• @[email protected]
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    1315 days ago

    Despite his efforts, Dolan’s message did not gain enough traction. His campaign, funded largely by personal loans, couldn’t match Ocasio-Cortez’s $8 million war chest.

    You people are living in an oligarchy and “who has more money for this season” being a perfectly normal news bit outside of popular sports is completely insane.

    • @[email protected]
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      235 days ago

      That’s because billionaires have purchased SCOTUS. The outcome of a single court case has allowed unlimited money from whomever into election campaigns.

    • @[email protected]
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      275 days ago

      You realize that “you people” includes you, correct?

      Or are the mega rich treated just like everyone else where you are?

      If so, where is this magical land of fairness?

        • @[email protected]
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          35 days ago

          Eh… There are a variety of end-runs around this mechanism.

          Hiring politicians on as lobbyists or allowing friends and family to sit on private run boards and trusts can create a back channel for money to flow into a politician’s pockets. Public money can be funneled into private profits for which the supporting politicians are also stockholders. And politicians can receive discounted/free services from friendly private sector constituencies. FOX News, the classic example, is a multi-billion dollar network dedicated to running Republican-friendly media. But when corporate lobbyists and political strategists can be found everywhere from the boards of NPR/PBS to the guest chairs of MSNBC to the editorial rooms of the WaPo/WSJ/NYT, there’s really no safe spaces left.

          You can mitigate the direct “bag of cash for favors” effect that, say, John Boehner cutting tobacco lobbyist checks on the floor of the House has produced in the past. But you can’t keep public sector administrators from finding ways to receive kickbacks via private sector channels unless you completely divorce these institutions.

          • @[email protected]
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            165 days ago

            Eh… There are a variety of end-runs around this mechanism.

            There are any number of hypothetical end-runs around just about anything you can think of, that doesn’t make protections, mechanisms, controls, or safeties useless.

            In the US, political bribery is nearly 100% legal. I’d rather have some hoops for corrupt officials to jump through. We don’t even make them break a sweat in this country.

            • @[email protected]
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              -25 days ago

              There are any number of hypothetical end-runs

              Not even hypothetical. We just had the SCOTUS kick down the door on legal bribery in Snyder v United States.

              I’d rather have some hoops for corrupt officials to jump through

              I mean, if we’ve got a magic lamp I can do better than a few hoops. But the system is of the corrupt, by the corrupt, for the corrupt.

              At some point, you’re forced to recognized the farce of democracy at work.

              • @[email protected]
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                5 days ago

                IIRC, people were talking about places in this thread that aren’t the US.

                As stated, political bribery in the US is nearly 100% legal. You can even study it in school and make a career out of it.

                • @[email protected]
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                  -25 days ago

                  The Canadian system has it’s own share of corruption and bribery. Just check out Rob Ford, ffs.

      • @[email protected]
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        475 days ago

        I do not life in the US. However because of US hegemony and my country being a suck up to the US i have to follow what is going on there.

        But in case there is any doubt. The country i live in, which is Germany is corrupt and authoritarian with a complicit public and private media as well as the “center” parties moving further to the right and helping fascism rise faster than ever before. The “liberal” middle class are to a large extent just self delusional racists and the country will become a fascist hellhole in the next ten years.

        So if you have the opportunity, please help spread awareness about all the shit happening here too.

          • @[email protected]
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            55 days ago

            I don’t know, Labour should win a landslide next week in the UK. And Conservatives will become a party #3 or even #4 for the first time since forever. Tories also ran out of money, lol.

              • @[email protected]
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                45 days ago

                It’s still FPTP here, it’s just that people got sick of Tories. Even billionaires got sick, imagine that.

            • @[email protected]
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              05 days ago

              You mean Keir “Tony Blair without the charisma and leadership abilities” Starmer’s Labour? Fat lot of good THAT pack of ideologically bankrupt liberals are going to do other than freeing the UK from the even worse Tories! 😮‍💨

          • @[email protected]
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            55 days ago

            It is, expect everything to lurch to the right for the foreseeable future. Get ready for more humanitarian crises as we in the west increase sending climate and conflict refugees back to countries of origin or 3rd countries for “asylum processing” as climate change really starts to bite.

            Also, I hope you enjoy Cold War 2: Arctic Summer Melt.

          • @[email protected]
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            35 days ago

            Hopefully, the UK is going to take a couple of steps to the left shortly.

            If it does, it’s not because the country is moving left but because the right fucked up.

            • @[email protected]
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              25 days ago

              Yeah, it’s a great first few steps. Really hoping LibDem becomes the official opposition and it’s just two Left™ parties driving each other leftward.

              Current Labour concerns me with how it’s moved rightwards, but Daddy Starmer has my vote regardless

        • @[email protected]
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          65 days ago

          Yes, that’s right. The last European elections at the latest showed impressively that those dull people who are unable to see through the PR campaigns of the powerful are not an exclusive US problem. It is of course absolutely right that we in Europe rely far too much on the Americans and should set stricter limits to their capitalism, which in my opinion is completely out of joint. But I fear that we have already gotten too far into this quagmire. This is precisely why it is all the more important to raise awareness of this and to name those who are actually responsible for falling living standards and growing inequality - the US-type opportunists, the hangers-on and especially the blatant fascists in the ranks of our politicians and our societies. I am not at all convinced that the reasonable people have a shot, but I sure will continue to make an effort.

        • @[email protected]
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          -15 days ago

          Politics shift to the right when people feel disparity, and their future looks break. Politics shift left when people feel optimistic about their future.

          • @[email protected]
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            45 days ago

            Which is absolutely fucking stupid because we need leftist politics when the future looks bleak and when the future looks rosy that is the time to be more conservative about change…

            But we’re just human, we do everything ass backwards :/

        • @[email protected]
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          -25 days ago

          The country i live in, which is Germany is corrupt and authoritarian with a complicit public and private media as well as the “center” parties moving further to the right and helping fascism rise faster than ever before. The “liberal” middle class are to a large extent just self delusional racists and the country will become a fascist hellhole in the next ten years.

          The funniest part is that this has been brought about by the common belief that idealism is stupid and dangerous and leads to fascism, while cynicism is very smart and realistic. One good thing about idealism is that it gives you a reason to fight and sense of good and evil.

          What I mean is that idealism, say, 20 years ago would be associated with extremism, neo-Nazis, unreformed Bolsheviks, sect members, radical Islam. But somehow the actual fighting forces sporting all such ideologies work without it too.

          As if that “sail” filled not with wind, but with popular emotion were worse than lack thereof, because without it your “boat” wouldn’t be moved from the right (presumably) track. Turns out the “boat” also has “oars”. Evil doesn’t have to be charismatic, although it was that in the 1930s. It can do just fine with apathy and half-consent.

      • @[email protected]
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        225 days ago

        Jesus fuck you people claim it’s rigged no matter who wins

        Headline: “Person with most money wins race handily”

        Far Left Antifa CCP Tankie on Lemmy: “Damn, seems like the sheer volume of money is determining the winners of these races”

        Reasonable Rational Centrist: “STFU, you stupid idiot! Why can’t you just be happy that the person with the most money won?!”

        • @[email protected]
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          5 days ago

          I like how that guy thinks the hive mind complains when progressives win because of “corporate donations”

          • @[email protected]
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            25 days ago

            Clearly Jamaal Bowman isn’t as progressive as George Latimer, but Lauren Boebert’s progressive bonafides pushed her through.

        • @[email protected]
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          -85 days ago

          Yeah, that’s how elections work. If it were in good faith, it’d be a valid complaint. But it’s not. It’s just another thing they pulled from a hat labeled “how can we make Democrats look bad here?”

      • @ZombiFrancis
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        105 days ago

        Yeah those corpos tipping the scales for progressives. Such a thing.

      • @[email protected]
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        -45 days ago

        The DNC are not moderates. They are economic far right with imperialist foreign and racist internal policy, but some LGBT rights sprinkled in between.

        And i am quite sure if people like Sanders or Stein would win it will definitely not be because of corporations funding them, more the opposite actually.

  • Veraxus
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    595 days ago

    Moderate? Marty Dolan is a full-blown conservative. Why do we keep pretending like being a Democrat means you can’t be a conservative? The DNCs entire top brass is conservative. It’s a conservative party by objective international standards.

    • @[email protected]
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      265 days ago

      Because the Overton window in the United States has many people viewing fascists as friends and anyone further left than center right as “extreme left wing socialist communist Nazi terrorists”.

      • @TopRamenBinLaden
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        125 days ago

        I hate it when ignorant people conflate Nazis and communists. I have argued with so many dumb people who think that the Nazis were a Socialist party, when the exact opposite is true. These people probably think that the DPRK is democratic, too.

        • @[email protected]
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          23 days ago

          Well if’n it weren’t properly a democracy how comes that 'ere Kim fella put it in the name, huh?

        • @[email protected]
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          35 days ago

          It’d be like thinking the Democrats and Republicans are arguing about whether America should he a direct or representative democracy.

  • @[email protected]
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    405 days ago

    I hope people stop believing the bullshit that’s trying to get progressives to not vote or to vote for 3rd parties. Progressives absolutely can win democrat tickets, and that’s exactly why there’s so much propaganda trying to convince people otherwise. Progressives have a lot of political power right now, and the whole system can swing left if people don’t just give up. Progressives giving up is the only play the right has.

    • @[email protected]
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      -24 days ago

      Progressives should absolutely vote in primaries and lower contests. They should also make it very clear there are limits to their graciousness when our president supports blatant war crimes and genocide.

      • @[email protected]
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        13 days ago

        I don’t disagree. But we’re living in interesting times.

        I don’t like most of the people on the ticket I’ll be given in November, but you know what’s objectively worse? Actual fascism. Fascism always ends in genocide, and these white Christian nationalists aren’t even trying to hide it, going mask-off even before they have the power to back it up.

        When fascists can be this bold and still keep their seats of power, that’s quite worrying.

        As I saw someone say earlier, we’re in democracy triage.

        I’d vote for Biden’s corpse before trump or not voting. We must wrest all power from the fascists before we can squabble about who’s more left.

        • @[email protected]
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          2 days ago

          We must be able to effectively fight it though. And blindly voting for the elite approved opposition ends in them holding the door open for fascists every time.

      • @[email protected]
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        3 days ago

        Graciousness? I don’t think that’s the right word…you don’t vote for someone because you’re being gracious, you vote for someone because you think they’ll deliver what you want - or in this case perhaps, the closest person who actually stands a hope in hell of getting elected.

        • @[email protected]
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          -14 days ago

          Oh no. It’s graciousness to vote for the guy you lost to and who went out of his way to break campaign promises on unions, climate change, and immigration. Another term is good loser.

          But the point is there’s limits. There have to be limits or else you’re not a loser in a political contest, you’re a blind supporter they never need to actually listen to.

            • @[email protected]
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              02 days ago

              Ah yes, Reddit, and a Biden specific sub. The very material of unbiased analysis.

              Also. You’re responding to something pre-debate. There are very definitely other options now. Run a debate series with select candidates, open a comment period with the state parties, and culminate in an open convention.

  • @[email protected]
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    455 days ago

    Good. Anyone described as a “moderate” in the US is actually a conservative at best. Anyone described as a “conservative” is actually a fascist at best.

    • @[email protected]
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      14 days ago

      I hate this divisive bullshit. Democracies require pluralities. You need to be a big tent party to govern.

      • @[email protected]
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        23 days ago

        The most divisive people in politics don’t want that big tent to be a governable coalition. If you appeal to big tent politics they start trying to incite violence including political subjugation of the same opponents that you’re trying to appeal to. You’ll see them around.

      • @[email protected]
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        23 days ago

        Reality check: Repubs are trying to elect an insurrectionist promising to be a dictator. I’m sorry facts are divisive, I don’t like the situation either.

        • @[email protected]
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          03 days ago

          Sorry. how does AOC defeating democratic moderate in a primary impact a republican getting elected. I don’t think moderate D’s or voting R on the presidential ballot. A moderate Democrat is still voting democrat.

  • @[email protected]
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    124 days ago
    1. It’s a very progressive district, that’s how she got elected in the first place. This is not a surprise.

    2. I bet my politics fit closer to the other guy, but I’d still vote for AOC between the two because she has a national influence and disproportionate power in the Caucus. If you’re actually voting to influence Congress towards helping your district in particular, AOC might get that done even if it’s secondary to her national political project. Some moderate guy in a safe D seat would absolutely never get anything for your district.

        • @[email protected]
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          14 days ago

          I wouldn’t have a problem with liberals calling themselves the left if they knew why that was different from being a leftist

      • @[email protected]
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        13 days ago

        Would she? I’m not that informed on her politics but I think Bernie supported her, and Bernie is definitely a progressive even by rest-of-the-world standards.

  • @[email protected]
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    676 days ago

    It amazes me that primaries are held this late in the year. It’s only four months or so until the election.

    • Ghostalmedia
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      905 days ago

      Only in America. Other counties campaign for a few weeks. The US turns it into a 12 month fund raising and media spectacular, with primaries at the halfway point.

      • @[email protected]
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        165 days ago

        A while back, HR 1 For the People Act promised to remedy much of the issue but it never got a vote in the senate because Republicans held the Senate Speaker until the next congress was formed.

        • @[email protected]
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          25 days ago

          And because, having gotten back in power, Dem leadership didn’t take it up again as they too are getting rich from the current system.

          • @[email protected]
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            4 days ago

            TBF, after the 2020 election they were faced with issues like budget reconciliation and debt limit (without which nothing would be voted on at all during a government shutdown) as well as reimplementing some of the many regulations taken down by the Trump admin and finally passing a 1.9 Trillion Dollar infrastructure deal alongside a new round of stimulus checks (which the receiving states decided how to use, sadly), and many congressional hearings about corruption of the former administration and federal judges (which ultimately hasn’t lead anywhere other than referrals to the DOJ).

            So in the 2 year span that they held 48 + 2 senate seats and house majority, they were pretty tied up I would say.

            EDIT: Plus, it would’ve been filibustered anyways.

          • @[email protected]
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            -35 days ago

            Same reason Biden is talking about a potential tax on the rich but won’t ever be caught talking about repealing the Trump tax raise on the working class that actually happened.

            • TurtleJoe
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              25 days ago

              The Trump tax cut expires next year. Biden has promised not to renew it if he’s reelected.

              Get informed.

                • TurtleJoe
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                  35 days ago

                  You should probably not be asking smug rhetorical questions when you don’t actually understand how the federal government works.

                  Use a search engine, educate yourself.

                • @[email protected]
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                  5 days ago

                  It was an act passed by congress and signed by a sitting president. Biden alone doesn’t have the authority to change it, and if he did try that then it would be caught up in courts for years.

    • @[email protected]
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      445 days ago

      Why make election season much longer than needed?

      Printing ballots can be done quite quickly.

      And is 6 months of campaigning really better than 2 months?

      • @[email protected]
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        5 days ago

        Ffffuuuuuuucccckkk no its not better. It’s just that our system predated most parliaments, and as such the founding fathers made some stupid choices that made it utterly impossible to amend basic quailty of life changes for our democracy.

        • @[email protected]
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          65 days ago

          What did the founding fathers decide that made it impossible to have short election seasons in the US?

          • @[email protected]
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            5 days ago

            The process to amend the constitution. It’s all but impossible given modern politics, and that’s largely been true for 50 years and counting.

              • @[email protected]
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                35 days ago

                Our election cycle cant be curtailed or shifted because our constitution can’t realistically be amended to match the saner policies in other countries. When our constitution is so antiqued that that “money is speech” becomes the law of the land, there is a core problem with the founding document itself.

                How it that not related to our election cycle?

                • @[email protected]
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                  -35 days ago

                  Because a constitutional convention is so wildly unlikely it’s just distracting from any actually helpful suggestions.

        • @Kellamity
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          45 days ago

          Just in the spirit of pedantry, its not really true to say that the US system predated most parliaments.

          Like, maybe its technically true now due to the expansion of democratic and republic systems in the post-colonial era, but parliaments in Western Europe were plentiful and long-established in 1776.

          The first American government was notable in that is was completely divorced from a hereditary Monarch, and I don’t wanna downplay that, but a system in which a representitive body of land-owners is elected by an enfranchised class to decide policy and even pass legislation existed in, for example, Iceland since the 10th Century, Catalonia since the 12th, England since the 13th. It was arguably the standard during the enlightenment in Europe.

          My two cents, the US system does seem to be remarkably inflexible. I guess it’s complicated to unpack why exactly, but a combination of myth-making, bad-faith originalists, and the sheer size of the country probably all play a part in it

      • hash
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        75 days ago

        It’s better for the politicians wallets.

        • @[email protected]
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          45 days ago

          Well no, it’s better for the politician’s campaign’s wallets. If people could spend campaign funds however they wanted then Donald Trump would have quite a few less pending felonies.

          • @[email protected]
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            05 days ago

            First of all, there’s TONS of ways to enrich yourself by running for office without technically breaking any of the very flimsy campaign finance laws. That’s why people with literally no chance of winning keep running for public offices up to and including the presidency.

            Second of all, the FEC, which is ALREADY as toothless as a nonagenarian who never brushed his teeth due to chronic deliberate underfunding and understaffing, has an EXTREME backlog of cases from having lacked a quorum for the better part of a year.

            Third, even if the FEC was otherwise effective, this is TRUMP we’re talking about here. He’s getting away with TONS of campaign finance fraud and legal misuse of donations as is.

    • @[email protected]
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      46 days ago

      The Dem presidential primary still has like two more months.

      Biden and his pick for DNC chair set the date, they could have made it whenever.

      They choose after the deadline to get on all 50 ballots for some reason.

    • TAG
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      25 days ago

      Massachusetts has not held its Senate primary yet either. I had to check, it will be on September 3rd it seems.

  • @[email protected]
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    54 days ago

    An article about an election without any numbers. How tight was the race? How many people voted? We will never know. In fact, the whole article contains no information that wasn’t known beforehand. Probably written beforehand and just put online by a timer as the result was not surprising. News media is going downhill faster and faster.

      • @[email protected]
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        145 days ago

        Why? We get to tell the truth and apparently deeply bother you all at once. Seems like a win-win for everyone but you , and you don’t matter.

          • @gravitas_deficiency
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            34 days ago

            Feels like you’re pushing an agenda here that doesn’t really coincide with reality.

      • @[email protected]
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        14 days ago

        After what happened to Jamaal Bowman. Not a fucking chance.

        Oh, did people pointing out the unfair latitude given to your favorite genocidal nation make you upset? Whoops.

      • @[email protected]
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        35 days ago

        You could argue that AIPAC is partly responsible for the mess we’re in, as well as other PACs. So, I don’t think that they will stop. Hell, one could hold that stance while voting for questionable politicians on their side. You just gotta make sure that the threat of being primaried remain.

    • @[email protected]
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      765 days ago

      Yeah:

      “We need to freeze the border and send that message to the world to stop the death and casualties along the way,” says Dolan. “The Republicans are right on this issue. But that doesn’t make me a Republican. No party is right on every issue.”

      On his campaign website, Dolan who has served as managing director at banks including Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, puts the city’s current plight thus: “Bail reform a disaster, the National Guard in the subway, toothpaste locked up in drugstores but criminals running free.

      https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/06/17/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-primary-challenger-marty-dolan/74074419007/

      • @[email protected]
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        615 days ago

        It’s hilarious to me that 40 years ago this person would have been solidly Republican. Now he’s a “moderate Democrat”. This term now means “conservative that doesn’t like Trump saying the quiet part out loud”

        • @[email protected]
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          95 days ago

          A lot of money has been pouring into propagandizing liberals in big progressive cities about crime specifically. Trying to promote a crime hysteria. And then part 2 of that plan is to recall the progressive politicians and elect in Republicans who will claim to fix everything.

          It’s had only modest success in actually electing Republicans so far but I get the sense it’s a long game. People have absolutely bought into the “crime is at an all time high” lies.

      • @[email protected]
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        105 days ago

        “Bail reform a disaster, the National Guard in the subway, toothpaste locked up in drugstores but criminals running free.

        Umm doesn’t the State have a bigger hand in that instead of the Federal government?