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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • The current senator minority leader is Chuck Schumer. He’s incapable of being an effective opposition leader. The dude is addicted to the status quo, terrified of rocking the boat, completely disconnected with the American people, and overall stuck in the mindset of a 20th century politician.

    There is a lot of frustration with him among democratic voters, but he’s maintained his power among the donors and other senators.

    A huge part of his argument is that there’s nobody else that can replace him. At the moment, he’s not wrong. His rivals in the Senate are either cut from the same cloth as him, or are in their own way content with the status quo. I know people on Lemmy love Bernie, but the man was elected to the Senate the same year Pokemon Diamond and Pearl hit the shelves and is no closer to the revolution he promised.

    While this filibuster doesn’t accomplish anything itself, it’s part of a larger effort Booker is making to raise his national profile and position himself so he can replace Schumer. In that context, it’s an important and smart strategic move.

    Ironically this filibuster was probably less physically and emotionally exhausting than trying to teach all of his Senate colleagues how to effectively use TikTok.





  • A danish news organization will have articles about what Danes think of tariffs. The same with a Canadian news organization, a German one, etc. Yet for some reason almost all of what American sources talk about is what citizens of other countries think.

    I think the fact that American establishment publications put out more articles about what citizens of other countries think of tariffs than what Americans think of tariffs is part of the reason why Trump won.

    The upper 10 percent of liberal America seems to think of themselves as citizens of the world, and seems to spend more time caring about anything other than Americans outside their hyper-specific socioeconomic niche.

    The end result of this mentality is that Trump was able to make huge inroads with groups that were historically democrat’s bread and butter in 2024. Even if he was lying through his teeth, he and his team made real efforts to appeal to issues that were important for demographics.

    I’m willing to bet you could find people from Hawaii to Mississippi altering their spending habits in fear of Trump’s tarrifs. Maybe the press should spend more time reporting on them.

    Obviously, neither Trump nor MAGA is the answer. However there needs to be a way to talk with how out of touch so much of our establishment is without sounding like a Trump supporter.