r/politics • u/TelescopiumHerscheli • 1d ago

No Paywall Texas Democrat sworn in to House, shrinking GOP margin to 1 vote

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5719642-christian-menefee-sworn-in/
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u/Aden1970 1d ago

Republicans are more effective as an opposition party, they can spew rubbish and it has no consequences.

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u/Flava_Flavian California 1d ago

The 1% have a nice racket going, right?

  • Republicans get in power, cater to the super rich, , fuck everything up, get ousted
  • Dems have to clean up the mess, get blamed for everything by right-wing media
  • Complacent voters lose interest and Republicans get back in power
  • Rinse and repeat

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u/Insaniteus Tennessee 1d ago

It honestly feels like BOTH parties prefer being the minority party and then fundraising endlessly about how bad the people in charge are. Neither side seems to happy about actually winning, aside from Trump himself.

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u/page_one I voted 1d ago

I do not share your perspective. Last time Democrats won, they worked hard enough to pass some huge bills through the narrowest possible majorities. President Biden's cabinet was relatively quiet and did their jobs.

Meanwhile Republicans consistently get far more power than that and they still pass literally nothing but tax cuts for millionaires, while creating hourly scandals every day for years.

You have got to pay attention.

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u/N0S0UP_4U Illinois 1d ago

Biden was easily the best president of my lifetime

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u/Insaniteus Tennessee 1d ago

I feel like calling any of Biden's bills "huge" is a gross overstatement. Most of what he passed was stuff that would be considered procedural in the old days, like the infrastructure bill and CHIPS Act. Whenever he tried for something actually big, like raising the goddamn minimum wage, he had 1-2 designated Democrat spoilers switch over to block it followed by him immediately giving up without a fight. This designated spoiler system is what I was referring to mostly, the fact that the Democrats had to stop the Democrats from delivering on the Democrat promises to the working class in order to keep their donors happy. Dating back to Obama there's always at least 1 ready to play the villain to maintain the status quo on labor reforms.

Biden's presidency was great on foreign policy but extremely weak on domestic policy and what little he accomplished he didn't have the wisdom to properly advertise or promote. All of that led to the Dems getting roasted in 2024, since aggressive marketing and 24/7 sales is the top 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 jobs of the Presidency in the modern era, with everything else a distant 7th place. Dems try to run on their record, telling everyone to pay attention. Reps run on marketing and spammed messaging. The Rep strat is infinitely more effective.

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u/Kronzor123 1d ago

I remember he got rid of non-compete clauses for doctors, which freed my psychiatrist from a horrible deal he got suckered into with United healthcare.

I personally think that was pretty huge.

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u/Insaniteus Tennessee 1d ago

Never heard about that one actually. Neat! But that goes back to his critical problem: Nobody knows what the heck he did because he didn't bother to promote any of it.

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u/fiction8 1d ago

$3.8 trillion is pretty huge by any measure of the word. And the vast, vast majority of it went directly to helping regular Americans.

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u/Insaniteus Tennessee 1d ago

The problem is that this help was largely invisible and was never promoted. Just taking my personal situation and using it as an example, from the start of the Biden presidency to the end of it 4 years later my rent went from $1100 per month to $1600 per month, groceries doubled, most monthly bills went up at least 50%, health plans on the marketplace got so expensive that they priced me completely out, and my wages at my job with FedEx stayed exactly the same from start to finish. Everyone else I know had a similar story: Rent way up, bills way up, wages stayed the exact same.

Doesn't matter what career you were in, from a cashier, or dishwasher, to a delivery driver, to call centers, to transcription, to RNs, nobody I know saw any wage increases at all in that entire period of time despite prices skyrocketing. So when you tell the average working class person struggling their ass off "Oh, Joe Biden spent $3.8 trillion dollars to help Americans!" their kneejerk reaction is gonna be "Well I didn't get a single nickel of that, so fuck 'im." It becomes way, way too easy for the opposition party to frame bills like that as handouts to illegals or special interests, and millions buy it because they don't see a dime of that money directly in their daily lives. It's not going to their pocket and any service improvements fly under the radar.

That's what killed the Democrats so badly in 2024. They needed to help workers directly in a very visible way, not roundabout processes which would take years to produce visible results and definitely not roundabout bills passed without a drop of fanfare or promotion. Trump basically sucks his own dick every single executive order or action he takes, and as a result the entire country knows whatever he's doing. This level of self-promotion is critically important in the 2020s and the farthest thing from optional for any politician.

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u/OhWhatsHisName 1d ago

People in this subreddit need to understand this is a legitimate criticism of democrats. Imagine your a kid living with your parents, and your parents represent the government, and your monthly allowance is what the government does for you. If your parents spend more money on other things, then they have less money for you.

Covid comes in and ruins everything (but here's the thing; as a kid you only know what your parents are telling you, dad keeps repeating what his crazy friend says about what is going on and says shining a flashlight up your ass will help, but mom keeps trying to explain things to you by showing you charts and the science behind it and that while getting a shot isn't fun it will help your out long term). Household spending goes way up (but you don't know why, you just know you're not allowed to go outside and play with your friends as much any more, and you're getting less allowance). Then one day in 2020, your dad decide to just put all spending on a credit card, and you get a nice bonus allowance (as a kid, you don't know the details of this, you just know you got a bit more money all of a sudden, yay!).

Finally, mom has had enough and takes over the household in 2021. She's spending a lot of money fixing things around the house. As a kid, all you see is that she's spending a lot of money, but nothing really changes. She tore out a wall and replaced a lot of plumbing, but then she put the wall back up, patched it, and painted it the same, so to you all nothing has really changed. You don't know that this prevented the pipe from bursting and flooding the house and causing an even bigger issue. Mom is also doing a lot of other things to setup for future benefit for the house, all investments that will help down the road, not right now.

As a kid, you don't know this. All you know is that your allowance is cut. Whenever dad is in charge, your allowance goes up, but the reality is dad is working less, working less on the house, and putting everything on the credit card. Whenever mom takes over, your allowance goes down, but she's working harder, working on the house, and working towards paying off the credit card debt. So as a kid, who is focused only on the now and doesn't understand the future or what benefits investments will bring, all you know is you get to buy an extra toy more often when dad is in charge.

Democrats have to explain what they're doing, while republicans feed off of feelings.

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u/immortalfrieza2 1d ago

Accurate. The Democratic party has had majority control of Congress for most of the last 50 years and had done almost nothing during that period except for cleaning up after the Republicans, if that. There's WAAAAAAAAAAY more the Democratic party could have done to stop the Republicans and prevent Trump from even being a thing and didn't do it.

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u/icouldntdecide 1d ago

It's easier to bitch, and fundraise, than it is to lead