https://www.axios.com/2025/05/13/donald-trump-impeachment-thanedar-democrats-react
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Florida even completing the recount would have meant a victory for Gore. Aside from preventing the corruption of the electoral process in Florida, Nader not being on the ballot in New Hampshire would have swung the Electoral College result from 271-266 in favor of Shrub to 270-267 in favor of Gore.
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Every democrat sending out the message that Trump shouldn’t be impeached right now is a dumbass. You can’t criticize Trump for ignoring the constitution, the courts, and taking a giant shit on democracy, then say “oh, but we can’t impeach him.” That’s literally your fucking job, Congress. You are destroying your messaging by sniping at Thanedar.
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Ok, let’s find out who they are, and primary all of them. His action might be useless given the current balance of power, but his statement is just as important politically.
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I agree with most attempts to force an impeachment vote, but this one appears to be different from previous attempts like Al Green’s. This appears to be a cynical attempt by Thanedar to fend off a primary challenge from the left. Is Thanedar your rep? What does it look like from your perspective (and others) from Michigan?
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It might be, but somebody had to do it. The leadership is trying to be so careful about every little thing, and watching their support slip away because of it. People want them to fight fascism, not wring their hands over competitive districts. Run on saving the Constitution!
ETA1:
He is not. My rep is a fascist.
ETA2: The leadership let Thanedar get away with this, again, because they won’t do their job. Exposing how the sausage gets made and how they botched things isn’t going to help them.
ETA3: Apologies to my keyboard. I’ve been typing awfully hard.
Edited to remove f-bombs.
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Ya think?!!?
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I don’t think arguing against democracy is a good move for the Democratic party. Leave that for the Republicans.
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I don’t know guys… All I know is that I am endlessly angry about what is happening to our country and to the world, and how everything meant to protect us is just failing left and right, and how the change that needs to be made is so deep and systemic and frankly global, that it’s mind-boggling difficult to even start to wrap our heads around it, much less work to change it. All I see in the world from our centrists and center-left politicians (not just here, but around the world) is status quo thinking that got us here in the first place. It’s like, most of the people with any real power to change anything are so hell-bent on keeping things as they are, that they refuse to see that we’re destroying ourselves and the world in the process… so… yeah. I’m mad and we need serious change, and almost nobody in power is willing to push for that change. 
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Well he has been changing his stance on some issues lately. So you could say he’s different but “different” definitely doesn’t mean “better.”
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Thanks for this. As a person who worked in pols offices for years, I can confirm this is true. I’ve participated in the prioritization and response processes, and it’s why I encourage individual messages over petitions. What jumps out at me is we need better ways to reach TPTB within the party, because they may not react in the same way as elected officials do with voters in their districts.
My main communication is with county and state Democratic party organizations. I’m starting to believe we need a campaign for those at the national level. Something sustained on social media would get their attention, but it needs to highlight the need for progressive & pro-worker policies to replace strategies from Carville and Pelosi. They really need to pass the torch to younger candidates and pundits. NextGenDems?
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/05/02/etienne-jeffries-pelosi-democrats-00322628
Ok, Brand New Congress? 
This resistance to change is a huge part of what got us here. Clinging to norms and wanting a return to civility is killing us in a world where that ship sailed a long time ago. What also worries me is the scenario Stacey Abrams outlined in her discussion with Rachel Maddow - the rise of a fascist wolf in reasonable sheep’s clothing. Gavin Newsom is giving me those vibes. However, they warn about Republicans who figure they can follow in the wake of 
by promising to restore the social safety net and follow the rule of law - winning votes from both sides to gain power before going full authoritarian. 
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The message I’m getting out of this is basically “we’re fucked”, because they already ignore us and seem deeply committed to rejecting the change that needs to happen in order to “fix the vehicle”. The Democrats always take the wrong lessons from a loss and they always will, drifting more and more right until it reaches critical mass and they’re completely unelectable, if that hasn’t happened already. It hardly seems to matter if there are a small handful of exceptions within the party if the deeply entrenched leadership is 100% committed to preventing them from actually being in a position to do anything.
I’d been silently following the discussion earlier and generally agreeing with both sides- the Democrats have nothing to offer other than not being Nazis, and have utterly and repeatedly failed to inspire or listen to their base… but realistically, we live in a two party system and voters also failed in their duty to keep the actual Nazis out of power. I didn’t expect great things out of Harris but it was pretty obvious that a continued slow decline was still preferable to the almost instant collapse of everything we hold dear that we’re now facing. At least there might have been some time for a third party to emerge.
That said, the Democrats’ response to a fascist regime taking over has come closer than anything to making me a non-voter. They’ve made it very clear that nobody represents us, that nobody will protect us, that they will remain impotent and inactive even in the face of glaringly obvious, undeniable evil from the other side. I’ve been voting blue my entire life and it’s gotten me nothing in the end. I’m sick of watching Trump get away with 17 things that would have instantly ended any other politician’s career in disgrace, every single day for a decade straight, because Democrats refused to make use of the easiest controversy fuel they’d ever been handed, month after month, year after year, until Trump’s insane rambling and outrageous actions became totally normalized. I’m sick of watching everything always get worse, never better, because they refuse to commit to actual progressivism and try to solve problems that the rest of the world figured out decades ago, let alone the most current challenges we face. At this point I wouldn’t even trust them to undo the damage Trump has done, should they return to power. They seem to have very little interest in doing anything other than constantly begging for donations.
Would I vote Democrat again? Probably, because voting is easy and I don’t see any other way to even potentially make a difference, but I’ve lost any hope that it will matter. I can’t count on the Democrats, I can’t count on my fellow voters, I can’t even assume there will ever be elections again, at least ones that aren’t rigged from the start. I really think “total breakdown of our Constitutional order” is more likely than the Democrats doing their jobs and pulling us back from the brink, at this point. They’ll fight to marginalize and silence the progressive voices in their party right up until there is no party.
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Not at all meant to pick on you, but this is exactly what I’m talking about.
There are at least dozens of examples in Congress and hundreds, possibly thousands, of examples nationally in state and local office, of Democrats doing the work; of literally putting themselves in harm’s way to fight the fascist regime and fight for us.
I can go on and on about my own House representative who flew to a T****-aligned fascist dictatorship in order to work towards release and return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. There were ten Democratic congresspeople on that trip.
In New Jersey, 80-year old representative Bonnie Watson Coleman was assaulted by ICE officers as part of her (and two colleagues’) inspection of a private ICE detention center that hadn’t gone through sufficient certification and inspection. The Democratic mayor of Newark was arrested on BS trespassing charges.
Attorneys General from a score of states have taken the administration to court over a number of legal and constitutional violations. AOC’s tour with Bernie is of course well known but other Democratic politicians have held town halls where Republicans are too afraid of their own constituents to hold them anymore.
I think it’s safe to say there are more Democratic politicians who are fighting for us than those who are fighting for the status quo. Why give the latter all the power by pretending they are the Party?
If we aren’t taking the party back, what’s the plan? Roll over and die? What’s the alternative? Because I see a lot of whinging and not a lot of planning or action.
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Thank you.
[disappointed toddler gif]
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lol, there were too many. It was kind of ridiculous.
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I don’t know that this is true. It is true that we have not had a totally new political party rise to prominence since the Republican Party was founded shortly before Lincoln’s election. However, today’s Democratic Party is not the party of FDR. And FDR’s Democratic Party was not the party of Andrew Jackson. And the same could be said of the GOP. And sometimes, those party shifts have happened fairly quickly. MAGA’s takeover of the Republican Party took shockingly little time, mainly because most Republicans are cowards and they offered little to no resistance. Now I don’t know if something similar could happen with the Democratic Party, but continuing to pursue the center path is NOT the answer. And that’s the path the Democratic Party leadership is taking, and I see no signs that they are receptive to a different approach. They respond to AOC’s popularity with resistance, not acceptance.
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I’m not talking about shifting an existing party’s priorities taking decades - I’m counting on progressives driving a shift like that in a much shorter timeframe. When I talk about a new party taking decades, I’m talking about a NEW national party (or making an existing minor party like the Greens viable).
When the Whigs gave way to the Republicans, that didn’t happen overnight. The collapse of the Whigs and rise of Republicans took decades. I think that would take even longer in some ways today, because it’s not just the explicit party structure in every state, coordination of existing politicians changing their formal party designation, changing voter registrations and primary voting, converting donors and donation mechanics, etc. etc. etc. It’s also all the informal channels that have been built up in the party that have to be recreated from scratch. And there are way too many people who just won’t move over, even if the new party better aligns to their values. My parents are an example of that. I could probably talk my mom into it, but there’s no way my dad is going to vote for anyone but a Democrat. And before anyone blows them off as “establishment” or “centrist”, just don’t. There are very, very few, if any, people here who have the legitimate progressive bona rides that my parents do - from protesting the Vietnam War to on-the-street marches and sit-ins for Civil Rights to striking & picketing in support of unions that weren’t even their own.
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Tell me you’ve never been to Australia without…
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It’s funny because it’s true!
Meanwhile, I have to be careful so I don’t get my Lake Wobegon visitor permit cancelled.
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