I'm just saying, we should everyone accountable with every instance of bad behavior.
I say we hold politicians of all stripes accountable,
The solution is that we as citizens need to be ever vigilant for abuses of power and dangerous or counterproductive speech,
Of course. 100%. No one could possibly disagree with these statements in a vacuum. But it's here where we get back to having to recognize objective realities. Liberal Democrats are held accountable. Because institutions that are commonly thought of as liberal (newspapers, fact-checkers, etc.) hold them accountable, and the democratic base has trust in these institutions.
Honesty and AccuracyI've already made a big long post about how Obama was held accountable, and took responsibility for his false claim that people could keep their current plan under Obamacare, so I won't cover that again. Here's another example though:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a firebrand, so she tends to get fact-checked a lot for someone who is a freshman congresswoman in office for less than two months.
When she felt that the editorial process in Politifact and the Washington Post's Fact Checks were unfair, she made pointed criticisms, while accepting responsibilitty for being wrong or not as accurate/clear as she should be,
Facts are facts, America. We should care about getting things right. Yet standards of who gets fact-checked, how often + why are unclear. This is where false equivalency+bias creeps in, allowing climate deniers to be put on par w/scientists, for example. For example, it looks like @PolitiFact has fact-checked Sarah Huckabee Sanders and myself the *same* amount of times: 6.
She’s been serving for almost 2 years. I’ve served 4 days. Why is she fact-checked so little? Is she adhering to some standard we don’t know about?
This culminated in exchanges with The Post and Politifcat in which we all got to learn a bit more about the fact-checking process, Ocasio Cortez saying that her words aren't meant as an attack, but legimitage questions, and that she respect the importance of the job journalists and fact-checkers do.
But when these very same institutions Fact Check Donald Trump, he simply dismisses them as straight up fake. He did it last week:
The Washington Post is a Fact Checker only for the Democrats. For the Republicans, and for your all time favorite President, it is a Fake Fact Checker!
And his base agrees with him. They don't call him out on this bullshit. Per Pew Research, they also agree that The Washington Post is not trustworthy. Even OP, who seems like a really nice guy, refers to this practice of the media checking the president as:
our media as a whole and many other people are so caught up in trashing Donald Trump and anyone they disagree with that we can't have a reasonable and open discussion
RacismVirginia Governor Ralph Northam (D) admitted to wearing blackface at a party in the 1980s. I don't think this makes him a horrible person or anything, but it creates enough doubt over whether he can govern equally for all races, that I think it's a legitimate topic of discussion. The Democratic Governor's Associate has called for him to resign. It's ultimately on Northam for whether or not he actually steps down. I suspect he won't, but the pressure is there. He has less political leeway now.
Donald Trump spread false and dangerous rhetoric about black people. He "both-sides" Charlottesville, drawing false equivalence between counter protesters and murderous Neo-Confederates and Nazis. Republican congressman Steven King is a white nationalist. These guys face comparatively little pressure because their base could not give a shit.
Sexual MisconductA story came out about Senator Al Franken unwantedly kissing Leanne Tweeden. A juvenile photo he took of her while she was sleeping lent a lot of credibility that this behavior was in his character. He faced pressure from fellow Democrats and resigned.
The same month that he resigned, Republican stood by Roy Moore as extremely credible accusations of pedophila surfaced.
Donald Trump:
We don't need a liberal person in [the Senate], a Democrat, Jones
Sarah Sanders:
The president wants people in the House and Senate who support his agenda.
Kellyanne Conway:
I'm telling you we want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill through.
And in the end, Moore got over 600K votes from the Republican base. Thank god it wasn't enough, but only barely.
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I am on board with holding everyone accountable. I think I do a fair job of it personally, and I support institutions like The Times, The Post, Politifact, etc. that hold everyone accountable.
Right now, I'm holding conservative Americans accountable, because I think they're asleep at the accountability wheel.