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West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin called today’s vote to oust McCarthy a “sad day for our country” that sends a negative message to the rest of the world about American democracy.
-Said a douchebag who spent years obstructing progress.
Joe Manchin voting record sends a negative message to the rest of the world about American democracy.
Perhaps. But consider Speaker Jordan. McCarthy may be a jellyfish who had no business wrapping his tentacles around the House gavel, but he at least tried to slither across the aisle on occasion.
I’m settling in for the clown show to come.
West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin
They misspelled republican in disguise wrong
They misspelled it wrong, so they spelled it right?
Some misspellings are more correct than others.
I bet he said all that from the back of his yacht.
Eli5 on Joe Manchin please? Never heard of him
He’s a dem who doesn’t seem to share any views with other Dems.
He singlehandedly delayed or outright prevented many large bills from going through.
When Bidens term is looked back upon, Manchin will be the force that prevented Biden from pushing though some of his more progressive plans.
He doesn’t always vote with the democrats, but if a republican had won that seat, they would be much more likely to side with the republicans.
He hasn’t done anything single-handedly, in every case where he gets blamed, it’s because there’s a huge Republican minority opposing something and he joins them. You can never blame him unless you’re first blaming all the Republicans he’s joining.
He’s a lightning rod because people think that for some reason he should vote with the democrats every time, but that’s not realistic. He’s a democrat from a very conservative state. The problem isn’t Manchin, it’s that they have to rely on Manchin and Sinema so much. If the democrats had a firm majority, his votes wouldn’t matter. Instead he’s often the deciding vote on something, so if he doesn’t support it it fails. But, again, it would be worse if a Republican had won instead. Right now the senate is 51/49, and the Democrats can occasionally pass things. If Manchin had lost it would be 50/50 and they’d virtually never pass anything.
When people look back at Biden’s term, they’ll note that it was the Republican who blocked everything, and that the 51/49 senate was too close to pass anything meaningful. Sinema and Manchin will probably get a mention, but anybody objective will note that it was the Republicans who blocked things, not Manchin and Sinema.
Democrats can actually pass bills 50/50: if the US Senate ever has a tie vote, the Vice President gets to pick a winner.
Which was 100% predictable and expected.
Including the fact that there are plenty of other Democratic senators who believe the same shit he does and vote accordingly but he’s doing what he agreed to do as the public whipping boy.
There are two things he’s useful for: having a Democrat as Senate Majority Leader, and he actually does side with Dems on voting rights most of the time (even co-sponsoring bills). That’s it. Other than that, might as well let the seat fall to a Republican for all the good he does.
With his position as swing vote, Manchin is arguably the most powerful person in the world. He’s doing fuck all with that power besides obstructing things. If I were a W. Virginia voter with sense, I would be asking how he’s using his position to help W. Virginia. You want to bring jobs and industry and sweet government pork to your state, Joe? You’re in a prime position to do it.
Democratic senator from an otherwise red state. He tends to be a spoiler for Democratic plans, along with Kristen Synema.
If the GOP was closer to the center, he would likely switch parties.
from an otherwise red state
Not really, his voters overwhelmingly support progressive policies.
It’s just no progressive has a chance in the primary with the party blocking all of Manchin’s primary opponents.
It has been on a downswing lately tho. 2016 there was more D than R voters, and 2021 it got tied up.
I do t know why everyone acts like all these “red states” are worth writing off, it really wouldn’t be hard if we actually tried for them.
I don’t know where you’re getting there being more D than R voters in WV. The last two presidential elections went to Trump by 40 points
Manchin is a senator, which means the election is state-wide, and West Virginia is a deeply red state.
A Progressive candidate has 0 chance in West Virginia and any claim otherwise is quite simply wishful thinking.
Let’s leave the Bernie Math in 2016
Ugh I’m not gonna try like a little fuckwit
He’s not all bad. He has let the democrats get through as many judges as possible. That said, he is a bad look for the party hands down. He allows moderates to believe democrats have a plurality when really they are just being lead by the people the least to the left. So when things go wrong it was the other 48’s fault but not really.
You mean christofascist supreme court justices?
No, the various federal benches. Which, incidentally, were the only federal positions that Trump had been filling with any urgency. Ambassadors and heads of departments all went unfilled, but not judges. So now the federal bench is stuffed with Trump appointees, and Democrats are only pushing back a bit.
If they had any sense, they’d quadruple the size of the federal judiciary and stuff it back up. The size hasn’t been increased in a while, and the workload per judge has been pilling up, so there’s a good reason to do this, anyway.
… no Joe Manchin has not helped the democrats appoint any christofascist Supreme Court Justices.
??? No, he helped the fucking Republicans do it. Wtf man?
The Republicans didn’t need his help.
Thank you
He’s a bitch boi
He’s like the swing vote guy, or one of them. Votes against party policy.
Summary of voting record: opposes big business, environmental protection, financial sector regulation, gun control, hawkish foreign policy, foreign and humanitarian aid, taxing the middle class, military spending, domestic surveillance. Supports taxing businesses, restrict money in politics, consumer protection, disaster relief, funding education, public health, labor rights and wages, lgbt rights, internet freedom, a robust safety net, higher spending, women’s rights.
Came across this site looking up an answer for you. http://politicsthatwork.com/voting-record/Joe-Manchin-412391
Worth looking at it in more detail because he did vote to support abortion restriction so idk about supporting women’s rights etc.
He’s the dem senator from west Virginia. He’s a coal barron we put up with because if he lost a Republican would most likely take his seat. He’s the Senate’s kingmaker
“Democratic Senator”
Democrats this morning were shown a clip of McCarthy on CBS over the weekend trying to blame them for shutdown chaos, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said, calling that a clarifying moment for those in the party who might have voted to save him. McCarthy’s decision to blame Democrats on TV this weekend was “one of the most crushingly stupid things somebody could do on the eve of your survival vote,” he told NBC News this afternoon.
I saw that interview clip - the reporter actually started laughing when he tried to blame the Democrats. It really was a stupid thing to say.
The Democrats were discussing working with him. Then he basically told them to fuck off with that interview. So he lost with 8 republican votes. Such bad strategy. It just makes you think, aren’t you supposed to be a politician. You ever politiced in your whole life?
I guess this is the kind of stupid, horrible strategy you can expect from the current Republican party. They don’t have to make deals are negotiate. Their entire platform is scream Democrats bad.
He was trying to throw the democrats under the bus because the threat from Gaetz was that he was working with the Democrats. But he forgot the Democrats aren’t complete pushovers, just mostly pushovers, and ended up falling under the bus instead.
He eas trying to get the most radical reps back by showing “hey i am one of you, i also wanto to own the libs” But fascists hanging their own to try if they are not radical enough is a story as old as fascism.
They already made their deal, with Putin.
You’re crazy if you think it’s these guys cutting deals with the big P directly. It’s more like the NRA, the Heritage Foundation, the Carlyle Group, some Koch org, or other billionaires.
The politicians are just the mouth pieces and button pushers.
That 14 republicans went to see Putin is the exception, not the rule. Normally they don’t expose that relationship and keep it going via middlemen.
I mean, hasn’t he always been kind of dim? I’ve always thought of him as kind of an older Eric Trump, tbh.
Do you recall where you saw that video?
I don’t remember the exact link I watched, but here’s a clip: https://youtu.be/6sAFFDWaNtY?si=wUaBjyiPv1o8SWzJ
Thanks MVP 🫶
Man, McCarthy is such a hilariously stupid little bitch. I’m honestly mystified that he thought that gaslighting approach was going to work.
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Former Fairfax County Commissioner Gerry Connolly? The man who never met a defense contractor he could say no to?
Everyone wants to act like he wants to be speaker…
He gets zero out of it and no matter what happens it hurts his chance retaining his seat or moving up to a higher office.
He probably can’t be happier to step back in the shadows.
Edit:
Woke up to see no ones ever heard about a dog that spends it whole life chasing cars, then when one stops realizes it doesn’t know what to do
He desperately wanted to be speaker. He was pissed off when it took him many votes to get the role, actively negotiating for the job he should’ve been a shoo in for.
Then even once he had it, he was doing anything he could to appease the freedom caucus, including the unilateral impeachment investigation and the shutdown threat.
In averting the shutdown he essentially resigned, but at that point he was a broken man who was tired of selling his soul to appease the far right. Lets not act like he didn’t do everything’s short of shutting down the government to avoid this.
He’s been trying to get that speaker spot for years, you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Speaker is usually end game. For politicians who want it, that’s where their career peaks. Party leaders pretty much always end up unpopular. That’s why Paul Ryan was reluctant to do it and now his career is tanked. John Boehner is a full time lobbyist now. Pelosi will probably never leave Congress.
But no one has ever wanted to be speaker more than Kev. He’s not really smart or popular enough to get any higher anyway. The fact that such a dim witted sad sack got as high as he did is a miracle by itself.
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Delete conservatism and religion.
If you deleted religion would conservatism even survive a few generations?
Have you like looked at Japan or any communist country. Japan is 62% non-religious and is highly social conservative. Czechia is the least religious country in the world but they also obviously have a conservative politics.
It’s not that they’re not religious. They just don’t pick only one. As they say, “Born Shinto, married Christian, die Buddhist”
I love that quote, that’s so accurate. Especially with how many funerary schools are primarily Buddhist in Japan along with the vast majority of their burials. It’s actually uncommon for a mortician to prepare a body for a wake.
I had a Japanese boss tell me the state religion of Japan is “being Japanese”. That struck me as being so very true during my few months living there.
It’s a very regimented culture, isn’t it? Everything guided by ceremony and tradition, you’d think half of it was religious in nature.
Could be remnants from past religious values and teachings?
This says Japan has at least 70% of the population following religious practices in 2019?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/237609/religions-in-japan/
The majority of Japanese adhere to Shintoism, a traditional Japanese religion focusing on rituals and worship at shrines. In 2019, around 70 percent of the total population of Japan participated in Shinto practices.
It would be a serious blow at minimum
Without all authoritarians in it, in fact.
They can take a long walk off a short pier for all I care
Remember this is the same McQarthy who chose to kiss orange ass at every opportunity he got. He was given so many opportunities to do the right thing but deliberately chose to be an asshole and pack all the committees with Nazi caucus members. He did everything he could to push extreme right wing lunacy and kill bipartisanship.
Now the same Qevin turns around and makes a pikachu face why Dems didn’t save his sorry ass.
K-Mac was also the dude that said on the floor that Putin pays Trump and Dana Rohrabacher. Yet he continued to side with them, after Dead Eyes Paul Ryan told him to keep that info in the family.
Kevvy pooped in his bed and was surprised he woke up covered in shit.
K-Mac sounds a budget version of a Big Mac except somehow you have convinced yourself you a have a 50 % chance of getting dysentery and the other 50% is that it won’t give you dysentery. Yet every time, you have a K-Mac…you get dysentery.
I like those odds, does it have a pickle?
It’s up to you, you can all the pickles or no pickles. Can’t guarantee how fresh those pickles are.
Mmmmmmm…K-Mart burgers…
We gonna get a carousel like the Conservatives in the UK last year? Will our next speaker outlast a cabbage?
On this side of the pond we use Scaramuccis
Conversion ratio, for reference: One Truss is equal to exactly four Mooches.
I am absolutely horrified that I know exactly what this sentence means.
Americans will use anything but the metric system.
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No, because those things are so full of salt and other preservatives they’ll last forever.
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I’m uh… not sure?
Yes
I get that Dems are enjoying seeing the Republicans seem to fail, but I get the feeling this is going to turn out horribly. We’re going to see Speaker Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz and the country will suffer for it.
Highly unlikely. Freedom caucus will not get the speakership. GOP hates them more than McCarthy. Gaetz didn’t think this through. The only option is more of the same or somebody more friendly to the Democrats.
The freedom caucus can block any nominee they want, and Republicans have made it clear they won’t accept someone that wants to work with Dems. It took 15 votes to get McCarthy as it was. I am not hopeful.
The freedom caucus can only block nominees if no compromise is made with dems. The gop can give concessions and have a speaker tomarrow if they like.
If they dont, then the house will have no speaker, and the GOP will get no bills passed of any type. The budget will be CRs until the election because none of the middle of the road GOP wants the shutdown fallout.
Then, hopefully all these clowns get walloped.
No bills can be brought without a speaker, so no CRs until a speaker is elected. The temp running the show has 3 powers: He can call a recess, adjourn, and call a vote for the speaker. That’s it. No other legislation passes unless they can get off their asses and put in a speaker.
Can’t the pro tempore bring bills before the house?
He can only run the voting for a new speaker
Which would also imply they can’t bring an impeachment vote in front of the House.
I’ve been saying for a while now that the best way to fight fascism (before it gets to its terrible end state) is to push them to fight each other in purity contests. This is a good example.
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Yes. A government shutdown is what happens when Congress fails to pass a law that allows the federal government the necessary funds to operate. If the House is unable to pass such a law, the federal government will shut down.
Oh yeah. 40 some days left.
Conservatives can’t govern.
If we oversimplify what happened, it’s hilarious that they are mad at him for voting with Dems, so they got rid of him by voting with Dems.
And one of the more likely scenarios is the non-freedom caucus GOP cuts a deal with Democrats to neuter freedom caucus’ power.
Which is what McCarthy should have done a while ago. “I won’t do this stupid impeachment inquiry as long as you back me when they try to oust me”
You’re assuming Kevin is smart.
I think he’s just terrified of Trumps base.
He is(edit: terrified, not smart). For sure. But the way you strip their power is by ripping the band-aid off and stop kowtowing to their non sense. That’s what actual leadership is. Saying “we need to do it this way because it’s the right thing to do” even if it’s hard or unpopular.
The Republican moderates, if any actually still exist, could take back control of their party if they really had the balls to. It would require them to call a spade a spade, and then start working with Democrats.
Only cuz abstain is same as a no vote tho, really.
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I mean they just showed they have the power to remove the speaker, the power goes through them
They wouldn’t have had the power without Dem votes, ironically.
Well, we have Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise as the choices. Both worse than McCarthy.
They gotta get the votes. Idk if u saw how Kevin struggled but he used everything he had politically to get that gavel in the first place… and even some he didn’t have. When he caved then that was when the idiots like gaetz knew he had kev by the balls…which is why we are here now.
I can’t shake the bad feeling that the timing is going to be a real problem once shutdown time rolls around here in less than 40-ish days. What if we don’t even have a fucking speaker at all by then??
There is the possibility that Dems coordinate a vote with the not-Freedom Caucus GOP to elect the least disagreeable candidate, though…
If that was a possibility, I would think they would have done so in one of the 14 ballots before Republicans settled on McCarthy.
Look what they did to Liz Chaney. They would expel a Republican that did that from the party, and then they would Primary them out of office.
The next speaker will be incentivized to neuter the freedom clowns after what happened to McCarthy.
So I think there is a better chance they try to strike a deal with the Dems. Honestly it’s just mins blowing to me that the Republicans see this absolute fiasco as a better outcome than getting 10-15 Dems on board. It wouldnt take much work.
Any Republican that works with Dems any more than McCarthy is likely to be primaried. They have brainwashed their base to think Dems = Evil, and working with them is worse than a deal with the Devil.
Republicans are stuck in this weird place where they do not have enough votes for a majority without the freedom caucus, but the base will replace them if they work with Dems. As such, they placate the freedom caucus.
They can’t do it like wounded gazelles. They have to act together or in larger numbers. Don’t get picked off one by one.
I know they are cowards, but jeez, I guess they can’t trust each other enough to do it together.
I’m not a betting man, but if i was, this will be the outcome.
Plus most ofvmy family would blame this all the dems for not reaching accross the asile, and being the party of devision.
“Yeah! Why aren’t dems meeting halfway between Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy???”
Man, the GOP have really let themselves be gutted by their most extreme members.
Yeah man. I’m running out of popcorn here.
Elect a clown, expect a circus
Call me old and cynical but I see the inevitable conclusion of this game that the conservatives have been playing being a civil war. This is what they are pysnigb for, this is what they want.
The reason they want this is because, well, they are extremist Christian terrorists and they’re plain evil. Dunno how else to say it. They don’t want gays to have any rights, they want gays converted or dead. They don’t want trans people to have rights and have a remote shred of happiness, they want them dead. They don’t give a shit about abortion, they want more babies in poor and breken families who are easy to manipulate into voting for them. Hell, they don’t want democracy, they want a theocracy.
They watched the handmaid’s tale and thought they were watching an awesome documentary. It contains all the elements that gets them hard; being able to force their religion upon others, being able to control others, rape others…
Imitgt be having a tinfoil hat on right now but I see these extremists come up with a document that wants to do away with democracy and have an all powerful
presidentdictator, that outlines a plan to prohibit porn and even simply books that talk about transgender issues and jail anyone who produces or possesses such evils…These are not nice people, at this point I think it’s safe enough to say that these are dangerous terrorists
I think the US is in much bigger trouble than most people see
Imitgt be having a tinfoil hat on right now
No thank you. Literally every holocaust survivor was screaming deja vu with Trump, along with all their descendants who got the bed time stories.
What really fucked up is the shit in handmaud book that was left out of the show
I’ve straight up had people say that in the wake of a birthrate crisis, Gilead would be completely justified.
I’m not an anti-natalist, but if the choice really was between Gilead and humanity dying out, I might reconsider.
Let humanity die out.
I never read the books. Is it that bad?
They banish black people to a radio active waste land to kill them off.
Could be me but I thought that was in the show too, no?
I only the first few episodes so they probably added it in latter
For the voters you maybe right. For the leaders, follow the money… It’s as simple as wealth and power.
Keep us “plebs” fighting on stupid shit so we don’t eat the rich. Terrorism recruiting strategy 101. Get people addicted to hate so it can be channeled against the opposition.
At least those are my insights.
Do we actually have to eat the rich? Can we just use them as fertilizer instead?
I mean, I’ll take their cake and share it around to be eaten, lol. Could care less about their bodies.
You sound like Marjorie Taylor Greene lol. Things are nowhere as bad as you are projecting, we are all literally laughing at the Republican party (Republican party included).
If anything, this whole ordeal probably just saved us from going to civil war because it showed the country how dangerous this type of MAGA thinking in just 8 representatives can be.
I’ve seen many rather too prominent R party members talking casually about civil war. If that doesn’t at least make you frown then I think you might be a bit naive. Hitler too was a funny guy until he suddenly burst on the world stage. Trump too was laughed at a year before he was president
Hahahahaha
Fucking clowns
Now they’re a complete set of failures!
What happened to Eric Cantor?
Lost his primary in 2014 then resigned before finishing the term.
9 years ago… also Boehner. Didnt think politics could get crazier. How young and naive I was.
What happened to Paul Ryan?
Saw the first two years of Trump and bowed out before it went full insanity. He may be playing it smart and letting the whole Trump thing go away before running for president. We’ll see.
Paul Ryan is absolutely going to try to step back into politics once Trump is gone, and act like he’s a return to sanity.
He isn’t.
I’m not forgiving Paul Ryan for torpedoing the Hearing Protection Act at the one time in recent decades it had a chance to pass.
Is that the ridiculous bill to legalize silencers? It will never pass. Has zero chance. Hey want to save your ears, here’s an idea, stop setting off explosions near your head as a hobby. The report is a feature not a bug.
What would that bill do?
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The Speaker position was but a mere stepping stone to their true calling of being wealthy k street lobbyists.
Young gun, gray hair.
Haha.
Could we please stop calling these agents of destruction “conservative”? They don’t want to conserve anything. “Destructives” would be better.
America’s two parties are Regressives vs Conservatives.
amen
Reactionaries.
Tis the word to use.
*Russian agents
*paid russian assets
As it stands the GOP seem unlikely to be able to elect a speaker. Speakers provide a list of people to become temporary speaker in case of emergency, so upon McCarthy’s ouster rep. Patrick McHenry became speaker pro tempore. Speakers pro tempore have only the authority to gavel sessions in and out, and to conduct votes for a new speaker.
Basically McHenry’s first act with the gavel was to order Pelosi out of her offices. What an asshole
Right?
I’m no fan of hers, but jeez McHenry… let’s see, what’s more important: try to get the House back on track, or engage in petty, vindictive partisan bullshit?
I’m glad the House passed that CR, though I’m not sure they’ll have a new speaker before it runs out.
Pretty, vindictive, partisan power-grabbing shit. The interim speaker shouldn’t even be able to do that
Apparently some of the Republicans are talking about nominating Trump as speaker. The speaker doesn’t technically need to be a member of congress. I wonder if there are enough anti-Trump republicans in the House to block that. If it’s a close vote and certain congress people block Trump, they could get a mountain of hate.
Amazing that the founding fathers didn’t contemplate the possibility of a felon under active lawsuits becoming speaker
In defense of the founding fathers, they were all traitors to the crown and enemies of the state when they wrote that.
Possibly they were young and drunk too.
They also sold drugs, ran guns, and said fuck the law. This documentary touches on it.
Also opiun.
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…and?
They probably didn’t contemplate having an active child Diddler be speaker from 1987-2007 either, but Republicans sure love their historic firsts.
The founding fathers were amazingly shit at game theory.
Considering no one would formalize game theory for 150 years it’s not particularly surprising.
You don’t need to necessarily formalize game theory to consider things like: hey, we just gave the president the authority to pardon. Couldn’t they abuse that? What if they pardon someone who was doing something illegal that they ordered? What if they commit a crime and pardon themselves?
I mean, that’s the most obvious one that you don’t really need formal game theory to know could be a problem. Then there are all the other problems. Checks and balances are good, but when a powerful faction uses its power to put loyalists into the thing that’s supposed to balance them, the system seems to unravel.
They didn’t even contemplate the House Speaker being in the Presidential line of succession. Which is the reason they want to put Trump there. Not that it would work; they’d have to remove both the President and Vice President at the same time, and the Senate ain’t going to do that.
An angry mob with strong will to unalive certain people before the #3 in the line of succession would be a major concern
Only 3-4 republican votes are needed to block any candidate since the Democrats will all be voting against.
Yes, but if Trump is on board, can you imagine the mountain of hate mail and death threats those 3-4 would receive? Would they have the guts to accept that consequence?
This is one of the least likely scenarios.
That sounds scary if possible
It’s not
that ain’t going to happen
Speaker of the house is 3rd in line to take over if the VP and Pres are dead or unavailable.
Question is if you think that MAGA and foreign intelligence would be up for forcing that issue.
Making Trump speaker would be a major national security risk to Biden and Harris. Gives way too many lunatics big ideas is there’s a direct benefit to their movement. Not to mention it WAYYY to closely mirrors the arc of Hitlers rise. Failed coup attempt, followed by taking on a secondary post a few years later.
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Now wait a minute…I thought they liked McCarthy SOOOO much, they were willing to vote for him as speaker 15 times in a row just this year?
The first 14 times McCarthy failed to get voted in. They disliked McCarthy so much it took 15 votes to get them in the first place.
Correct. And instead of fixing the issue…here we are. But hey, they got a beefier salary out of it.
