Unfortunately, your typical Democratic official—whether it’s Biden or Schumer or Jeffries or House Oversight Committee ranking member Gerry Connolly or the recently elected DNC chair Ken Martin—didn’t get into politics to defeat the Republican Party, to zealously advance the interests of ordinary people, or to protect democracy. They didn’t rise within the party ranks because of their talent for public service. In a functioning democracy, that wouldn’t matter as much. Nobody really cares if a politician’s inner life is absorbed in personal ambition. But at this moment of national and planetary emergency, pathological careerism is unacceptable. People should either step up or, if they don’t fancy the fray, follow the example of Senator Gary Peters, who recently announced, like a normal person in his late sixties, that he’ll retire in 2026.
The sorry truth is that without enormous pressure from the party base, a significant number of senators and representatives won’t have it in them to oppose Trump. We, the concerned citizens, will have to force them to do their duty. We’ll also have to march, sooner rather than later. But that’s a separate topic. For now, these are our guys. We go with what we’ve got. And let’s not forget: Republicans can’t govern, they’re unpopular, and they’re led by the most idiotic president in living memory. They are beatable.
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The appropriate punishment for corruption is not a face smashing, it’s seizure of assets and a prison sentence. Also, there are degrees of culpability, and profiting off a failing system you occasionally make half hearted statements about fixing is less bad than actually trying to make it fail.
Lastly, just on a realpolitik level, at this moment fighting against fascism will be easier with Pelosi and Pelosi-like people in our coalition instead of out of it.
Her corruption caused unspeakable death and destruction in lives in the US and all around the world. That healthcare CEO who was shot wasn’t 1/10 as deserving as Pelosi, and I’m glad he’s dead.
Yes, we could benefit greatly from having Pelosi in our coalition. The problem is that we don’t and never have. Most recently, she was responsible for blocking AOC from leading the Democrats in the House oversight committee and gave us an elderly cancer patient with zero media savvy in her place. The one position in the House that has some ability to push back, and Pelosi pissed it away out of spite. With friends like that, who needs enemies.
It’s been absolutely obvious that the Democrats have been leading us to where we are now for at least 20 years, if not 50. I can’t even begin to count the number of massive failures Pelosi herself was personally responsible for in that time. After so many years of calling her shit out to deaf ears, I’m not interested in lectures on civility.
Trump is an opportunistic infection destroying America from within, and establishment neoliberals are the AIDS that set us up for it. I’m not looking to them for help.
Guessing you have “receipts” for this. The only destruction she’s responsible for is what’s happening right now. She helped turn liberalism into the new conservatism. Maybe if she actually led the fight for working families we’d have a Harris presidency or at least control of one chamber.
What’s happening right now isn’t enough? That’s been a long term project for her. It wasn’t easy steering the country away from every opportunity to avoid it.
There is her decades of shilling for big oil.
She continued to support the Pied Piper strategies that promote far right candidates in Republican primaries so that Democrats can campaign on how bad Republicans are instead of actually delivering.
She was one of the loudest (and most effective) voices in the deregulation push that culminated in the 2008 mortgage crisis.
Then there all the many instances where Pelosi campaigned against progressives in Democratic primaries, both when the progressive was an incumbent and a challenger.
With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?