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Zeits's avatar

As someone who lived through ( and remembers the The Peace Movement during the 60’s and 70’s , it took several years of demonstrations w students killed by National Guard, a criminal president ( Nixon) , and much social/cultural turmoil to set the country on a new direction. Ford, Carter, decent people but not willing to deceive the public. Reagan, ruined the road back to decency and helping all citizens ( and noncitizens) and I remember his RIF as the beginnings of dismantling the government that helps domestic issues. Again we became a war machine and the results are readily seen in Afghanistan and Iraq. Clinton tried and could have been a true force in setting up another 4 yrs of Democratic policies w Gore but he just couldn’t stop being a sexual predator and we get Bush, quite incompetent except for his neoconservative partner Cheney and more war. Obama, whom I liked was ineffectual perhaps from having little experience in Washington politics and not having the cajones to go against McConnell ( Garland). Hillary is brilliant but not a good choice as campaigner and was damaged by the GOP war machine ( Fox, Senate investigations).

I’m at an emotional low from this roller coaster ride but I now know that it has to get as bad as it was in the early 70’s for things to turn around but this time there’s 400M guns in circulation and those idiot militias are not in the Idaho woods.

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Barry J Kaufman DO's avatar

Democrats are too busy singing "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps to celebrate gun legislation that skirts around the primary issues leading to our epidemic of gun violence. More "incremental change" from a party whose increments have allowed for the aggressors, the Republicans, to win even when Democrats "get stuff done (to quote Hillary Clinton's insult to Bernie Sanders during the 2016 campaign). Your remedies are all sound Thom, but this Democratic Party, with your help, always has an excuse for what is really incompetence, terrible judgment and a preoccupation with The Third Way and electoral politics over sound public policy. A party that is silent on Israeli apartheid and who aids and abets MBS to starve Yemeni children (among so many other things) is devoid of a moral compass, and their MSNBC base, much like Trump's base, let them get away with anything with zero accountability. Biden is the most rudderless, unimaginative stereotype of an ailing neoliberal politician I have ever seen in my lifetime, yet you praise him as the next FDR. Obama made awful decisions and passed terrible legislation (including the ACA), yet you praise him and make excuses for him. No more excuses Thom, it can't get much worse and it's never been a democracy for anyone but the wealthy and the white, but Democrats will hear it as the resounding thud in the midterms and a revolt from progressives who will no longer sit by idle while they support anti-abortion, anti-labor Congressional candidates over pro-abortion, pro-labor progressive women of color then wonder why centrists are blocking their agenda. Nancy Pelosi is not a progressive, Joe Biden is not FDR, and Barack Obama was a cancer to our democracy in more ways than just Roe v Wade: https://medium.com/@barrykaufman/roe-v-wade-democrats-cry-wolf-one-time-too-many-4aa22af92412

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