- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
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not just a bill, a constitutional amendment. this means it has absolutely zero chance of passing. it would need two-thirds of both the Senate and House, and then approval by 38 state legislatures.
and because Republicans control Congress at the moment, this won’t even get a vote in committee, much less the full House. this is 100% performative. it’s a press release from Jayapal’s office, no more.
but here’s the fun part - Jayapal has introduced this amendment before. here’s the 2019 version, for example.
back in 2019, Democrats did control the House. they could have voted the amendment out of committee, and then given it a full vote on the House floor. they could have forced every member of the House to vote on the record about supporting or opposing Citizens United.
why didn’t they? my guess is that a bunch of “moderate” Democrats would have ended up voting against the amendment, along with probably every single Republican, and it would have made Democrats look bad.
so much like abortion rights, Democrats enjoy having “Citizens United bad” as a campaign slogan, but when it comes to actually exercising political power when they have it, hey look at the time gotta go.
the other option to overturn Citizens United would have been to expand the Supreme Court to reverse its rightward shift. Biden claimed to be open to this idea…and then appointed a committee to study the problem. a committee made up of 35 members. which is pretty much straight out of the CIA sabotage manual. a committee of 35 people will starve to death trying to come to consensus on where to go for lunch. Biden appointing such a huge committee was a clear sign that he didn’t intend to do anything about the problem.
but congrats to Rep. Jayapal, she probably was able to send some great fundraising emails about trying to overturn Citizens United.
but congrats to Rep. Jayapal, she probably was able to send some great fundraising emails about trying to overturn Citizens United.
Normally I’m pretty cynical about performative politics too, but in this case, with how apathetic congressional Democrats have been when it comes to the unravelling of our federal government, it’s nice to see someone performing something that isn’t acquiescence.
Jayapal is also fairly high on my list of “ok politicians”. She did good work before she was a rep, did good work as leader of the progressive caucus, and has done good work as a rep. I think if our government were filled with people like her we would be in a much better place. All that is to say, I’m not sure the progressive rep from Seattle is a great target of derisive comments about fundraising emails which may or may not exist.
fundraising emails which may or may not exist.
I am in Jayapal’s district and have been for a long time. I don’t think I have ever seen a fundraising email from her. I’m sure she does them, but she is generally really good on the issues so I don’t think she has to do as much.
Thank you. This is a good take down on the story. Maybe I oughta just delete.
edit: In reality I think your comment is too good to delete the whole post.
DO NOT DELETE THIS. The more people know about Citizen’s United the better. Naming this decision as a lynchpin of our society’s current troubles is something everyone needs to understand. Although our system has been rotted from the inside out due to this decision, preventing any established procedure from possibly removing it, people still need to understand that we can’t have a government that runs on quid pro quo. Even if this can’t be the way to solve the problem, more awareness means that more people may try more original approaches which could possibly work.
Citizens United must go in order for true democracy to thrive.
Followed by ranked choice voting…
let’s do this 💯
