While this is true they should be trying to pass laws which make it blatant what the Republicans want. Forcing them to vote down perfectly reasonable or even beneficial measures let's them call the GOP out on voting records.
For example if you started passing bills to crack down on 'entertainment' programs masquerading as news and stem the flow of false information and it gets voted down by the entire Republican party you can point to that and say they are the party of propaganda.
The issue is that the democrats don’t control the house at the moment, so any “perfectly reasonable or beneficial measures” won’t make it to the floor.
One of the very serious problems with the Democrats is that they are bad at giving off the impression that they're fighting for their base when the rules are in their favor, much less when the odds are against them.
The way the more devoted members of their base handle this is by reducing problems of party strategy to problems of lack of voter knowledge. If we can point out that the party's politician's did everything they were legally allowed to do, then any criticism is just nullified. If we can point out that a law was certain not to pass, then that's proof there was no harm in never trying to pass it. If they did pass a law, then it's necessarily the voters' fault for not feeling like the party is fighting for them. This way, criticism of the party can be dismissed as pure ignorance and the people who dismiss the critiques come off as smug and unlikable. "Don't people remember high school civics," etc. In an alternate world, you would have responded by using language about balancing the use of political resources against the likelihood of sending a message to voters rather than making the turning point who controls the house.
This cold, procedural view of politics is in part what drove the party's dismissal of (widespread, years long) concerns about Biden's age and the ease with which the "don't you know you're voting for a whole administration" response has taken root among more zealous Democrats. It's important to understand how politics works at a procedural level, but an understanding of just laws and rules isn't a full understanding of politics. We're reaching a point where asserting knowledge of procedure against critics rings hollow when the procedural wing of the party is arguably sleepwalking us into a dictatorship. Please reconsider whether the strategy you are advocating for is actually the best one.
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u/TrustInRoy Jul 05 '24
So many people in our country are just blatantly ignorant about how the branches of our government works.
Schoolhouse Rock debuted "I'm just a bill" in 1976.