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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", sykesix asked the members: "What do you do if you arrive early at movie besides go to the snack bar?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Personal Finance / Macroeconomic Trends & Risks
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Author: albaby1 ✶❂🐝 GOLD
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Number: of 4769 
Subject: Re: Will Mexico pay fo the wall?
Date: 11/11/26 10:19 AM
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I hope the Democrats do something more useful for we the people than just screaming about the insanity / suing/impeaching/hearings him and his cronies; like, getting the tariffs back under control and picking a moderate, viable candidate to run against the Pubs; and letting go of the cycle of knife fighting.

They will run into the same problem that bedevils every new Congress, of either party. Winning the election usually does not translate into the ability to implement your policies.

Democrats have massive Congressional majorities, but they cannot pass any legislation into law that the GOP opposes. The filibuster and the veto are insurmountable blocks. While the investigatory and oversight powers can't do all that much that is immediately useful for "we the people," at least those are powers that the Democrats actually have right now. Almost everything else is limited to preventing the GOP from doing anything.

Yes, they can pass a lot of messaging bills to run into the veto and filibuster. But there are limits to even that. Vulnerable House members (and there are a lot of those) don't want to take votes that they will get attacked for if those votes don't translate into real impacts. IOW, a House member might take a tough vote to get a valuable program into place - but they're less likely to take that tough vote for a valuable program if it's not ever actually going to get implemented. Because then they won't have the real world impacts/benefits of the program to run on.

Guarantee: in two years, the voters will be frustrated with the Democrats for not fixing all the things they were sent to Washington to fix. Progressives will continue to be outraged that the filibuster is still there. There will be anger that there hasn't been Medicare for All or tariff repeals or any substantive legislation to throttle back ICE enforcement. Etc.

Voter expectations cannot be met. Parties cannot get elected if they make achievable promises to voters. Voters continually get disappointed when the unachievable expectations are, unsurprisingly, not achieved.

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