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Robin_net@beehaw.org 7 months agoThe last time they had a meaningful majority they spent their time (72 working days) on ACA (a major healthcare reform), pulling us out of a recession, appointing two supreme court justices, and so much more. They are known as the most productive Congress since Lyndon B Johnson was president. The last official majority they had they spent their very thin majority cleaning up after Donald Trump and dealing with COVID.
Democrats don’t get strong majorities for long periods of time like Republicans do, and they are expected to fix every issue plus clean up after the newest national disaster that Republicans created. Maybe if we gave them time and a strong enough majority they would get more done.
FlashMobOfOne@beehaw.org 7 months ago
First, you should put this in air quotes: “a major healthcare reform”. It’s only a reform if you the consumer can absorb the price gouging required to access our health care system in the first place.
Secondly, Obama had a supermajority for a time. He could have done anything if he’d have been willing to do the work.
Americans can’t eat excuses, and for me at least, it’s no longer acceptable to simply be slightly less conservative than the other conservatives.
Robin_net@beehaw.org 7 months ago
I 100% agree that they should have gone further with the many things they accomplished during their super majority. A universal healthcare system would have been better, they could have gone further with digging the average American out of the recession, etc.
However, it is disingenuous to pretend they did/do “nothing meaningful”. ACA expanded healthcare to millions of people who couldn’t get insurance at all, expanded Medicaid and Medicare, and it lowered healthcare costs. That’s pretty meaningful and a major success even if it wasn’t universal healthcare.
I think it’s also disingenuous to compare democrats who make small progress forward to Republicans who are actively trying to roll all of our laws back to the 1800s. Again democrats aren’t ideal, and really we need a more progressive major party in the US because they don’t go far enough, but it’s better to make any progress forward than it is to fully regress.
Democrats not being progressive enough is an issue we can fix in time, but it will take decades of hard work (and continuous work even after we succeed). We need to start helping more progressive candidates with their campaigns and even personally running campaigns during local, state, and national primaries. It would also help for us to push for major election reform while we work towards getting progressives elected. It is unacceptable we only really have only two major parties and really only one choice during general elections.