Yeah, he tried, but anyone with working brain cells could tell you that ACA was just going to end up in a bigger payout to the healthcare industry. It was a status quo pro-corporate bill just like the rest of his centrist policies.

The actual solution has and always will be to reduce costs, which means people losing jobs and hospital admins not owning 3 vacation homes.

Consider, as a revealing example, the Patriot Act of 2001. There was more resisitance to it from Democrats than from Republicans, yet there was still not nearly enough resistance. In the Senate, the vote was 98-1, with only Democrat Russ Feingold against. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act?#Legislative_histo...

In my "free speech zone" link above, the Democrats were the first to use that blatant violation of free speech, at their national convention.

Republicans take advantage of the precedents set by both parties.

Not even the liberal democracy that one of the parties want is properly a liberal democracy, it is to the limits where it infringes into business needs, and moneyed interests. They can't fight the system that enables them to exist.

There are the token attempts to make it look less than that, to appear more altruistic: ACA, better paths for immigrants to be legally integrated into society, etc. but overall the majority of Democrats are also entirely bound to the powers that fuel their campaigns, money is the only real power in the end.

The issue with the other party increasingly becoming more authoritarian and extreme over time is a side-effect from grievances caused exactly by the issue of the people not having actual any power to course-correct policies, there aren't many policy choices, it's business and money or business and money and fascism. Normal people were led to believe they can just become one of the moneyed elites if they just work hard enough, and government stays out of their way, so they vote against their interests as what they are: common people.

I wish the USA would learn that a two-party system eventually will breakdown, that it will eventually cause the fracture to be too great, and that some members of the politician class would use this wedge as a weapon to achieve power, just like what happened with the GOP. You simply cannot have only 2 parties to determine the political will of 300+ million people, it's impossible that either of them represent the variety of wants and needs of the whole population but you are stuck with that.

Continuing democracy as it was before also doesn't seem to be a good solution, it was exactly the system that brought into power the current tyrants. Too many norms, protocols, and procedures relying on tradition and decorum rather than codified, it was bound to be abused at some point, and it's quite incredible it has lasted this long.

Every time the Republican party gains power, they turn up the burner.

When the Democratic party gains power, they don't turn the burner up any further, but the most we can give them credit for is they may occasionally toss an ice cube in the water.

They do not turn the burner down.

They do not remove the pot from the stove.

They do not take the frog out of the water.

The Democratic party isn't as bad as the Republican party, but they're still ultimately boiling the frog.

---

For all their crowing about how bad Republican policy is, how often do you really see them repealing bad laws passed by Republicans - especially the disastrous tax cuts and sabotage of government agencies? Biden couldn't even be bothered to replace all of Trump's appointees.

The last few decades have demonstrated that at the very least, we need a number of constitutional amendments to fix the cracks and gaping holes in our current governmental structure that allowed us to get here, and it'll probably take burning down both major political parties and starting with new ones to make that happen.

There's so many possibilities of what happens if elections are halted that you no one can truly predict anything. It never happened for nationals and it very very rarely happens in state elections. Having a hostile takeover of the ballot box will truly throw things into chaos. In what way and against who, it's hard to tell.

And yes. Of all things I think having a civil war as Russia is teetering on attacking Europe and China is at the peak of its power is a great way to reverse 80 years of progress. Or of course, erase eons of civilization all at once.

So yeah, it's all about creating a violent confrontation to assuage a galactic, battered ego.

There's a movement all about making things go faster so the 'rebuilding' part can then happen sooner:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism