Obama had thousands of unconfirmed appointees because Republicans blocked them for his entire term
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
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Sure. That's because Democrats are political morons and spinless assholes.
Even now, spineless.
No, complicit.
We need to stop pretending Democrats are constantly getting "outplayed" or "surrendering". Their goal is to put on a good enough show that we feel like we have representation while ensuring that their billionaire donors get everything they want.
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they also had 10 DINOS at the time to vote against them.
And party leadership should whip DINOS into shape.
Instead, the party consistently coddles and enables them.
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Democrats had forced multiple votes on almost every one of Trump’s picks, infuriating the president and tying up the Senate floor.
Yet the "Both sides" group will still continue to say the Dems aren't even trying.
They’re fucking not. They could have done this exact fucking thing at any point since 2008, bUt tHAt wOuLD HavE beEn tOo DiVisiVE.
Do not pretend for a fucking second that the Democratic Party is in any way, shape or form competent. Do not pretend for a fucking second that the Democratic Party did anything but pave the way for this fascist regime with their ineptitude and greed, thus enabling the shattering of the American republic.
Thune said that those confirmed on Thursday had all received bipartisan votes in committee
According to the article the Democrats are still helping Trump get these fascists appointed.
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a very simple question: did it work?
all they have done so far are this kind of performative, petty, menial and ineffective resistances, yet on anything that has mattered, they capitulated.
please point me to anything effective they have done. so far the most hopeful thing i've seen is Zohran Mamdani getting the nomination, and the congressional Democrats still haven't endorsed him yet.
yes it did work. They delayed his nominations for a long time as the minority party. they did the most effective thing possible in the situation.
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In this very thread people are blaming the Dems for not being fascists themselves under Biden and Obama.
No. You’re deeply mischaracterizing the situation.
The Democrats could have, at any point since 2008, responded to Republican obstructionism with this very same policy. It has been brutally apparent for well over two decades that the GOP was not negotiating in good faith, and would never again negotiate in good faith. The Democratic Party refused to even consider employing even the most basic precepts of game theory. They continued to negotiate with a bad faith actor in good faith, and were somehow constantly surprised when said bad faith actor acted in bad faith. That’s not politics. That’s rank idiocy.
This is not fascism, ending the fillibuster is not fascism.
The Democrats should have done so when they were in government to try and implement the things they were elected for.
America's broken political system certainly had a role in it's slide to fascism.
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We're maybe a week away from the enabling act
The Enabling Act allowed the Reich government to issue laws without the consent of Germany’s parliament, laying the foundation for the complete Nazification of German society.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-enabling-act
I wanted to reply to numerous comments, but I'll just do it here. The people aggrieved that democrats/liberals/the left didn't do more are not wrong for being upset, even very upset. Things are generally better for everyone, in recent history, under left-side leadership. But our representatives have been beset by corporate capture since the 80s/90s so by my estimation politics has been a performative art for my entire lifetime. Still anyone with their head above water knows you've got better quality of life under democrats, even if they are deceptive or corrupt.
The system needs replacement. It has been captured whole by multi-national industry, corporations, investment interests, and billionaires. It is currently being bent and corrupted to the point of no return. Even if democrats work for us, they only give us so much before bending for their donor money. I've always had this vague notion that for even the best intentioned, there's only so far you can climb the ladder of politics before you refuse a bribe, or lobbying money, and they just boot your ass. Or blacklist you, or whatever, you just get locked out. I dunno how to end this, except to say that the whole world needs a massive paradigm shift, and it just doesn't look like we gettin it.
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I was told that this was impossible to do when Dems were in power, because "The Reich wing might do it"....
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🤣 Twenty years of this shit. Twenty years of people saying "You can't do anything in the Senate without 60 votes" back and forth at one another endlessly. Twenty. Fucking. Years. 😂
I never want to hear shit about how Clinton / Obama / Biden "tried hard" again. I never want to hear shit about "We can't pack the courts, its unprecedented" or "This obviously qualified person is too radical to survive confirmation". You liberals deserve what you fucking get. Damn shame the rest of us are getting dragged along behind your worthless asses.
Are you saying that the Republicans going nuclear is the left's fault? Wow, just wow. The Republicans are destroying our government, but somehow, somehow, that's the left's fault. That's like saying that every victim everywhere deserved it.
They're saying the dems not going nuclear under Obama and Biden is the problem.
"We should have turned authoritarian before they did", basically.
It's a valid point when the republicans were telegraphing their intentions to do so the whole time. Should have seized power, disposed of the traitors and restructured the laws to fix the loopholes that allowed it to happen in the first place. Biden would have been great for this since he was already old as shit and they could have thrown him under the bus after the fact.
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Psst. See Murc's Law.
in American politics, only Democrats are assumed to have agency. Republicans are like rocks rolling down hill or perhaps sharks eating seals: they do what they do because that’s just what they are, so there’s no point in holding them responsible for anything, since they could not do ottherwise.
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Facists: Exist
DAMNED LIBRULS
???
DAMNED LIBRULS
For not taking action when they had the majorities.
Seems like a fair criticism.
And electorally, their inaction cost them. FDR's popularity rose because he did shit. There's this view democrats have that they only have limited political capital and they have to choose where to 'spend it', but it just doesn't work that way.
Yep. Republicans have the rabid following that they do because they accomplish tasks. Horrible, fucked up, stupid tasks that should never have even been tabled for discussion, but they get them done. 99% of Democrat messaging my entire lifetime has been "We're gonna do [X]! Oh, wait, no, we can't do [X] because we don't have a supermajority. Shucks. Well, we'll surely get 'em next time if you just vote for me again!" and people are, understandably, getting fucking tired of that. Especially when these same Dem voters watch every single conservative election cycle jam through abject bullshit without pushback. If they can get these things done then why can't you? Why can Trump loot my 401k and Medicaid directly into his own pockets but Obama couldn't enact universal health care? Why do we only ever ratchet toward the right?
Democrats have been chasing the mythical "centrist swing voter" for decades while voters have increasingly polarized into left vs right and the centrists have evaporated. Anyone who remains a centrist, now, isn't even going to go vote because politics clearly do not play any part in their lives.
We now have the additional problem of the rabid MAGA crowd being so vehemently anti-Democrat that not only would they never vote blue no matter what they were promised, they're statistically likely to go make attempts on the lives of Democratic officials or those running for office. So anyone who wants to run as a Democrat with an actual progressive platform are putting double the number of targets on themselves.
I think the only real way forward is a third party, one that can sidestep our red vs blue team sports mentality and say look, things are pretty bad for everyone right now. You don't have to vote for a Democrat or a Republican to make things better. You can come vote for us instead, we'll get this train back on track and you don't have to go tell the boys that you voted for a Democrat
...But then our problem becomes making this third party actually electable, which has historically been a huge problem in America.
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I mean it's 100% fair criticism, honestly. The part where it falls down for me is where the solution always seems to be "Don't vote for Democrats!" (and then leaves the room, walking proudly)
Almost everyone in Washington is a piece of shit, although the Republicans are much worse. If you want to have another FDR, you have to have another several decades of labor movement before that, fighting for change from the bottom up. And then the political class is the last to come around, and they can lock in and extend some of the changes you fought for. "Democrats are POS" is mostly true. "Let's get less engaged to politics / It doesn't matter who wins the election" is a fucking horrifying reaction and plan to cope with that and make it better.
I've heard many people on Lemmy say that they're not planning to engage with the electoral system until the Democrats get better on their own. All I can say to that strategy is, better start looking around for where to move to that'll give you the best shot at having a pretty comfortable ICE facility to call home going forward. And if you identify as any kind of anarchist / Marxist / anything like that, if you are at all engaged with any kind of counterculture or activism and you're still in the US, you should probably be making plans to leave, because for you it will probably be much much worse.
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I mean, I don’t think you will have to ever hear it again to be honest. We’re headed into truly uncharted waters. By spring next year it’s hard to say what of our political system will even be recognizable.
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Breaking News: Three Supreme Court Justices dies under mysterious circumstances, meanwhile trump's three Supreme Court Justice Nominees approved within 2 hours.
The Nazis are grabbing power faster and faster every day
The country is already lost the real question is why has there been no coup yet. Very telling on Democrats and their ability to talk themselves into complacency.
What are they waiting for? Republicans to yell "lol we are fascist"? But we know Democrats will then go "oh but they're just saying it we need conclusive actions so we can write another stern letter."
America is a failed state. Let me hear it from everyone in the back.
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That's fucking terrifying. So 48 more cult members with no qualifications and no willingness to work with Democrats in any way.
This definitely won't hurt Americans even more...
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