Dan GillmorJan 29, 2025

It is completely reasonable at this point to ask whether congressional Democrats have even a shadow of a clue about anything.

They aren't an opposition party. They are a feckless nothingburger of a party, cowering in the corner as Trump breaks multiple laws.

Show threadChris Hanson
@dangillmor This is who the Democrats have been since the Clinton era and their heavy reliance on corporate funding instead of small donor funding means that they can’t be anything else. If they try to advocate for the people, then they are going against their corporate donors and we can’t have that even if it means election losses.
Jan 29, 2025 at 1:53amIceCubesApp
Show threadEndymion_MallornJan 29, 2025

@eschaton Pre-Clinton. I'd say since at least Mondale, but I think it goes back further.

@dangillmor

Show threadChris HansonJan 29, 2025
@Endymion_Mallorn @dangillmor Indeed. It seemed to me to be a combination of the pre-Reagan entrenchment of many Democratic members in the House & Senate and a reaction to the Reagan sweep of the Presidency: The entrenched Democrats, to hold their seats, decided to keep paying lip service to their existing constituencies but court industry donors by playing along with rather than opposing Reagan.
Show threadEndymion_MallornJan 30, 2025

@eschaton Yup. And it's more evidence that we need legislature term limits.

@dangillmor

Show threadChris HansonJan 30, 2025
@Endymion_Mallorn @dangillmor I disagree; term limits would be another tool to get rid of people who buck the party’s primary goal (pleasing donors regardless of votors) and put even more of the power in the hands of lobbyists as a substitute for institutional memory.
Show threadEndymion_MallornJan 30, 2025

@eschaton I respect your position but I disagree. You're suggesting essentially that we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. Even if you're right, I'd rather be damned while acting, rather than sitting on our butts and letting century old thinking rule the world. We don't need the "institutional knowledge", that's what the corpus of law is for. What we need is a government made up of principled people. For the people, by the people, of the people. Not of the megarich, for the corporations, and of the lawyers.

Term limits are the only way to force new blood into the government.

@dangillmor

Show threadChris HansonJan 30, 2025
@Endymion_Mallorn @dangillmor Maybe we need age limits rather than term limits, or something along those lines. Or the term limits need to be long enough to negate the “institutional memory” problem but short enough to result in enough shuffling, rather than what most people intuitively think term limits should be.
Show threadEndymion_MallornJan 30, 2025

@eschaton I think 2 terms is enough. Match the Presidency.

@dangillmor

Show threadChris HansonJan 30, 2025
@Endymion_Mallorn @dangillmor For the Senate maybe but not for the House. That’s exactly why I said “rather than what most people intuitively think term limits should be,” since the more “amateur” legislators wind up required to be, the more “professional” the legislative staffs (and the lobbyist vultures surrounding them) will wind up being. For the House something like 6 terms—to year-match a 2-term limit in the Senate—might be reasonable.