Democratic National Committee vice chair David Hogg’s plan to spend $20 million to primary older Democratic incumbents in Congress has sparked intense anger from some lawmakers.
“Fighting Democrats might get likes online, but it’s not what restores majorities,” she added.
There are currently 2 vacant seats in Congress, which won’t be filled until the fall, left empty by Democrats who died in office. We’re not going to restore majorities by electing people who keep dropping dead.
Any other job where you fail as hard and as often as those old fossils do, you get the fucking boot. Why do they think they’re entitled to their fucking seat? You fucked up and have been responsible for having the world’s worst person elected twice now. Time to go.
Let me guess - the older lawmakers who voted for some of Trump’s cabinet nominations?
Exactly. And those older law makers get in the way anytime people want to even attempt to make things better.
has sparked intense anger from some lawmakers.
Who gives a shit. What do potential voters think?
Useless old parasites upset they are being dislodged from the host.
“What a disappointment from leadership. I can think of a million better things to do with twenty million dollars right now,” swing-district Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) told Axios.
“Fighting Democrats might get likes online, but it’s not what restores majorities,” she added.
The issue is we get majorities and then nothing gets done with depresses turnout.
We don’t want to primary these old conservatives, we’d much rather them represent their constituents, but they’ve shown time and time again they won’t.
We’d rather they get out of the way and resign, but they won’t put the future of the party over their own personal power.
So fuck em.
I agree about “fuck em”, let’s get out with the old and in with the new.
But what majorities are you talking about? I keep seeing this repeated all over the internet- the sentiment that Democrats get nothing done when they have control. The problem is that I’m 33 years old and the Dems have only had control of the federal government for a few months of my life, and that’s when they passed the ACA. I can’t really make a judgement on what the Dems do when they’re in power because they largely have not been.
you owe it yourself to read up on american political history and; if you did; you would learn that every time they’ve had control of all 3 branches of government; they’ve squandered it by letting a one or 2 democrats derail all of their plans, meanwhile republicans steamroll over their own dissenters every time they’re in control.
you’d start to see that this pattern keeps happening again and again.
What times are these?
As I said, they have only had control for 4 months in my lifetime. Before that you need to go back to 1961-1969 with Kennedy and Johnson. I would actually need to do more research to find out whether they had a Supermajority or not, but it’s not even worth looking up because going that far back in time shifts the politics of the parties significantly and is not very relevant to today. The Democratic Party still has plenty of Southern Conservatives all the way into the Carter years.
So I would love to know what pattern you are seeing.
I think they’re including technical majorities that failed to effect meaningful change because of DINO shitbags like Manchin and Sinema.
Even without those DINOs they still didn’t have a Supermajority. Honestly I think most people just don’t understand the difference between a majority and Supermajority and mistakenly believe 50 is enough in the Senate.
have you ever wondered why republicans don’t need a super-majorities or why dems give a rats ass about dino where republicans dont every-single-time?
is that not the definition of a rigged game?
democrats had full control from 1993–1995, 2009–2011, 2021–2023 and majority control from 2011-2015 & 2023-2024. in other words: 12 years of complete or majority control out of the last 33 years.
every single time their agenda was thwarted by one or two lone dissenters within their caucuses; where republicans completely steamrolled over their own dissenters.
You should looked up how Congress works. They need a Supermajority to pass most legislation, and the Dems only had that for about 4 months from 2009-2010. The last time they had that control was under Kennedy/Johnson in the 60’s.
The problem is that I’m 33 years old and the Dems have only had control of the federal government for a few months of my life, and that’s when they passed the ACA.
What?
We literally had it 2021-2023…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congresses
And from 07 to 11…
What are you talk.ing about “a few months”?
They had control of the Presidency and the House of Representatives. I never said they didn’t have that- I said they didn’t have control of the Federal Government.
The Senate was tenuous. Just having 50 Dem Senators (well, that’s not true either because you need to include Independents to get to 50) isn’t good enough- you need 60 votes to have a filibuster-ptoof majority. The Dems just barely scraped that together in 2009, complicated in part by Ted Kennedy’s seizure and eventual death and Al Franken delayed in getting seated due to recounts. They only had 60 votes (still including Independents) from September 24th 2009 - February 4th, 2010. 4 months of controlling the federal government.
That is why when the 2008 financial crisis happened and the Dems wanted to pas a stimulus package in 2009, they had to get Snowe, Collins, and Spectre (who would leater switch parties to get them to 60) from the Republican side in order to get that passed.
They absolutely did not have control of the Supreme Court at any point in the Biden administration and the Republican SCOTUS shut down a lot of what the Biden administration tried to do. I remember checking every day for months to see how they would rule on Student Loan forgiveness, for example.
This is why they have the perception of being powerless- because they’ve pretty much never had the power. The Republicans love people who say the Democrats are useless. They love saying Biden didn’t do what he promised when he DID and the GOP-dominated Supreme Court reversed it. They love being able to stall Democrat legislation and blaming a Democrat president. Everything the Dems have done outside of those 4 months have required careful compromises and negotiation with the GOP to pass.
They had control of the Presidency and the House of Representatives. I never said they didn’t have that- I said they didn’t have control of the Federal Government
They also had 50 D senators and Harris as the tiebreaker…
They had the whole federal government for two years but didn’t get shit done because suddenly the guy who campaigned on being a literal “senate whisper” who said he could get R votes wasn’t able to get every D vote.
If you can’t understand 2021-2023, stop trying to cover earlier too.
We don’t have a parliamentary system where a party can kick out an elected member for not supporting the party’s agenda and replace them with someone else. Each member is individually elected to represent their state or district. For better or for worse, they get to decide what is best for their constituents and their constituents get to respond in the next election.
Joe Manchin was the major impediment in 2021-2023. He mostly supported the party’s agenda but had some sticking points. He had to be onboard with whatever passed given the razor thin majority.
I saw all these screeds about how he should be kicked out of the party, but the objective reality is there is very little you can do to pressure a centrist Democrat from a state that voted for Trump by 50 points. The only option available was to placate him and come to a compromise (which he ultimately agreed to for major climate change reduction investment).
The reality is that the Democratic Party is not monolithic, it has some centrists who don’t support some of the more ambitious goals of the party. If you want bigger action, you have to have a bigger majority. Slim majorities give small wings of the party outsized influence on policy.
We don’t have a parliamentary system where a party can kick out an elected member for not supporting the party’s agenda and replace them with someone else.
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That doesn’t mean no pressure can be applied, if it does then Biden is a liar and ignorant of how our system works… Why didn’t you speak up when he kept claiming he could apply pressure to get Republican votes? But regardless of if it could have worked, Biden refused to try public pressure
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The fact that we can’t kick them out of the party is why the new DNC is advocating to primary them out.
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You’re skipping the whole “fillibuster” thing. You need 60 to even have a vote on a lot of issues.
The filibuster that the Democrats always refuse to abolish. The fact that the filibuster still exists in 2025 is proof that they don’t care about Americans.
So the best thing the Democrats could do when they had a super majority was pass the Republican healthcare plan? And you don’t see why that’s a problem?
was pass the Republican healthcare plan?
Technically it was a more conservative version of the Republican healthcare plan…
But that comment also incredibly misrepresents how long Dems have held dual majorities, which is a much bigger issue.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congresses
Who said anything about dual majorities?
Yes. Sadly, it was RomneyCare, and the very first thing Senator Biden did in negotiations was throw out the public option as a pre-concession to republicans. They hadn’t even began debating the bill yet.
Biden was the VP at that point but yeah fuck that shit
Oops, fixed, ty
The same healthcare plan the Republicans have been raging against ever since it was passed?
Are you a Russian bot or something? Because that’s literally the only explanation I can think of for someone calling Obamacare a Republican plan.
It was literally based on Mitt Romney’s healthcare bill in Massachusetts. Unless you think the guy that ran on the Republican ticket AGAINST Obama wasn’t a Republican.
Romney was indeed a Republican, but a moderate one. The Church of Latter Day Saints has always been a weird outlier in American politics, and as a Mormon Romney largely follows that tradition. Utah itself is a great reminder that the trends Americans see with the two-party system, where every issue is a binary choice with the GOP or DNC each picking an option, the reality on the ground is more complicated.
It’s also worth looking to how Romney was the first senator in US history to vote to impeach his own party’s president. He did it again the 2nd time Trump was impeached too, along with a handful of others.
That’s not to say that I like Romney at all, or even that I like the ACA or even that I like the Democrats.But Romney is perhaps the furthest left Republican and created that initial bill with the intention of being a bipartisan compromise. He’s far closer to Neoliberal than Nazi. And while it was the foundation, his bill was NOT the final bill that passed into law. The bill that did pass saw 100% of Republican senators vote against it. It passed 220-215 in the House with 1 meaningless Republican vote. To say it was a Republican bill is simply historically inaccurate.
The criticism is valid but antiquated. It was Romney’s healthcare framework for Massachusetts, and Obama (in typical fashion) led with a compromise to attempt to avoid a fight with conservatives and conservative democrats. By agreeing to private insurance mandates and not even fighting for a viable public option, I agree that Obama really missed a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
The reason why it doesn’t make sense now to level the criticism that it’s a “Republican healthcare plan” is that we’ve shifted several Overton windows to the right since then. A “Republican healthcare plan” in 2025 is an uninsured ER visit, where they are allowed to turn you away; you die in the street, after which your surviving family is billed for the corpse cleanup.
That compromise with a group that had been screeching about hiw they won’t work with you for the previous 15 years is exactly how we got to where we are today.
Yes, for sure. While everyone else was in realpolitik mode, it seemed clear to me you don’t start a negotiation with a bad faith opponent by ceding your strongest position.
Obama governed as a centrist, and while I agree he probably escaped unscathed without any long-term ill will because of it, he squandered a ton of opportunities. Oh, and we got Trump as a reaction to the GOP’s boogeyman propaganda anyway.
Calling another user a Russian bot is a civility violation so your comment is removed.
But further, the reason Obamacare is often called “a Republican plan” is two-fold:
First, there’s not a lot of daylight between Obamacare and what Mitt Romney implemented in Massachusetts as “Romneycare”. Democrats would like to believe otherwise, Republicans would like to pretend otherwise, but there it is:
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/romneycare-vs-obamacare-key-similarities-differences/
"you guys had a proven model that we built the Affordable Care Act on this template of proven, bipartisan success. Your law was the model for the nation’s law.” - Barack Obama.
Second, unlike universal health care, Obamacare forced people into the clutches of the for profit health care system when, ideally, it should have eliminated it. Forcing people to give money to companies is a Republican bulwark, not a Democratic one.
My apologies if a crosses a line with the comment, but calling the ACA Republican is demonstrably and factually false and, in my opinion, actively spreading disinformation.
The bill passed the Senate 60-39, with 1 abstaining. All 39 Republicans Senators voted against it. It passed 220-215 in the House with only 1 Republican vote.
If you want to say it wasn’t enough, that’s completely fair and I would agree. If you want to say the Democratic Party, both back then and today, is dominated by Neoliberal interests and suppresses Progressives or Socialists or whoever else then I would also agree. But none of that was the conversation- the bill that passed was demonstrably not Republican.
It was absolutely a Republican bill. The Democrats tried to implement universal healthcare in 93 but the Gingrich controlled House shut it down. If Obama and said he wanted to offer a tax break to first time gun owners, the Republicans and Fox News would have called it a communist plot to create a Democrat controlled militia. The Republicans are only ever interested in obstruction
No, I’m saying that Barack Obama, the architect of the plan, straight up told everyone he based it on Mitt Romney’s health care plan in Massachusetts.
That’s what people mean when they say “Republican Plan”. It’s a copy pasta from Mitt “Corporations are people, my friend” Romney.
Then why didn’t Republicans vote for it?
And not just votes. Republican Attorneys General across the country tried to get it overturned in the courts. The House and Senate Minority Leaders have quotes strongly against it. Romney himself did not hold any office at the time the ACA was passed, but was preparing for his next presidential campaign. He described it as “an unconscionable abuse of power…the act should be repealed”.
If you look more closely at the Massachusetts state government in 2006 when Romney was governor and passed “Romneycare”, you’ll find that the state Senate was dominated by Democrats 34-6, while the state House was dominated by Democrats 139-20-1. There’s a much, much stronger case that Romneycare in Massachusetts was a Democratic piece of legislation than there is that the ACA was Republican.
The Republicans had plenty of control of the federal government before Obama, and their plan of "leaving Americans with nothing* was already in place. That’s what the Republicans voted for in 2010 by voting against the ACA.
While this article by Axios and other recent ones seem to cast David Hogg in a bad, unproductive light, I am grateful that they brought attention to the matter.
Because I forgot to donate to his campaign, and I’m not going to be left out of that wave of support.
I do believe this is his organization’s page, Leaders We Deserve:
I’m very proud of our young progressives. Go, David!
He’s a DNC vice chair already, he’s going to be around for a long time and another sign the current DNC isn’t the DNC from just a few months ago.
Where was the outrage when AIPAC dropped money bombs on progressive primaries to silence opposition?
The DNC is dead to most USians, the party leadership just refuses to acknowledge it even when their candidates and strategies lose to literal outright fascists.
Burn it down.
Im gonna agree and disagree at the same time. Money and party ideology are absolutely problems within our political systems, BUT age is also a huuuge problem. Its in my opinion if we had a majority of the dem party under 50 we would have seen such a better fight against this fascist bullshit. Hell even a republican party thats led by a significantly younger majority may have even helped to prevent this as well.
I dunno, Oregon’s reps are pretty old and trying to fight the good fight.
Where was the outrage when AIPAC dropped money bombs on progressive primaries to silence opposition against Israel and the Genocide of Palestinians?
Well when people called it out, Eeddit and Lemmy said anyone who saw this was:
- Antisemitic for not wanting murder
- A Tankie/Russian Bot
- Somehow wanting Trump to win by having better candidate to win against Trump
- Sore losers who didn’t like a “fair” election like Trump
- A Bernie bro who hates $THING
If you look at the lemmy.world modlog, so many people calling out this were removed and banned, and then the userbase acted dumbfounded when the legitimate users were “quiet” after being banned, so it verified their bias of “everyone who disagrees with what my favorite political tells me is a bot/troll”.
I agree, I lost a huge amount of respect for the people running and moderating lemmy.world after dealing with their reactions to people simply upset that a genocide is happening.
I had an interaction with one of their mods and it was very disappointing to see them so confidently on the side of silencing voices speaking up about genocide.
Sometimes I get the feeling lemmy.world is run by a bunch of centrists who’s hobby it is to undermine leftism because they are afraid of leftwing beliefs exactly the way pathetic conservatives are, and it makes it hard to take the entire community seriously.
Some of the prominent very active low effort posters like Pugjesus have absolutely trash views when you actually get into a conversation about their beliefs.
I had an interaction with one of their mods and it was very disappointing to see them so confidently on the side of silencing voices speaking up about genocide.
Was it JeffW or JordanLund? Both of those dudes can’t help defend genocide. Especially JL, he openly hates Black Lives Matter.
Sometimes I get the feeling lemmy.world is run by a bunch of centrists who’s hobby it is to undermine leftism because they are afraid of leftwing beliefs exactly the way pathetic conservatives are, and it makes it hard to take the entire community seriously.
And they call us the Russian Psyop/bot. I’ve had so many people say things like “I’m a leftist, but [defending the most conservative positions possible].” At least .ml is honest in their intentions.
Some of the prominent very active low effort posters like Pugjesus have absolutely trash views when you actually get into a conversation about their beliefs.
And he’s so fucking smug! He will defend his trash opinions, say he’s the smartest one in the room, and then act like he’s the victim when he says something like “I don’t think you should ally with these people when ICE comes knocking” or “I don’t have to respect the pronouns of people I don’t like.”
Lemmy.world is a majority of my blocklist. I like a handful of users from it. But the mods and admins have cultivated a inverted MAGA mentalitt around themselves. Anytime you critize their favorite thing, you’ll be banned and blocked. And then they claim it’s evil when .ml does the exact same thing.
On top of everything above, the snark against any criticism of us foreign policy, the DNC, or neo/liberalism has been getting really gross. Completely overriding any genuine discussions or nuance about the topics.
I got perma banned by pugjesus on one of his comms for defending the blowback podcast and the journalists who created it
I’m definitely thinking about switching instances
That sounds like PugJesus and transphobia.world. “Vaguely leftist” my ass.
Also, age isn’t the problem, the problem is money and a rigid party ideology.
They’re not exactly the same thing, but they’re certainly correlated.
Dem insiders just don’t have the same values as their erstwhile voters
Dem insiders are criminally corrupt scabs who are largely to blame for fascism.
What the FUCK did they think would happen after the most catastrophic election loss in a generation? The DNC and Democratic leadership should have enough of a sense of the gravity of the situation we’re in to resign in shame. Instead they have the audacity to complain?? Seriously, understand how big of a failure you’ve been a part of and actually DO SOMETHING to help solve it.
This is the same Democratic party leadership that ran Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s campaigns. The same Democratic party leadership that cares more about stopping Bernie Sanders than about stopping Donald Trump. They know who’s side they are on, and it’s not the same side as you and me. The Democratic party is unfortunately rotten to the core, and it’s all about the money. Imagine the concept of regulatory capture applied to politicians broadly and you will understand the modern Democratic party and the state of our government. We need a party built from the ground up to represent the working class, whether it be from the ashes of the Democratic party or otherwise. Primary them at every turn or run independent campaigns where feasible. The other challenge is that mainstream media is owned by the same corporate masters, so it will be an uphill battle regardless.
This is the same Democratic party leadership that ran Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s campaigns.
Yes but no. The people who won the party leadership elections a few months ago are not neoliberal establishment dems. They’re the kind of people who would, for instance, spend 20 million dollars to primary ineffectual establishment democrats.
Hogg is. They made all the DNC leaders sign a no-challenge pledge recently. Every one of them signed it, except David Hogg.
Also, notably, he isn’t doing these primary challenges in his official DNC vice chair capacity. This is on the side as part of his PAC initiatives.
This is the same Democratic party leadership that ran Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s campaigns.
Hogg has been vice chair of the DNC for like two months…
How is he responsible for what the old guard did when almost all of them got the boot months ago?
I should have been more clear. The post I’m replying to said “what the fuck did THEY think would happen”… which I took to mean the (presumably older establishment) dems that are whining about Hogg’s call for primaries. That’s who I’m talking about.
They literally think if they sit back, do nothing, and let the Trump regime destroy our government from within, that we will be forced to come crawling back to them next election.
Fuck that, fuck the Dems, we deserve much better than these selfish pricks.
Good fucking riddance, if they wanted their seats they should have defended our country and stood against nazis.
God the more I learn about this kid the more I am impressed and behind his every move!
Can you tell me more about him? This is the first time I’ve heard of him and I can’t find much online.
Look up the Parkland School shooting. He also has a wikipedia page.
Ah thank you. Wish it said what his BA from harvard was in, but sounds like he’s got some good experience with activism and policy so that’s nice. Hopefully he can find some good candidates/
He was a student during the stoneman Douglas School shooting, then picked up skeet/trap shooting, and it’s currently one of the vice chairs of the Democratic national committee.
Did he go to college for IR? Did he work under anyone in congress? Did he have a career? Advanced degree? Youtube channel? Why is he given 20 Million dollars to fund candidates? Sounds like he might be a good fund raiser with a recognizable name. A face to bring people in, but is he qualified to be making high level decsisions on behalf of all democrats and really americans? Your goal is to run the country for americas benefit right? Not the democrat party?
Why was Elon musk allowed to spend a quarter billion Billion BILLION dollars on a single state’s supreme Court judge’s race.
I think you need to stare into this🪞 for a little longer than a little while.
I looked in the mirror and what i saw was just another question. Why couldn’t the DNC find a candidate to beat Trump or Mitch McConell or any other psychopath entrenched in office for 30+ years? Why is the DNC’s messaging and strategy so bad that they can lose an election to a deranged tyrant… twice.
Either way I looked in the future mirror and you’re starving in a camp in El Salvador, or maybe starving at your house. It’s the ghost of this christmas future. Have fun when supply chains collapse and your can’t exchange your money for food buddy!
Well that’s a great point! I thought about it, and I did some research on how the DNC selects its members. I concluded that the DNC itself is an elitist organization that does nothing but provide fake opposition to a real problem with the republicans. I find that the institution itself flys in the face of fair represenation. I’ve really felt that way since 2016 when they didn’t let Bernie take the nomination. But now I’m extra irate. and as i sit here staring at a child who is going to be determining the parties future I have real questions and concerns.
You have snarky answers and downvotes. You got a real address to my criticism or did I lose you somewhere and this is all I will get?
The old moderate Democrats are not going to change…they keep trying to reach conservatives in a “middle” that keeps moving right. I’d say getting Democrats elected, then replacing them with better democrats in future elections would be the way to go, but there’s something to be said for getting nowhere with the same.old.people.in.the.same.old.positions.election.after.election.and.never.gaining.a.meaningful.majoritye. Either the positions or the people need to change. Since the existing people are not willing to change their positions on the issues, people must be the next thing to change. The party needs to progress into the future, with younger, more vital blood.
Why would you want Bernie Sandwrs to change. He’s trying to reach conservatives because they are normal people who have been deluded and manipulated into voting for nonsense, but they basically support the same stuff normal people want.
Bernie Sanders is an Independent - one of the reasons he’s treated so badly by the DNC. There should be more Independents, as far as that goes.
many of them are Dinos, themselves, just need to rout out those first.
I’d start by looking at the ones that cried the loudest in reaction to this.
Calling then Dinos works on at least different levels. They’re old and not Democrats.
Anger because they’re useless and they’re being called out.
Here it is. The democrats they say are fine. Squibbling over 20 million. Please, are you the second most powerful political force in America or are you just a bunch of sphistocrats.
they have the same donors basically.
He is trying to get rid of the dead wood.
