Four months ago, after weeks of intense negotiation between my staff and Democrats and Republicans, we came to a clear — clear bipartisan deal that was the strongest border security agreement in decades. But then Republicans in Congress — not all, but — walked away from it. Why? Because Donald Trump told them to. He told the Republicans — it has been published widely by many of you — that he didn’t want to fix the issue; he wanted to use it to attack me. That’s what he wanted to do. It was a cynical and a – extremely cynical political move and a complete disservice to the American people, who are looking for us to — not to weaponize the border but to fix it.
He wants to convince independents and light blue/light red voters that he is doing something because it’s his weakest issue and he is currently being accused of complacency/making the border worse. He’s not trying to go further right than Trump.
He is going to the right though, and a clear issue here is that many independents are actually on the left of. democrats. We’re not a cohesive group or a “party”.
And he is fucking over the border. We know what we need to solve it- increased funding for more clerks/judges/legal aid
But that’s not funding for their salary raises/expenses, or the corporate/billionaire mega donors subsidies and tax breaks. So fuck even trying that.
I’m not saying one way or another if it’s a good idea, I’m just saying what the calculation is
Long term it’s an awful idea, for the DNC
It’ll put the DNC in competition for the conservative votes, while leaving progressives free to form a legitimate party that’s actually progressive.
For the short term, it means the republicans are just going to further into fascism while the dnc progresses to fascist lite (exactly where the repugnants used to be.)
The only hope is if one or the other parties fails and/or progressives to finally figure out that “lesser of two evils” is exactly how we got here in the first place
I’m going to be honest, there is zero chance progressive are going to form a legitimate competitive party anytime soon, definitely not because of this. I’m willing to put down money on it.
To be clear I do not endorse how the Democrats are handling this. But if we’re talking about political calculus, they are not going to see a large migration to a third-party over this. And certainly not to Republicans. In a few years most people won’t even remember Biden did this and those that do aren’t going to punish a different candidate for Biden’s executive order anymore than they’d punish a GOP president for Trump’s.
Short therm, you’re very right- long term, 2+ decades, if the dems keep shifting right, it’ll happen on its own.
Democrats and republicans are not the first political parties in the US. They probably won’t be the last.
I’m not really sure we’re in a position to make a hot take about the political landscape 20 years from now, but I certainly don’t think this executive order is going to be remembered by then. If you argument is “the Democrats are going in a direction that might create a third-party 20 years from now,” well, there’s no way to really prove or refute that right now and that’s a pretty broad bar so sure it’s possible. This is definitely a far cry from your previous comment.
20 years from now, they won’t remember this specific act. But it doesn’t change the shift, and people will remember the broad strokes.
Not sure how that’s a far cry. Short term, democrats are going fascist lite as republicans are full on embracing fascism.
Progressives (and the centrists being passed by,) are either going to continue voting for the lesser evil (which is increasingly fascist…) or they’re going to find other answers.
This is just my prediction.
I just think it’s unproductive, has no basis (feel free to show me some data points on this truly), and requires no risk on your part to make this prediction. I could easily say “based on the long lasting impact of Bernie Sanders just entering the election for a few cycles I predict the democrats will be a far more progressive party in 20 years.” It’s equally valid and safe because like you, I don’t really need to show anything to back it up. I’m just kind of gesticulating at what happened from 2008-2016 with bernie.
I mean this really and truly: feel free to make all the predictions you want, and I hope you push the Democratic party to be more progressive or are currently working to get progressive candidates on ballots. These are good things to do. But these kinds of discussions we are having are really not productive. They’re not even academic or interesting. They’re just so vague and long-term and unsupported that we’re just kind of throwing darts at a bar. Which I mean sure it’s fun I guess but at some point you need to start keeping score and having a basis for how you’re throwing them unless you’re truly just there to kill time, which does not seem like the case for you. You seem passionate about this and like you want to have productive discussion.