this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Socialism
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Man we really needs a president who calls this stuff out. It's obvious to everyone else that SCOTUS is a blatantly political institution at this point. Biden might not be able to expand the court willy because of the Senate, but he could at least use the bully pulpit to humiliate them and galvanize the base.
The problem with the bully pulpit is that it only works on people who feel shame, and the Republicans gave up all pretense of that in 2016. Any strong arming Biden tries to do will only be met with further obstruction, fantasy "investigations" and impeachment proceedings, and more thinly veiled attempts to stoke anger and inspire acts of violence among the most radical conservatives. We're well beyond the point of looking to the past for viable political tools when the rules are so different now. What we need is for voters to get Republicans out of power and give Democrats decisive majorities in both houses of Congress and more state legislatures. And we need more people to participate in the primaries so those Democrats aren't just milquetoasts too. Then and only then can the gloves come off.
I don't know that I agree.
The president has the power to call special sessions of Congress under the Constitution. If he started making these legislators cancel vacations they'd be a whole lot more pliable. The problem with the bully pulpit is Biden doesn't have any intention of using it, and Republicans know this because they're all owned by the same donors. Just once in my life I'd like to see a president fight just as hard to raise the minimum wage as Trump did to ban Muslims.
Hell, when people told Bernie it was impossible to get a minimum wage increase through congress he gave speeches outside Amazon and Disney, and that act led to a living wage increase (at the time) for more than 200,000 people.
Would they? I have seen zero evidence to suggest that.
That's an apples-to-oranges comparison. You're talking about a legislator putting enough attention on private companies that they chose to raise their minimum wage because it became good PR. That's completely different than an executive trying to pressure legislators into doing something when their voters elected them specifically to always do the opposite of what said executive wants.