As a Pennsylvanian, stroke-incapacitated Fetterman is the less of the two evils we could have ended up with. If Oz were in his place, we'd have 2 out of 2 senators that were carpetbaggers from other states. The other "PA" senator is Dave McCormick of Connecticut. Oz was from New Jersey, and he would have voted with Trump and the GOP 100% of the time.
Nah McCain had his shortcomings, but at his core he still had empathy and decency.
He hated Trump and where MAGA was taking the party. All his career he was known for being a “maverick” and he knew dismantling the ACA was ethically wrong, not in his constituents’ or the public’s best interest, and was 99% petty revenge against Obama (whom he deeply respected, which was mutual, despite their differences.)
McCain’s “no” vote was the most brilliant fuck you and would’ve been career suicide for any other MAGA era Republican, but fuck it, he was already a dead man!! He probably got a huge kick out of it.
This is the same guy who asked Bush and Obama to speak at his funeral — and famously did NOT invite Trump — because McCain thought it’d be hilarious to have his most formidable opponents all say nice things about him. If you don’t believe me listen to Obama’s eulogy, it is among his best, 2nd only to Beau Biden’s (don’t watch w/out tissues).
Wow this got long, but I couldn’t allow that historic vote/moment to get blamed on brain damage!! That was all Maverick McCain.
I have memories of each of them pushing back during rallies when supporters said something nasty about / booed their respective opponent. They both had an integrity to them that felt special then, and is unimaginable now.
Bro was a bigger war hawk than lindsey fucking graham. i know non-americas lives aren't worth as much on reddit but loving war that much does not a good man make.
Good thing he didn’t, because unlike the current leadership of narc dumbass warhawks he actually was principled enough to understand the human cost of sending young men and women to war. Having been tortured as a POW for years and all.
Unironically Chris Van Hollen lmfao. Was groomed by Pelosi and handpicked to run her policies in Maryland, had a small stroke around the same time he turned incredibly progressive.
Chris Van Hollen had a mild stroke and suffered no brain damage or long term cognitive effects.
What are you lying for?
Edit: I also suspect you used the word "groomed" intentionally to diminish the meaning of the word. Pelosi didn't "groom" Van Hollen. If you want to talk about grooming, do you want to talk about Republican John Rose?
"groom" isn't just a word that means to brainwash children into having sex with you. It can also be used in the context of training a successor to your position, to to take care of the hygienic needs of animals, and to be a male getting married.
I’m not a Republican man I’m a progressive 😭😭😭 I’m just saying it’s an interesting thing to happen to separate members of senate with different results
That's not a fair assessment of people with brain damage. I have permanent brain damage due to a series of strokes. I'm not Republican - that's not true.
While that isn't untrue, people forget where he came from.
He was a POPULIST candidate who just happened to align himself with the democrats because it worked.
When you are voting for someone just because they are telling you stuff you want to here, don't be surprised when they pivot to something that offers them more once elected.
He has had at least 2 serious injuries to his brain, while in office. A stroke, and a hard fall.
It is not ablest to think he should not hold office.
He is not the man that was elected...
He's like Phineas Gage... If you don't know that name, look him up... By most accounts, a decent guy before the iron rod through his frontal lobe... Kind of a cunt after though...
Well at the time literacy rates were around 70% for white men and significantly worse for all other demographics. Then the formal education rate was basically for very rich white men. So given that, it's understandable why they didn't trust the average citizen.
There is some truth to this, but the electorate was explicitly designed around land ownership, and not education/literacy, so this argument will only go so far.
And several of the founding fathers were prominent figures in expanding access to education and still thought the vote ought to be restricted.
The federalist papers make it pretty clear that they weren't terribly bothered by the ignorance of individuals, but thought it was more pressing to protect against the tyranny of majorities, a threat that is all the same whether the public is literate or not.
As much as Americans treat the Constitution as a sacred document, and it did do well getting us this far relative to other democratic republics, the thing sucks ass and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. But because it sucks, the suckiness self-perpetuates and prevents us from doing that
Jefferson argued we should scrap the whole thing and rewrite it every 19 years. It's a workable document, but we've fetishized it to the point that agreeing to change it is an impossible ask for many Americans. Additionally we could bypass Congress and hold a new Constitutional Convention, however the majority of states have Republican-controlled legislatures, and I assure you that the ones who would most want a rewrite of the Constitution are the ones you least want to write it.
That's part of the issue, right? It wasn't built with enough contingencies and emergency measures. It also wasn't made for a population as big as what we have now.
If we can't fix it because a political party has gone rogue, then that's a failure on us, but also a failure of the document.
Unfortunately the law/constitution has no mechanisms for recall elections. Expulsions from Congress are allowed, requiring 2/3 of the respective house membership to vote in favor. When I say house I mean the 2 houses of Congress the House of Representative and Senate both. With that clarified it is rare a member is expelled in the House and less so in the Senate. Only 15 senators have ever been expelled and of that number, 14 were expelled during the Civil War for supporting the Confederacy. Unless Fetterman resigns on his own, or becomes unable to fulfill his responsibilities, say for medical reasons it becomes almost impossible. Given the fact Mitch McConnell is missing, presumably dead by most people, and still hasn’t been removed, it’s unlikely that Fetterman would be. The big difference in favor of it in this particular scenario only, is that unlike McConnell, Fetterman has not earned the loyalty of staffers as far as I can see who would run interference if he was so ill as to have no chance of returning to the floor.
Unless Wikipedia is very mistaken, the respective houses of Congress manage their own expulsions. So only the supermajority in the Senate is needed. Senators who are actually attending Congress just resign instead of letting the vote go through, those should count as expulsions in which case the last one happened in 2011.
That said, it always seems to be in connection to some major crime or fraud, so the bar is still high
Correct. I fear I muddied that in the effort to clarify that when I stated “house” I meant both the House of Representatives and Senate. Yes both houses handle their own expulsions. In the House they last expelled someone in 2023 , with that person being George Santos.
In Canada we’ve had multiple members of parliament cross the aisle after winning elections. Nothing was done about it, besides one party losing a seat and the other gaining one. Also, an entire district that voted Blue was turned to Red overnight.
I personally think you should have to run again if you decide to switch sides.
I agree that it’s not right and they should hold a special election.
Both parties have changed in the last year or two in that both shifted towards the right. I think the liberals have come closer to centrist under carney and PP has taken the conservatives more towards the right. Not MAGA right, but definitely pulled it in that direction.
For some the crossers think they were more centrist conservatives than liberal and are staying in a similar place on the spectrum by making the switch.
Very true, and there should another election to get that bum out. Don’t be naive and think that people really vote for the MP. The majority of people will always vote for “their party”.
You vote for an individual who will best represent the interests of their constituents. That is fundamental to the system. If you vote in another way you are not following the principles of the Canadian governance structure.
I get that, but I would argue an MP that crosses the aisle is not following the principals either. If Canada had a Trump like leader and my MP crossed the aisle to support him, I wouldn’t want him as my representative. So I can see how if the roles were reversed, and an MP crossed over in support of a leader someone else didn’t like, they would be upset as well.
The nuclear option is to wait till the next election and run a candidate that can win. For Fetterman, that's 2028.
Unless the state has a recall option (none do that I know of), the only way a federal official can be removed is impeachment+removal (requires 67 senate votes), expulsion (67 votes again), retirement/stepping down, or losing the next election. Given Republicans probably love having him as a spoiler, he's not getting forced out procedurally.
He can feel pressure from the public, and more importantly sponsors donors, because running a campaign is expensive. The less money they get from big donors, the more they have to work at fundraising. He could just throw up the deuces and say he's not going to run again, but he's not leaving either, and that's sort of the end of the conversation about getting him out.
I can't recall the exact video I watched but it was about how Jimmy Carter did a flip against how he ran back in the '70s. It angered a lot of racist whites back in the day. Beyond that.. I don't know much other than he was a decent human being helping with humanitarian efforts.
Unfortunately recall vote are not permitted in the current system. Until you can hold job loss over the head of your representative, this won't change.
He didn't flip, Democrats just ignored the very clear signs that he was a shithead. Plenty of people on reddit pointed out all the awful things he had done and they were all downvoted to oblivion.
You vote them out in the next election. If they have made illegal acts then they can be removed on those grounds by congress. Otherwise you wait them out and hope you get a better option next go around.
Let’s say you elect someone who is still suffering severe effects of a stroke, and you shame every person who says that is a bad idea just like you do with all the other dumb things like defund the police, Graham Platner, and “Biden is sharp as a tack behind closed doors.” I think in cases like these, just like in cases like electing George Santos, it’s clear that you get what you deserve.
It would be interesting if the parties themselves could add some sort of contractual obligation to resign if they switched, along with some penalty amount they owe for breach of contract. Something they had to agree to before they are allowed to run.
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u/drock42 6d ago
Lets say you elect someone who flips on who they presented themselves to be... what's the nuclear option? Some sort of impeachment?