A conservative plan for Donald Trump’s potential transition into the presidency calls for dozens of prisoners to be executed, according to HuffPost. An 887-page plan by Project 2025, led by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, says that if elected, Trump should make a concerted effort to execute the remaining 40 prisoners on death row. The section’s author, attorney Gene Hamilton, advised that Trump “do everything possible to obtain finality” on the current list of people until Congress forces them to stop. Hamilton is the vice president of America Legal First, a group of former Trump lawyers bent on attacking “woke” companies, headed by Stephen Miller. Trump’s approach to the death penalty stands in stark contrast to that of President Joe Biden, who has openly opposed the death penalty, but done little to move forward legislation to reform or abolish the practice since entering office.
For those of you not in the know Project 2025 is Republicans plan to turn the USA into an authoritarian state.
I don’t disagree…but the party-line Democrats have been telling progressives exactly that since the Clinton administration.
Again, to be clear: I’m happily voting Biden this November, but the Democratic party has become very good at doing just enough to keep their core loyal while also doing nowhere near enough to keep the country out of constant existential peril, effectively cultivating that crisis as a (pardon the pun) trump card that they then use to tell progressives “what you want is less important than the current crisis! Just go along with us in this election and we pinky swear to do more for your causes!”.
They know if they move left they’ll be displaced by a combination of progressive candidates and centrists, so they have basically adopted the strategy of keeping the right just dangerous enough to be credible while keeping their left flank secured with a drip feed of snail’s pace “progress”.
I’m voting Biden, but not happily.
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Israel-Gaza conflict aside…what makes you unhappy about voting for him?
I have to admit that I wasn’t thrilled about voting for him in 2020, but I also have to admit that in the intervening years he has at the very least met my expectations in most areas, and shockingly, he’s exceeded them in a few areas.
As I get older, I’ve learned from experience to temper my expectations in a president, and with those adjusted expectations, I am surprised to find myself feeling better about voting for Biden in 2024 than I did four years ago.
I can sum it up in one word: age.
Look, I’m no spring chicken. My age starts with a 4 now, and it seems the age gap between me and the age of the president hasn’t changed.
I’m just tired of geriatrics running the country.
I’m overall happy with Biden except for Afghanistan and Gaza. Given the cards he was dealt with, he seems to be doing an ok job.
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In what way? He established an agreement that the Taliban violated, thereby making it void.
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Same here. I was not wild about him, and figured he’d be even more right of center than Obama was. Turns out to not be the case on quite a few fronts.
I can’t really disagree with you. The issue is we have reached the actual point where the current crisis dwarfs all others. Maybe I was just younger then, but it didn’t feel like we had such existential threats in the Bush and Obama years. I remember people said that Romney winning would be the apocalypse, but it’s laughable to say that would’ve been the case in hindsight.
I think what we can take heart in is that we’ve been seeing a gradual increase in progressiveness in the party. And not just a small constant increase, but a significantly growing one. There are a nontrivial number of Congressional members who are incredibly progressive, and they’ve shifted the mood of the party notably leftward. The Inflation Reduction Act was a historic level of climate spending, to the point that Europe felt pressured to pass similar legislation. And the IRA actually closed the corporate tax loophole too – large corporations raking in billions in profits now have to pay a minimum 15%, even if they could previously loophole their way to $0.
I wish things were faster. Gaza in particular has highlighted to me just how frustrating it is for things to only improve at a snail’s pace. And specifically with Gaza, I don’t think the progress is actually amounting to material changes.
We are seeing material changes in other areas though. Healthcare could be a hell of a lot better, but as someone who relied on Obamacare for a few years, things have actually improved for people. The important thing is that we don’t lose heart, and that we keep pushing for better. The US has a rich history of leftists persevering to accomplish women’s suffrage, civil rights, labor rights, and gay rights and equality. As long as we press forward, just like they did, we’ll be successful. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice and good.
If we could just bury the fascists for good, we could start to make serious progress.