Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) has “been with the Republicans” since Congress returned, after the Michigan Democrat endorsed former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) in the midterms.
“She’s been with the Republicans ever since she’s come back. So she’s been on the Republican side of the aisle,” Ocasio-Cortez said during an appearance on “The Don Lemon Show” that aired Thursday.
“This is just the epitome of a certain kind of transactional politics,” she added. “And it’s really sad.”
Much like Sinema, there are MANY of these DINOs who act as Republican sleepers, just waiting for their activation to inflict the most damage. Once that capital is expended, well, then time to be open Republican.
Schumer, Jeffries, Stevens, Fetterman are Sinema. There are many more (e.g., DWS in FL, and Gilibrand in NY)
This is why. Nothing will change until we get these traitors out
How are they getting elected in the first place? Are they making appealing campaign promises, then reneging on them or are they just put forth as “your local DNC appointed representative - what are you going to do, vote republican instead?”?
All conservatives are pathological liars. As crazy as living a lie would seem to a normal person, lying at all times is perfectly comfortable for conservatives. So they use that well-practiced skill to their advantage. A conservative will lie about what they want for lunch if they think it will benefit them in some small way.
Every word uttered by a conservative is deception or manipulation. Whether it’s a politician, a colleague or dear, sweet grandma baking cookies, never trust any conservative. They are instinctive manipulators. Always have been.
There’s no requirement for politicians to uphold campaign promises, and no penalty to reneg, so yeah.
It’s tough because the nature of a Representative Democracy means we should empower representatives to make decisions that we ourselves wouldn’t necessarily make – much like parents stopping children from eating candy every day. They should ideally have a full-time job of educating themselves, consulting experts, figuring out what is best for their constituents.
haha. Funny. I know.
But maybe there is a middle-ground where we can not keep them so rigid to campaign promises, but permit Recall votes at any time during their terms on any elected official – even if the threshold may be higher at 60 or 70% to prevent too much knee-jerk reactivity.
Corruption can and should be treated as an act of treason to democracy, and should have legitimate criminal consequences.
The vast majority do not have a problem with representatives changing their opinions based on new information or empiric evidence. That’s what is expected of moral and ethical leadership acting in good faith. The expectation is that there must be logical consistency, and actions must be based on attempts to do what is morally and ethically justifiable.
The problem is they don’t even attempt to do any of that. They just lie to win and essentially tell their constituents to go fuck themselves. That is corruption, and lying only to defy the will of the people should be treated as the most serious crime possible in a democracy.
For the most part there hasn’t been much competition because they’re the only ones who get funding from rich people.
There’s a lot to unpack on this but you’ve got gist.
At the root? America is just a very conservative country, and it has backwards laws on the books that only accelerates our downward spiral. It’s made more conservative because the wealth gap has widened so much and billionaires and psychopathic corporations blindly pursuing profit only care about enriching themselves – and they can now freely buy media megaphones and dupe the masses while simultaneously eroding education and making the electorate more short-sighted, easier to dupe. (Hence why Trump said, “I love the poorly educated” and “Smart people don’t like me.”
So the Overton Window drifts right; sensible policies that would be center-left by European or Canadian standards get painted as radical communism, etc.
Democrats as I noted in another comment below are timid because they’re up against a more powerful force and partly corrupted from within themselves. The corrupt (and naive) have sold the party on the notion that, “Hey, we can never persuade the electorate. We can never compete with the megaphones of the right, so best we can do is be Republican-Lite, lest we’re perceived as commies by the poorly educated electorate.”
So Overton Window keeps being defined by the Right, so goes the country…
That is… Unless gas prices go up lol.
Edit: I should say there are things to be hopeful for. Talarico has a damn near AOC platform and just won Texas. A Sanders-backed progressive just beat Collins in Maine finally. A Medicare For All and Muslim just won the battleground state of Michigan. So the bullshit that progressivism doesn’t sell and we have to cater to the blind has been largely debunked.
Yeah, let’s go back to the small tent and get rid of people who only agree with us 95% of the time. Screw having a sustainable electoral majority. Ideological Purity Now!
Lol they’re not just Republican sleepers, they’re quite literally foreign nation assets as well. Cuba is unsurprisingly pretty good at this
Lol Cuba? Which one is an asset from Cuba?
So close. Soooo close.
Cuba? Not Israel?
I think they’re the same picture, but even if, the output/consequences is the same.
Republicans are heavily compromised by Russia (and in general the BRICS orbit, more accurately), along with Israel, and domestic billionaire oligarchs.
Democrats are heavily compromised by Israel and domestic billionaire oligarchs as well, but since they’re the lesser evil they also attract a subset of do-gooders trying to push back against the corruption. Our job is to amplify their voices to the best we can and broaden the work the likes of Sanders kicked off years ago.
Oh yeah I agree, I just wanted to make the distinction that our corruption is as much of a melting pot as our population is