I found myself fairly disappointed in the content of this podcast. I find that Tim and Sam are doing what the media has been doing for 10 years (for good reasons but still frustrating): realizing that the problem has been mostly caused by Trump and republicans and yet it’s somehow the democrats job to fix our politics. I watched the reac…
I found myself fairly disappointed in the content of this podcast. I find that Tim and Sam are doing what the media has been doing for 10 years (for good reasons but still frustrating): realizing that the problem has been mostly caused by Trump and republicans and yet it’s somehow the democrats job to fix our politics. I watched the reaction after this tragic event and almost every single Democratic office holder has come out and condemned all acts of violence including Nancy pelosi who’s husband was attacked because of politics and was attacked by almost every single Republican lawmaker afterwards. Then I see the Republican reaction to this event by lying and bringing the temperature up.
You cannot expect for the politics to change if one side refuses to change. You can’t expect one side to uphold all political norms while the other side tramples on said norms. At some point you have to expect Republican voters or Republican leaders to force change even if they have to lose elections. The problem is they have been given this choice many many times over the last 20 years and the republicans have chosen not to take the off-ramp.
I’m disappointed as well and couldn’t agree more with your comment. I hope this is not an indication of the change that Sam’s addition to the Bulwark is bringing. Because I love the Bulwark precisely because they don’t usually do this sort of thing.
I'm willing to give Tim and Sam the benefit of the doubt, considering how raw all of this is. But I agree with you that it's totally asymmetric. Unfortunately I don't see an off-ramp.
Like I said I understand why they are doing it. It’s almost subconscious because they know that republicans will not turn down the temperature. They will not stop calling for violence. So they hope that if one side does it it will help our politics but we have seen for 10 years it won’t.
There has been no president in my lifetime that has done more to try and bring down the temperature. He is so apolitical. He barely uses trump’s name. What has the response been? Republicans just make up more shit and continue to increase the temperature
Falsehoods and the threat of violence are now the Republican brand, because the MAGA component thrives on it. It's hopeless to expect it to change until Republicans are trounced again and again at the polls.
I know. Shit I don’t. They have been losing for like 6 years and they still aren’t changing. Honestly I’m at a loss for what to do but always expecting dems to fix things may feel good to say but isn’t the solution.
Leros, this is exactly what I wanted 4 years ago. To have Biden retreat from the public to take down the temperature. To not make the presidency into reality tv. He has done this admirably. He has had tons of opportunities to go on attack (his impeachment, the debt ceiling, the debt cliff, his son being forced to testify to congress, conviction of his son, the Paul pelosi incident, trump trials, trump’s rape case, trump’s fraud case, etc). He has suffered in popularity with his base because they don’t see him fighting. I thought that doing all this economic populism in red states instead of doing structural reform.
I can say I was wrong. The only way to cause change is to do power politics. Maybe if he did this we would still be here. But taking down the temperature, or at least trying too, has failed.
Obama is partially why we are here (not his fault at all). Flowery beautiful speeches make some of us feel good (me included) but they haven’t worked
It made sense after the insanity of Jan. 6 for Biden to try to take down the temperature. After all, part of his narrow Electoral College victory (and it was narrow-we should not fool ourselves into thinking otherwise) was reasonably thought to be due to Biden's appeal as a "normal" President. But it's clear in retrospect how wrong that view was. All it did was give MAGA time to regroup and have the rest of the non-MAGA Republican lapdogs fall in line to save themselves from being primaried out of office. Hopefully we have learned the lesson you suggest: only power politics works.
I found myself fairly disappointed in the content of this podcast. I find that Tim and Sam are doing what the media has been doing for 10 years (for good reasons but still frustrating): realizing that the problem has been mostly caused by Trump and republicans and yet it’s somehow the democrats job to fix our politics. I watched the reaction after this tragic event and almost every single Democratic office holder has come out and condemned all acts of violence including Nancy pelosi who’s husband was attacked because of politics and was attacked by almost every single Republican lawmaker afterwards. Then I see the Republican reaction to this event by lying and bringing the temperature up.
You cannot expect for the politics to change if one side refuses to change. You can’t expect one side to uphold all political norms while the other side tramples on said norms. At some point you have to expect Republican voters or Republican leaders to force change even if they have to lose elections. The problem is they have been given this choice many many times over the last 20 years and the republicans have chosen not to take the off-ramp.
I’m disappointed as well and couldn’t agree more with your comment. I hope this is not an indication of the change that Sam’s addition to the Bulwark is bringing. Because I love the Bulwark precisely because they don’t usually do this sort of thing.
I'm willing to give Tim and Sam the benefit of the doubt, considering how raw all of this is. But I agree with you that it's totally asymmetric. Unfortunately I don't see an off-ramp.
Like I said I understand why they are doing it. It’s almost subconscious because they know that republicans will not turn down the temperature. They will not stop calling for violence. So they hope that if one side does it it will help our politics but we have seen for 10 years it won’t.
There has been no president in my lifetime that has done more to try and bring down the temperature. He is so apolitical. He barely uses trump’s name. What has the response been? Republicans just make up more shit and continue to increase the temperature
Falsehoods and the threat of violence are now the Republican brand, because the MAGA component thrives on it. It's hopeless to expect it to change until Republicans are trounced again and again at the polls.
I know. Shit I don’t. They have been losing for like 6 years and they still aren’t changing. Honestly I’m at a loss for what to do but always expecting dems to fix things may feel good to say but isn’t the solution.
Leros, this is exactly what I wanted 4 years ago. To have Biden retreat from the public to take down the temperature. To not make the presidency into reality tv. He has done this admirably. He has had tons of opportunities to go on attack (his impeachment, the debt ceiling, the debt cliff, his son being forced to testify to congress, conviction of his son, the Paul pelosi incident, trump trials, trump’s rape case, trump’s fraud case, etc). He has suffered in popularity with his base because they don’t see him fighting. I thought that doing all this economic populism in red states instead of doing structural reform.
I can say I was wrong. The only way to cause change is to do power politics. Maybe if he did this we would still be here. But taking down the temperature, or at least trying too, has failed.
Obama is partially why we are here (not his fault at all). Flowery beautiful speeches make some of us feel good (me included) but they haven’t worked
It made sense after the insanity of Jan. 6 for Biden to try to take down the temperature. After all, part of his narrow Electoral College victory (and it was narrow-we should not fool ourselves into thinking otherwise) was reasonably thought to be due to Biden's appeal as a "normal" President. But it's clear in retrospect how wrong that view was. All it did was give MAGA time to regroup and have the rest of the non-MAGA Republican lapdogs fall in line to save themselves from being primaried out of office. Hopefully we have learned the lesson you suggest: only power politics works.
Yep. It sucks too. Trying to do the right thing but your opponent just sees it as weakness.
The fundamental problem for dems in power politics is that because of the senate and the court they are the weaker party.