With no taxes on tips (if it actually happens), expect a HUGE increase in tip expectations.

Do they mean “buying” instead of “owning”?

Adding seats to the court needs to happen, as well as reapportioning representatives, and giving electoral votes to DC and the territories. We need to find politicians that aren’t afraid to do it.

That’s an important issue, but if Democrats ever see power again, it’ll be important to focus on re-enfranchisement (RCV, instant runoff, or anything fairer than FPTP; NPVIC; national mail voting; mandatory voting), on judicial reform to undo the corruption and incompetence that has been packed there. Without those, keeping any gains will be impossible.

Then, triaging existential threats is critical, which will mean fighting climate change, investing in public transport (trains), and breaking up trusts will have to be pursued simultaneously. Stopping any support for genocide needs to happen as soon as possible.

There will be plenty more structural changes to fix beyond that: Protecting whistleblowers and protesters, improving FOIA, replacing norms with laws (Emoluments Clause enforcement, financial records disclosure, no insider trading for Congressmembers, &c), and all manner of civil rights protections and police reform.

After all that, it’ll be time for the stuff I’ve been hoping for: nationalizing healthcare and Internet access, and copyright reform.

Should I not be calling it “trans”?

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/37394/why-do-some-words-have-x-as-a-substitute

None of this really addresses my question.

If voters bear no responsibility, do you really believe in democracy, or are you thinking about this as an issue to be solved by authority?

The self-righteousness of this discussion is a problem. Politics requires some humility, which we seem to be short of.

Interesting. That’s an angle I’ll have to consider. It seems like democracy with fixed terms and term limits has a similar problem to capitalism: myopia.

Liberal isn’t shorthand for libertarian.

you blame the voters but you do not want to put an ounce of blame on the party that would rather lose an election than offer meaningful change

Uh…

the DNC is out of touch with voters.

What is this, if not shared blame?

If you say so.

Democrats aren’t authoritarians. It’s a bad comparison. Democrats are always fragmented, it’s virtually a defining characteristic. Post-Biden unity has been quite unusual.

The fixation is because there is no clear line of succession. If he fails, who steps in? They’ll splinter and fragment. They’ll still be deplorable, but less effective when not united behind a single authoritarian leader.

None were leftist, and only one got as far as violence.

You may be right, but it seems to me that sleeper cells need direction. Otherwise, they’ll interpret their ideology divergently. They may block progress pretty effectively, but it’ll be hard for them to make gains in a shared direction.

This is all true, but there’s not clear line of succession after Trump, so they’ll splinter. Redirecting the fervor to some new dear leader will take a long time. The Trump thralls are entirely invested in him alone.

It’s literally impossible to fully boycott Amazon, I’ve been trying for years. Even if you buy elsewhere, often you’ll find out after the fact that Amazon does the shipping or payment processing.

We should nationalize their monopoly or break it up.

Not only do [the old trucks] only get 9 miles per gallon, they’re also noisy, smelly (I have to close my window every day when the mail truck comes around), have no air conditioning, hard to stand up in, and their only safety feature is mirrors that constantly fall out of alignment. AP also points out that nearly 100 LLVs caught fire last year – a common event when it comes to internal combustion vehicles.

There was almost a Mormon Navy?

So it sounds like you don’t believe progressive taxation works. I guess that’s an understandable viewpoint. But if you think complexity is the problem, I have a hard time accepting your assessment of me as naïve. People that want simple solutions to complex problems are showing the lack of sophistication that defines naïvety.