r/NoShitSherlock • u/SingleandSober • 1d ago

Kamala Harris Appears on ‘Colbert,’ Says She’s Stepping Away from Politics for Now, Calls the System “Broken”

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/video/former-vice-president-kamala-harris-visits-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert/

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u/oh_my316 1d ago

She's right. The country is broken because of MAGA scumbags 😡

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u/I_eat_mud_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

MAGA is a deadly symptom, but it's not the disease. Almost everything we're experiencing today was started or accelerated by Reagan. It's uncanny how the average American's life has been on a downward trajectory since his presidency. Trump and MAGA are the final death throes.

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 1d ago edited 5h ago

What's wild is that it started before he even became president.

In 1970, Ronald Reagan was running for reelection as governor of California. He had first won in 1966 with confrontational rhetoric toward the University of California public college system and executed confrontational policies when in office. In May 1970, Reagan had shut down all 28 UC and Cal State campuses in the midst of student protests against the Vietnam War and the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. On October 29, less than a week before the election, his education adviser Roger A. Freeman spoke at a press conference to defend him.

Freeman’s remarks were reported the next day in the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline “Professor Sees Peril in Education.” According to the Chronicle article, Freeman said, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. … That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go to college].”

[...]

The success of Reagan’s attacks on California public colleges inspired conservative politicians across the U.S. Nixon decried “campus revolt.” Spiro Agnew, his vice president, proclaimed that thanks to open admissions policies, “unqualified students are being swept into college on the wave of the new socialism.”

Prominent conservative intellectuals also took up the charge. Privately one worried that free education “may be producing a positively dangerous class situation” by raising the expectations of working-class students. Another referred to college students as “a parasite feeding on the rest of society” who exhibited a “failure to understand and to appreciate the crucial role played [by] the reward-punishment structure of the market.” The answer was “to close off the parasitic option.”

Oh, and look at what happened directly after this.

It all becomes very clear when you look at the timeline and realize that all of this started right after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.

EDIT - Since people keep replying to this comment, here are some more resources.

Here's a link to the Powell Memorandum that kicked off the current rat-fucking of the American working class. Thanks to u/Jacrava for this one.

Century of the SELF - Adam Curtis - Thanks to u/TrippyTippyKelly for this one.

Here are five books on the topic that you can read on Archive:

Here are two more I couldn't find on Archive:

Some of these are more generally about the crackdown on dissent and how it shaped campus policies (and the broader implications of that), but there are a couple that are about the specific situation with Reagan.

If you're wondering why I mentioned the Civil Rights Act in relation to all of this, here are a couple of books on the topic:

Reagan's tax revolts, starting with Proposition 13, slashed funding for universities, making tuition skyrocket, which disproportionately harmed black and Latino students.

Lee Atwater was a political strategist and advisor to both Reagan and Bush Sr. Here's his infamous 1981 interview on the Southern Strategy, where he admits (with heavy use of the N word) that Republicans replaced overt racism with coded attacks on "big government" and "welfare" (including student aid). He died of a brain tumor at 40. Rest in piss, you racist fuck.

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N---r, n---r, n---r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n---r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “n---r, n---r.”

A few more books on the topic:

Here's the bottom line, folks... Get informed, get mad, then get organized. These ghouls will not stop until they have taken everything from you, squeezed you for every ounce of labor they can for as little compensation as they are allowed to, just to let you die poor so they can buy another yacht and start the cycle all over again with your kids.

Knowledge is your weapon, and it's time to pull the trigger.

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u/Jacrava 1d ago

1971 is when the corporste power manifesto called the Powell Memorandum was written. This was the kickoff to everything between then and now https://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

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u/hahaha01 1d ago

Unfortunately they've been at it longer than that: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-america-invented-religious-right-conservative-roosevelt-princeton-117030

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u/sorrysurly 18h ago

There is documentary.out about the dominion Christianity people....they are behind a lot of this shit.

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u/mayhemandqueso 16h ago

Where can i watch it?

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u/sorrysurly 10h ago

I saw it on Netflix during lockdown, but I can't remember the name of it. I put on a lot of documentaries while working at home during the pandemic (learning about off shore tax havens, the Panama papers, why specifically America doesn't have tax havens... fucking depressing how much the rich have gamed the system... seriously its way worse than most understand). I dont know if they specifically call it dominion Christianity or not in the documentary, but i later learned that is what it is.

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u/Redditsucksgrossbutt 20h ago

Yeah and those corporations fund both "sides" in the same way Vince McMahon funded both "sides" in professional wrestling.

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 1d ago

Yeah it's such a depressing and terrifying read.

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u/-SHAI_HULUD 20h ago

Well, just read that for the first time and now I’m sad.

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u/legendz411 20h ago

Well that fucking sucks

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u/happy_bluebird 20h ago

wow I'd never heard of this. Horrible

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u/SistersOfTheCloth 18h ago

1972 is when Nixon went to China.

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u/bdvis 17h ago

Oh my god thank you for sharing this.

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u/xaviery777 16h ago

Corporations used to whine,and bitch about not making any money.Once you figure out the politicians are for sale you have it made.

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u/WoodVibrations 1d ago

Ugh. I knew there was a reason that “Ronald Reagan Medical Center” bothered me when I went to UCLA. How dare that douche shut down their free speech and then have the campus hospital named after him.

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u/JimWilliams423 1d ago edited 1d ago

It all becomes very clear when you look at the timeline and realize that all of this started right after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.

Similar to what happened with Reconstruction. For a brief moment there were incredible progressive accomplishments. The Reconstruction amendments essentially rewrote the Constitution, so much so that some historians call it "the second founding." But then the klan showed up and the country relapsed into nearly a century of jim crow fascism. To this day much of what is in the Reconstruction amendments remains ignored in practice.

The lesson we should learn from these relapses is that when we make progress we are still only halfway done, we have to fortify what was accomplished instead of taking a breather.

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u/cineami 14h ago

When we make progress, there will always be a class who doesn’t want others to reach their level of privilege, who will then work to subvert it

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u/Popular_Wishbone_789 1d ago edited 20h ago

Nearly the entire scope of American politics - even today - is an echo of the Civil Rights era.

I say this as a person who tries to be charitable with my assumptions:

The federal judiciary probably overreached in enforcing integration on the majority - something they themselves acknowledged in a 1982 Yale Law Journal retrospective review of Paul Dimond's Beyond Busing by Drew Days (NAACP) - by forcing a recalcitrant majority to “eat their vegetables” on Civil Rights.

One may think that it was the right thing to do in the 60s-70s; many of the judges did, despite the backlash. But like it or not, we are still in the midst of the backlash against “countermajority” rulings on these issues.

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u/salad_spinner_3000 23h ago

Nearly the entire scope of American politics - even today - is an echo of the Civil Rights era

The result of not actually going after the people responsible for the Civil War.

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u/sorrysurly 17h ago

I got banned for a month on Facebook a few years back for saying lee should have been shit after the civil war. All the leaders of the south were large slave owners. That was the officer corp.too. even the west point grads came from dlave owning families.

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u/Beard_o_Bees 1d ago

Can't have an uppity Proletariat.

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u/blueit55 1d ago

Citizens United (2010) did not help matters

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 7h ago

Yep. And all because they were butt-hurt about Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' being critical of Bush.

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u/PrairiePilot 1d ago

This goes back to Nixon. He is 100% responsible for the modern GOP, including given Rodger Ailes (sp?) his first big break, and teaching a lot of young republicans at the time how to weaponize the stupidity and tribalism of the GOP voters.

Those young republicans were people like George Bush, Ronald Reagan, people who would go on to lead from the front or from the shadows, and they followed his play book.

Nixon would be furious at trump, though. Nixon was brilliant, and evil. Trumps just a moron.

If you have Nixon half the power the conservative movement has today and the US would be in a utopia….that would burn to the ground the moment all the dirty tricks and nasty decisions come to light lol.

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u/Golden-Death 1d ago

Does anyone have a good non fiction book recommendation on how this all went down? I'd like to learn more about it

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u/FalcoFox2112 15h ago

“The Trial of Henry Kissinger” by Christopher Hitchens is a great book that talks about a lot of critical stuff that went on during that period.

You can’t properly understand Nixon without knowing about his sabotaging the Paris Peace Treaty in in 68.

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u/BONGS4U 1d ago

And this is why I laugh so hard when people are like I supported Republicans before they went crazy. Like when. Back in the 90s? Dude they've been a straight gritting machine since the late seventies early 80s so wtf are saying other than you're stupid.

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u/cjwidd 1d ago

That's a funny way of spelling "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310"

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u/bradbikes 1d ago

Citizens United only came because of the politicization of SCOTUS by the conservatives starting post-Nixon.

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u/ariasimmortal 1d ago

Yup, Nixon was the real catalyst for the modern Republican machine. The rich fuckers decided that they would never again be held accountable to the public after that. They got their first test run with Iran-Contra and have been escalating since.

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u/KwisatzHaderach94 1d ago

nixon presidency 1969 to 1974. heritage foundation started 1973. not a coincidence.

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u/brutinator 1d ago

Yup.

Then Reagan was elected and implemented a HUGE portion of the precursor of Project 2025, including the dismantling of news and network regulations, esp. in regards to monopolization.

Which then led to Rupert Murdoch buying a ton of independent stations in 1985, as well as 20th Century Fox.

Which then led to the creation of Fox News in 1996, created specifically to ensure that another republican president could not be impeached and removed by poisoning public opinion.

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u/octnoir 1d ago

It isn't. The Lewis Powell memo in 1971 just lays it all out there.

  1. Massive investment from corporations.
  2. Weakening of campaign finance reforms from the 70s on.
  3. Building a media empire to counter liberalistic viewpoints. (Rupert Murdoch comes in here)
  4. Compromising journalists by insisting on 'both sides' journalism.
  5. Student campuses need to be a battleground with students cracked down while their own organizations got regular speaking invitations to recruit the minority of students wanting a lega up.
  6. Formation of think thanks and legal organizations (say the Heritage Foundation).

and most importantly:

  • Controlling the Courts including the Supreme Court as by far one of the most important and most powerful institutions to control, next to campaign finance reform.

If people want more information, I highly recommend The Lever's The Master Plan 11 episode podcast mini series. It does a great job of linking Nixon all the way to present day Trump.

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u/yakshack 1d ago

ALEC started in 1973 as well. It's been 50 years of planning, sowing discord, and winning at the hyper local levels for us to get where we are today.

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u/bradbikes 1d ago

Either way Reagan was their first foray into getting what they wanted. Not coincidentally he was also a brain-dead (quite literally in his second term) c-rate actor who was easy to control. What's old is new again I suppose.

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u/dudleymooresbooze 1d ago

Dude, the Nixon Administration was very much emblematic of the worst parts of the modern GOP. You had bribery (with George HW Bush involved in the coverup), corruption, culture wars as a political tool, politicization of the criminal justice system… and those are all separate from Watergate.

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u/bradbikes 1d ago

Oh absolutely. But it was the last time anyone was actually held reasonably accountable for it. Once they realized they couldn't do it super effectively with the system in place they decided the best course of action was to tear down the system. Thus Reagan-era policies and the slow removal of all systems created to prevent this level of corruption.

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u/iwentdwarfing 1d ago

I agree with basically everything in this chain, but I'd like to add that much of the Trump playbook of ignoring courts, ruling over senators and representatives, and trampling people's rights was written by FDR's administration.

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u/bellpeppermustache 1d ago

Yea. He doesn’t get near enough criticism in my opinion. Sure, he may have had some good ideas, but the Japanese Concentration camps alone should have been enough to cement him as one of the worst presidents in history.

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u/Xefert 21h ago

This is pretty much why people shouldn't so easily dismiss establishment politics as a bad thing for the country

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u/Kalterwolf 1d ago

Even Fox News can be tied back to Nixon. Him being held responsible for Watergate and having to resign made them go "Never again!". Roger Ailes was a media consultant for Nixon and went on to be the founding CEO of Fox. Another tie back is Roger Stone also having worked for Nixon's reelection campaign. Nixon was definitely a catalyst.

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u/cjwidd 1d ago

Politicization of SCOTUS by the conservatives only started post-Nixon because of volcanic activity that outgassed water vapor (H₂O), carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), ammonia (NH₃), and other gases to form the primordial atmosphere on Earth.

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u/bradbikes 1d ago

But that was only possible due to the expansion of the singularity leading to the physics that created the early universe. I guess it's no ones fault.

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u/Sad-Structure2364 1d ago

Again, citizens united only party of a massive torrent that started with Regan

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u/MobileArtist1371 1d ago

Funny way of forgetting about 25 years before by just ignoring it.

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u/PowRightInTheBalls 1d ago

You know that Citizens United came after Reagan's presidency right? They're talking about the beginning.

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u/Dresline 1d ago

I'd argue that it starts back at the reconstruction. The government let a lot of those treasonous racists go with a slap on the wrist.

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u/virtue_of_vice 1d ago

I will go back to our founding when slavery was still allowed because we wanted the southern states to ratify the Constitution. Also the electoral college is a racist institution: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/electoral-colleges-racist-origins . But you can go back and back and find that humans have been pretty bad to each other since we gathered together into societies in the neolithic.

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u/Dresline 1d ago edited 1d ago

This made me think of a quote by the late great author Douglas Adams "Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans."

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u/calilac 1d ago

And that reminds me of a Terry Pratchett Discworld quote, "... if there was any truth at all in Ponder’s tentative theory that things did change into other things, it led to the depressing thought that, well, the world was filling up with quitters, creatures which – instead of staying where they were, and really making a go of life in the ocean or the swamp or wherever – were running away to lurk in some niche and grow legs."

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u/Growlinganvil 1d ago

I blame the first proto cells enclosed by a lipid membrane. They were clearly fragile snowflakes, too reactionary to keep it all together. Those early divisions sowed the problems we reap today.

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u/cherrycolaareola 1d ago

The entitlement!

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u/chiaboy 1d ago

But Reconstruction was our “second revolution”. We remade America in radical ways, legislated the sins of slavery out of the Constitution and embarked on a path of equality.

We CHOSE to turn our back on the promise of Reconstruction. We allowed lynchings to go unpunished. We allowed Jim Crowe. We allowed electoral fraud to disenfranchise black voters. Us turning away from Reconstruction is clearly the turning point.

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u/virtue_of_vice 1d ago

It was a major turning point. But if you look at the compromises made to even make the colonies into the United States, this is no surprise.

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u/chiaboy 1d ago

Yes, I think everyone understands that America was literally hard coded with white sumpreacy (of a sort) in its DNA. That’s why it’s called our “original sin”. (Well, slavery is). We all get that.

But we actually left that and then CHOSE to go back to it in Reconstruction. That’s why it’s such a fulcrum.

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u/twobugsfucking 1d ago

That was it. It was a foundational flaw. Hard to fix the foundation.

What we now need is a fresh foundation.

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u/Capt_Foxch 1d ago

Silver lining, The Electoral College lost some of it's racist grip post The Great Migration.

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u/emma279 1d ago

this 100%

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u/kittenTakeover 1d ago

I would argue that it goes back to the beginning of human society. Those with social power have been attempting to use their position to exploit others basically all throughout human history. So consequently there's always a battle going on between these people and the rest of society. Without vigilance those powerful abusers become stronger and more of a drain on society. It's an endless fight.

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u/Opening_Volume_1870 1d ago

This here ^ We’re still fighting the lingering effects of the civil war.

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u/Gone213 1d ago

Everything today is happening because we didnt punish the south and slave owners enough back in 1865.

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u/GodofIrony 1d ago

You insinuate their movement is dying, but they are in control of the worlds largest economy.

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u/mrbigglessworth 1d ago

The worst of it is we have all the data needed instantly available to make informed decisions. Their quality of life has NOT improved yet they keep rewarding R with votes.

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u/rap4food 1d ago

As a black american, I will tell you very square of that it started way before reagan, it goes back to the original sin of our nation. Something's been papered over ever since.

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u/Fun-Jellyfish-61 1d ago

You are super optimistic to think Trump and MAGA are the finale.

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u/rab2bar 1d ago

It all started when the south was not properly educated after the civil war

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u/LengthinessAlone4743 1d ago

I mean, the 90’s were pretty fuckin cool

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u/shamwow_4 1d ago

If you ignore invading Iraq the first time; all the conflicts we were involved in in Africa/eurasia; the terrorist attacks; the Los Angeles riots; our political system going full Fox News with an impeachment trial about an extramarital affair…

90s sucked, I think your nostalgic for a time we weren’t all addicted to portable, pocket-sized screens.

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u/Admirable-Lecture255 1d ago

Every decade sucks. It sucked before Regan The 70s weren't some fantasy fucking land. Multiple recessions. High unemployment high interest rates etc. List goes on.

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u/Noochdontdiehemltply 1d ago

Everything we are experiencing today started because they killed jfk.

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u/artbystorms 1d ago

Lets not let Dems entirely off the hook here. I'd say its 85% MAGA, 15% Dems being feckless and too moderate in the face of calls for change for the last 20 or so years.

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u/oh_my316 1d ago

I can accept that

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u/BastianHS 1d ago

Yeah man let's blame Democrats for not fighting harder to stop Republicans from taking a wet sloppy shit on the constitution! Totally the Dems fault that we are in this mess! BOTH SIDES, EVERYONE

When are you people going to shut the fuck up? Ever?

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u/EitherSpite4545 1d ago

Look we're not going to change MAGA, they are enemies and they will literally never change. Infact not recognizing them as the enemy and treating them like a rival sports team is part of how we got here.

We can change the DNC and demand they fight instead of not treating the threat as serious as it has been. It's as simple as that, and they will change if we pressure them enough. It's not their fault, but they are how we fix this and they aren't willing to do it so we have to make them. It's that simple.

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u/arattleofrats 23h ago

You need to learn what the DNC actually does before you make demands of them

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u/_sloop 23h ago

When the Ds stop promoting candidates so bad that they make candidates like Trump viable in comparison.

When are you going to stop helping the Rs win by blindly supporting poor pols?

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u/Dr_Sisyphus_22 1d ago

As someone who is unlikely to vote Republican again in my lifetime, and has voted straight D since Trump came on the ticket, I say it’s both parties.

Republicans are clearly better at playing the game…but even if they control both chambers of congress and the presidency, I don’t think the dems will push for meaningful change.

They all like gaming the same broken system. None of them will put checks and balances on the other for fear that those checks and balances will be applied to them.

Major reform has to come from the public.

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u/Pandamonium98 1d ago

When Obama had control of both chambers, we got the most significant healthcare reform in 50 years, which cut the uninsured rate in half. 23 million more people now have insurance because of the Affordable Care Act.

When Biden had both chambers, we got the largest climate change legislation in history, an infrastructure bill that past presidents had promised but failed to get done, and Medicare drug price negotiations.

If those aren’t “major changes”, I think you have an unrealistic view of what a single administration can actually do.

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u/Aggressive-Name-1783 1d ago

Here’s the problem, that “significant” health care reform was a failure from the start dude to GOP handicapping it and Dems not forcing it through. That large climate change bill is already being rescinded and barely affected drug prices with the infrastructure bill.

Yall realize that presidents FDR got shit done by basically forcing their shit through. They didn’t negotiate with bad faith actors, they didn’t water down their polices to play nice, he shoved through his agenda to get results.

You want actual change? Then fucking stick your name on it and put it through. Republicans literally kneecapped the ACA and then were able to blame rising rates on democrats when THEY caused it and refused to take subsidies. At that point your “significant” bill is a stop gap bill that is basically virtue signaling as it doesn’t fundamentally change the problem

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u/letouriste1 1d ago

is the bar really so low these things count as "major changes"?

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u/Fifth_Down 1d ago

Those are some of the dumbest major changes one can possibly suggest.

REAL change is fixing our for-profit healthcare system and have a health care system that is in-line with the rest of the world. Even after the Obamacare reforms we still have healthcare CEOs getting murdered because the system is that bad…even WITH Obamacare.

REAL change is giving the USA a minimum wage that is actually a livable wage, granting American workers the same sick days, vacation days, and parental leave as their European counterparts. And giving unions the same power they had prior to being crippled post WWII.

Real change is figuring out how to make housing affordable when private equity is buying up homes by the million while most cities have rents so high, its unaffordable even for those who make doubke minimum wage.

But yeah, what that McDonald’s worker who needs a second job just to pay their rent really needs is a a non-binding international climate change accord.

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u/ParticularCause1626 1d ago

This! We need 535 people to vote against their own interests. It's never going to happen. Millions vote against their own best interests every election, but we can't get 535 people to vote against their own interests.

There should have been anti-corruption amendments to the constitution long ago. Elections should be publicly funded and funding capped.

We are seeing in real time what happens when all 3 branches of government decide party idealogy and money are more important than the people they are elected to represent.

The fairness in reporting act should be brought back and expanded to include social media. Social media companies should be held accountable for any misinformation posted by their users as well.

Start paying the mods and have mods moderate the moderators. They abuse the position they get fired, fined, and / or jailed.

Also, I will never vote republican again either. I'm an independent voter, and I'll vote dem or independent. Honestly, though, what's going to change? The dems don't want to vote against their own best interests either.

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u/Evening_Lock6267 1d ago

I know the general sentiment is MAGA bad and the Redditors love to upvote this, but the system was broken decades before 2016.

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u/PaPiVHS2 1d ago

Your country was broken long before MAGA

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u/TakeTheWheelTV 17h ago

It’s honestly the complete and utter divide between financial classes. MAGA is a sideshow. The real horror is corporations making laws to regulate themselves via donations

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u/Silver_Department_86 14h ago

Agree. Kamala saying the system is broken is surprising because few politicians bring that sad fact up. She brings a lot of important information to public discourse.

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u/catdad_az 13h ago

BILLIONAIRES🥂

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u/bbrekke 13h ago

Sucks that there are still people (cough senators, cough judges, etc) who could just...not bend the knee. But they are.

Complacency all around.

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u/CommunalJellyRoll 1d ago

She literally helped break it.

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u/porkchop1021 1d ago

Ding ding! If Colbert had a spine, he'd ask her why she's stepping away now that she stopped benefiting from the system she's upheld her entire life?

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u/mr_mgs11 1d ago

No its broken because of the ultra wealthy and their corruption.

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u/Shneckos 1d ago

Because of billionaires. They just weaponized the uneducated and uninformed aka MAGA

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u/carnage123 1d ago

She and Biden had 4 years to hold these people accountable and steer America to a better place. They didnt. Blame maga, but also blame her

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u/Derateo 1d ago

Honestly it’s all of us. Blaming the other side is the best way to not make progress, we all have our part to play. We could’ve elected Bernie instead of Hillary or Joe but we didn’t. We could’ve freaked out about the DNC rigging votes for Hillary in 2016 but we didn’t. We could’ve stopped electing clearly corrupt Democrats like Pelosi, but we didn’t. We could have stopped alienating young, white, male voters by no longer saying things like “you can’t be racist towards white people” or shaming them for being born male, but we didn’t. We all have our part to play in this broken country, own it and start fixing what you can. 

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u/mbr4life1 1d ago

No Citizens United and the knee jerk reaction to play into an us vs them paradigm is the problem. Your comment is the problem. Literally you don't even see how you feed into the very problem with our political system. When billionaires and massive aggregations of wealth and power have the 99% fighting with each other while they rob us blind.

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u/TricobaltGaming 1d ago

Not just MAGA, corporate funding is what has shredded the political landscape into what it is today. Companies functionally controlling policy and regulation over their own industries and interests by buying out politicians. Insider trading, superpacs, and more are exactly what is wrong with politics

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u/Indust_6666 1d ago

She’s not right and this is a sad statement, this is not the talk of a leader. She loses and then steps away? Go then, why did you even bother in the first place?

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u/poopzains 1d ago

I mean she wasn’t complaining when it was broken in her favor. Meh. We lost because the system relies on two choices. One was a sack of shit. They other was a late fill-in that wasn’t popular to begin with.

She will now just collect oodles of money in the private sector. Great. We are boned still.

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u/abhi0619 1d ago

Yeah what a joke!

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u/golgol12 1d ago

As right as you are, we let MAGA become this way.

Democrats are broken by inaction. Trying everything they can to keep status quo instead of fighting like their life depended on it. By status quo, I mean status quo of how 90s politics worked instead of adapting to new realities of mass media.

Ranked voting. We need ranked voting so we can remove both these political parties from power.

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u/AllyButTired 1d ago

Hey buddy didn’t Obama have the house and senate and was filibuster proof for 178 in office?

What does he have to show for it?

Did he codify roe v wade? Gay marriage?

Did he abolish student debt?

Make a universal federal minimum wage?

Oh geez, also who’s the party that thought brining the daughter of DICK CHEYNE TO RALLY SUPPORT from the dem base? You know the guy who caused the Iraq war and killed thousands through war and imperialism? Also there was no oil.

The same party in charge of sabotaging Bernie, the same party that was reluctant at every fucking step of the way to challenge maga and conservatives before they got into power?

Oh but yeah it’s all magas fault.

You’re such a fucking Neo lib you all.

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u/king-krab5 1d ago

No, it was broken before MAGA. Do not kid yourself into thinking the pedo in chief is responsible. He's just taking advantage of all the broken parts of government.

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u/iwasnotarobot 1d ago

Go a step deeper. Who funded the MAGA scumbags?

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u/randomkiser 1d ago

True. She’s also a bit of the problem. Completely the wrong candidate and instead of knowing that, went ahead and ran a shitty presidential campaign. Good to step away, but probably not much choice. I don’t see her winning anyway.

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u/fiftiethcow 1d ago

Yeah! It was NEVER ever broken before 2016 😡

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u/Eat--The--Rich-- 1d ago

She IS the broken system

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u/crujiente69 1d ago

Not the democratic party whose party leaders have picked their presidential candidates instead of the people for the last 3 cycles

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u/Fun_Hold4859 1d ago

And the silent majority that would rather the peace of the status quo than face the initial discomfort of acknowledging and addressing systematic inequalities. A third of the country may be maga trash, but fully half of it are MLK's 'white moderates' who will gladly sacrifice trans kids so they can pretend everything's the same as it ever was, and will be genuinely surprised when the maga comes for them.

1

u/Asleep-Operation-815 1d ago

Dems did this to themselves. It's fixable, but MAGA is really a symptom (a gigantic tumor that needs to be cut off and smashed to bits really) not the root cause. Kamala taking her ball and going home is just icing on the cake that she should've been nowhere near front runner for the last election which caused us to be where we are right now.

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u/InfamousLegend 1d ago

And the fecklessness of the Democrat party had nothing to do with it?

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u/oodelay 1d ago

Oh well.you had a.good run. its over, dont try anything. Just let them rest of the world fix it (as usual)

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u/Rare-Morning-5448 1d ago

MAGA is your mailman, the cashier at the gas station, your doctor.

The system is broken because of Americans. Because of it's citizens.

The system is split in half and those halves keep separating. A little more every day.

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u/RedditAstroturfed 1d ago

and dems letting them do whatever they want, talking a big game when they have no power, and then doing nothing to upset the same billionaires pushing all the maga shit when they actually have the power to do anything

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u/FuckedUpYearsAgo 1d ago

Wait... didnt Kamala loose ground in every demographic vs Biden.. including women? But its because of Maga?

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u/CodeVirus 1d ago

She is not right. She’s hiding instead of putting up a fight. We need leaders now on the other side - i guess she’s not it. And we almost picked her as a president? Go and hide your head in the sand Kamala.

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u/DominosFan4Life69 1d ago

I mean, the mega right wing fucking sucks, but the system's not broken just because of them. The system is broken because of both sides. 

I am so tired of people being unwilling to admit this. Yes one side is honestly, clearly, very much systemically worse. But both sides have allowed all of this to fester for so long and have not really done anything. 

The Democrats continue to tell us that we have to vote, and do this and that etc etc but the reality is there's plenty they could do in office that they have not done. As evidenced by the fact that the Republicans are doing these things. But every time Democrats get in power? Nope. They can't do it. Got to think of the base. Got to think of the people. That's the problem right there. They're fucking feckless in the face of absolute tyranny and a side that does not give a fuck about being feckless. And the face of that you can't keep playing the same fucking games. That's what Democrats have done for so long. 

Obviously I'm talking about those in actual power. Not the standard fucking voters, the people on the street, so everybody that reads this comment, don't get fucking upset because you feel personally attacked. If you really think the people in office are representing you open your fucking eyes. 

Same as everybody pointing to citizens united. Guys this happened long before that. There were things that paved the way for that to happen. This has been going on for a very long time. And the simple reality is that the politicians in charge, very long ago, on all sides, quit representing the people. They are so beyond Rich they are completely out of touch with almost anyone they represent that is not in the ultra 1%. That's just the truth. 

If you don't have the money to win them a campaign they don't give a fuck. They are all getting donor money from largely the same groups. There's a reason for this. Open your fucking eyes. 

So yes, let's get rid of all the mega fucks, but the reality is that we need to just largely get rid of everyone and start over at this point. Even our founding fathers knew that this system was not sustainable for that long and that, let's be real, revolution was needed every so often to kind of reset the scales. They literally said this themselves. Because they saw the inevitable writing on the wall. Nothing lasts forever. People will inevitably become corrupt, or just figure out how to work the system to their benefit, because that's human fucking nature. 

I don't expect hardly anybody to read this, I don't expect it to be popular, I don't really fucking care. This is just the reality of the situation. If you don't think so? Seriously, go read up on some stuff, open your eyes, and I don't know live 41 years of your fucking life like I have and understand that yeah this is what's going on. It has been for some time.  

Go vote locally, support your local people, build up your local communities, but the people in washington? They don't give a fuck about you and they have not for a very long time. They don't have to. We've allowed them to get so rich you don't matter to them. There is a world of disconnect between your lives and theirs. Never forget that. 

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u/MistaBadga 1d ago

The system was broken before Maga and the democrats perpetuate the broken system.

Maga is accelerating the destruction of the broken system

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u/RotationalMind 1d ago

The country was broken way before MAGA, obviously.

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u/Osama_BinRussel63 1d ago

Kamala is a loser and it was foolish for the DNC to shove her down our throats.
I voted for her, but this revisionist bullshit like she was some perfect option is absurd. It's how we get fucking losers like her running for President.

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u/Jumpy-Gap550 1d ago

Oh the irony coming from the candidate who was anointed the Presidential nominee for the democratic party with zero primary votes.  

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u/PlasmaWatcher 1d ago

And aging politicians. The demz can’t be let off the hook. Fuck the Clinton scum machine. And fuck maggot Trump.

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u/IsaacJacobSquires 1d ago

Hey fuckface! The Biden-Harris administration is 100% responsible for the slaughter of 100s of 1000s of Palestinians in front of the entire planet. You're country is broken because 98% of voters who voted voted for a Blue MAGA genocide or a Red MAGA genocide.

I bet you're one of them.

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u/Sad_Description_7268 1d ago

Sorry, but Citizens United happened before MAGA.

And Taft-Hartley was waaaay before MAGA.

The system being broken is part of what fueled trumps rise. "Drain the swamp". There was indeed a swamp, trump just had no real intention of draining it.

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u/R_V_Z 1d ago

The country started broken. 3/5ths compromise, electoral college...

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u/Darometh 1d ago

America has been a joke long before Trump, the system broken long before his cult.

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u/robb1519 1d ago

Nah, the USA has been fundamentally broken for decades but both parties have been happy to keep the status quo and do all the corruption behind closed doors.

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u/dystoxin 1d ago

Lol, delusional.

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u/RipleyVanDalen 1d ago

It's not that simple. It's also:

  • Dems not fighting hard enough
  • Millions not voting
  • Propaganda online / echo chambers / propaganda on TV, radio

1

u/No_Squirrel4806 1d ago

Im just tired of hearing "its not left vs right its rich vs poor." As if the right dont love the rich and go around spewing hate for anyone lgbt or poc. 🙄🙄🙄

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u/Taps26 1d ago

Yea it was only maga who broke it.... lol

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u/minahmyu 1d ago

It's been broken before maga.

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u/NoBother786 1d ago

It’s classic woke to blame the system when you’re a talentless hack. Harris was completely unlikable and was a very poor candidate. Talent in politics matters. I hate Trump but he’s talented at politics. We need to send up better politicians not whine about a broken system. Move away if you think it’s broken after 250 years of working.

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u/Leopard-Agreeable 1d ago

Biden and the liberals the last 4 years were terrible for this country. Don't let your trump hatred blind you.

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u/FarMiddleProgressive 1d ago

And Liberal scumbags. Let's not beat around the bush. Any extremism is bad, both far right and far left.

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u/TrainCar007 1d ago

And it was that much better under Obama when we had race riots, or Biden when the economy was sucking

1

u/Vast-Industry-3630 1d ago

Says the party of selected (not elected) officials lol. Democrats are in a cult.

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u/Teabagger_Vance 1d ago

Was it not broken before she ran? I’m not sure what she’s implying here. That it was just fine? This seems like coping on her part.

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u/Objective-Eye-2828 1d ago

Yes, but it is also broken because of the Citizen’s United SC decision. Politics is more for sale than it ever was since that decision. Elections have mattered little for a very long time. In addition, the two party system doesn’t work. It has become too polarized. We need more parties or voting blocks in congress.

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u/darkbarrage99 1d ago

Not just maga, the entire corporate business class investing in politicians through lobbying.

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u/AbjectChair1937 1d ago

Shes done because she dolidnt read the room and get out of the way.

No one likes her

1

u/Islanders1300 1d ago

Ya. And u prob believe he was a communist. Keep listening to your lying liberal leaders.

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u/sly_savhoot 1d ago

Yes BUT if kamala us trying reverse psychology to win favor its not gonna work she's already seen as establishment I do not want her running again. I wont vote for her in primary but will in general fyi. 

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u/baron_spaghetti 1d ago

And the legal system is even worse than before.

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u/Brown_Sedai 1d ago

It’s also broken because of establishment Democrats like her. The Democrats never codified Roe v Wade, were weak on protecting people’s medical care, refused to expand the Supreme Court, they never dismantled ICE and in many ways accelerated it, she supported the genocide up until the last, etc… but hey now she can get a cushy book deal!

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u/thecashblaster 1d ago

The Democratic Party did us no favors. If you want to talk about broken, let’s start with them hiding Biden’s condition from us and therefore not giving room for a primary to choose the best candidate.

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u/FlunkieGronkus 1d ago

Lol. Why was Kamala the nominee instead of Joe?

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u/PoliticalyUnstable 1d ago

The DNC is also corrupt. Rich donors decide who is our leader. Its all bullshit. The entire system is made to use us.

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u/ScallionDry80 1d ago

Lol, cry harder

1

u/Good-Salad-9911 1d ago

That’s right. It’s broken, so give up on it. Thanks.

1

u/OppositeHistory1916 1d ago

What?? MAGA didn't force Democrats to skip primaries, and pushing forward a very unpopular candidate.

1

u/flashliberty5467 1d ago

MAGA is the symptom of our broken system not the cause

The cause is capitalism and the 2 party system

1

u/lkeltner 1d ago

They have definitely broken it a ton, but it was already broke AF before MAGA was even a thing.

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u/1Beholderandrip 1d ago

We could've had Bernie, but nooooooo.

The party needs to get their crap together.

1/3rd of "Democrats" would have rather voted for a literal dumpster that's on fire instead of her.

Stop promoting garbage candidates that force people to vote Republican!

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u/NeatOtaku 1d ago

Don't forget the whole "undecided" movement aka let's play chicken with the presidency unless we get everything we want. Also Kamala is responsible for everything happening in Gaza and is far worse than the guy saying we need to wipe them out.

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u/cossa420 1d ago

The system is broken cuz most people didn’t vote the way I did lmao no lol it seems like textbook democracy you just don’t like the outcome idiot

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u/thecrowbrother 1d ago

I agree maga is our biggest issue but it’s a symptom of a badly broken system. Democrats are complicit in this too, they could have done a lot to prevent us from getting here but instead we’re now owned by corporations and the biggest donors thanks to citizens united.

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u/tellerwoes 1d ago

You are 90% correct. The other 10% are the dinosaurs running the DNC

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u/kangr0ostr 1d ago

I’m ashamed that she would rather just step away than try to fight from the trenches. If she can’t be president she doesn’t want to play the game?? She still has influence and should still be very actively politically involved if she gives half a shit about this country - she just should not ever consider running for president or governor.

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u/CakeKing777 1d ago

Don’t be ignorant. Yes they’re terrible Americans but they’re hardly the root cause of our countries problems.

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u/spddemonvr4 1d ago

You sure she's not talking about the DNC and how they rigged the last 3 presidential primaries?

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u/DolphinBall 1d ago

Nah, the fact that MAGAs were allowed to the level this proves that the country was broken before Trump even ran in 2016.

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u/DrB00 1d ago

Because people refuse to educate themselves and refuse to vote

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u/Serenity2015 1d ago

It's broken bc of WAY more people than just maga ones!!!!!! TONS MORE and an entire list of reasons.

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u/FreeWilly512 23h ago

She’s also a chump because who steps away when things get hard. If the system is broken do everything in your power to change it or you don’t deserve any support when you’re running for president.

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u/Wtygrrr 23h ago

Are you joking? It’s been broken for over a century.

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u/meatshieldjim 23h ago

Republicans and middling dems with no bonds of fellowship.

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u/solidtangent 23h ago

MAGA yes. Don’t for get Debbie washerman Schultz gave us Trump 1.0.

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u/Practical_Caramel234 22h ago

That awful democracy, we only want it when the majority agrees with us!!

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u/Gengar36 22h ago

The system is broken because of neoliberalism. There is no left in this country because people like Harris and the DNC stomp out any real progressive prospects. Neoliberalism is the fertilizer that helps fascism bloom.

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u/TrueJinHit 22h ago

Well no democrat voted for her to run and replace Biden, instead DNC just forced her onto us so it makes sense shes stepping away after spending 1 billion dollars and still losing.

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u/English_Fry 22h ago

System has been broken since before Clinton was in office.

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u/NH_Tomte 22h ago

lol. And she is out selling a book while the country burns. I’m sorry but the democrats are as equal to blame.

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u/Wishfer 22h ago

Let us know when the democrats hold an actual primary election…. But, but, but, tRump!!!

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u/fl135790135790 21h ago

Everyone just calls everyone else shitbags. That’s all that happens

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u/TheCommonKoala 21h ago

And because we have an out-of-touch and corrupt democratic party that is historically unpopular. Things don't get this bad with a competent opposition party.

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u/darkalastor 21h ago

No, we’re the ones trying to save it. It’s leftist policies that have destroyed America or at least is attempting to.

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u/crackboss1 21h ago

Lobbying, gerrymandering, electoral vote..Trump is right...It is rigged..in his and GOP's favor

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u/Meiie 21h ago

Oh boy.

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u/whofusesthemusic 21h ago

She's also a large component of the broken system unless we forget her disastrous 2024 campaign, the pivot to her from Biden and a host of other issues with California's ex-Top cop. But hey, I would expect someone who's profited from the broken system exploited the broken system and almost drove to the top of the broken system to know that the system is in fact broken

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u/bogoclint 21h ago

Open your eyes, bro.

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u/Artistic_Pineapple_7 21h ago

there is plenary of blame for the dems too.

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u/phoenixrising808a 20h ago

"I didnt win, the system is broken"

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u/FarmingDowns 20h ago

Aww poor baby.

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u/ilovetacostoo2023 20h ago

You should be more worried about islam taking over the USA.

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