Co-signing this so hard. I love Gregory Maguire's writing and Wicked is one of my favs. (Lost is #1.) No shade to the musical, but it feels like it read Wicked's story about how elites use radicalized victims to retain power and decided it was a story about friendship being magic forever.

Yup, totally agreed. Clinton saw that the country was right-leaning and so he moved the Democratic party to the right to win politically. I'd argue the end result is pretty terrible and why it's proving so hard to get career Dems to move away from reactionary centrism that is just conservatism-lite.

Clinton made life worse for immigrants, but he didn't criminalize immigration any more than you or I are actively supporting a military invasion just because we paid our taxes. We can't say that we're mad about misinformation and then engage in sloppy broad-strokes generalizing ourselves.

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. Details matter. These things are complex and understanding them is important. We can recognize that Clinton, supposedly one of the "good guys," caused harm without dumbing down the issue just because doing so makes us feel less conflicted.

So I agree with you that Dems have historically favored the status quo far more than disruption, which benefits the wealthy and the powerful more than anyone else. But I disagree that fascism is what is at play, the recent techno-fascism like Musk and Thiel are trying to enact notwithstanding.

I don't think Dems have a fascism problem, they have a capitalism problem. Generally, big dollar donors to the left aren't about total government control (fascism), they're about unlimited, unregulated opportunity only for themselves as wealth-hoarders. Dems can't figure out to move around that.

I think we largely agree. The IIRIRA (ugh what an acronym) is terrible - it's abused because it is a solution to a problem that didn't exist. Clinton bears responsibility, but I'm saying "illegal" immigration was criminalized LONG before him, so its not fair to lay that entirely at his feet.

In what way? No one is required to make a political endorsement. Hillary wasn't required to endorse Mamdani, just like Sanders wasn't required to endorse Clinton, Biden, or Harris (which he refused to do until the last minute - which is his right!)

I mean, these are unrelated, but yeah! ICE funding has grown INSANELY every year under Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. It needs to stop and ICE needs to be abolished. You can see the exact numbers here: www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/t...

Well, no. That's wrong. He signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which expanded the list of crimes that, if committed, could be used to deport immigrants. It also reduced available benefits. I don't think that's good, but that's not criminalizing immigration.

In the Senate, yes. 40 Dems joined 50 Rs with only 9 Dems opposing. But the House was different. It passed the House with 295 votes, 223 of which came from Republicans. That means 72 Dems voted for it, 132 voted against it, almost double. All told, the majority of Cong. Dems opposed the bill.

Well, not pretty much every one, but still plenty enough to make it happen for sure. And believe me, I'm not defending them. I protested their offices back in 2002. Their votes were wrong then and still wrong now. But it wasn't a unified Dem movement. There was a lot of dissent.

Don't be obtuse. I'm not defending the Dems who voted for it. I was protesting them back in 2002. I *am* pointing out that "all Dems are turncoats who voted for ICE" is blatantly false and lumping in people who do the right thing with the ones who do bad just undermines everyone.

ICE was created by the Homeland Security Act in 2002. The House, the Senate, and the White House at that time were all controlled by Republicans. Also the vote was nowhere near unanimous - 293 to 132 in the House and 90-9 in the Senate. There was never a Dem majority.