>GOP put party win before a nation by agreeing to nominate an unfit individual for office. They failed as gatekeepers.
Why do we want corrupt politicians as "gatekeepers" to anything? The Democrats did a fine job "gatekeeping" Sanders from the 2016 and 2020 nomination, to what end?
By the way, nothing will ever get done in the US until the bitter partisanship ceases. Most of what both parties do is political theatre.
> The Democrats did a fine job "gatekeeping" Sanders from the 2016 and 2020 nomination, to what end?
I don't understand this perspective. Sanders lost because he lost primary elections. That happened because democrats didn't believe in him as a candidate. Many of us have been steadfast in our disbelief for years due only to listening to what he himself says about what he wants to do. Why discredit our opinions this way?
Sorry, but if you don't think the entire Democratic machine has been working against a Sanders win for 5 years, you haven't been doing enough research. I know you don't like him, and you are 100% entitled to dislike and vote against him - but to pretend that he lost only because he wasn't popular enough is pretty blind to how our democracy runs.
Not having enough support is the only reason he lost. The DNC didn't go in and tamper votes.
I've seen many sanders supporters get upset over things that they perceive as unfair like how candidates dropped out to stop splitting the vote.
Every single candidate has had complaints about being treated unfairly. People were calling joe's campaign dead in the water. Yang got upset enough that he called out networks in a very public manner.
And yea, Sanders wasn't supported by the establishment. But like we've seen with Trump, the establishment doesn't matter if the candidate has real support. Obama was a no name senator that beat the most establishment character ever because he had that support.
Sanders had a lot of problems as a candidate, and those are the real reasons that he lost rather than conspiracy theories about machinations by the elite.
Was "the democratic machine" casting ballots in the primaries? Were they controlling the minds of the people who did? The "republican machine" tried to stop Trump and failed, because at the end of the day people voted for Trump in the primaries. He was popular in a way that Sanders wasn't.
In the gatekeepers' perspective, it was to postpone discussions on policies that would be extremely difficult to implement well. If the Republicans had done their job as well like usual, we wouldn't end up in this awkward situation of having an unpresidential president, but here we are. Freedom has a funny way of getting what it wants, like water flowing downhill.
From the non-gatekeepers' perspective, the difficulty of policy implementation does not matter when the policies themselves are ineffective and only serve to maintain status quo financial structures, which benefit the wealthy often at the expense of the most vulnerable.
What specifically makes the president unpresidential as opposed to other presidents? Is it removals as a percentage of the estimated illegal immigrant population? The dramatic expansion of the power of the executive branch into the realm of national security? Number of U.S. citizens executed without trial? Those are all things which happened under previous presidencies.
> If the Republicans had done their job as well like usual
Is it really fair to argue that gatekeepers are effective if they failed to do what you view as their jobs? "If it wasn't for those meddling Republicans!"
My point was to illustrate that previous presidents have also done things which could be considered unpresidential depending on your opinion. Unless I'm missing some official definition of presidential, these are all things that you personally believe are unpresidential. I'm not saying I disagree with you, but things like "never takes the high road" sound a bit biased.
I agree that "presidential behavior" is a subjective term. Doesn't make it useless - just subjective.
Are you arguing the counter, that his personal behavior is in any way laudable? Do you think he's a good role model, and would want your children to emulate his behavior?
> Are you arguing the counter, that his personal behavior is in any way laudable? Do you think he's a good role model, and would want your children to emulate his behavior?
I don't have to think that he's a good role model to think that previous presidents have also violated human rights and eroded freedoms.
edmundsauto nailed it in the unpresidential comment.
I wasn't complaining about the gatekeepers failing, just trying to share their perspective for those who might not understand.
FWIW, I think the best outcome would have been to deny Trump at the gate, and instead find a candidate who could get those policies done without being a danger to democracy.
> FWIW, I think the best outcome would have been to deny Trump at the gate, and instead find a candidate who could get those policies done without being a danger to democracy.
The problem is that's anti-democratic because many of those gatekeepers are appointed rather than elected. At that point the gatekeepers may as well directly decide who the president is, because it has already been chosen regardless.
Why do we want corrupt politicians as "gatekeepers" to anything? The Democrats did a fine job "gatekeeping" Sanders from the 2016 and 2020 nomination, to what end?
By the way, nothing will ever get done in the US until the bitter partisanship ceases. Most of what both parties do is political theatre.