Democrats are mad that their base are demanding and expecting them to at least try to do something.
For some reason Axios posted like at least 3 variations of the same story:
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/06/democrats-congress-trump-musk-doge-calls
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/12/democrats-grassroots-groups-moveon-indivisible
Why it matters: Members of the Steering and Policy Committee — with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in the room — on Monday complained activist groups like MoveOn and Indivisible have facilitated thousands of phone calls to members’ offices.
- “People are pissed,” a senior House Democrat who was at the meeting said of lawmakers’ reaction to the calls.
- The Democrat said Jeffries himself is “very frustrated” at the groups, who are trying to stir up a more confrontational opposition to Trump.
- A Jeffries spokesperson disputed that characterization and noted to Axios that their office regularly engages with dozens of stakeholder groups, including MoveOn and Indivisible, including as recently as Monday
Zoom in: “There were a lot of people who were like, ‘We’ve got to stop the groups from doing this.’ … People are concerned that they’re saying we’re not doing enough, but we’re not in the majority,” said one member.
- Some Democrats see the callers as barking up the wrong tree given their limited power as the minority party in Congress: “It’s been a constant theme of us saying, ‘Please call the Republicans,’” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.).
- “I reject and resent the implication that congressional Democrats are simply standing by passively,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).
The other side: “People are angry, scared, and they want to see more from their lawmakers right now than floor speeches about Elon Musk,” Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg told Axios.
- “Indivisible is urging people who are scared to call their member of Congress, whether they have a Democrat or Republican, and make specific procedural asks,” Greenberg said.
- “Our supporters are asking Democrats to demand specific red lines are met before they offer their vote to House Republicans on the budget, when Republicans inevitably fail to pass a bill on their own.”
Reminder that Richie “I reject and resent the implication” Torres spent the election trying to get the political streamer Hasan Piker banned for antisemitism (read: criticising Israel).
I also remind dipshit Democrat defenders to hold Democrats to account. They ran a failed election campaign. They decided adhering to genocide was more important than winning. This is how they respond to their base expecting literally anything of them, is to resent them and tell them to shut the fuck up and plead there isn’t anything they can do so they just have to roll over.
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They won’t even stop confirming Trump’s nominees.
They’re not weak. They’re complicit.
Lol the US has lost its extravagance so now the one party rule is showing. They can’t go against policies they all agree with.
Democrats are going to keep on losing for the next decade or so. The party is filled with out-of-touch geriatric fools who believe politics still function the same as in 1990.
controlled. opposition.
People hate it when you bring up how shitty both sides are, but this is what lib centrists have been supporting for decades. When you promise a guaranteed vote for nothing in return out of a theory of harm reduction election after election, you’re left with a party so out of touch, so intellectually stunted, that they’re struggling with the mere concept of being an opposition party.
Unfortunately, the time to do anything about it has passed. Progressives and leftists have been shouting about how awful the Dems are since Bill Clinton, but instead we always had to “Vote Blue No Matter Who” and that our time would come someday. We could have spent the last 10 years primarying out all these weak-ass corporate stooges, but nobody wanted to divide the party. Now, we’ll be lucky to still have midterms in 2026.
The left in the US needed to do something similar to redmap, basically take over the party from the ground up. Field leftist candidates in every position at every level. School boards, dog catchers, literally everything all the way up to president. maga started this decades ago, and it’s why they have so many people in influential positions now. The left got outsmarted, outmanoeuvred, and beaten to the punch. And it’s quite likely too late for them to do anything about it politically as the US political system doesn’t look like it’s going to survive much longer.
That strategy also has been tried and failed repeatedly since the 1930s.
Outsmarted and outmanoeuvred? The left has been trying to make progress for decades. I’ve personally worked on some of those local campaigns. The problem is that the American people routinely rejected us, every single time. We never had any corporate donors or massive amounts of personal donations, no large media support to help get the word out, so is it any wonder we kept losing? There was a brief hope that social media would help level the playing field, but we all saw how quickly that got corrupted by fascists.
The white moderate did not want socialism, so they have gotten fascism.
Just a question from outside the US. Did the minority moderate want socialism? From outside it seems like a general issue with us moderates that they fear anything labeled leftism, not a specific white policy
I’m honestly not sure. I can definitely say those local campaigns I worked on received support mostly from queer people and people of color. I’m not sure how many minorities in the US still identify as moderates after the way the empire has treated them, but I know there are blocs of super Catholic South American migrants and ex-Soviet EEU migrants who hate leftism.
I was using the phrase to refer to MLK’s letter where he specifically calls out “the white moderate” as being one of his greatest obstacles on the path towards civil rights. If you’ve never read through the letter, I highly recommend it, as it describes the white moderate perfectly.
Is it the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” you are referring to? If so I’ll read it t tonight after work.
I’ve basically only seen the “I have a Dream” speech from him (except the cultural osmosis knowledge of FBI linked death and such) so the reference to white moderates went straight over my head and it just looked so odd to put a racial target in a post which otherwise seemed to view the struggle to rights from a classist view point rather than racial
Can I ask why “limp wrist(ed)” has reentered everyday speech? Does it have some connotation that isn’t “f*g”? Because that’s the only way I ever saw it used, but I’ve also recently seen people shocked it has that connotation.
It does have a broader connotation of being effete and dainty, which I think is what the intent was?
But, yeah, the old connotation doesn’t go away just because we’re using it differently. I don’t like it.
I wasn’t aware of any previous connotations, my apologies. I just didn’t want to call them limp-dicks, it felt too gendered and crass. I’ve always seen it as a cleaner version of that. Is limp-dick also meant to be a gay slur? I’ve edited the post to just use weak-ass.
Yeah, I only asked because it seemed out of sync with the rest of your message, it didn’t seem like you were intending it to have that connotation. It might be something that jumped out at me due to my age and experience with homophobia (kids in the 90s would literally make a limp wrist gesture at you to call you gay), especially since every time it’s brought up people seem unaware of the anti-gay connotation.
To my knowledge there’s no anti-gay connotation with limp-dick, it’s just gendered as you pointed out.
Holy shit today I learned, I would have never connected those two things on my own. My ex-boyfriend used to make fun of people unironically trying to use that hand gesture, but I never once thought of it as a limp wrist!
They took an oath to defend their nation against all threats, foreign AND domestic. “The bare minimum” they must do is to physically go to the doors of department buildings they are supposed to have authority over, accompanied by armed police or guards willing to back them up, and demand entrace.
Make no mistake, the first punch or shot MUST be from the DOGE/GOP/MAGA fascists, if they fail to back down… but the issue must be FORCED otherwise they win by default. IFF fascists first take the step to violence, then the response must be 500% right back at them, or THEY WIN BY DEFAULT.
When Trump lost the last election, his followers stormed the capital. When Harris lost, nothing.
Not wanting to normalize violence after every federal election… I kind of get. It takes a lot of evidence to justify doing that (and to be clear, it’s clear to any sane person that the right-wings had not a shred of real evidence to justify their attempted insurrection).
But, as just happened last week, Congressional reps who absolutely had the right to enter a building they oversaw were illegally barred by DHS and un-uniformed goons from DOGE. No inquiries or committees required – it was on its face an illegal act. They should have pushed physically right then and there for entry, and either gained entry peacefully, or had cameras rolling if the fascists took the first step to physical violence so the next step could be taken. As it is, their useless finger-wagging and walking home with their tail between their legs has only allowed this coup to progress even further.
Congressional reps who absolutely had the right to enter a building they oversaw
No they don’t. A bill was submitted in 2023 but never made a law.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/5465
Wow. Really. Fair enough, that’s … disappointing. Is there no other regulation/law they could have used to force the issue?
I’m not American so I’ll plead ignorance here :/
Of course it could be abused, unless it were worded carefully. All right, what other levers could the Dems use to force the issue (which I assert still needs to be done – get access to regain control of these agencies from DOGE, or make them cross the line to force if they will not back down peacefully. Otherwise the administrative, bloodless coup will continue to its completion.)
They are a minority party so they have no levers. The Right has tens of thousands who will risk jail to threaten the left about anything. The left politicians have no citizens that will stand up and protect them the way the right has protection.
The circus of performative outrage hits new heights as Democratic lawmakers and their activist base clash over who gets to script the political theater. House members whine about grassroots groups like MoveOn flooding their lines with demands for resistance theater, while those same organizers accuse legislators of treating democracy like a spectator sport.
This mutual frustration reveals the rotting core of institutional politics – careerists want quiet compliance, activists crave empty gestures, and neither addresses the structural collapse of representative governance. When your “resistance” boils down to phone bank metrics and procedural chess moves, you’ve already lost the plot.
Actually try and do something other than throwing your hands up and saying “Nothing to be done.”
Then you dumb fucks should have voted. But, no, you had to send a message to Biden, who wasn’t even running anymore. I voted for Kamala. What did you guys do? Nothing. You did nothing. Now, this is what you get.
So you… Don’t want people calling their senators?
No, don’t you know, the election is over, politics are on time out for 2 years.
Literally in the post you’re responding on:
I also remind dipshit Democrat defenders to hold Democrats to account. They ran a failed election campaign. They decided adhering to genocide was more important than winning. This is how they respond to their base expecting literally anything of them, is to resent them and tell them to shut the fuck up and plead there isn’t anything they can do so they just have to roll over.
What is it with you fucking morons who incessantly turn every criticism of the Demcoratic party into some insane notion that purely by virtue of existing they are owed votes? That’s now how politics works. That’s not how election campaigns work. Also, do do you think the organisations doing this didn’t campaign for Democrats? Do you have any reading comprehension?
You did nothing. Now, this is what you get.
Liberals and wishing harm on others when they fail.
“You did nothing” Did you phonebank? Did you go canvassing at all? Did you deliver or distribute campaign material? Did you incessantly post online enough about how it’s your duty to vote Democrat, the most significant and important contribution to every election campaign?
No? Oh, you’re just still whining months after the fact that because you saw liberal orgs that actually did campaign for Democrats are not satisfied with how Democrats are responding to Republicans and the excuses they keep making?
Well, this is what you get. Clearly you just didn’t want it enough.
What’s more, the DNC’s rank and file have said they were very dissatisfied with the campaign from very early on, and those who voiced their concerns internally were either ignored or retaliated against. Fucking blue MAGA too busy licking the boot of the DNC brass to realize the actual members are also angry.
Is your premise that you can’t have voted for Kamala and also demand that Dems try being an actual opposition party, or what?
Your voting for Kamala didn’t do anything, so what are you doing now?
