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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Substance. People want substance from their leaders. The packaging doesn't matter. Continue to try to shove neo-liberalism and corporatism down the throats of the electorate and it does not matter if your candidate is a white woman, a gay man, a black man, or what have you. It DOES NOT MATTER. It's the lack of substance that people are rejecting.

People are struggling to afford a basic standard of living. The GOP offers no solutions, but they do offer an outlet for their fear and anger. The Democrats only shot at countering fear and anger is with real substantive solutions. Raise the freaking minimum wage. Pass parental leave laws. Gut the for-profit medical industry. Address corruption and money in politics ON BOTH SIDES. Make owning a home a realistic dream for young people again. Make retirement a realistic dream for young people again. Make raising a family economically possible without a 6-figure salary again. Make it so every dang job can't require a masters degree while paying us poverty wages.

Stop arguing about what the candidate should look like and start talking about what people NEED and the solutions we can offer them to win their support. [/quote]

The problem is that Trump’s challenge to the swamp forced Dems into a corner where we are now very pro-establishment.  Democrats now believe and assert that the for-profit medical industry is not corrupt, and that anyone questioning it should be censored.  Democrats can’t address corruption in government, they believe and assert that there is no corruption on the Democratic side, or even much wasteful spending at all.  Democrats believe and assert that Biden’s economy was very strong, and that the affordability crisis is exaggerated by Trump voters.  We came to these positions organically—we wanted to oppose Trump everywhere and always.  But our pro-establishment stance is killing us in this climate of anti-establishment voters wanting change [/quote]
These are very extreme interpretations of democrat beliefs. I don’t think any democrat believes there’s zero government waste, but they also do believe that the government isn’t a complete waste of resources and we should fund cancer, HIV, and epidemiological research, we shouldn’t delete whole departments because we think they aren’t 100% efficient, we shouldn’t fire thousands of Americans from their jobs either. Dems are some of the most critical of the healthcare industry around, but they also do believe in vaccines and medicine[/quote]

This is just a convoluted way of admitting I’m right.  These are very pro-establishment beliefs in the eyes of average voters, even if they feel wise and nuanced to you.[/quote]

NP How is that "pro-establishment"? Serious question. [/quote]

It’s pro-establishment to fight against audits and cost-cutting in government (while grudgingly admitting that okay maybe there is some waste) and it’s pro-establishment to promote for-profit corporate pharmaceutical products and insist that people should “believe” captured regulators (while grudgingly admitting that okay maybe the bloated health care industry is kind of corrupt).  Defenders of corrupt systems don’t get to pat themselves on the back as reformers just because they admit the corruption as a side note).[/quote]

NP...

Let's be clear on some things.

OIG, GAO, OMB, Congress, and other oversight agencies audited, rooted out corruption, and cut costs for years and nobody fought against it.  Nobody defended corrupt systems.

DOGE is anti-establishment in that it isn't actually auditing anything or doing real cost cutting, it is just burning things to the ground.  They are not finding corruption, they are fabricating bullshit reasons to destroy needed agencies and services.[/quote]. I wonder why the federal budget never declined by even one dollar after all those years of cost cutting by so many wonderful oversight agencies.  I wonder how we got up to $7 Trillion in amnual federal spending.

Why do you suppose DOGE is acting so crazy?  Could it be that rooting out stubborn waste requires drastic executive action instead of “processes” that have never ever reduced spending?  Or do you really think that Trump and Musk are just sadists who want to “destroy needed services”?  Pretend for a moment that they weren’t your political enemies, but your friends.  Can you imagine any reasons for them to do this other than wanting to “destroy needed services”?[/quote]

A huge chunk of our debt is because of Bush and Trump tax cuts.  Those added TRILLIONS to the debt, far more than the government employees DOGE is attacking, far more than the paltry handful of contracts that DOGE has cut.  FAR more.

I am all in favor of streamlining and modernizing government and making it more efficient.  But that's not what DOGE is doing.  It's breaking government and making it dysfunctional.  Anyone close enough to government will tell you this.  Even Republicans like Senator Curtis also said it, he said what DOGE is doing is "cold and dysfunctional."

The problem is that to streamline and modernize government, you need to take a step back and actually do a detailed analysis of the CFRs to find areas of overlap, areas of contradiction, policies and processes that are outdated and so on, along with any areas where the regs are out of whack with laws and court orders.  You DON'T just take a machete and just start randomly swinging it, like DOGE is doing.  And when identifying those problem areas of the CFRs, you will often actually need to go back to CONGRESS to have them revise the law, not just arbitrarily and capriciously make changes as DOGE when they don't have the authority to do so.  Even the cuts aren't legal given the impoundment act.

They are not "friends" and they are not doing good work.  Nobody who knows anything about government thinks so.  Nobody.[/quote]

Its a legal slaughterhouse [/quote]

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