Summary
House Democrats, led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, introduced the We the People Amendment to overturn Citizens United, aiming to curb corporate influence in elections.
The constitutional amendment asserts that constitutional rights apply only to individuals, not corporations, and mandates full disclosure of political contributions.
Jayapal cited Elon Musk’s massive campaign spending and subsequent financial gains as proof of the ruling’s harm.
Advocacy groups praised the move, calling it necessary to combat corporate power and dark money in politics, but Republicans have not backed the proposal.
So they throw this impossible task out there, something they can put all their energy and rhetoric into which will ultimately not bear results in my lifetime, and they can say see I was fighting against this tyranny.
This is such a bald-face transparent PR move I hope everyone sees it for what it is.
They’ve had multiple chances to fix this when they had real power. They’re idiots.
They’re idiots, or… they are insincere.
The reality that people who vote Democrat loyally, especially white, middle income, NPR listening, card carrying liberals, need to come to terms with is this:
The Democratic party doesn’t work for you.
The leadership of the Democratic party, it’s party managers, the ones who hold real power: they do not share your same interests. It’s always been performative. The vast majority of Democrats never meant any of it. The few that do are refused any real leadership or power. Every time they’ve had the votes to do something, anything, there is always a technical or procedural excuse. And when they now the thing can’t pass, they use the opportunity to show their bonafide: precisely when it has no cost. The current political situation were in would be impossible without the weakness and persistent cuckoldry coming from the Democratic party.
It’s a waste of time to invest further in the Democratic party. They were never going to come to your rescue, now less than ever when they are most needed. American leftist already knows this, it’s time for the American liberal to develop a sense of shame at their unwillingness to oppose the baseless, performative bullshit they’ve come to accept as politics from the DNC.
We need a new political project. The DNC is cooked.
American democracy has been dead for decades. Congress hasn’t GAF what the people want for decades. Trump and his minions are acting the way they do only because the plutocracy no longer needs to hide this fact. https://www.good.is/Politics/20-years-of-data-reveals-that-congress-doesnt-care-what-you-think
“But they didn’t have a 90 seat advantage in the Senate and 400 house seats and the presidency!!! How do you expect them to get anything done without that?!?” - centrists
I literally see these every week here. Like somehow when they have a majority they are unable to pass any laws, and when in a minority, they can’t stop anything Republicans do.
Like every time there is a majority, every democrat just is unable to do focus on anything but one bill. That one bill is all can be voted on, all anyone can vote on, and all that can be focused on. Any other legislation by legislators can’t exist.
The excuse I always see is “we’re a big tent party so Joe Lieberman/Joe Manchin tells us what to do.”
Which is not the response of an effective political party.
Like when the Republicans tried to repeal the ACA?
Well, yes. This. Just reduce the numbers appropriately so it’s not a strawman.
The American people have voted against democracy. If they don’t have a solid majority of the vote, they can’t do much.
2024 is far from the only example of this.
Not to defend the spineless Dems or this performative stunt, but it would be pretty difficult to pass at any point. They would need a lot of Republicans to join.
But I am picking nits. There’s no good reason not to push for this while they’re in power. If they had thrown their weight behind it in 2023, and forced Republicans to go on the record for CU, we’d probably have President Harris now.
We just have to admit that the representative democracy system, in its current form, suffers from the same flaws as other systems. It’s done a great job at elevating people a bit, but we hit a new ceiling of how prosperous the average person is.
I really want the conversations to be more around iterating on representative democracy. In this day and age we should be able to have our voices/votes heard more on each topic.
I don’t think we’ll ever move on to the next step of human societal development until we stop concentrating power. Us picking a representative in the hopes that they will proxy vote for what we actually want them to vote for does not work.