What do you do when you have "Democrats" like Joe Manchin, Senator from West Virginia, who decide
that their opinion alone should be the one that sets economic policy for all 50 states.
It would take Moral and Intellectual Courage, but if I was a Senate Democrat whose constituents would
suffer because Manchin refused to compromise on the proposed budget, I would oppose anything that
is beneficial to the people of West Virginia. No matter what committee I'm on, or what form that benefit
would take, Economic, Social, Educational etc., if Manchin wants it, I'll try to block it.
Unfair? Really? Aren't your constituents just as important? Why would you aid someone who cares nothing for the people of your state? Perhaps you should ask the voters you represent what they think?
THIS IS HILARIOUS; YOU HAND DONALD TRUMP THE ELECTION, EVEN THOUGH THERE ARE OBVIOUS PROBLEMS WITH THE VOTER COUNTS IN CERTAIN KEY STATES, (SEE MY SERIES OF POSTS ON THIS ISSUE), AND YOUR "SHOCKED" BY HIS BEHAVIOR. YOU HAD A CHANCE TO STAND UP, AND DEMAND, AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE NONSENSICAL RETURNS WHICH GAVE HIM THE WHITE HOUSE. AS FAR AS I KNOW, NOT ONE OF YOU DID. YOUR COMPLAINTS MEAN NOTHING TO THOSE WHO WILL SUFFER WHEN THIS DEMAGOGUE TAKES OFFICE.
- DAVID.
Trying to understand the Democratic Parties response to the Donald Trump win in the Presidential Election has been difficult. It is almost surreal, for it is like they have never met THIS REPUBLICAN PARTY.
Think I am being Unfair. Consider This:
Your a Republican, planning future strategy. You have seen your party go through Eight Years
of an Obama Presidency, and no matter how often your Party Thwarted Attempts by the President and other Progressive Democrats to help the American People, your Diatribe, Half- Truths, and Race Baiting etc., have managed to fool enough of the Electorate so that you lost nothing at the polls.
What is even better, YOU NEVER HAD TO SEEK OUT COMPROMISE. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID, ENOUGH PEOPLE TOOK IT AS TRUTH, AND BLAMED MOST OF THE COUNTRIES PROBLEMS ON THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT.
USING RELIGIOUS ZEALOTRY, WHAT YOU COULDN'T BLAME ON THE PRESIDENT, YOU PUT ON THOSE WHO DIDN'T BLINDLY AGREE WITH YOUR BRAND OF CHRISTIANITY, WHICH IS NOT A DOCTRINE OF PEACE, BUT ONE OF HATE AND PREJUDICE.
However, it gets even better. After eight years of Economic and Social Progress, with the country much better off than it was before President Obama took office, you were able to elect an Unscrupulous Demagogue to the highest office in the land. Running on a Platform of almost Pure Hate, appealing to the Basest of Human Emotions, it was a campaign Histories Dictators would be proud of. Yet, even with all this..
...the Democrat Party is accepting the President Elects offer to heal the Division in this Country.
(A Division caused almost exclusively by your parties words and actions).
What does this tell you?
- THAT NO MATTER HOW REPREHENSIBLE THE REPUBLICAN PARTIES BEHAVIOR IS, IT DOESN'T MATTER.
- REACH OUT TO ALL THE BIGOTS, RACISTS, HOMOPHOBES, AND OTHER HATERS THAT YOU CAN, IT DOESN'T MATTER.
- PROMOTE ANGER, VIOLENCE, AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL BEHAVIOR. IT DOESN'T
MATTER.
IN THE END, IT IS THE DEMOCRATS WHO WILL COME CALLING, HOPING, THAT THIS
Roe v. Wade was decided almost 50 years ago, and in the decades since, we’ve seen the right to an abortion challenged, criticized, and attacked over and over again. Republicans have advanced a malicious private right of action scheme to prevent women from having autonomy over their own bodies and health decisions. It’s time for the right to choose to be codified into law and protected from GOP State Houses and conservative judges.
That’s why it’s so important for the Senate to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act. After the House passed this historic bill by a narrow 218-211 vote, the Senate must stand up and do the same.
Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues have used bad faith, straw man arguments to restrict women's reproductive rights. They’ve even packed the court with conservative justices with the goal of overturning Roe v. Wade. We need to be forceful and loud in saying enough is enough and we need to take action.
Until the right to an abortion is codified into law, that choice, which should only be determined by a woman and her doctor, will be eroded by the extreme right across the country – just as we’ve seen in the last few months.
Thanks for being by our side as we stand up to the Senate and tell them to stop playing political games with a woman’s autonomy over their body.
RICHMOND, VA — Former President Barack Obama exhorted Virginians to support Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s candidacy for governor, warning of the dire consequences for the state and the country if he were to lose.
Obama presented the choice for Virginians as between McAuliffe, who he said would keep moving the state forward, and Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, who he said has been “encouraging the lies and conspiracy theories that we’ve had to live through all this time,” referring to the ongoing attempt by former President Donald Trump to falsely claim that the 2020 election was illegitimate.
Obama also said Younkin has attempted to “quietly cultivate support from those who seek to tear down our democracy.”
Obama mentioned a recent campaign event hosted by grassroots Republicans in support of Youngkin, where attendees recited the Pledge of Allegiance to an American flag that they said was carried in D.C. on Jan. 6, the day of the violent assault by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
“When you don't separate yourselves from that, when you don't think that's a problem, that's a problem,” Obama said.
Youngkin called that event “weird and wrong,” but Obama and other Democrats brought up Youngkin’s push for “election integrity” — a phrase used often as a placeholder for disproven claims about the 2020 election — and his call to audit voting machines, which already takes place.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe dances on stage before a campaign event with former President Barack Obama at Virginia Commonwealth University Saturday in Richmond, Va. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“Either he actually believes in the same conspiracy theories ... or he’s willing to go along with it, to say or do anything to get elected,” Obama said. “And maybe that’s worse, because that says something about character ... There’s some things that are more important than getting elected, and maybe American democracy is one of those things.”
McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin are in a tight race ahead of the Nov. 2 election.
Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter told Yahoo News that the Republican candidate “is a political outsider that does things differently and focuses on the issues that are affecting Virginia voters.”
Obama spoke at Virginia Commonwealth University here in the capital city of the commonwealth, a location chosen to reach out to two voting blocs that skew most reliably Democratic, but who also have voted in lower percentages than other groups in some recent elections: young voters and Black voters. Richmond is home to one of the biggest concentrations of Black voters in the state, along with portions of Norfolk and areas of Northern Virginia.
Obama’s visit was also meant to focus Virginia voters on the national context of the governor’s race, framing it through the lens of issues beyond the state. McAuliffe is talking about abortion to voters in Northern Virginia, an issue that has national stakes with the looming decision at the Supreme Court next year in a Mississippi case that could repeal Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in every state.
But the even wider lens is the attempt by former President Trump to restore himself to legitimacy despite his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, where he spoke to a crowd near the White House, repeated his false claims about the 2020 election and told them to march to the U.S. Capitol and “fight like hell.”
Trump’s supporters then waged a violent assault on the Capitol in an attempt to stop the 2020 election results from being certified, with some chanting that they intended to kill members of Congress and even Trump’s vice president, Republican Mike Pence.
“It was a violent attack to disenfranchise the votes of 80 million people. Folks, they didn’t want your votes to count ... they wanted to erase your vote,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told the crowd.
“Can’t we have a small ‘d’ democracy and can everyday people participate? That is what’s at stake,” Kaine said.
Former President Barack Obama campaigns with Terry McAuliffe at Virginia Commonwealth University on Saturday in Richmond, Va. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Trump has portrayed what happened on Jan. 6 as a good thing. There are some signs that a few Republican leaders want the direction to choose a different standard-bearer in the 2024 presidential election, but that resistance is limited at this point, and Trump’s narrative enjoys the support of the right-wing media.
It was this larger context that Obama sought to crystallize for those in the audience at VCU, and those who would consume his speech in sound bites on social media.
“Our democracy is what makes America great. It’s what makes us the shining city on the hill, this extraordinary experiment in self-government. Protecting and preserving that shouldn’t be a partisan issue. It didn’t used to be,” he said.
The move to nationalize the race in Virginia mirrors what Democrats did in California ahead of the Sept. 14 recall election, which Gov. Gavin Newsom won decisively. Democrats were concerned about Newsom’s fate over the summer but were able to stabilize the race once they brought in household names that raised awareness about the campaign among less engaged members of their voter base and talked about the contest in the context of national politics.
Like Newsom, McAuliffe — who was Virginia’s governor from 2014 to 2018 and was limited to one consecutive term by the commonwealth’s constitution — is seeking to beat back a motivated Republican grassroots that is hungry for a victory in a state that was won decisively by Joe Biden in 2020. Biden will campaign with McAuliffe in Arlington on Tuesday.
