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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Hey, everyone on this thread saying "do something useful". The democrats are currently the house minority. The Republicans will torpedo anything useful they propose, and have already signaled that they will do so. The dems are blocking what they can when it is proposed. This is performative, yes. That's exactly what a minority party does outside of responding to what the majority party dictates, which dems are also doing. Johnson and conservative committees decide on what is brought to the floor, so no amount of hard work magically makes good legislation happen.
To add to that, this is three Democrats who spent like three minutes talking about and signing something a staffer typed up. It's not like we were about to have free healthcare but we can't now because they decided to spend months of work on this.
It used to be that all votes were not completely along party lines and the members of a legislative body would actually... deliberate. Every issue and vote now has only one dimension that matters.
Sure, but it is almost an inevitable result of FPTP, the makeup of the Senate, etc, and not just because people don't want to deliberate. The two parties are living in completely different realities at this point and that does not set a stage for deliberation. I don't have an answer for you, and I'm not sure that anyone in America truly does right now. There is no simple answer, that is certain. We should all be very suspect of anyone who tries to sell us one.
Honestly, it kinda makes my eyes roll too. I would never argue this stuff is effective. It's just not diverting any resources or attention away from anything important.
I disagree entirely with your middle paragraph. They cannot "bring anything to the table". That's the entire point of what I said. The minority members cannot just bring things up for vote like that. Consider the turmoil that would cause when conservatives are in the minority. Like it or no, there is not a single productive thing Democratic House members can do but posture, block, and campaign right now. It's the way our government is constructed and a natural side effect of bipartisanship dying when the conservatives decided to go fully insane.
I'm with you, it's very demoralizing. Let's not forget, there are a ton of useful things going on behind the scenes. Democrats are blocking harmful legislation where they can and you really can't overstate the importance of campaigning in an election year. We don't have the power to introduce or pass legislation, but that does not mean important things not happening. Defense is still essential, even if you don't get a bunch of shiny new things to show for it.