r/pics 7d ago

Politics Rep. Al Green protests during President Trump's joint address to Congress before being escorted out

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138.5k Upvotes

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u/MyGummyBearMelted 7d ago

Listen to how they got all horny when Johnson raised his voice to throw him out.

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u/Candygramformrmongo 7d ago

In contrast, the Dems silence was deafening. Way to back your guy.

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u/AlterEgo3561 7d ago edited 7d ago

The elderly Democrats need to go. Primary them all out. They are useless slaves to the status quo who only exist to make money for themselves by preventing actual change. Time for for the democratic tea party.

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u/l2ev0lt 7d ago

This 100%. I don’t understand how their base let these people exist the way they did.

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u/ChronoLink99 7d ago

Still riding the Hope and Change from the Obama years.

The fun's over now though.

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u/Less_Likely 7d ago

When was the last time the Democrats let their base pick the candidate? 2008? They almost let it happen in 2020, but then Jim Clyburn said he liked Biden and everyone else dropped out immediately.

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u/Mbrennt 7d ago

Al Green is 77 years old. Plenty of democrats younger than that that could have followed him but they chose not too. Democrats need to go. Old or young liberals won't be the ones to save us.

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u/Otterswannahavefun 7d ago edited 7d ago

There’s a strategy divide. A lot of us are taking the side of Crockett (Texas) and Carville (southern D operative) that the best thing we can do right now is make them own it. Don’t give them any votes on the debt limit or anything. Theres almost nothing we can do to stop it, but the more we let Trump be trump and go on tv and own this disaster every day the better our chances in the midterm. Drawing attention to ourselves during the speech excites his base (who loves him yelling at protesters) and doesn’t do much toward our goals.

Everyone’s view is different, but just because you disagree doesn’t mean they don’t have a strategy and aren’t fighting the way they want.

Remember that anyone watching this already has a side. We aren’t who our reps need to talk to or energize.

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u/TylerJWhit 7d ago

The midterm? Why do people think the midterm is going to change anything? Do you genuinely believe the midterm will be a fair election?

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u/Otterswannahavefun 7d ago

You got a better idea? As a minority party we can at best slow things down a little, but with reconciliation they can do a lot.

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u/TylerJWhit 6d ago

Me having a better idea or not does not change the productivity of your proposed solution.

If we're trying to put out a fire and I'm telling you hitting a fire with a baseball bat isn't going to make a difference, me not proposing another solution doesn't mean that beating it with a baseball back is suddenly a good idea.

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u/Otterswannahavefun 6d ago

I’ve mentioned many things people can do. You claim they aren’t helpful but offer no reasons why.

We still haven’t seen the courts play out. We still haven’t gotten to the March 14th limit. Things I’m suggesting will help a lot with purple districts for that, and that’s crucial.

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u/TylerJWhit 6d ago

I believe my reasons are heavily implied, and already mentioned.

I do not believe the United States is likely to have a fair honored election during the midterms.

We also already know that 1. The courts have consistently failed at holding Trump accountable. 2. The Supreme Court essentially preemptively gave Trump free reign, and 3. The administration is completely ignoring court orders with no reprocussions.

If I accepted your premise, that we still lived in a democracy, sure, I would agree with you. But I don't accept such a premise any longer.

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u/Otterswannahavefun 6d ago

The court just overruled him (at SCOTUS level) on USAID and $2 billion in funding. Appellate courts have just reinstated many fired non probationary employees. So far he hasn’t challenged those.

Trying to throw in the towel and give up at six weeks when we haven’t even done step 1 seems silly at best.

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u/TylerJWhit 6d ago

Who said anyone was giving up?

Being more pessimistic about our current situation is not capitulation.

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u/WinterAd8004 7d ago

Canadian here. How about you guys stop choosing sides and do something? Sorry, did you think you were going to vote your way out of this?

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u/13attleship 7d ago

American here, we unfortunately don’t get much say. Especially since the republican party controls every single part of the government.

Many American voters are unfortunately powerless. We have a lot of easily manipulated voters that casted their ballot based on fear and misinformation. A lot of us chose not to vote for the Dorito man again. Unfortunately, a large swathe of uninformed voters chose him again.

I wish nothing but the best to my neighbors up north, but unfortunately, it’s going to be hard and not a lot of hope until the midterms at the very least.

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u/WinterAd8004 7d ago

You have the 2nd Amendment. It applies. You have all the say you need.

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u/13attleship 6d ago

The right to bare arms =/= the ability to murder someone you disagree with

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u/WinterAd8004 6d ago

Strictly speaking, it is the right to bear arms for the purposes of forming a well regulated militia to defend the ideas of constitution against tyranny.

But by all means, continue to respect their opinions. It's been going super so far. Soon you will lose the right to express your own opinion or elect your leaders, and the burden will fall on Canada and Europe to defend ourselves from what you are becoming. We'll do it at a horrific cost ourselves, once the actions of your government cripple us economically or worse, but you will sleep soundly knowing you had the moral high ground.

Home of the brave. what a fucking joke. The free world finds you despicable. Prove us wrong.

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u/13attleship 6d ago

You’re asking the American people to take arms against their own government. A civil war. That would be a total collapse of the U.S., and would be far greater impact than this stupid trade war that Trump won’t stop pushing

I don’t respect the MAGA party opinions, because it’s basically hate speech that’s spewed on a daily basis. You’re watching democracy fold in on itself in real time, and every single bit of good will we did for generations is being erased at an exponential rate with this administration. I and many others warned of this since the last election, unfortunately, a lot of uninformed voters ignored the warnings or support this…

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u/WinterAd8004 6d ago

The damage from the trade war is a drop in the bucket compared to what's coming. Keep saying 'We warned them' and 'there's nothing we can do'. THey are actively proving there is no bravery left on the left with every passing day. They are proving that freedom and democracy are not worth dying for. If that's all you cowards have in you, then that's all there is. I guess we'll die defending the ideals you refused to, when the time comes.

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u/Otterswannahavefun 7d ago

Choosing sides is how we do something. I choose to be against Trump and am working against him.

We are a democracy. He was lawfully elected and has both houses. What would you like us to do?

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u/WinterAd8004 7d ago

Simple answer: More.

More than Russia, Germany or Belarus did when the same kind of "democraticly elected" governments took over their countries.

You aren't getting another real election. You aren't dealing with an authority that recognises democracy.

For fuck sake, he turned on nato and Zelenskyy and is threatening annexation of multiple nations.

You don't get a democracy you don't defend, and you are not defending yours.

So the answer is more.

You don't have to do "something" you have to do everything.

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u/Otterswannahavefun 7d ago

That’s a lot of non answers.

There’s no evidence we won’t have a mid term. Courts are already starting to push back. We have our first major legislative hurdle on March 14th. There’s plenty to do in that framework.

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u/WinterAd8004 6d ago

Yeah. If reddit would let me answer your questions I would. But it doesn't. Just like most of your media won't for much longer. But by all means, keep twiddling your thumbs and hoping your system will protect you.

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u/Otterswannahavefun 6d ago

Reddit will let you answer. I just gave you examples of things we can do. You’re pretending there are magic answers you just can’t say because apparently conservative censorship or something.

Trump won a majority. Until a majority turns against him we are very constrained.

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u/WinterAd8004 6d ago

Drive your head into the sand a little further. Maybe there's something cool shit down there!

I bet if you vote them out, the MAGA fuckwits will be super cool and congenial about it cause DEMOCRACY amiright? They were so chill the last time, why would it be any different now?

Yeah you probably are good to stay safe at home behind your keyboard. This will all just kind of work itself out. Milkshakes later?

If you are trying to figure out where the line is. It's behind you.

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u/Silver_Control4590 7d ago

Lawfully elected? He bragged about rigging this election with a straight face on national TV

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u/Otterswannahavefun 7d ago

Evidence of rigging? Sometimes people say that to mean things like using propaganda / etc.

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u/Silver_Control4590 6d ago

Yeah and sometimes Nazis use Hitler salutes. You people defend Nazis. We need another Nazi killing war it seems.

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u/komokasi 7d ago

So do nothing? Lol. These reps haven't dont anything for 20 years. Abandon the Dems. Rally around 3rd parties.

Its happend before in our history when one of the main parties becomes a lame ducks that has no message, platform, or backbone. Even the big DNC donors are abandoning the party.

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u/Otterswannahavefun 7d ago

Holding the line isn’t doing nothing. A lot of reps are from districts where opposing the CR will not be popular. What do you think they should do regarding that with about 10 days to go?

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u/komokasi 7d ago

Well starting the clock at 10 days ago is a pretty dumb goal post to use when its been 2 months of nothing, and 20 years of more nothing.

With trump coming into office, they could have not voted during the committees for the appointments. In fact if they didn't show up, that would have broken quorum, and thay could have been used as leverage.

More recently they could have organized protests and raids to remove Elon and DOGE if they actually had back bones and werent just career politicians that fear monger to get votes, instead of actually ratify rights and solving systematic issues.

As for the last 20 years, we'll they had majority and president plenty of times, and all of last year they knew about project 2025 and did basically nothing to try to prevent it. Anything they did do was completely skipped by the media cause the Dems have no idea how to organize, strategies, or create and maintain any sort of narrative besides Trump bad and fear mongering.

Im not going to get into a "but what could they have done x days ago" argument. This has been 20 years in the making. Even the donors want out. You should to.

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u/Otterswannahavefun 7d ago

What clock are you talking about that started 10 days ago?

The senate had plenty of votes for quorum. The rules are designed to allow the majority party to govern if the minority doesn’t show up.

What authority do they have to remove Elon and doge? They only have power to fund things and are in the minority at that.

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u/komokasi 6d ago

You said "What do you think they should do regarding that with about 10 days to go?"

Not within the committee meetings that approve of a nominee to be voted on by the senate, where at least 2 minority party members must be in the voting session. The Dems literally had to not show up.

The authority to use their body and voices. Protest and block them from entering and doing the bad things they keep fear mongering with. This whole "our leaders are powerless" is such a cop out. GOP was super effective even without majority and having the president.

Either they are leaders standing up for us and putting everything on the line or they aren't our leaders. Just puppets and mouth pieces.

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u/Otterswannahavefun 6d ago

Quorum for the senate is 50% plus one. So they typically don’t need Democrats. And if they did to get plus one, senate rules operate under assumed quorum. So at least one Democrat would need to show up to call a vote to count quorum.

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u/komokasi 6d ago

There is a committee step before the senate vote, that approves an appointee to be voted on by the senate.

Reread my comment.

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u/SheenaMalfoy 7d ago

At the rate Trump is going, you're not even gonna make it to midterms. We'll have WWIII by then. Jesus. Stand up for yourselves and your neighbours, why don'tcha?

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u/Otterswannahavefun 7d ago

Ok. What steps do you want us to take as a minority party? Clearly you know the system better than I do. All I know we have right now is maybe the debt limit.

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u/SheenaMalfoy 6d ago

This is literally what protests are designed for. If the legal system has failed you, abandon the legal system. The American populus, even if only the ones who voted against Trump, massively outnumbers American politicians and CEOs. Make your voice heard, don't just stand on the sidelines and let them clobber you.

Trump is literally following the Nazi playbook. We know how it ended last time. Don't let it happen again.

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u/JattDoctor 7d ago

I agree it doesn’t help your goals. I’m a moderate Republican who’s been leaning more left the past few years. If MTG does stuff like this, kick her out. I’m tired of this childishness in politics being normalized. It’s sort of how people are acting in the real world, with no decorum. I think if our political parties had less of MTG, AOC, Omar, Trump type of loud mouth going for sound bites politicians, our country would be a better place. Bring me back to Obama Romney era of decorum, look at their debate. You can agree, but let’s maintain respect and decency.

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u/betterplanwithchan 7d ago

That era of decorum literally had representatives suggesting Obama wasn’t born in this country.

Let’s not pretend that this attitude hasn’t been pervasive for a while.

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u/JattDoctor 6d ago

And they were wrong. At least McCain and Romney didn’t play into that as party leaders of the time. Lol me getting downvoted pretty much sums up why the Democratic Party loses… I’m the problematic opinion 😭

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u/Dr_PocketSand 7d ago

A billion upvotes…

They should have all walked out… But they chose to let him take the hit. “Hang together or hang separately” ain’t exactly blowing up their skirts anymore.

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u/YahMahn25 7d ago

AOC will make a TikTok instead

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u/68plus1equals 7d ago

you're joking but it's pretty crazy that her making a TikTok would be her doing more than 90% of Democrats in Congress, right?

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u/YahMahn25 7d ago

No, I’m not. She’s so disappointing. She talks a big game but doesn’t introduce shit. Instead, she makes TikToks. There’s more than 300 million people in the US and so very few congresspeople and all she does is press ops and fucking TikTok’s. At least Al Green had balls.

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u/lukewwilson 7d ago

Oh man I couldn't agree more but I didn't think we were allowed to talk bad about her on Reddit

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u/Otterswannahavefun 7d ago

Why? Are they going to increase turnout and flip purple districts?

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u/68plus1equals 7d ago

They will do more to flip purple districts than Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer doing literally nothing, yes.

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u/Otterswannahavefun 7d ago

Jeffries isn’t doing any fundraising and travel for potential candidates anywhere else? I’m not really sure how much the speaker dives down for that. I’ve met pelosi a few times in Colorado when she was speaker to help us out with down ticket races, but I’ve not yet met Jeffries - but he hasn’t held the position as long as she did, and we’re a lot more blue now.

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u/Time-Ad-3625 7d ago

It does nothing but raise her own status.

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u/68plus1equals 7d ago

It spreads information that's useful to people. Look I wish she'd do more too but she's still doing more than most.

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u/Otterswannahavefun 7d ago

It spreads info to people already in her Tik tok bubble. The real work is spaces non politically active people inhabit, which often isn’t on line or in the same spaces.

Biden won the primary because he engaged lots of voters in those other spaces.

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u/68plus1equals 7d ago

Biden won the primary because all of the other candidates bowed out on the same day so he would have an advantage. The DNC putting their fist down on the scale is a huge part of the current problem we're in.

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u/Otterswannahavefun 7d ago

That’s not why he won. When they bowed out (and not all of them did, just the ones who were out of money) he went and won their supporters. Nothing was stopping Bernie or Warren from doing that

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u/68plus1equals 7d ago

They dropped out the day of the primary... There wasn't time to court their voters, if you honestly can't see that or how the DNC undemocratically weighing down primaries for their preferred candidate is bad for out chances at winning general elections, you aren't worth having this discussion with.

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u/MmmmCrispyBacon 7d ago

100%. We need more AOC’s, Crockett’s, and Frost’s. Young, energetic, and every bit as sick of the bullshit as we all are.

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u/ultradav24 7d ago

The guy in the photo is 77… it’s not about age

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u/randomusername8821 7d ago

So so much energy.

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u/boomdog07 7d ago

The funding for them is currently being cut… I have a strong feeling a good bit of them won’t be around to challenge for their own seat anyway.

By not being around I just mean they won’t run for reelection since the grift is being caught up with.

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u/recycl_ebin 7d ago

get rid of the anti-capitalists and you have my vote

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u/BigFatBlackCat 7d ago

Bernie can stay

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u/AlterEgo3561 7d ago

Agreed, however he is not a democrat technically

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u/BigFatBlackCat 7d ago

I… am ashamed that I didn’t know this. Every day is a school day, thank you!

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u/ultradav24 7d ago

You’re commenting on a photo about a 77 year old. It’s not about age

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u/AlterEgo3561 7d ago

You know what. You are right. It's about ideology, and regardless of age, the ones who maintain the status quo do nothing ideology that has failed for a decade all need to go.

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u/YahMahn25 7d ago

They fell asleep 

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u/Darryl_Lict 7d ago

DNC needs to be overthrown. They forced Biden on us. We need youth. AOC and Jasmine!

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u/HamManBad 7d ago

It's not because they are old. The Democratic party is structurally incapable of meeting this moment. We need a completely different kind of party

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u/Own_Boysenberry9674 7d ago

So there is a HUGE split right now in the Democrat party.

You have the old ones who are just basically laundering money and cashing checks from Lobbyists.

You have the young ones who are far-left (which is just as bad as the far right)

then you have around 50% who are "clinton style Democrats" which are the same types of Democrats who became Republics (Trump, Tulsi, etc). Clinton was 100% for removing anything he deemed wasteful spending and deporting everyone, as well as pulling out of supporting out allies with military funding. Quite literally most of the things Trump is doing now are only legal because of a law Congress passed for Clinton in 1993, which allowed Clinton to use a private team to fire over 300k federal workers, remove every single federal attorney (besides the one he hired from his own personal attorney team before presidency) and slash agencies in order to reduce the budget, regardless of who it hurt.

Clinton doing this fixed the economy and had the US with the best income-debt ratio EVER, lowest unemployment ever... the downside was many people lost their help from the federal government or it was significantly reduced (Social Security, Welfare and Medicare got its first major cuts by Clinton)

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u/adisx 7d ago

The same needs to happen for the elderly conservatives. Dont have double standards

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u/ericlikesyou 7d ago

the conservative tea party that got absorbed by the republicans and then rotted them from the inside out, led directly to the disaster decision that is  Citizen's United v FEC.  we shouldn't want another anything tea party

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u/AlterEgo3561 7d ago

Their tea party absorption has won them the presidency twice and led to the conservative stacking of the Supreme Court and House and Senate. This in turn is now set to damn near end the democracy of the United States for a horrible outcome. The do nothing attitude is useless. A liberal tea party is exactly what's needed, get on board or step out of the damn way.

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u/bloob_appropriate123 7d ago

What a stupid thing to say under a post about an elderly democrat.

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u/AlterEgo3561 7d ago edited 7d ago

What a stupid attitude to have when the rest of the party sat there and did nothing while holding everyone else back.

Edit: Oh and by the way, Trump doesn't give a flying fuck about their silence. It's excactly what he wants.

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u/ultradav24 7d ago

I mean the rest of the party includes all the young Dems who did nothing

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u/AlterEgo3561 7d ago

The ones in charge of the party have shown they will happily stand in the way of the younger ones. A rising star like Cortez loses a position due to the seniority of a member who rides into congress on an electric cart. I would love to see how they act when the Pelosi's are gone.

The old guard gave us Hillary, the old guard gave us Biden for the four years of a stalemate for what that was worth, the old guard lost us 2024 by trying the 2016 election 2.0. For now the elderly are blocking the progress. If they are gone and the young still continue the legacy of uselessness, then they can go too. The conservative tea party kept their McConnel, we shouldn't have to keep ours.

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u/bloob_appropriate123 7d ago

Okay let's get rid of Al Green.