It's interesting how the effects of filter bubbles are playing out here. Everyone believes that they have the upper hand and the majority of the American people are on their side, because computerized personalization shows them only opinions from people who agree with them. As a result, they think that the negative popular opinion for the shutdown will fall primarily on the other party, and so it is rational for them to continue the shutdown until the other party blinks. Of course, the other party has the same information distortion in the opposite direction, so they also believe that if they just keep going, the American public will blame their opponents.
In reality, the public is pretty close to split down the middle, and both parties are getting blamed, and the real message that people are taking away from this is that Congress is dysfunctional. It's a game of chicken where both parties think that the other side will blink, and so they just end up crashing.
Reminds me of the dysfunction the Roman Republic towards the end of it’s time.
It’s not unique to the US however, I think maybe we are all approaching the end of the line for current political/civil systems without further work that no one seems interested in taking.
The shutdown is a temporary budget squabble in a stable democracy; a banal political stunt that has happened every few years for the past few decades.
Rome’s dysfunction meant civil wars, assassinations, generals seizing poWer, private armies, and uprising (in a fundamentally different society where, incidentally, over 25% of the population was slaves.)
There has been over 2000 years of history since Rome… when a the only analogy a person can come up with is some half-baked allusion to the Roman Empire/Republic it’s a good bet said person lacks a sense of history, knowledge of current events, and common sense.
None of which has anything to do with the ‘last days of the Roman Republic.’
Feel free to panic and tear your hair out… that’s what both sides do. Boring. The post, however, make some pretentious analogy to the Roman Republic. The analogy was silly. That’s all. It’s just an annoying variant of Godwins law: Rome or Hitler… the only two analogies available to those ignorant of history.
Assassination & attempted assassinations have all happened within 12ish months.
You’ve got an executive branch stacking all open positions in judicial and legislative branches with their political appointees. And the executive is interpreting the law to gather as much power as possible to the head of state.
It’s not hard to see the parallels but you keep on trucking dude.
> You’ve got an executive branch stacking all open positions in judicial and legislative branches with their political appointees.
The judicial branch is composed of Judges who are confirmed by the Senate… not the executive branch.
And there are no ‘Legislative branch’ appointees.
I assume you mean the executive branch is making appointments to the executive branch? Who would you prefer to make such appointments? The Postal Serice?
So you’re saying the solution since Republicans control congress they should do away with the filibuster, pass a check funding bill and then continue governing under bare majorities with no filibuster?
I don’t particularly like that outcome and I think the public understands that democrats have at least some leverage or they wouldn’t be acting in this way.
The way this normally works is, when the House has passed something and the Senate won't, it goes to a reconciliation committee (with members from both houses), and they bring a compromise bill back, and both houses vote on it.
OK, the House passed something. The Senate has made it very clear that they won't pass it. Well, who's preventing the next step from happening? Speaker Johnson, that's who.
Sure, there are sessions where negotiation must happen between House and Senate. I personally think we should abolish the filibuster - it's undemocratic in the extreme. Republicans (only!) still have the "Hastert Rule" for the House, which is equally undemocratic, and named after a convicted sex offender.
I'm urging the current Senate, controlled by Republicans, the party also controlling House and Presidency, to get rid of the filibuster because then the ruling party could not escape responsibility for their legislative actions.
Polling suggests that independents don’t “overwhelmingly" blame the GOP. It’s split 48/32/14 GOP/Dem/Equal
"Democrats and Republicans hold each other's party more responsible for the government shutdown. Among independents, 48 percent think Republicans in Congress are more responsible, while 32 percent think Democrats in Congress are more responsible and 14 percent volunteered that they think both parties are equally responsible.”
A 16 point difference is quite substantial in American politics. It's a matter of taste whether you consider it "overwhelming," but it's objectively not split down the middle.
This is true, but it's also changing every week to where people increasingly blame the Republicans. A lot of people are still completely insulated from the consequences of the current shutdown, but as food benefits lapse and air travel shuts down people are going to blame the very public president and party that's allowing this to happen.
What does the Supreme Court or White House have to do with the bipartisan agreement between Senate garbagepersons to retain the insane filibuster policy that guarantees non-resolution of simple deadlocks?
For good reason. That's what being in charge means. Biden had to take the blame while he obviously wasn't capable of being in charge. But it does always seem to be exploited beyond reason by the opposition. I'm very curious on what do non-diehards think on Dems blocking the clean bill and on keeping funds flowing for themselves to stay in session.
Please don't start a flame on this. If you can't stand trump, make it an exercise in self-control and skip the reply on this one.
I'm not sure I agree. In a democracy, you should expect voters and representatives to act within the framework of that democracy, which is usually more complex than the binary choice of being the party in power or not. Yeah, in aggregate 2024 was a loss for the Democrats. But they didn't lose every election, and because of that they retain some power even as the minority party, specifically the power to filibuster in the Senate, as well as the more general power of being the minority by only a relatively slim margin in both houses of congress.
The Congressional Democrats who did win their elections choosing not to use that power to advance policies they were presumably voted into office to support just because Republicans won more elections in Congress as well as the White House seems like a strange definition of democracy. The intent of Representatives and Senators is to advocate for their constituents. Abdicating that in favor of taking a nationwide poll is the opposite of their job. Why should a Senator from California base their vote on which party the good people of North Dakota chose to represent them or how many other states voted the same way?
Yes. People love to hyperbolize "this is the last election ever", "this is the most important election ever", "no matter what we need to win this time or the world will end".
In reality, the public is pretty close to split down the middle, and both parties are getting blamed, and the real message that people are taking away from this is that Congress is dysfunctional. It's a game of chicken where both parties think that the other side will blink, and so they just end up crashing.