We don't have enough time for 'positive trends' to be worth much.
this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2025
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There isn't a single Republican in the House who I want to see stay in office. That said, trying to get every single one out just isn't going to happen. A "positive trend" doesn't mean anything in districts as strong as this one, but there are plenty of purple districts where that positive trend means a flipped seat. And all the gerrymandering to secure more seats means each seat is less safe (those blue voters didn't disappear, even if their district essentially did) so that could backfire as well.
Remember when W was the worst president ever and the Democrats made huge gains and then took over the government permanently and got everything done they wanted?
Yeah me neither.
No, but during the eight years after him, we did get:
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act
- Affordable Care Act
- Repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy
- Removal of 180-limit for wage discrimination claims
- Withdrawal of US forces from Iraq
- Paris Climate Agreement
- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
- Clean Power Plan
- Shepard & Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act (allows crimes motivated as gender identity to be prosecuted as hate crimes)
- Death of Osama bin Laden
Saying they didn't get "everything done [that] they wanted" is disingenuous to the achievements accomplished and shows a lack of understanding of how progress is made.
- CFPB is gone
- Wall Street is such legalized gambling that they literally legalized gambling
- Health Insurance is still bullshit and now the subsidies are gone through an unforced error on the Dems part
- DADT is repealed but the Coast Guard is still debating swastikas and nooses, and let's not forget what's happening to trans service members
- US forces are now in Venezuela
- Paris Climate Agreement is now totally forgotten
- DACAs are being sent to Salvadoran torture prisons
- AI is destroying clean power
- The president now commits hate crimes regularly
- Osama succeeded in panicking the US into its own decline
But my point isn’t that things were fixed, but that they’ll never be fixed. There will be a slight leftward swing, there will be a couple minor victories that nobody is really happy about, and then a huge rightward shift that undoes all or most of it.
Because this has been the pattern for my entire fucking life and it’s getting older than I feel.
Yes, progress is fragile and needs constant defending. This is an important observation you have made.
And Americans constantly refuse to defend it.
To the point that I think they want to be this way and don’t want to bother stopping them anymore.
They are completely fine with what’s happening. It would be pretty obvious if that were not the case.
They'd be fine with it if minorities got none of the benefits
We had an intact election system for reasonably fair mid terms and a pres election for that to happen. I am absolutely not confident America will get fair enough elections in the midterms in 10 months, nevermind 3 years from now. All while potentially irreversible structural changes are taking place making it impossible to remove the right wing from any branch of government. I don't think waiting for the presidential election or for the trends we see now to pan out is anything to pin hopes on.
We have the time we have.
What is, is.
What will be, will be.
Everyone gets it. I was responding to just such a statement.
This is like cheering that trumps polling is in the shitter, yet he still has 70% support from his idiot Maga voters. I mean, I guess it's something, but there is a cancer in this country that we have to figure out a way to excise before we get any real progress. Or halt our regression at a minimum.
A lot of it has to do with who actually shows up to the polls. Trump supporters are pretty quiet these days with all the Epstein files revelations, while Dems are more motivated than they have been for a long time, knowing they may not see another fair election if they let this go much longer.
And yet they still lost.
It was the opposite in 2024. Dems didn't show up.
It's funny to me that the Espstein trickle release would have an impact. I mean, did anyone not know that the proven rapist, convicted felon, life-long racist was a piece of shit? The other, undermining the foundation of the country, stuff should have more of an impact. And even if they somehow, grudgingly agree that trump is a piece of shit, they'll still vote for his congressional enablers. I will remain pessimistic and hold onto my low expectations until I'm proven wrong.
And they still lost. So all we have is one more data point to consider when estimating the swing.
So, the Democrat candidate did better than the last election but still got absolutely annihilated. Woo. Yay. Happy Day.
This is such a non-news story for anyone but a DNC staffer it's ridiculous. Maybe someone wants to breathlessly report on how much better or worse the green party candidate did last election as long as we're talking about things that don't actually make any difference.
If you "outperform by double digits" and still lose by a double digit margin that just highlights how terrible you are, and how fucked we all are. Had they managed to win that seat or even get things close enough that the loss was in question that would be a news story, this is just reading political tea leaves.
Means nothing if the seat is still GOP
And the fun of statistics means could have been a 10 instead of a 5.
But even more meaningless when still a dem loss
Dems are ineffective. The threat of "vote for us or it'll be worse" has stopped working. We need a new movement.
Slow news week?
Crazy thing...
When you don't hoard all the wealth from state parties and prevent them from fighting in every election, we win less seats than if we put a legit effort into winning every possible elections.
But it takes billions to have a coin flip chance at convincing voters a neoliberal is better than a Republican, that's just been the reality of American politics for decades.
If we stop shoving neoliberalism down voters throats, we don't have to continuously rob the state Dem parties to pay for the one presidential campaign every four years.
OR... Populists easily win votes by promising to do things they can't (lower prices) or by promising that great things will come from things they can do (deport immigrants, raise tariffs). Voters are now waking up for the second time that Trump can't deliver what he promised, so they are willing to look at alternatives.
The left could also nominate populists who promise everyone two acres and a mule, but is that really what's good for the country? There are plenty of leftist populists elected in South America, yet those countries stay poor and crime-ridden. Some here use US interference / the World Bank / globalists as a boogeyman excuse, but the truth is that populists are good at getting elected and then fucking everything up.
BLUF: you know we can just run someone who authentically wants to help Americans .. Right?
OR… Populists easily win votes by promising to do things they can’t (lower prices) or by promising that great things will come from things they can do (deport immigrants, raise tariffs).
...
The left could also nominate populists who promise everyone two acres and a mule, but is that really what’s good for the country?
It's just unfathomable to you, that we could run someone who authentically will help now that the DNC isn't literally funded by Hillary's personal fundraising machine she built...
Like, are you just unaware of all that?
There are plenty of leftist populists elected in South America, yet those countries stay poor and crime-ridden
Yeah...
Mainly due to the fucking CIA, again, both under Republicans and neolibs.
Don't forget, just because we always wait a couple decades to declassify shit, doesn't mean we perpetually just stopped that long ago. There's always a giant backlog of shit they're waiting till we don't care as much.
Clinton flat out told journalists she wouldn't have let Palestine have an election, and the only way she would have, would be if it was rigged:
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton displayed a brazen contempt for Palestinian democracy in a 2006 meeting with Jewish journalists in Brooklyn, according to a new report. She also warned of the rise of “Islamo-fascism” as a “global threat that needs a global response.”
According to the Observer, Clinton told the editors of the Jewish Press: “I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” said Clinton, then a New York Senator running for re-election and shmoozing with the editors of the Press. “And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
https://mondoweiss.net/2016/10/palestinian-elections-determine/
But obviously the reason leftwing governments don't work in South America, is the United States of America.
but the truth is that populists are good at getting elected and then fucking everything up.
Liars are good at lying...
Again, we could just pick someone that doesn't lie, how is that such an alien concept to you?
And even if that is your logic, how the ever loving fuck do you not understand why voter turnout is a huge problem? And that the fix is just running someone authentic?
The logic in your comment just isn't consistent. The only thing consistent is saying anything in the moment that doesn't make neoliberalism look like the cause. It's literally like talking to a trumpet.
Authentic people say, "Look, we need to do more of this thing. But there are consequences for doing it, and it is going to lead to the following problems. We will have to make tradeoffs."
Voters look at that and the other guy, who promises only good things, and they vote for the other guy.
There are plenty of leftist populists elected in South America, yet those countries stay poor and crime-ridden.
Not exactly South America, but Mexico disagrees. Bolivia too. Leftist populists aren't miracle workers, but they do have a pretty good track record.