability improves

Looking up and down this thread and there are people you would agree with about our situation being awful, while being extremely reluctant to blame a planned and coordinated influence campaign by an adversary. It amounts to calling our fellow citizens chumps, and that's rude.

The private sector, for slightly more benign reasons, and sometimes less benign reasons like keeping cigarettes from being blamed for cancer and emphysema, uses the same mechanisms to sell products. If that didn't work, nobody would pay for advertising and PR.

Well after demonstrating shaky allegiance to the US and personal meddling in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, his companies are ripe for nationalization.

He's got a lot to lose!

> done putting so much money into politics

Will be done by the end of the year (tm)