Good News. Kentucky re-elected Democratic governor. Virginia flipped house of delegates to Democrats, gaining complete control of state legislature.

Kentucky shows is that even in red states, Democrats have the numbers. This shows how critical showing up and voting is.

GOP/Republicans bad for climate change. They deny it, say it isn’t humans, etc. Democrats at least acknowledge we need to do something.


For those outside the US, we have first past the post voting, which inevitably leads to two political parties.

State governments hold a lot of power. They are almost completely over sovereign with certain restrictions and reservations of power by our federal government.

GOP (aka Republicans) = Right to far right. I.e. libertarian, fascist, conservative, Christian nationalist.

Democrat = center right to far left. I.e. conservative, progressive, socialist, neoliberal

Democrats have greater numbers by a good margin, but have lower voter turnout and are disenfranchised electorial due to gerrymandering.

  • Jaderick@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I feel like this is part of the problem. A bad President like Trump can make things far worse, but most of the time what they say and what they can do are very different things.

    IIRC Biden talked about federally legalizing marijuana, but has not done so yet which does not help his case.

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      he talked about that after the election though. All in all though Biden has been awesome for me. No surprise billing, a jobs bill that focuses on enviromental conserns, capping student loans to the original principal and forgiving after 20 years (which is only because he got blocked on loan forgiveness in general but he still came out with a pretty good system), getting taxes done online. Ill take it.

      • Jaderick@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I speak as someone disillusioned with the Dem party post 2016. Biden’s administration has done good things in the face of baseless obstructionism, but IMO he should be the conservative against more progressive candidates. He really is American conservatism with liberalism sprinkles.

        My indignation at this article and media outlets are the tying of these local and state races to Biden the individual and the presidential branch. As you pointed out, the real change comes from the legislative branch and local offices. I have a feeling many of those local races where Dems nominally won have no love for Biden but, like us all, will have to support him because he’s not biohazardous trash like all Rs at this point.

        He doesn’t inspire me to go vote. I’ll do it out of obligation to myself and other citizens, but he makes it a chore.

        • HubertManne@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          oh yeah but that has always been the case with democrats. they are more centerist or at best left of center than progressive. The only reason they have genuinely progressive and liberal folk in the party is because of our two party system. It used to be sorta the same but oppositely with republicans although they were farther from the center. I can’t even say they have become more conservative unless you only use their way of doing things for the last few decades. To me its just crazy almost random stuff. Its us vs them where us seems to change on some sort of fad basis or is defined by anti them or something.

    • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Decriminalizing weed, voting rights, student loan forgiveness, all were supposed to be “day 1” initiatives. None have been successfully delivered and he’s almost through his first term. Biden only cares about keeping corporate oligarchs in power, and the DNC is playing with fire foisting this garbage candidate on us while risking the criminal traitor Trump as an alternative. It’s risky, it’s greedy, and it’s wrong.

      • Jaderick@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Agreed. The DNCs only saving Grace is that they aren’t Trump which is only a winning strategy now after they royally fucked up with Hillary, the candidate that had a 20+ year smear campaign against her (on top of the other problems). I don’t have confidence that they learned from any of this, which could push another fascist candidate into power who may be more competent. Here’s hoping Americans start learning to read through the bullshit lmao.

        I ask people to read up on the history of the labor movement (Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Battle for Blair mountain, mining unions etc) as that’s what started changing my American propagandized perspective.