The enhanced subsidies for people who buy their health insurance through exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act have officially expired, and Democratic lawmakers are ready to make sure voters know whom to blame going into the midterm elections.
Politico reported Friday that while Democrats in Congress are still pushing their Republican colleagues to allow a vote on renewing the enhanced subsidies, they have mostly settled on a political strategy of going scorched-earth on the GOP for letting them expire in the first place.
Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) told Politico that Americans who see their monthly premiums skyrocket in the wake of the subsidies’ expiration will take out their anger on the GOP.
Hopefully, there’ll be some decent candidates and not just more of the same “centrists” who just pocket money from AIPAC and other big donors.
“Not the GOP” is not going to cut it.
Yeah except what if we just try to shame everybody into voting for a centrist candidate they aren’t inspired by at all?
How about before we get to that point you pick a candidate you DO support and boost them so they BECOME the candidate instead of passively waiting for whoever floats to the top of the bog?
Primary turnout is 20-30% generally. You want more progressive candidates? Encourage them and then go vote for them in primaries. Bring friends.
It’s what mamdani did and it worked.
Yep. Now is the time! Not later this year. Not 6 days before the election. Right god damned now. Right up until the candidate is chosen. Then it’ll be time again the fucking second the election is over.
So do something, right god damned now, and practise as you preach. Use your comment to namedrop your pick and why they’re your pick.
I’m just acting on your username and basing this info on Texas. It’s not my state, not even my country, but it takes minutes to find out that Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico are running for the Democratic senator candidate, that Crockett is an AIPAC shill who has rejected the label “progressive” and Talarico is pro-healthcare reform and critical of Israel and Christian nationalism. I’m sure with a few more minutes you could find their voting records, just like I can for my local representatives in my country.
Who is the person that you want as your candidate in March and why?
That’s a fair call out! I talked shit and didn’t back it up.
It’s no contest. Talarico is the more progressive of the two. I’m glad Allred dropped out because he’s milquetoast. Crockett is proud of being a corporate Democrat. Talarico has called what Israel is doing atrocities and war crimes. He’s headed in the correct direction on healthcare even if I disagree on the nuances. He’s vocal about the billionaire donor issue. My biggest beef is how much of his platform is based on being a Christian, but that’s a strength here whether I like it or not. And to be fair he calls out the people using the religion to be racist jackasses so, unlike a lot of the cowards, he is trying to clean house.
If Crockett is the nominee I’ll vote for her. But unless and until then Talarico gets my money, attention, and time.
Yeah, I’m sorry that yours happened to be the comment I jumped on. In fact I’ve been ruminating on this sentiment for a while now. I think that voters on the left in general, myself included, need a fundamental shift in our voting mentality and how we prioritise events in the election cycle.
The battle for us is making sure that a desirable candidate is on the ballot paper on November 3rd. In that respect, the big midterm election for us is March 3rd. We need to be rounding up and riling up as many left wing voters as possible in time for March 3rd so that the choice in November isn’t between political apathy and a status quo corporate democrat.
Don’t be sorry buddy. You’re not wrong. I’d much rather someone be brusk and call me out correctly than polite and poisonous or doomer who insists that everything will always suck no matter what and try to turn us all against each other with purity tests.
Consider me properly and fairly called out. And consider me on your side.
They will send a sternly worded letter and do nothing else
I’ll believe it when I see it, but the standard is for Dems to do jack shit.
You’re talking about the elected officials, the sticks seems to be referring to voters
I’ll believe that when I see it, too.
Their messaging is usually terrible and so off-putting to so many of the low-info and the normies.
Watch for the Dems to step on some stupid rake like bathroom bills, men in women’s sports, BLM, “antifa”, defund the police, etc. it almost seems inevitable that even when the most obvious narrative is right there for them to set up the framing, they let the fucking corporate media and the fascists do all the framing.
They have no real media. Of course it’s framed by corporate media.
Well they have to actually do it though. If they win a lot of seats in 26 and then things don’t improve they’re going to get crushed again in 28. They got to follow through.
Ah yes, here we see Lucy is placing the football in front of Charlie Brown but will she let him kick it?
The economy is consistently better under Democrats. Things consistently get better under Democrats.
I get that it’s not as fast as any of us would like, but if you’d loved through it and paid attention, you’d have a better understanding of why. Obama understood he was a centrist, and it’s why he centered his first term strategy on being the most bipartisan president of all time.
McConnell saw that strategy and thought it was more important to defeat Democrats than to improve the country.
The real problem isn’t the Democrats, status quo or not. The problem is that the Republican party exists. The problem is that every so many years the voters get bored with slow, steady improvement and spend the next several years tearing everything down.
And it’s a hell of a lot easier to destroy than to build.
I’d love to be choosing between Democrats and Socialists. I’d love to have two sane choices. I’d love if our dividing issue was whether trans people should be allowed in women’s sports, and not whether trans people should be allowed to live.
The economy is not better under Democrats, liberals largely ignore the economy under Democrats. Republicans only exist in their current form because Democrats keep shifting further to the right and their ratchet effect keeps the status quo from slipping back.
And don’t forget the possibility of a new government shutdown on Jan 30th. That’ll be fun.
Honestly wondering if the dems did something politically smart here.
They actually let the cuts go in place which means the morons finally feel the pain and everyone already rightly blames Republicans for that. Maybe they’ll actually get a win here for the people.
Fanciful thinking but I choose to hope.
Dems will shut it down just long enough to hurt people, but as soon as the airports become affected, and corporations can’t move their operatives around the country, they’ll fold.
Big difference this time is that holiday time is over. I’m not so sure the corpos care a whole lot about keeping the airlines available for Valentine’s Day.
Exactly the point. If it was the MAGAs at war, they would happily leave the airports closed over the Holidays, and try to blame Dems for it.
But reverse it, and the Dems will only fight until it gets inconvenient for the wealthy, them fold over nothing, and take the blame themselves.
MEDIOCRE!
Don’t worry, the Republicans agreed to discuss health care this time.
Honestly I figured the reason they caved in was that party leaders knew it would fuel midterms to make people suffer, but they themselves didn’t want to look that way so they had safe seats to be the fall guys. So yeah, duh.
Pretty sure people here can see the writing on the wall and will at least vote in the primary. Not sure what good it’ll do since tactics like that work way too well on average voters, but might as well try.
That’s what pisses me off about a lot of Democrat politicians. It feels like they don’t see Trump as an enemy so much as a punishment for the voters for not voting for them. No concern, no hard action, just saying “look what you’ve done. Ready to go back to normal now?”
Yup! Return to normal was such a dumb rallying cry for Biden. I was rather vocal about that to people I knew during the 2020 primary but by the time my state got to vote, he was pretty much the candidate.
HAVE THE DAY YOU VOTED FOR
Nasty worded letters? Shaking fists?
Raised eyebrows?
Definitely those too, they can be done simultaneously
Lol. ‘they’re both the same’. ‘party owes me a good candidate, or I don’t vote, even if the other candidate is a monster’. ‘corporate sponsors’, ‘conplicit media’, ‘genocide’, ‘my foot hurts’, ‘its a working day’,…
If you don’t want to something, any excuse is as good as the next.
Good point, we should certainly vote for candidates who will fight for health care and not back down.
Too early. This is a fight for November. The fight for now is, are you fighting to boost the candidate you like who you CAN support? Or just waiting to see what settles so you can just complain about how it’s not good enough?
Now it’s too early? JFC!
