I fully believe Trump happened because of gridlock. People just don’t believe the government is capable of anything, good or bad!

Def! Part of the reason why I saw his win coming in 2016. Reagan era and his WH sledgehammer on social goods were met with Republican Lite Dems (Neolibs). A lot of the public’s both sides stuff comes from becoming adults in that era, (def my parents). And people just got used to the struggle.

Like they really went to town appeasing the right, so much so that even kid me heard over and over about “too PC.” Racism and sexism were constantly being brought up as being less serious than they were. The Heritage Foundation had a huge hand there. Thus people learned to not see racism.

💯 the inevitable endpoint of GOP obstructionism

Kinda insanity there are politicians dying to defend the filibuster. Like, most democratic nations don't have that. It's either a simple majority or supermajority required to pass legislations or amend constitution.

People bet on insanity because they thought that (1) it would do something and (2) wouldn't do anything bad at the same time

Having both no expectations while being promised the world i think has really fucked with people's expectations

Slow government is the best government. When those fuckers do things quickly you know it will be a pile of shit.

Slow is different from "impossible" and Congress has been in "impossible" territory for 15 years.

The legal weed industry in the US has been around for over a decade, and has been slowly dying, and the #1 reason why is because Congress has been able to do basic things like "pass legislation to allow regular banking and tax deductions for state-legal operators".

A B O L I S H T H E F I L I B U S T E R

And the Senate tbh

Yeah, Obamacare just doesn’t happen without two consecutive blue waves and a less polarized Senate map that helped us end up with 60 senators for a few months.

A world where the Dakotas, Montana, West Virginia, and Arkansas can each have two Democratic senators is a different world.

Only North Dakota! Thune was the junior senator from South Dakota at that point.

Ah, correct! Still, it was a world where South Dakota *could* have two Democratic senators. Like, that seemed like a reasonable thing that could happen, but it seems insane today.

Yes, it had been true five years earlier.

I struggle to process how much of that shift was ancestral Democrats realizing they don't actually like Democrats that much anymore, versus Republicans successfully shifting much of the country away from free & fair democracy via REDMAP & good luck.

Little of Column A, little of Column B, but 1994 and 2010 both happened before REDMAP, so I tend to think it's mostly the former.

Some of the most insane-looking North Carolina maps people post were actually Democratic gerrymanders from the 1990s. A lot of Democratic gerrymanders in the South turned into dummymanders in 2010, giving Republicans the chance to gerrymander after that. But the shift was already happening.

Also thanks to Martha Chokely, Obamacare also infamously *did* require shoehorning in a “reconciliation fix” bill!

the 2010 midterms continue to deliver on the promise of Newt Gingrich to permanently turbofuck the country

This is the shocker for me, I had expected 1934 midterms, that is nowhere near what happened.

Even this is a borderline case because IIRC after Ted Kennedy died they had to resort to shenanigans to get around the filibuster.