#even clinton is not having it

[lilislegacy]

not an american? allow me, an american🇺🇸, to explain our very simple and totally not-corrupt recent presidential history

in 2016, after being in office for 8 years, obama and biden passed the presidency to trump. then trump tried to win again, but biden beat trump, so trump then unwillingly passed the presidency back to biden, with harris. then biden really tried to pass the presidency to harris, but trump has now beat harris, so biden and harris will now pass the presidency back to trump.

so basically our leaders are just playing a really dirty and high stakes game of hot potato.

hope this helps!

[mrmeepsmadmind]

human(?)formers wavewave teehee. um don't hit readmore if u don't like some RLLY scribbled gorish (‼️) anatomy. nothing rlly detailed, tumblr takes my quality of already low quality art & gargles it with pebbles & rocks so it's not like. terrible but. ( the gore, not my art LOL) but still! hiding it under here just incase! take a peek if u like

tortured genius, literally, LOL -- read in soundwave's monotone

[entomologistologist]

maybe all you guys already learned this right when the episode came out, but TIL that Ross Perot was a real human man who ran as a third-party candidate in 1992 against Bill Clinton and incumbent George H. W. Bush, losing to Clinton. Since he won re-election in 1996 in the Smiling Friends timeline, we can probably assume he replaced Clinton as president entirely in their world. I find this really, really, really funny.

The guy who Charlie mentions won in a landslide in 1980, Shrimpo Jones, sadly is not a real human man in our timeline. He is probably a shrimp. The landslide victor in our world during 1980 was Ronald Reagan.

[lazyscience]

so there's something I feel like young leftists are not getting at all when they rail furiously about how "we keep voting for Democrats but they keep just pandering to the right, what are we supposed to DO to get them to change OTHER than not vote for them?"

It has to do with fundamental assumptions about what "governing" is supposed to mean in the modern era, and this is a conversation that has to happen culturally in and around what is happening at the ballot box in a lot larger sense than it is. putting in a readmore because this gonna get long and also ranty.

It also means I'm taking another Tumblr break because I can not, I CAN NOT with the current political discussion any more and even with terms blocked I'm seeing it, and I don't want to spend my evenings alternating between rage and depression, I get enough of that from the news.

This conversation was happening even earlier than this, but the timepoint at which it was first coming to a head and when I became familiar with it was 1994 and Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America". Prior to this point, the ethos on both sides of the aisle (in public) was that in general, a congressperson's job (especially in the House, a little less so in the Senate maybe) was while you were under the umbrella of one of the two parties, you were mostly looking out for the particular agenda of your state and only secondarily working towards a national agenda. And secondary to this idea, most of them agreed on basic principles that gridlock was bad (wouldn't produce anything useful/re-electable for your state), civil service employees and appointees weren't supposed to be blatant political operatives (there were, of course, but that was considered more sleazy and corrupt than "elections have consequences, hurr hurr") and that for the stability of the country, things like the debt ceiling were best mutually avoided.

So for the better part of the 20th century, the Democrats were more the party of regulation, the social safety net and the reality and use of powers on a federal level; the Republicans were the party of "leave these decisions to the individual states" (this is obviously a grotesque oversimplification, people have literally written dozens, probably hundreds, of scholarly books about this shit). And Newt Gingrich, ambitious little shit from an at the time deep red Republican state, said "you know what, we need to embrace a national party and federal control the way the Democrats have--because until then, WE can't control it." So the Contract With America was born - and the goal became instead of "well, whatever, as long as I can weasel out concessions for my state/special interests that hired me" the game ALSO became "demonstrate that federal government doesn't work by MAKING it not work." By using all the procedural stupid dirty tricks that a reactionary old bunch of white dudes that had just been through a war put into place to make any point of settled law that had happened basically as hard to change as fucking possible.

Now, the Democrats couldn't/didn't WANT to play by those rules, because their biggest and most popular successes (qualified, imperfect, but still) - Social Security, Medicaid, the civil rights movement, antitrust, worker protections, environmental protections - are all contingent on a federal government apparatus that actually fucking works. And now that the Republicans can win either by getting what they want OR by yelling "look, this process is clearly broken and doesn't work!", the only way Democrats can make sweeping changes without having to fight tooth and nail every step of the way is to have a majority in both houses of Congress, control the Presidency, and the Supreme Court.

Because again, the reactionary old white men who had just lived through a butt ton of social upheaval wanted to make it hard for one group of (rich white, male enfranchised) people to control another - and they literally at that time could not have envisioned the way the country would grow into both a far more unified AND polarized place that would take these safety rails and exploit them to block every achievement their opponent might make, whether or not it was actually in the best interests of the people they're representing.

(I mean, they should have, political parties and all that toxicity were not new to the British Empire before the colonies even existed, but well, I think we all know by now there's a lot of things they couldn't have imagined. See also: the second amendment)

So here's the deal - if you punish Joe Biden for being a confused corporate-friendly war-hawkish atrocity-enabling weenus - which he totally is sometimes! - you are kneecapping any actually progressive congressional candidates you elect unless you can also deliver 67+ solidly Democrat/Green/whatever the fuck Angus King is votes in the Senate, and 290+ equally staunch Democratic representatives. Because otherwise, that Republican President's just gonna veto everything they legislate that isn't what he wants. And yes, the Senate has to approve any federal judges or Supreme Court justices he wants to appoint - but again, the Republican party sees the federal court system being slow, backed up and impossible to use as a totally acceptable compromise in return for being able to block any significant Democratic legislation from going forward.

Since 1789, do you know how many vetoes have been overridden by supermajority? 109, out of 1,484.

Now, if you could GET that supermajority in the Senate and the House? You could amend the Constitution! You could make mail-in votes mandatory, and/or mandated paid time off for voting. You could mandate ranked-choice voting, so that leftists could vote for the candidate they actually want without splitting up the bloc to the advantage of the fash/fash-adjacent. You could do things like mandate that a Presidential election isn't valid until a minimum threshold number of votes has been achieved that's actual a majority of eligible voters, not just whatever fanatical minority shows up that day, so some asshole who won with 20 percent of eligible voters can't claim to have "a mandate from The People."

BUT WITHOUT THAT SUPERMAJORITY, VOTING TO PUNISH ELECTED OFFICIALS FOR NOT DOING THINGS THEY CANNOT FUCKING DOOOOOO MEANS NOTHING BUT LOSING FOR ALL OF US!

Especially when the other fucking asshole candidate wants to make it legal for the National Guard to LIVE FIRE WITH ACTUAL MILITARY BULLETS ON PROTESTORS, and the Supreme Court has just made it possible for him if elected to order that and have it not be illegal! If he wants to start deporting all Muslim immigrants like he was trying to push for last time he was elected, or round up LGBTQ people and put them in re-education camps, if he gets elected, he could do that now! Because crimes committed as "official acts" are no longer crimes!

So you want to not have to regularly make shitty compromises in the voting booth any more? Great, neither do I. Here are the only ways I see this going forward:

Get 2/3rd of the states of the union to call for an Article V constitutional convention - and be willing to have the process potentially hijacked by fash nutjobs at the state level if those 2/3rds aren't all Democratic-controlled. It's possible - I mean, the system was specifically designed to work that way - but the fact that a) an Article V convention has not successfully been called in the history of the US, and b) the only people advocating for that in the year 2024 are the actual fucking Heritage Foundation of the infamous Project 2025, Ben Shapiro of "but pussy doesn't get wet" fame, Greg "the solution to Uvalde is arming teachers" Abbott and similar nutjobs make me think that's not the safest way to get the outcome we want here.

Hold your noses and get 67 Senators and 290 Representatives elected that are either Democrats or who will reliably caucus with them like Socialists or Greens and have them pass a law to require ranked choice voting for the presidency - there's a chance it'll get a constitutional challenge from the Supreme Court, but there's not a solid precedent either forbidding or encouraging, and by the time it's an issue hopefully we're back in 5/4 liberal court territory if Alito and Thomas either retire or get canned. That will mean a lot of mid corporatist conservative Dems who will make decisions you don't like and don't want to support, but with an endgame of someday getting to stop doing that. This is honestly probably the most achievable, so it is also the one Republicans are fighting against hardest with gerrymandering and voter suppression, and they have banned it on the state level in Florida, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee and Idaho.

Let Republicans get elected to prove a point. This will result in an unknown but presumably acceptable to you number of deportations, convictions, legal abuse and deaths among people the Trump administration declares undesirable, including Muslims, Palestinians, trans people, anyone working in gender studies or race studies, the unhoused, potential child labor, and people of childbearing potential among others. This is not a threat to get you to fall in line. It is a prediction based on the previous behaviorand stated policy positions of Mr. Trump, the Republican National Convention, and the decision of the Supreme Court allowing his administration to carry out what would otherwise be crimes but for a president are "official actions" now apparently. It will also at the very least make easier the capture of the Supreme Court for another two or three decades during which no effective challenges can be brought for voter suppression, gerrymandering, and violent suppression of protest.

honest question: how, exactly, if it becomes an illegal act to talk about racism, queer liberation or police reform, are you proposing to get your better, more leftist candidates elected? I am so serious right now, why do you think after another four years of Trump provided he doesn't just immediately declare martial law like he already almost did once, do you think people would be willing to stick their necks out to identify themselves as enemies of the state? Think about the stranglehold Joseph McCarthy had on this country from 1947-1957.

[dittolicous]

i dont care where you live in the usa or w/e... if you dont vote for biden you are throwing away your vote and enabling trump. because *everyone* thinks their vote doesnt matter and piddles around because of that. hell, everyone thinks 'its only me, it wont make a difference' about THOUSANDS of things, like littering, picking seashells, taking stones from rivers, etc. and in all of those situations THEYRE FUCKING WRONG. if anything unites us, its our damn ability to think we alone are the outlier despite everything indicating otherwise.

and miss me with that 'biden is just as bad/is a murderer' shit. 1) cool, and how do you plan to change things in a mr. nazi-dictator trump world? how are you ACTIVELY making a difference? 2) CHANGE IS INCREMENTAL. the reason things suck so much is because the left keeps taking slow change as 'no change' and giving up before we can gain any momentum to make big change!

if you vote in hamas or w/e to protest... you might as well throw dirt at all those suffering innocent people. you arent saving palestine that way. that is not a helpful protest. you'll only enable trump to win by throwing away your vote. it is the one bit of actual power you have, so USE IT RIGHT! stop in-fighting for one moment! look at what is possible to achieve in reality! dreams arent fulfilled overnight!

when you feel like your vote doesnt matter, remember this - you have to try anyways

[geddy-leesbian]

being my friend means putting up with a lot of stupid bullshit. however it also means any pics u send could get u a silly photoshop if im inspired

[doglike-mix]

I want to have sex with Bill Clinton sooo badly. He's hot. Whenever I see him I get so aroused. I just can't help it. Especially when I see photos from when he was President. He was soo sexy back then. I wish I was a White House intern during his presidency. I would be making sooo many excuses on why I have to be around him. I would like totally suck his dick. But I would want to do even more than just suck him off, too. I would want to be bent over the Resolute Desk, gripping the edge of it while he fucks me. That would be soooo hot. That's my biggest fantasy ever. Obviously, it can't happen, but I love thinking about it.

I want to have sex with Bill Clinton sooo badly. He's hot. Whenever I see him I get so aroused. I just can't help it. Especially when I see photos from when he was President. He was soo sexy back then. I wish I was a White House intern during his presidency. I would be making sooo many excuses on why I have to be around him. I would like totally suck his dick. But I would want to do even more than just suck him off, too. I would want to be bent over the Resolute Desk, gripping the edge of it while he fucks me. That would be soooo hot. That's my biggest fantasy ever. Obviously, it can't happen, but I love thinking about it.

[lil-als]

Thank you for putting me on Clinton the musical, I’m currently sitting in class listening to the soundtrack and not doing any work AT ALL ❤️❤️ thx luv

That’s so Awfulsomekward of you

[r4v3nr0s3]

THIS HAS TO STOP

Nothing tells me you are more ill equipped to be a progressive activist than this absolute TRASH.

First of all the misogyny is off the fucking charts, you knuckle dragging troglodyte!!!

Second, do you think that the same political machine that convinced you the absolute brain dead trump or Bernie sanders was a better candidate and that Kamala Harris was a cop in 2020 might have something to say about one of the most influential and progressive feeeeeemale politicians of all time??? She founded Children’s Health Insurance Program FFS!!! Wanna know how that originated? Her fight for Universal Health care!!!

Third, if any of you zygotes had more than a goldfish brain you’d be able to google how absolutely disgusting this nation has treated HRC since her stupid husband was president. They turned her into a boogeyman and you little cunts believed them!!! YOU ARE AS BAD AS EVERY REPUBLICAN MAN WHO HATES HER WORSE ACTUALLY BC YOU CLAIM TO BE BETTER

Fourth, STOP PITTING WOMEN AGAINST EACH OTHER. Hillary Clinton is not as progressive as Kamala Harris but she is one of her most ardent supporters. Hilary Clinton LOVES Kamala Harris because she’s not a self absorbed little cunt rag more interested in jacking off to internet points. She spent her time ignoring harpies like this and actually made formidable and robust social programs that help people. She has done far more than name post offices and transfer inmates to for profit prisons out of her state like some war profiteering jackoffs you believed propaganda about.

I wish y’all didn’t hate women so much. It makes you terminally fucking stupid.

[daenystheedreamer]

clintons fan blog. billary fan. bill and hillary cliton to be Clear. WITH JONCON QUOTE!

[britneyshakespeare]

i was just reading a news article shaking in disbelief that claimed that from their poll t**mp had a growing favorability and an overall 2-point lead (still within the margin of error) of the national popular vote before i read that the sample was only of 1,000 voters. in the entire nation. big hefty fuckin claims for that small a sample

[ld-fc]

was watching a video of deep inside’s mission and of course the influence of james bond on franklin is clearly there. BUT, how bout we take things a bit further and consider…a bond girl inspired lamar who happens to work dolo as spy and is franklins love interest

[cruelsister-moved2]

its interesting how present the tendency is to frame issues as the struggle of privileged woman vs marginalised man where the marginalised man is the ‘good guy’ and the privileged woman is the ‘bad guy’ and their ultimate needs for liberation are never aligned like. of course this can happen on an individual level but im talking about people who literally on some unvoiced level see class struggle as like the fight between the based masculine worker and the evil feminine oppressor and its interesting

[blueinmoonlight]

Barbie got 8 oscar nominations and American Ferrera got nominated for Best Suppoting Actress. But because Margot and Greta didn't get Best Actress and Best Director people are turning it into a feminist. Completely overshadowing Lily Gladstone's historic nomination and ignoring Greta Lee and Celine Song being snubbed.

[soozaliker]

Being in a system be like

dio brando from jojo's bizarre adventure: i have come up with a plan that will not fail on how to get past a day in school

erwin smith from attack on titan: oh shit really

bill clinton: i am Bill Clinton the 42ND president of the United States

[doglike-mix]

It moves me to tears sometimes that 90s Bill Clinton will never be thrusting in me. I want him sooo bad.

It moves me to tears sometimes that 90s Bill Clinton will never be thrusting in me. I want him sooo bad.

I want to have sex with Bill Clinton sooo badly. He's hot. Whenever I see him I get so aroused. I just can't help it. Especially when I see photos from when he was President. He was soo sexy back then. I wish I was a White House intern during his presidency. I would be making sooo many excuses on why I have to be around him. I would like totally suck his dick. But I would want to do even more than just suck him off, too. I would want to be bent over the Resolute Desk, gripping the edge of it while he fucks me. That would be soooo hot. That's my biggest fantasy ever. Obviously, it can't happen, but I love thinking about it.