Massie was against it. Need a Massie/Bernie ticket
nozzlegear 12 hours ago [-]
At 84 years old, Bernie is older than both Trump and Biden and probably shouldn't be running for anything.
jmalicki 12 hours ago [-]
And regardless of your feelings on his political positions, in his extremely lengthy time in the House and Senate, he has only gotten three bills he sponsored passed - two renaming post offices, and a VA benefit increase.
Despite having a position of power for a very long time, he has been completely ineffective at wielding that power to achieve any of his goals.
yabutlivnWoods 6 hours ago [-]
If his goal was just get bills passed, sure
As a Senator he is invited around the world to discuss his ideas
jmalicki 5 hours ago [-]
And how has that changed anything?
If he was not able to change policy in any way as a Senator, how would he be able to do so as a President?
He can veto a bill then get it overridden. He has already proven 100% he lets the more conservative parts of Congress walk all over him - he can have the best ideas in the world but that won't change a thing.
If you want someone to make people discuss ideas - great, you can be at a think tank. The point of electing someone to political office is to get bills passed, so that things actually change.
yabutlivnWoods 4 hours ago [-]
Your claim is his acting as a voice for America abroad has not benefited the US?
"Walk all over..." when he is clearly out numbered not just in Congress but by voters. You want him to show up with a flamethrower and show what he's really made of?
You're not at all engaged in a sincere discussion. Coming off like an intentional astroturfer just out to propagate Bernie hate
Don't get me wrong I am not a Bernie Bro. Just aware there is a world outside him working against him this whole time too.
jmalicki 17 minutes ago [-]
He can do that without being an elected congressman.
If you are elected to congress, your job is to get bills passed.
If you like his politics, there are other people like Elizabeth Warren that have remarkably similar political positions, yet are some of the most highly effective politicians in the sense of enacting policy.
Oh, but she is a woman. So better support Bernie instead.
The conspiracy of people who hate the left are the ones who prop of Bernie, because he is a joke. The more the left supports Bernie, the more people like Warren struggle to get elected, and the authoritarian likes that because Warren is actually a formidable foe, so they want to prop up ineffective people like Bernie instead.
genxy 11 hours ago [-]
This is like measuring programmer value in klocs.
jmalicki 11 hours ago [-]
When klocs is approximately 0 that is telling.
occamofsandwich 11 hours ago [-]
Short enough to possibly be correct.
techteach00 11 hours ago [-]
True. Maybe Ro Khanna/Massie. Honestly those good tickets have minimal support. People don't pay attention enough. Will get more establishment figures. Probably Rubio vs Newsom. No reason to vote then.
lovich 8 hours ago [-]
If you think the democrats and the republicans are equivalent you are purposefully ignorant.
We are getting what would be admin ending scandals every other day for over a year and actual Americans are being killed because of their poor governance.
Goddamned Americans had it too easy for too long an forgot how much infrastructure and planning goes into running a superpower.
jen20 11 hours ago [-]
> No reason to vote then.
It is not possible to eye roll hard enough at this.
In the US (and to a lesser extent, the UK), you vote for whichever you believe to be the least bad candidate, or tactically for whoever will keep whoever you believe to be the most bad candidate out of office.
It is exceptionally uncommon that you get to vote for someone rather than against.
JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago [-]
> In the US (and to a lesser extent, the UK), you vote for whichever you believe to be the least bad candidate
And you aggressively prioritise primaries if you aren't in a non-swing state.
lapcat 9 hours ago [-]
> tactically
IMO voting tactically makes about as much sense as choosing lottery numbers tactically. Perhaps it makes less sense, because people do actually win the lottery. Unless you are a Supreme Court Justice, the odds that your vote will change the election outcome are practically nil.
It's a bit odd to believe that you can't change who the candidates are, but you can nonetheless change which candidate wins. In fact, you can't do either. Collectively, we determine both, but each voter is only a grain of sand in the collective heap.
jen20 2 hours ago [-]
Tactical voting is far more important in the UK, where there are typically more than two candidates to vote for in any given seat, the government is not directly elected and most candidates are not selected in primaries.
It's _incredibly_ common there to vote to unseat the current government, or avoid splitting the vote on one side of the spectrum or the other. For example, I personally voted for a candidate I had almost no agreement with because they were most likely to unseat someone who supported Brexit. And it worked.
lovich 8 hours ago [-]
The snowflake doesn’t feel responsible for the avalanche
tmaly 12 hours ago [-]
Did I miss something, or was Section 702 the same thing used on Trump during his first term?
jauntywundrkind 12 hours ago [-]
The Bluesky thread on the midnight session where Johnson tried to ram through a 5 year approval with significant revisions no one had seen is gobsmacking. Most transparent, only if you are looking for most transparently corrupt and evil administration ever. This is such a vile thing to do to a democracy.
https://bsky.app/profile/lizagoitein.bsky.social/post/3mjpar...
America's greatest digital senator (by country miles) has also ongoingly been posting up a storm about how the current usage of FISA has more Bush era secret interpretations they won't tell us, that is authorizing them to spy broadly on Americans. One of many examples:
https://bsky.app/profile/wyden.senate.gov/post/3mjkquz34uc2a
JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago [-]
This is actually an issue where almost anyone calling their electeds in the House and Senate will probably reach someone where the is a tiny, marginal effect.
LocalH 12 hours ago [-]
when will the dems learn that the dnc is just republican lite
we need completely new thought to unseat "both" sides of the US government and return it to washington's ideal of "political parties fucking suck" (paraphrased)
nozzlegear 12 hours ago [-]
> when will the dems learn that the dnc is just republican lite
When will "when will the dems learn that the dnc is just republican lite" enjoyers learn that there's an ocean of difference between dems and republicans, and that most Americans aren't going to throw that away over votes on issues that they're either fine with or, at best, indifferent to? Like it or not, this is unlikely to rank in most people's top five most important issues come November.
JumpCrisscross 12 hours ago [-]
> When will "when will the dems learn that the dnc is just republican lite" enjoyers learn
On the bright side, these folks tend to be civically and electoral uninvolved. So they aren’t having any net effect on policy, other than slightly endorsing the status quo.
lesuorac 11 hours ago [-]
Eh, while I do think you should go out and vote I'm not sure you can exactly say they're endorsing the status quo.
Take 2024 vs 2020 where turnout dropped 4% [1] and compare it to the 2025 NYC mayoral race where more people in 2025 voted for Mamdani [2] then voted in 2021 at all [3]. IMO, the horrendous turnout is a reflection of the horrendous candidates that run.
> not sure you can exactly say they're endorsing the status quo
That's not the intent. But de facto, they either have no or that effect. Particularly in primaries.
There is also a huge messaging difference between casting a blank ballot and not showing up at all. The presumption is you can safely ignore someone who doesn't vote for several cycles because they tend to keep not voting for novel–but consistently exculpatory–excuses each time around. You have to still pay attention to intermittent voters if you don't want to get caught wrong-footed by a wave.
LocalH 12 hours ago [-]
when the people who endorse the "status quo" (which is itself rapidly shifting if you track the US political sphere before the modern day) number in the millions, it's a bit more than slightly
normalize supporting a proper civics test before the right to vote is granted. you don't have to agree with any political topics, but you have to understand how politics actually work before you can cast a vote
JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago [-]
> it's a bit more than slightly
I've voted in New York and Wyoming. In a general election, my Presidential vote does not practically count. As a result, I can typically throw it for a third party as a messaging vote. (If New York or Wyoming are turning out to be contested, the fight was won elesewhere.)
If you're in a swing state and you don't vote, you're about as important for the Presdiential general-election campaign you would not have voted for if you bothered to show up as an actual opposition voter. (Depressing turnout among unlikely voters who might vote for the other candidate is a real, precedented, cosultants-who-specialise-in-this-exclusively social-media-advertising turnout strategy.)
Computer0 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago [-]
> the typical GenX reply
...not Gen X.
7 hours ago [-]
will4274 9 hours ago [-]
You'd be better off if you stopped seeing groups of tens of millions of people as enemies. That sort of thinking is how genocides start.
gnerd00 12 hours ago [-]
> Like it or not
the exact words used by Hillary for President people, with utter sincerity !
nozzlegear 10 hours ago [-]
Hillary would've been an excellent president, and I say that with utter sincerity.
> My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.
– Hillary Clinton
That's the kind of person I want in the Oval Office.
jst1fthsdys 9 hours ago [-]
"We came. We Saw. He died."
Not the kind I do, personally. But most of our presidents have been war criminals. So she would have been a great one, yes.
nozzlegear 8 hours ago [-]
Everyone agrees that Libya was a boondoggle, and that what you've quoted was a poorly judged gaffe.
> But most of our presidents have been war criminals.
Hyperbole poisons debate.
parineum 4 hours ago [-]
You want a person who believes that, not Hillary Clinton.
krapp 8 hours ago [-]
Yeah right now the "clearly superior candidate" is (checking notes) crashing the global economy with a holy war against Iran to distract from his criminal conspiracy to hide his complicity in sex trafficking and abuse, posting AI images of himself as Jesus to spite the Pope, sending armed thugs into blue states to harass people and shoot them dead in the street, destroyed America's research and science infrastructure, his cabinet is full of conspiracy theorists, nazis and fascists, he's deranged, senile, definitely bought by Russia... and has in the space of a few months utterly ruined America's reputation and credibility throughout the world.
And yet people still insist Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris were "the worst candidates ever," and that there was simply no choice. They want to turn all of the chaos and stupidity of the current administration into some kind of referendum on how bad the other side is, and they'll even claim that there would be absolutely no difference regardless of who was in charge. Yet even if that were the case, somehow, Trump is still better. For reasons I guess. Other than not being a woman.
Trump literally made a meme of himself lounging at the resort he planned to build on the ruins of Gaza but we couldn't vote for Kamala because she was the Zionist.
People really do get the government they deserve.
LocalH 12 hours ago [-]
"far right" or "slightly left of far right" is a shitty choice, especially when "left vs right" is different comparing the US to the rest of the world
even the smallest-c conservative in the US is probably more right-wing than the furthest of the right in Europe (although they're trying really hard to prove that false)
the ocean you speak of is but a tiny puddle when you look at the whole of human political history
when is the dnc going to come out against genocide? oh, they're not? well then i don't care
i do agree, the complacency of US voters is the true root of the problem, one that the duopoly of politics strongly capitalizes on
i am not advocating violence, but i'm looking at history when i say that this is why revolutions happen
12 hours ago [-]
will4274 9 hours ago [-]
> when you look at the whole of human political history
When you look at the whole of human political history, the vast majority of politican systems have been authoritarian. Anybody who supports a system of government where average people get to vote (as both the Republicans and Democrats do) is part of the super ultra far left.
Do you not see how silly this is?
nozzlegear 9 hours ago [-]
> "far right" or "slightly left of far right" is a shitty choice, especially when "left vs right" is different comparing the US to the rest of the world
> even the smallest-c conservative in the US is probably more right-wing than the furthest of the right in Europe (although they're trying really hard to prove that false)
This is just more of the same "Bernie would've been right of center in Europe" tripe that Reddit has been repeating since 2015 – it's a tired argument that doesn't take into account things like immigration policies, gender identity, racial justice, stances on abortion, and so on.
> when is the dnc going to come out against genocide? oh, they're not? well then i don't care
This is a non-sequitur. I'm not interested in debating Israel, Gaza and genocide on the internet, or watching you use them as a blanket justification for disengagement.
Tanoc 1 hours ago [-]
>This is just more of the same "Bernie would've been right of center in Europe" tripe that Reddit has been repeating since 2015 – it's a tired argument that doesn't take into account things like immigration policies, gender identity, racial justice, stances on abortion, and so on.
When you look at the actual negotiations and implementation of policies that have happened, the Democrats now have a much smaller gap between themselves and the Republicans on the world stage. There are a handful of distinct issues that they are polar opposites on, but in terms of actual governance the leadership of the two parties don't stray too far from the same direction compared to Western Europe and South America. While in relative terms they were very divergent from eachother in the 1920s and the 1960s, they've once again moved closer together and we have not yet hit another divergence point. There is a stagnation and regression that appear very similar because public sentiment has rapidly changed and progressed since 2012. It's very visible in the way many of the same Democrats are around now as in 2008 (and some from even 1996) and still act like they're from that era where we were at "the end of history", while the Republicans have many newer members that have jumped in since 2016 that act like they're from the earlier era of the 1950s and 1960s when concepts like civil rights and second wave feminism were still widely contentious. Regular Americans just sort of view the period from 1968 to 2001 as a relatively uniform era politically because there weren't events that up-ended entire hemispheres in a U.S.-centric way the way World War II, The Cuban Missile Crisis, and 9/11 had. Yet between 2001 and 2012 there were several up-ending events such as the 9/11, the '08 financial crisis, and the rapid adoption of the smartphone and thus instant global communication starting in 2010. Since the normal public have that view what has happened since 2012 makes the stances the Democrats have retained from before that monumental shift appear not only outdated, but harmfully backwards, especially as more people who were not alive during that "end of history" era come to be of voting age. That means the two major parties can seem to be the same face wearing two masks right now because neither have kept up with left wing public sentiment.
Despite having a position of power for a very long time, he has been completely ineffective at wielding that power to achieve any of his goals.
As a Senator he is invited around the world to discuss his ideas
If he was not able to change policy in any way as a Senator, how would he be able to do so as a President?
He can veto a bill then get it overridden. He has already proven 100% he lets the more conservative parts of Congress walk all over him - he can have the best ideas in the world but that won't change a thing.
If you want someone to make people discuss ideas - great, you can be at a think tank. The point of electing someone to political office is to get bills passed, so that things actually change.
"Walk all over..." when he is clearly out numbered not just in Congress but by voters. You want him to show up with a flamethrower and show what he's really made of?
You're not at all engaged in a sincere discussion. Coming off like an intentional astroturfer just out to propagate Bernie hate
Don't get me wrong I am not a Bernie Bro. Just aware there is a world outside him working against him this whole time too.
If you are elected to congress, your job is to get bills passed.
If you like his politics, there are other people like Elizabeth Warren that have remarkably similar political positions, yet are some of the most highly effective politicians in the sense of enacting policy.
Oh, but she is a woman. So better support Bernie instead.
The conspiracy of people who hate the left are the ones who prop of Bernie, because he is a joke. The more the left supports Bernie, the more people like Warren struggle to get elected, and the authoritarian likes that because Warren is actually a formidable foe, so they want to prop up ineffective people like Bernie instead.
We are getting what would be admin ending scandals every other day for over a year and actual Americans are being killed because of their poor governance.
Goddamned Americans had it too easy for too long an forgot how much infrastructure and planning goes into running a superpower.
It is not possible to eye roll hard enough at this.
In the US (and to a lesser extent, the UK), you vote for whichever you believe to be the least bad candidate, or tactically for whoever will keep whoever you believe to be the most bad candidate out of office.
It is exceptionally uncommon that you get to vote for someone rather than against.
And you aggressively prioritise primaries if you aren't in a non-swing state.
IMO voting tactically makes about as much sense as choosing lottery numbers tactically. Perhaps it makes less sense, because people do actually win the lottery. Unless you are a Supreme Court Justice, the odds that your vote will change the election outcome are practically nil.
It's a bit odd to believe that you can't change who the candidates are, but you can nonetheless change which candidate wins. In fact, you can't do either. Collectively, we determine both, but each voter is only a grain of sand in the collective heap.
It's _incredibly_ common there to vote to unseat the current government, or avoid splitting the vote on one side of the spectrum or the other. For example, I personally voted for a candidate I had almost no agreement with because they were most likely to unseat someone who supported Brexit. And it worked.
Left publication also has a scoop on the negotiations with Freedom caucus too that proceeded this; rather interesting: https://prospect.org/2026/04/17/mike-johnson-fisa-fiasco-sec...
America's greatest digital senator (by country miles) has also ongoingly been posting up a storm about how the current usage of FISA has more Bush era secret interpretations they won't tell us, that is authorizing them to spy broadly on Americans. One of many examples: https://bsky.app/profile/wyden.senate.gov/post/3mjkquz34uc2a
we need completely new thought to unseat "both" sides of the US government and return it to washington's ideal of "political parties fucking suck" (paraphrased)
When will "when will the dems learn that the dnc is just republican lite" enjoyers learn that there's an ocean of difference between dems and republicans, and that most Americans aren't going to throw that away over votes on issues that they're either fine with or, at best, indifferent to? Like it or not, this is unlikely to rank in most people's top five most important issues come November.
On the bright side, these folks tend to be civically and electoral uninvolved. So they aren’t having any net effect on policy, other than slightly endorsing the status quo.
Take 2024 vs 2020 where turnout dropped 4% [1] and compare it to the 2025 NYC mayoral race where more people in 2025 voted for Mamdani [2] then voted in 2021 at all [3]. IMO, the horrendous turnout is a reflection of the horrendous candidates that run.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_New_York_City_mayoral_ele...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_New_York_City_mayoral_ele...
That's not the intent. But de facto, they either have no or that effect. Particularly in primaries.
There is also a huge messaging difference between casting a blank ballot and not showing up at all. The presumption is you can safely ignore someone who doesn't vote for several cycles because they tend to keep not voting for novel–but consistently exculpatory–excuses each time around. You have to still pay attention to intermittent voters if you don't want to get caught wrong-footed by a wave.
normalize supporting a proper civics test before the right to vote is granted. you don't have to agree with any political topics, but you have to understand how politics actually work before you can cast a vote
I've voted in New York and Wyoming. In a general election, my Presidential vote does not practically count. As a result, I can typically throw it for a third party as a messaging vote. (If New York or Wyoming are turning out to be contested, the fight was won elesewhere.)
If you're in a swing state and you don't vote, you're about as important for the Presdiential general-election campaign you would not have voted for if you bothered to show up as an actual opposition voter. (Depressing turnout among unlikely voters who might vote for the other candidate is a real, precedented, cosultants-who-specialise-in-this-exclusively social-media-advertising turnout strategy.)
...not Gen X.
the exact words used by Hillary for President people, with utter sincerity !
> My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.
– Hillary Clinton
That's the kind of person I want in the Oval Office.
Not the kind I do, personally. But most of our presidents have been war criminals. So she would have been a great one, yes.
> But most of our presidents have been war criminals.
Hyperbole poisons debate.
And yet people still insist Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris were "the worst candidates ever," and that there was simply no choice. They want to turn all of the chaos and stupidity of the current administration into some kind of referendum on how bad the other side is, and they'll even claim that there would be absolutely no difference regardless of who was in charge. Yet even if that were the case, somehow, Trump is still better. For reasons I guess. Other than not being a woman.
Trump literally made a meme of himself lounging at the resort he planned to build on the ruins of Gaza but we couldn't vote for Kamala because she was the Zionist.
People really do get the government they deserve.
even the smallest-c conservative in the US is probably more right-wing than the furthest of the right in Europe (although they're trying really hard to prove that false)
the ocean you speak of is but a tiny puddle when you look at the whole of human political history
when is the dnc going to come out against genocide? oh, they're not? well then i don't care
i do agree, the complacency of US voters is the true root of the problem, one that the duopoly of politics strongly capitalizes on
i am not advocating violence, but i'm looking at history when i say that this is why revolutions happen
When you look at the whole of human political history, the vast majority of politican systems have been authoritarian. Anybody who supports a system of government where average people get to vote (as both the Republicans and Democrats do) is part of the super ultra far left.
Do you not see how silly this is?
> even the smallest-c conservative in the US is probably more right-wing than the furthest of the right in Europe (although they're trying really hard to prove that false)
This is just more of the same "Bernie would've been right of center in Europe" tripe that Reddit has been repeating since 2015 – it's a tired argument that doesn't take into account things like immigration policies, gender identity, racial justice, stances on abortion, and so on.
> when is the dnc going to come out against genocide? oh, they're not? well then i don't care
This is a non-sequitur. I'm not interested in debating Israel, Gaza and genocide on the internet, or watching you use them as a blanket justification for disengagement.
When you look at the actual negotiations and implementation of policies that have happened, the Democrats now have a much smaller gap between themselves and the Republicans on the world stage. There are a handful of distinct issues that they are polar opposites on, but in terms of actual governance the leadership of the two parties don't stray too far from the same direction compared to Western Europe and South America. While in relative terms they were very divergent from eachother in the 1920s and the 1960s, they've once again moved closer together and we have not yet hit another divergence point. There is a stagnation and regression that appear very similar because public sentiment has rapidly changed and progressed since 2012. It's very visible in the way many of the same Democrats are around now as in 2008 (and some from even 1996) and still act like they're from that era where we were at "the end of history", while the Republicans have many newer members that have jumped in since 2016 that act like they're from the earlier era of the 1950s and 1960s when concepts like civil rights and second wave feminism were still widely contentious. Regular Americans just sort of view the period from 1968 to 2001 as a relatively uniform era politically because there weren't events that up-ended entire hemispheres in a U.S.-centric way the way World War II, The Cuban Missile Crisis, and 9/11 had. Yet between 2001 and 2012 there were several up-ending events such as the 9/11, the '08 financial crisis, and the rapid adoption of the smartphone and thus instant global communication starting in 2010. Since the normal public have that view what has happened since 2012 makes the stances the Democrats have retained from before that monumental shift appear not only outdated, but harmfully backwards, especially as more people who were not alive during that "end of history" era come to be of voting age. That means the two major parties can seem to be the same face wearing two masks right now because neither have kept up with left wing public sentiment.