Summary
Democrats are holding town halls in Republican districts, highlighting GOP lawmakers’ absence by leaving empty chairs on stage.
Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan hosted a town hall with an empty chair for absent Republican Derrick Van Orden, drawing 300 attendees in a town of 4,500.
Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ former running mate, has also held events in GOP areas, calling Elon Musk a “dipshit” and a “South African nepo baby.”
Republicans, facing backlash over Trump’s federal program cuts, have avoided in-person events, citing disruptive protests. Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are hosting events nationwide, while the DNC plans billboards urging constituents to demand town halls.
Why do people think republicans care at all about this? Or that republicans voters will suddenly start having a problem with this?
I think that’s the issue–the current ‘Republicans’ in the Executive Office don’t give a single shit if any of the smaller Republicans can ever return to their home districts. They are plundering all the bank vaults of government and keeping as much as they can for themselves. It’s a party made up of powerful narcissists–the only thing keeping any of them in check is the greater power of other narcissists. They will eat each other once they’ve eaten all of us.
The issue with any of this is that we’re assuming that we’ll have another election in four years, and I’m not so sure about that.
Republicans are facing historic high prices, too. They can blame Biden, pretend it’s not happening, but at the end of the day, they’re feeling the pain too and they’re getting pissed off. Might be the only thing to make them turn on Dear Leader…
The German people did not abandon Hitler even as their cities turned to ash.
I suspect that is some sort of sunk cost falacy combined with a narative that says only he can get the bad things to stop; once it get’s to the point that your cities are being destroyed, you probably wont, and certainly wont have the opportunity to, change leader. It’s critical that as many minds as possible are changed before getting to that stage.
Show me a single example of a Republican ever changing their mind.
I have a friend of a friend, I’ll call him RustGamer, who is a 3 time Trump voter. He marched with me last Friday for the 50501 Veterans protests. The week before he learned for the first time since it’s occurrence that two people died on J6. He was willing to read the Jack Smith report and was deeply troubled by it.
Sure there are some absolute shitmunchers and some so deluded they’re unsaveable. But for some, these people are misled, or downright brain washed.
Rustgamer has no technical literacy outside of Rust. He watched whatever Facebook, Instagram, or ticktock pushed. And of course fox news since that’s what his parents taught him. He wasn’t good at searching for dissenting opinions because Google would just push him more propaganda sites when trying to, sponsored search results are evil.
He’s been in a different reality for the last decade and is just now waking up. It took a lot of talking, a lot of biting my tongue, and showing him I a “radical leftist” actually wanted what’s best for both of us. It’s not easy and I completely understand if people aren’t in a mental place to do it with what’s going on. But we only get through this if we do it together.
United we stand. Divided we fall.
I don’t even like talking to people in the first place.
Ugh don’t remind me. Dealing with a bunch of psychotic apes is my least favorite part of existence.
SAME SAME SAME. When I started confronting these people in my life my anxiety would flare up to the point my voice would shake lol. And I never in my life thought I’d be out marching in the streets.
It gets easier, but it takes practice (Prozac helps too). Now the anxiety has become anger. But not anger at them, rather anger at the system. Anger at what we let this country become. Anger at how lazy and complacent I’ve become.
Do your best, stay safe, and most important of all don’t get scared. Get angry.
That’s the problem: I’m always angry. My voice doesn’t shake, it just gets louder until I walk off angry and never talk to them again.
Well, a number of them in Montana flipped to block an anti-trans bill: https://thepulp.org/montana-republicans-flip-to-defeat-anti-trans-bills/ (just a semi-random link to the story, there are many other sources). Some of them can be persuaded to change their minds. Perhaps not many, or by much, but it is possible.
JD Vance turned from criticising Trump to licking his boots. Does that count?
They already do; that’s why the GOP stopped doing town halls. For all their talk about fiscal responsibility Republican voters really don’t want anybody touching their social welfare. This might flip a few seats in Congress if there’s still democracy at the end of all this.
They’ll forget about it by next year. Or they’ll vote Republican anyway because they fall in line and not in love, as the saying goes.
Those seats will flip because more Dems will vote. Every time we expect republicans to be decent people they disappoint.
And then two years later the Dems won’t be mad and the seats will flip back.
It’s been doing this my entire life.
Hope? Belief that we are still all people at the end of the carnage?
Republicans have been this way for 30 years, if not longer. How can anyone still have hope they’re going to change? Especially when this attitude has basically gotten them everything they want.
Maybe I should visit the congressional gym. Apparently they act like ordinary people there.
I already said I bet D&R pols are probably like lawyers, viciously attacking each other in court, having martinis and golf after.
Has it though?
Are you not aware that they have control of the entire federal government and most of the states?
Right, but have the voters actually gotten what they wanted, policy-wise?
No, and they never do. But that doesn’t stop them from voting Republican.
They fall in line, not in love. They’re never not going to vote Republican.
I know several people who have voted republican and now vote democrat