Can’t disagree with you there. I went with “Obama” instead of “Clinton” because Obama’s staffers and appointees will be around longer than Clinton’s.

Clinton definitely cemented this playbook as doctrine, but Obama followed it to the letter.

It’s all he and his team know how to do. They still think his low poll numbers are a “messaging problem” and not a, you know, DO SOMETHING problem.

Not gonna happen in the next 15 years, at best. Obama’s apparatus has to be out of the picture for that to have a chance at happening.

Meanwhile, we also have to eliminate vultures like Gottheimer, Coons, and Warner who would stand in the way of anything approaching medicare for all, because it would not be helpful to their shareholders.

It’s all academic, though. Dems have only the tiniest hope of regaining the house, probably with a majority as slim as what the GOP currently enjoys. 2024 Senate is nearly a lost cause, with Joe Manchin dropping out of WV, and it being a shitty electoral calendar for Senate Democrats to begin with.

In re the Presidential race: coin flip at best between Biden and Trump, and neither of them are fans of giving people healthcare without corporations making obscene profits.

When AIPAC stops buying the US government.

I’m implicitly suggesting that Biden shouldn’t be tacking to the center to win imaginary centrist voters. I’m betting drilling fits hist admin’s and donors’ agenda anyway, though.

Which is funny, because the Biden admin is already opening sites back up and waving new drilling proposals through.

When you’re what?

I’m not saying it’s wise, or will work, just that that is the reason for the court’s stoicism.

They’re trying to make this case airtight in appeal. Judge Vaughn Walker took the same route when he struck down California’s same-sex marriage ban.

The last two Presidents to die in office were Democrats. It’s a Republican’s turn. Any one of them would be fine with me.

I think most Democratic party voters want universal healthcare. I think most Democratic party politicians do not.

Counting on cultural stasis will always result in disappointment. Luckily, neither culture nor disappointment are permanent.

And if your bootloader is unlocked, VZ is likely to lock you out of VoLTE/HD Voice/WiFi calling/etc.

I mean, you could go to T-Mobile who don’t currently play these specific games with devices, but then you’re trading coverage for features/freedom.

All carriers, wired and wireless, need to be regulated as DUMB PIPES. Title 2 for everyone. That’s what we’re paying for: Not “the Verizon experience” or “the pride and accomplishment of being an AT&T customer.” Let me buy a phone, and do with it whatever it is technologically capable of doing on your network. The network provider doesn’t need to provide any Android/iOS tech support if they keep it simple and stay out of the customer-fuckery business.

Warning about bringing an unlocked phone to Verizon (even if it’s a current flagship Apple/Samsung/Google device): 50/50 they’ll lock you out of WiFi calling/HD voice, etc. Because they’re dicks.

If you’re a fellow American, please stop weighing in on this whole thing. We shouldn’t be propping up Israel to begin with. We shouldn’t be involved in this at all.

Our support of Israel was certainly factored into Hamas’s decision to escalate things. And the blowback we’ll get from unconditionally supporting Israel is completely, COMPLETELY predictable.

Covid gave us an opportunity to turn the page on the war on terror, and now our unwavering support for one side of this conflict is going to prompt some yahoo to commit something stupid, and start the war on terror up all over again.

There is no upside in supporting one side over the other in this one - we need to sit it out. Stop sending billions to Israel every year and providing a pretext for some sort of revenge attack on us. Saudi doesn’t care what we think anymore, OPEC is going to do whatever it wants.

The US foreign affairs community seems to be of the opinion that our involvement in Israel and its recognition by KSA or any other big player in the region is going to secure the status of the petrodollar. But de-dollarization is going to happen anyway, thanks to BRICS.

So we’ll continue to sell arms to Saudi Arabia while they continue to not supply us with enough oil to keep prices low, and we’ll continue to prop up Israel while they continue to piss off the entire region.

And everyone is just… okay with this?

The Democrats need to do a better job at giving people the money they need to get what they need, and controlling the out-of-control plutocrats wringing every last bit of spare change from the rest of us.

“Ok GOP, we’ll cut our yearly deficit by 60% just by only giving the welfare queen confederate states $1 back for every dollar they contribute in taxes, instead of the $6 that South Carolina gets. Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and start turning a profit.”

“Hey, Joe Manchin: if you don’t offer your full-throated support to Build Back Better, we’re cutting off all Federal aid and investment in West Virginia, and we’re going to run nonstop ads telling your constituents why. Also, we’re going to break up your daughter’s pharma company.”

Time for some LBJ shit. But they’ll never do it, because they’re actually conservatives too.

I’m voting D too for the time being, but the Dems are never going to give us those things either.

The best Dems will offer is BS like means-tested limited family leave if you work for 3 years in an underprivileged school district first and then apply for a special program that will offset 25.7% of your lost wages via tax credits that can only be applied to the first $34,000 of income including HSA contributions but crediting back via deduction the first $500 spent on diapers as long as the diapers were 70% manufactured in the US blah blah blah

This Democratic party does not want universal healthcare. At best, they will grudgingly support universal “access” to healthcare. They do not want universal free college, nor free PTO, because that runs counter to the interests of their largest donors.

The best we can say about the current Democratic party is that they will, at times, pause the active arson that the GOP is inflicting on this country… maybe, sort of. They could have added DC and PR as states in the 2021-2022 session and given themselves a fighting chance in the Senate, but I guess they just kinda forgot to get around to it.

They exist to be a placeholder for whenever the GOP loses power, and a continuous fundraising lifestyle brand the rest of the time.

Mutual funds generally underperform the SP500 as a whole, as well as most broad-spectrum ETFs, and carry an expense ratio 5x higher than VG/Schwab ETFs just for fun. And that’s not even accounting for the class-A shares that a lot of financial advisors steer their retail clients into.

No, the “average” person should be putting whatever retirement money they can scrape together into index funds via Roth and/or traditional IRA, then regular retirement investments. But most “average” people can’t afford to even sock away 6 months’ worth of expenses in an emergency fund because healthcare costs and anything associated with raising kids has gone up a gazillion percent in the last 40 years while real wages have stayed stagnant.

Oh, also try buying a house while facing all of that AND student loans that Republicans are too pig-headed to let the government forgive even a fraction of.

“Financial illiteracy” isn’t the problem here, reality is.

I know we have outposts in Israel keeping an eye on - as an example - Iran and shit, but why do we have to be enemies with Iran in the first place? Our situation with Israel just seems like a pointless one-way relationship that only serves to further alienate the rest of the middle east from us.

“I have decided that Marbury v Madison is no longer binding precedent, and therefore SCOTUS has no constitutionally-derived right of judicial review.”

President could do this. In fact, I’ll bet $100 in a GOP president doing this in the next 20 years.