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this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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But do you actually see a path forward that does involve incremental progress?
I've watched politics incrementally change from Clinton's Third Way to Bush's War on Terror to McCain/Palin and the Tea Party to Trump.
I've watched Fox news incrementally change, I've watched print media incrementally be bought up.
I'm hearing about abortion getting banned, hate crimes going up, school shootings, people being abducted and sent to death camps in El Salvador.
When does this incremental change move us forward instead of backwards?
I'm not the assorted folks responding. What I personally want is a reform. I like the idea of democracy. I do not think we have it.
I think the system we currently have is rigged and not capable of producing the incremental change you ask of it.
Where I agree with everyone else, is that if we have to resort to revolution just to get the slightest pedestrian changes to the electoral system to let incremental change takeover (repeal citizens united, disband both parties, disallow "parties" to subvert primaries, remove big money, etc)... why set it back up more or less the same?
When those other leftists accept revolution as inevitable they can dream bigger beyond the current system.
The more liberalism is cooped by capitalists to resist the reforms liberalism itself demands, the less liberalism as a coherent movement can thrive.
This leaves actual liberals like you and me disenfranchised and without a party. A further leftist might describe that as defeatist.
If you have been following politics from the Clinton era, then you wound have seen the progress and incremental change first hand especially regarding social rights.
Gay marriage didn't exist. They were denied their existence in the military, and on TV.
We went from that to adding new letters to the ltgb alliance every few years. To pronouns and kinks like furries being accepted.
A black president was unimaginable. There were still people alive that experienced segregation.
Most of what you are listing are reactions to the progress. The bigots pushed back, and they won partly because they convinced us to be more cynical and divisive. To ignore and forget the progress that was made and spin as negatively as possible all the change we see.
Incremental change is moving forward 3 steps after falling back 2, not giving up because we couldn't be at step 5 by now.
Democrats spent decades fucking about with half-measures until the courts stepped in. And since democrats are so utterly useless at everything, they didn't codify Obergefell (after all, they didn't want to kill the filibuster they haven't bothered to block any of trump's agenda with) and the supreme court is likely gonna overturn it. But that's just an opportunity for more fundraising spam, which was the sum total of democrats' actions when the courts overturned Roe.
Are we really going to pretend that if LGBT rights were pushed and promoted by the democrats in the 90s, the American populace was just going to accept it? The Republicans would likely have a supermajority and the presidency after Clinton's 1st term.
Look what happened when we had 8 years with a black president.
I'm not saying the democrats did everything right, but the logic on incremental progress is correct vs tear it all down if it's not a utopia already
As opposed to taking credit for the work they didn't fucking do.
They had a majority under Obama and another under Biden. They had the opportunity to codify Obergefell. They chose not to. I wonder how upset they were that scotus did what they were unwilling to do because it wasn't iNcReMeNtAl enough.
If scotus hadn't stepped in, democrats would still be fucking about with half-measures.
When Obama had the majority, what did Democrats spend their time and political capital on? I don't know about you but healthcare seems pretty important and affects more people than gay marriage.
Biden used his to deal with a pandemic fallout and he was at least attempting to solve a educational loan bubble.
Keep in mind things like gay marriage and abortion were never in any immediate danger at any time. It has become socially acceptable and used as an empty threat by Republicans. That they were crazy enough to go through with it is just stupidity on their part.
Again, the democrats can be much much better, but you are absolutely ignoring the progress they made that would never have been made under Republican leadership.
Killing the public option and capitulating to republicans.
He was sure able to sell weapons to netanyahu without any problem at all. Bipartisan support, even. But codifying Obergefell wasn't a priority.
Which is why Roe was never overturned.
But they never will.
Yet we got the ACA, but i guess you prefer the old system where Americans can't get insured if they have preexisting conditions.
Sure. Things are easier to pass with bipartisan support. Are you suggesting Obergefell would receive bipartisan support? Lol
Which is irrelevant to my point. Roe was a republican talking point for decades but they were never stupid enough to act on it. When they did there was immediate election fallout. We are still in the "finding out" stage and there can absolutely be more blowback from this down the road.
Which is why you should continue to support the Republicans. That'll show them