The whole point of democratic elections is to allow for a peaceful transfer of power—without violence—when a government embodying one type of policy has become widely unpopular.
The problem we've gotten into in the UK (and also the USA) is that extremists have seized control of one of the regular incumbent parties, and the other parties have responded perversely by moving towards them. Removing the ability for a course change after an election.
Labour or Tories, they're still neoliberals.
Is this the same Biden who stopped the rail strike?
The same Democrats who propelled America to be the largest producer of fossil fuels in the world, under Obama?
As for the "Inflation Reduction Act", the money spent there is a tiny fraction of the fossil fuel subsidies that US pays.
What happened to single payer medicine? The same system that all other developed countries have had for fifty years?
My week was dominated by Biden invoking the Railway Labor Act, asking Congress to implement the deal he and Marty Walsh and worked out with the rail companies and unions back in September. Congress then did. There was an effort to include seven sick days in the contract, but Republicans naturally filibustered it, with help […]
I and every other human certainly heard about his completely symbolic appearance on a picket line.
I read that article at the time: "I explained that nearly every president would have done the same thing." That's because every President since Reagan has been hostile to unions.
And again, what about socialized medicine? Cutting the fossil fuel subsidies? Decreasing the military budget?
1/
@asociologist @cstross When we left America in late 2016, people thought it was because we thought Trump was going to be elected.
But in fact, Obama and Hillary Clinton were the ones that drove us away. Oh, either of them on a bad day is better than Trump on the best day of his life. But that doesn't make them good.
Obama had a simply horrifyingly bad record in every way. I really thought I had kept my expectations as low as possible and yet I was still devastated.
2/
Here's a long thread, and that still doesn't have all of it: https://toot.community/@TomSwirly/111363300490042037
When it came down to it, Obama was business as usual in every single way and America got neither Hope nor Change.
US Democrats ask for nothing, get less than that, and are simply happy with "not the Republicans". This is certainly very desirable but at some point America would have had to have stopped moving backwards and started moving forwards.
This did not happen.
3/
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] I've lived in the UK, Austria, Canada, 30+ years in the US, and now the Netherlands. I waited over thirty years for some sort of medical reform. The ACA fixed nothing about America's terminally broken health care system - it simply extended the horrible insurance system to more people. Medical bankruptcies are higher than ever, and outcomes are worse. 1/
@asociologist @cstross We left. We shan't be back. Thirty+ years is too long to be in a relationship with a country where my political ideas, completely boring and regular elsewhere, are generally considered childish, contemptible and stupid. I was no longer willing to have my taxes pay for endless genocides while schools crumble.
But most Americans can't do that and I don't understand why they aren't calling the DNC every day screaming at them.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325355
/thread
Charlie Stross
Dan Hirschman
Tom Ritchford