This is the fundamental message of the modern Democratic Party.
“Yes, you will still be boiled alive, but we will do it more slowly.”
And what’s extra hair-pullingly-frustrating about it all is that they’ll get blamed for the boil anyway… which will result in Republicans winning and turning up the heat.
There’s no way out. Its either a crew that will compromise and fritter away what time we have left or a crew that will pedal-to-the-metal straight off the cliff.
That’s an inherent trait of “liberal democracies” such as most (EDIT: democracies) in the world.
When they were forming, each had something else to compensate for this, be it a constitutional right of the military to change governments and ban parties, or quotas for party representation, or a monarch with some overruling powers, or a good tradition of countrywide protests with molotov cocktails over any grievance, one can go on.
Now they all converged to something averaging the working mechanisms of the 80s and 90s, and that doesn’t work. Well, if you take two kinda similar mechanisms and make something from a common subset of their parts, it won’t work if they are not redundant.
The bribery tends to come after - book deals and speaking fees, executive jobs and board positions for family members, assorted Tom DeLay style junkets to resorts flagged as “fact finding” missions.
The access that professional lobbyists provide are gatekeeping mechanisms to make sure the person who will eventually bribe you is legit.
This is the fundamental message of the modern Democratic Party.
“Yes, you will still be boiled alive, but we will do it more slowly.”
And what’s extra hair-pullingly-frustrating about it all is that they’ll get blamed for the boil anyway… which will result in Republicans winning and turning up the heat.
There’s no way out. Its either a crew that will compromise and fritter away what time we have left or a crew that will pedal-to-the-metal straight off the cliff.
Just enough to get elected, never enough to solve the problem. Job security…
That’s not a joke by the way.
That’s an inherent trait of “liberal democracies” such as most (EDIT: democracies) in the world.
When they were forming, each had something else to compensate for this, be it a constitutional right of the military to change governments and ban parties, or quotas for party representation, or a monarch with some overruling powers, or a good tradition of countrywide protests with molotov cocktails over any grievance, one can go on.
Now they all converged to something averaging the working mechanisms of the 80s and 90s, and that doesn’t work. Well, if you take two kinda similar mechanisms and make something from a common subset of their parts, it won’t work if they are not redundant.
I wish we’d just outlaw lobbying… I want an electric economy car… But all that gets built are stupid SUV junk that nobody can afford.
Idk if I want to live in a country where its a crime to talk to your elected representatives.
But I would like to live in a country where I could talk to my representative outside of a fundraising event or private service.
Yeah, but this is pretty much bribery with extra steps
The bribery tends to come after - book deals and speaking fees, executive jobs and board positions for family members, assorted Tom DeLay style junkets to resorts flagged as “fact finding” missions.
The access that professional lobbyists provide are gatekeeping mechanisms to make sure the person who will eventually bribe you is legit.