alt Hacker NewsNo offense, but this comes off as passive indifference and while I've heard people say things like this all my life it has broadly resulted in watching 30 years of societal decay. I can't help but think this is wrong.
We should have stacked the courts ourselves, brandished executive orders etc, had some spine.
Edit: I think I need to make clear my thinking that the right has selectively destroyed institutions and levied them in other areas where it makes sense for their agenda. It's not been wanton. So when I say leverage the playbook it's not a one sided act of destruction.
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Strongly agree. I think some (not all) of the Trumpian playbook can be wielded very effectively for non-conservative parties, for a few reasons:
- Some executive orders are always flipped as soon as the opposition takes office, but some unilateral changes are much harder for a cyclical/pendulum-swing opposition season to reverse than they are to emplace. We don't know which are which yet. The return-to-office mandate for Federal workers is probably one that'll have a lasting effect--even if un-done in the future, the average prospective Federal worker will consider the job as something that has a significant likelihood of requiring in-person work if the political winds change and that EO is restored.
- Some things really do get permanently addressed within an electoral season, if you have the guts to shotgun through enacting a solution to them. The withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Afghanistan under Biden is a good example of this. So is the "Fork"/RIF/firing wave of Federal employees under Trump. I'm not saying those are both good things, but they aren't "reversible" in the sense that, say, the Global Gag Rule was endlessly reversible.
- Success follows success, as well. Part of the reason that momentum holds such a sacred place in electoral planning is the same reason that Trump's "flood the zone" strategy was effective (again--not good, but undeniably effective): capitalizing on/marketing early unilateral wins of any size results in the public and Congress being more likely to support larger, more durable changes. This is complicated by many factors (media landscape, districting, money), but is broadly true.
"Stacking courts" would require a Senate that actually votes those judges in. "Brandishing Executive orders" requires a congress that won't be able to countermand you and a Supreme Court that won't "nuh uh" you.
You are yet another person upset that Democrats cannot overcome the purposeful design of our government that you need a lot of power to build, and little power to destroy.
People who want to fix things need dramatically more power than people who want to stymie and break things. Democrats only rarely get that power, and usually only by one or two votes from people who strictly do not care about fixing things. You want this country to fix things? You need to vote significantly more for a party who will push to fix things.
The minority party in congress has no power by design.
Let's say, hypothetically, you had two political parties — a "destroy the current institutions" party, and the "preserve the current institutions" party.
The latter might notice the former having an easier time, but "hey, it works for them" is the wrong takeaway. Commit to the hard work of building resilient institutions; don't join in the destruction because it's easier.
There's also an element of "Never (...), they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."