The Democrats already go out of their why to impress Republicans bringing people like Powell and Kasich over while snubbing progressives. They take the progressive vote for granted and move hard to the right. Should Biden win there is a real chance that the republican establishment will denounce Trump and will work with Biden to "increase unity and heal the wounds Trump caused", but actually just to continue to wield power. Internally this means only the foulest compromise passing, the county being governed by a giant center-conservative coalition against the left and a few reactionary Trump loyalists. Externally China is the perfect boogyman to unite over. An empire of evil that only a united America that is true to it's roots can overcome. China is a legitimate threat to American conservatism because they show that regular "free" individualist capitalism is inferior to a collective state capitalism. They still manage to increase their populations living standards and build great infrastructure something the west has been incapable of for more or less half a century. Biden has already said that he will not be as "soft" as Trump on "dictators" and will be tough on North Korea, Venezuela, Russia (of course) and China. The democrats don't see the republicans as an enemy to be beaten to the point of no revovery, but an estranged partner, who must be brought to it's senses. For a German like me Trump might be the harm reduction candidate bringing America down faster while Biden might pull our conservative government into suppoerting another war.
You really need other venues than electoralism, like desperatly.
Real talk, if the Democrats are going to reassemble the Iraq War Avengers team under their banner and become the party of "responsible imperialism" then Trump is legitimately the lesser evil to me.
As a latin american, seeing how they seeth to start bombing venezuela, sometimes I'm a hairbreadth away from campaigning for Trump lol
In 2016 I said that Clinton was the lesser evil for Americans but Trump was the lesser evil for the rest of the world.
I'm still convinced that's true with Trump & Biden.
All depends on which country. Trump's foreign policy has been worse for South Africa than Clinton's would've been (spreading of the white farm murders lie anyone?), but Trump is better for Venezuela for example as he's too incompetent to pull off a coup.
I do take your point on the signal boosting of the white farm murders myth for example.
We wouldn't have fucking Bolsonaro in Brazil if it wasn't for Trump, surely they would have still stopped Lula/Hadad with some neoliberal shitstain, but Marielle Franco and thousands of people would still be alive.
Yet with Clinton president, there surely be another new war in the ME or maybe even Vzla by now.
I hate this fucking world
but Marielle Franco and thousands of people would still be alive
I don't know if Marielle Franco would be alive, the paramilitary aparatus that killed her was already around long before Trump came to office. You can argue that they wouldn't have the balls to do it without the Trump/Bolsonaro "hivemind", and altough with her that might be the case, this wouldn't have stopped them from killing other people. I still agree that Trump is terrible for Brazil in terms of giving power to Bolsonaro's right, but Hilary could have started a war in Venezula, which would have probably led to a military figure in power by 2022.
All & all, the fall of the US Empire will be brutal for the colonies. And being in south america (US's "backyard") we will probably suffer the most.
the paramilitary aparatus that killed her was already around long before Trump came to office
Yeah you are right, I wish we all could be shitting on Lula/Dilma instead of having to shit on a cartoonishly evil ghoul.
In the voters mentality, "hey the yankis elected an openly racist mysoginist nationalist backed by evangelicals and others fringe idiots, and they are like smart and shit so voting this openly racist and mysoginist <<nationalist>> backed by evangelicals and fringe idiots would be like dope".
No lie, whatever happens in the imperial core have lots of consequences for the colonies. All around the world racists felt validated, so lots of motherfuckers wanted to be the next Trump, Bolsonaro is Brazil's Trump.
This :10000-com: Same thing happened in South Africa with the VF+, went from fringe white supremacist party to getting 5% of the vote. This led to the main opposition party firing their black leader and taking a hard turn right in order to appeal to voters lost to the VF+
DA is taking a right wing turn? Color me surprised (pun intended), the white liberal party is going right wing. I've heard EFF is doing way better than previously too though. Shit could get dicey in SA in the future.
EFF actually had a small decline in the last election if I remember correctly. Also not a fan of the EFF, they take the energy that could be aimed at a legitimate left wing party and shove it down their corrupt champagne socialist throats. All they're good for is talking points and awareness in parliament
Ah, I don't really follow South African politics much so I guess I was just remembering something from a few years ago.
Yeah it was a few years ago they had the big spike in support
Trump is unable to bomb other country's out of pure incompetence, its pretty funny.
He intensified the bombing in the already started wars but the motherfucker didn't start any new ones, or am I wrong?
He really tried to start a war with iran but it didn't work.
The Republican Party elites "denouncing" Trump would be political suicide. Their rank-and-file voter base despise them and worship Trump.
And the liberals will be taken by complete surprise, just like in 2016, and the antifa sandersista bro radicals will be to blame again, a process that will repeat forever and ever until the end of time
This lines up with my take. Whether it's realistic or not, the Dems seem to be angling for a soft coup of the GOP, taking over the "respectable conservative" position to create a purple hell blob. It might not work, but that seems to be their strategy. We'll run a right wing racist and a cop, hoover up all the right wing authoritarians put off by trump's behavior, and secure an iron grip on power that will allow us to crush any challenge from the left or the extreme right?
Idk, scares the shit out of me.
Sanders starts a new party that runs up the left picking up blue-collar union workers, young people, Latino/a voters, etc, and Republicans go the way of the Whigs.
As nice as this would be, I don't think Sanders would advocate for something like this if he doesn't even want to run against Biden after getting the most support he ever will in his lifetime. As for the rest of the succdem progressives (and associated groups like MoveOn, Justice Democrats, DSA National), they likely will try to #resist within the democratic party since they're not actually revolutionary or insurgent or whatever, but instead they know their funding streams and platform are more guaranteed if they are still called democrats to the general public (otherwise machine politics will easily conspire to freeze them out completely).
Since modern American political parties are nothing but fundraising mechanism with vague ideologies attached that people don't really give a shit about.
I get what you mean, but I still don't think it's going to happen.
Democrats and republicans are very willing to quash any sort of national insurgent energy via electioneering and how K street fundraising works. It's just not that easy for a national party to form in opposition to the two major parties (just look at every outside challenger from Debs to Nader to Stein etc).
The only way I can see this happening is if left-leaning candidates who superficially align with a major party begin running for super local offices (state congress, city council, etc) where there still seems to be less pushback against unknown candidates, lower fundraising thresholds for running a campaign, more measurable gains for communities, less chance for negative press due to lower exposure. Basically pack local governments with insurgent left politicians from the communities they serve and move municipalities and eventually states left and bulwark them against the worst effects of capitalism/fascism/imperialism.
That's an electoral strategy that could work.
Right, which is why they would have to align with the democrats/republicans (in name only) to get on the ballot, but then implement policies that are leftist/left-leaning and responsive to their communities.
Hey no worries, it's a bullshit byzantine process, and even trying to simplify the 12D chess involved is a headfuck
Fair, capital will always stand in the way of left progress, especially for candidates. But with small races it's more possible (but still hard) since it doesn't need the level of funding or personpower as larger federal positions/national races.
Bidenism is essentially a consolidation of most segments of domestic Bourgeois interests against a minority faction within the Bourgeoisie. The hard right seems to represent the interests of heavy industry like resource extraction, manufacturing, construction etc, while the Dems represent the service sector and light industry. Much of that second group was previously divided among centrist republicans and democrats, but Trump has basically told those republicans to fuck off unless they're 100% on board. Dems are likely going to be a party of Bourgeois Unity and the GOP will become more overtly fascist as they replace the lost influence from party-defecting Bourgeoisie with a disgruntled Petit Bourgeois, who will be more reactionary.
do you think the US would try to wage war against another nuclear power though? they can hem and haw, but i don't really think they'd risk going up against a nuclear state.
Of a sane nation, probably not, but the American military & related industrial complex is absolutely riddled with genuinely insane Christian fundamentalists who believe in, amongst other things, a great rapture.
Ten years ago I'd have felt pretty confident that no one was about to risk a nuclear war. Watching America's rapid decline I can genuinely see a collapsing American state using nuclear weapons against China or a proxy.
Trump is the lesser evil, if for no other reason than incompetence.
I'm just going from my experience from living in the Midwest. They love their daddy Trump.
Libs ain't gonna do shit besides peacefully protest at most.
Chuds might actually kill a few people unfortunately.
I feel that fears of civil unrest are being stoked so that when they roll in the Guard they will be welcomed with open arms by the middle class. I'm just cynical that way. I think that Americans that matter (comfortable suburban American consumers) will be the last to feel any effects from the unfolding disasters, and the last to acknowledge the cost being paid for their comfort.
Me, too. As part of that, I've been thinking a lot lately about what a Clinton presidency would have looked like. She loves a good diplomatic bombing campaign more than most of those ghouls, so she would have probably launched a few billion dollars worth of cruise missiles at Maduro, at the very least. Her Treasury department would have been filled with essentially the same people as are there now, so I have a hard time believing they would have responded to the financial crisis much differently. And she would have taken the pandemic more seriously earlier on, probably, but the anti-maskers would then also be fueled by anti-Clinton anger, so we'd still end up more or less in the same situation.
Aside from Twitter and some relatively minor changes in budget allocations, what would really be different?
I think Republicans understand the goal is money - so they talk about wars, toppling "dictators", freedom, security, and so on, but when they get their money they don't truly care if they win or lose a war, or topple a dictator,.etc.
The dems are stupider, and have bought into the freedom, security, etc. shit fully, so they may take a hard line and actually mean it. Especially Biden, because he extra dumb.
Or maybe they're all the same and nothing about electoralism matters at all
Looking forward to the 30 Minute War of 2026
Hope the Posadists are right
I thought this board was for politics. Politicians do pop culture. Donors do Politics
You don't care about Biden at all. You've actually never cared about anything a politician has done. No one has. Politicians have never done anything. Saying a politician does shit is like saying the wrench fixed your sink. Politicians are just tools for donors. Your rambling paragraph doesn't mention a single actual politician or their real personal agendas.
If you aren't name checking a hard-asset, infrastructure owning oligarch then you're just an arianna grande, get your cat ears and vote for no one. Here are the oligarchs behind Rupert Murdoch, these are who you should be worried about instead of biden:
John Malone Stan Kroenke James Cox Brian Roberts Charlies Koch
The thing you're sorta talking about but too triggered to understand is that Biden is actually backed by all the oligarchs on either side. That's weird and scary. The Lincoln Project is entirely staffed from former Koch-paid Tea Party staffers and now it's backing biden.
Basically the last 4 years was just a massive spree of deregulation. While all these abuses of the PPP loans for tens of millions are being parroted in the media, people like the kochs and malones didn't take money, they took laws. The laws they got will earn them extra hundreds or billions per year, now with those in place they can go back to a moderate-psychopath (Biden) before installing Tagg Romney as emperor in 2024. Basically the bullshit image they have for the Romney clan already has "destroyed the middle class" so they put trump in for 4 years to pass the laws too unpleasant for Mitt's reputation and vilify foreign sovereign/private equity.
The globalist vitriol is going to be used to (reasonably) regulate foreign capital which is great. Fuck MBS and softbank and all their bullshit. But they will not regulate domestic private equity. Foreign capital has be the only competition that american oligarchs had to compete with and when they're regulated out of the system, and after 2020 that'll be diminished and the Kochs and Malones will truly be kings.
But ya, you being triggered by biden is cool too. Cool opinion ya got kid.
