This is from a report put out by the Transitional Integrity Project, a "bipartisan group of over 100 current and former senior government and campaign leaders, academics, journalists, polling experts and former federal and state government."
In actuality, the project is all Democrats or "Never Trump" Republicans, including:
- John Podesta, former White House Chief of Staff
- Donna Brazile, former Democratic National Committee Acting Chair
- Michael Steele, former chair of the Republican National Committee
- Max Boot, journalist
- David Frum, journalist
This is not a joke. Liberal media has been covering this story and linking to this article [1] [2] [3] But they only mention the parts about Trump refusing to concede.
Right-wing media is talking about this angle, where Biden refuses to concede. Workers must have a full understanding of what is going on, so we can prepare & respond to the coming months.
I know some people here will be like, "oh that can't be right, aren't Democratic and Republicans on the same team." No, they are not. They both want to crush any working class power, but there are serious contradictions within the bourgeois class.
One faction of the bourgeoisie wanted to slowly contain China & Russia through building exclusionary trade agreements (TPP) and maintaining relationships with Europe. This would build towards world war at a slower pace. They see war with China & Russia right now as suicide for their class.
Another faction want to crush China & Russia immediately because they recognize the rate at which these two nations are building their productive base. They see a war later down the line as harder to win.
As the contradiction of capitalism heightens, and the American Empire fumbles under Trump, the former faction is under more and more pressure to act. Their "Russian collusion" plan and impeachment failed tremendously.
Now we are in a position where neither faction will recognize the election results, which will likely be the end of "liberal democracy" in the US.
After reading through this, this looks like complete hogwash. It basically goes "Biden loses, and suddenly the Democrats grow a spine they haven't ever shown any signs of having for the past 40 years and immediately demand western states secede from the union for reasons (despite not doing so in 2000 under similar circumstances)." If Biden wins the popular vote and Trump wins the electoral college, the DNC is going to shrug its shoulders, go "Oh darn, guess we'll get them next time. More campaign donations please!" and keep doing the same grift they've done for the past four years.
Yeah, I think the Democrats would continue to fight Trump with the same mad ferocity and the same narrow limits they have already. "He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named is a vicious democracy-usurping tyrant threatening to unwind the fabric of the democratic universe... and Twitter's CEO should really, really, consider banning him already."
And I also wish the man I've been calling a fascist dictator and a Russian asset every day for the past four years a speedy recovery
if Trump has a dominating win, yeah. but you're looking at the democratic party as something other than an organ of the bourgeoisie and treating the apparent weakness of their political coalition like it's materially real.
as always, this comes down to economic trends, and it's the same economic trends that have been driving this for 40 years except covid accelerated it all and dumped the worst consequences on us all at once. for the big bourgeoisie, they're happy and fine as long as they can profit, which means extracting wealth from the lower classes.
this crisis has left the working classes without much wealth left to suck up and left the already weak petit-bourgeoisie completely exposed. so one faction of the bourgeoisie is sucking that marrow out of the bone. but the rate of profit is virtually zero right now and we're at the point where major businesses are collapsing, energy has basically negative futures, etc.. so finance, the banks, major tech companies like Amazon and Google, they're all doing very well and instability is their biggest risk.
so if Trump wins in a convincing enough way that everyone can pretend it's all fine, it will be, at least as far as they're concerned. but a split outcome or a close Trump win is not stabilizing and things look poised to devolve fast and so they'll do what they're floating here and try to seize the state to apply their own stabilizing force. the organ by which they'll do this is the democratic party and that's what this report is talking about.
on the other hand, if it's a Biden victory - stability is bad when it allows your enemies to consolidate and you're in the weaker position. so the segment of the big bourgeoisie that are on the verge of losing their status and power have every incentive to fight that as hard as they can. it's less Trump good for the other side and more chaos is opportunity.
as usual in these games they've forgotten about the rest of us and they've bought their own bullshit about the strength/durability of their own coalitions (they'll collapse immediately after the collapse of the state) so they're taking a blind step off a cliff.
If you ignore the fact that the Democratic Party has conspired with their allies in the intelligence community to impeach Trump for his entire presidency.
The Democrats are not going to go after Trump on issues where they agree, private health care, military budget, etc. They will go after Trump on issues where they disagree. And they have, again, for his entire presidency.
The issue of handling the American Empire is driving a massive wedge in the ruling class. We are in the greatest crisis of capitalism since the Depression, and economic crises in the highest stage of capitalist lead to inter-imperialist wars.
If you ignore the fact that the Democratic Party has conspired with their allies in the intelligence community to impeach Trump for his entire presidency.
They've done jack shit. "Impeaching" him meant jack shit when they knew full well the Republican Senate wouldn't remove him. It's all performative. So yeah, maybe they'll do some performative bullshit for a month or so, but after Trump is re-inaugurated things will be exactly how they are now.
“Impeaching” him meant jack shit when they knew full well the Republican Senate wouldn’t remove him.
They have absolutely been trying to court Republicans to turn against Trump. That has been the political aims of this faction for the past four years.
They've been trying to court moderate Republicans to vote for Biden. No Republican in the Senate has been "courted" by Democrats. Every time they relied on someone like Susan Collins to help them, it didn't work. Democrats' moves are all performative. Like the other comment said, they've enabled Trump in multiple ways.
John McCain, Mitt Romney to start. I'm not going to go through the entire history of the past four years, since you seem dead-set on lying.
What important things did they side with Democrats on against their party? Not replacing a shitty healthcare bill with a slightly shittier healthcare bill?
What important things did they not side with Democrats on? Convicting Trump...
That is what I'm saying. They tried and failed. It's pretty clear the higher ups are communicating a change in strategy, which is what this entire thread is about lmao
They've literally enabled Trump in every conceivable way. The only disagreements have been performative for their bases, the ruling class is united in their fucking over of the working class.
People weren't joking when they said "worst economic crisis since the Depression"
our bourgeoisie unified around social democracy the last time this happened. this kind of balkanization won't allow them to do that (or unify on fascism, either, for that matter). this will be the long and shitty kind of war, with ephemeral factions and fighting that can't be stopped for a decade or more, especially as the whole world is brought into it by virtue of our position as the head of empire. at least the rest of the world will be free at that point to have their communist revolutions, I guess, but the only hope for us is that we take a slower path to war - we allow this state to collapse in the face of mass anger, allow the liberals to form a provisional government and call a constitutional convention, and start organizing an alternative power structure to that new state immediately. then we get to take up the call "all power to the councils". if the hot shooting war kicks off before that, we're all going to spend the rest of our lives fighting a guerilla war.
Because we put politics in their games, which means GAMERS need to have GAMER moments IRL instead.
Yo isn't this just a game of dungeons and dragons for Iraq War neocon nerds?
lmao this is so nonsensical to me. how do they escalate to succession immediately? is anyone actually willing to die for the democratic party?
how do they escalate to succession immediately?
What do you mean escalate?
- We're entering the fifth month of sustained street fights in major cities.
- The Democratic Party has impeached the president and accused him of being a Russian kompromat.
- The main political consciousness in the Republican Party is QAnon.
- The FBI just exposed a plot to overthrow the Michigan government after the president called on his supports to "liberate" the state.
I think you have just normalized the very clear descent we're seeing in the US.
is anyone actually willing to die for the democratic party?
Right now, no. Once enough people get murdered, which will happen in response to the election, yeah. That's generally how these things progress.
heres hoping we can just dissolve the democratic party because the only people willing to fight will be socialists i think
First civil war was about slavery. Civil War 2 is because people just love Joe Biden.
I'm going make an educated guess and say the Civil War wasn't really about slavery, but about foresight of industrialization.
I just can't accept that the US government ever cared even one iota about ending slavery, even for virtue signalling purposes.
Instead, it was probably due to the awareness of coming industrialization. Allowing slavery in new states would have made them dependent on slaves, and would have set back industrialization. The north wanted to set them up for the greatest chance of prosperity, while southern slave-owning elites wanted to get more plantation land.
Eventually, shorthand made this an issue of just "slavery", and even further shorthand made it a war about "doing the right thing" (lol)
Next you're going to tell me that WW2 wasn't about stopping fascism.
I'm gonna stop you right there. https://youtu.be/SFwHQYDqf6c
How is Russia building its productive base instead of still cannibalizing the remnants of Soviet infrastructure and scientific research though?
"Building productive base" isn't as accurate here as "building geopolitical alliances that are anit-American" which Russia definitely is doing. That serves the same function as what OP is talking about, threatening American hegemony.
Which alliances? In every conflict with the West up till now Russia has always meekly given in, and any struggle it showed was either purely for show or completely marginal in geopolitical terms. How can a country that almost exclusively relies on the export of raw materials to the West, that re-invests its surplus into Western assets and has the families of all the members of the ruling class (as well the members themselves, many of whom only venture into Russia to quickly inspect their fiefdoms) living in the West be possibly a foil to Western interests? In an armed conflict with China Russia will not have their back, the most likely scenario is it will sit on the sidelines waiting to see who wins, periodically muttering something under its breath when its physical assets suffer collateral damage now and then.
In every conflict with the West up till now Russia has always meekly given in, and any struggle it showed was either purely for show or completely marginal in geopolitical terms
Ukraine? Syria? Armenia? What lol
How can a country that almost exclusively relies on the export of raw materials to the West
Russian exports to China has increased 600% in the past decade. China is their largest export market.
Russian exports to the Netherlands (their second largest export market) have dropped by 50% in the meantime. Russian exports to Germany have dropped 60%.
Stop lying, and actually pay attention to what is happening in the world.
I'll reply by reposting my comment from a different discussion:
Look up the almost total dismantling of any advanced science, r&d and manufacturing base in Russia under Putin’s authoritarian turbo capitalism. His regime basically turned a highly industrialised country with a robust scientific culture and research infrastructure into an almost mono-economy based on the export of raw materials. Even in the defence sector: the Mayak nuclear processing plant for making warhead material (among other radioactive isotope enrichment) stopped processing weapons grade plutonium several years back, most fearsome nuclear armaments decommissioned and not replaced (Russia has only maybe 250 total functional (?) ICBM-SLBM) and almost everything is foreign made, the makers being NATO and US allied countries. In the case of a major conflict how much of that will be reliable?
Though that’s a rhetorical question because as they’ve shown in every military conflict up till now, Russian high command is scared shitless of actual confrontation with the West. In Georgia it was the general and commanders in charge of the actual troops near the border who gave the order to invade as retaliation and when the army was nearing Tbilisi the troops were promptly halted and pulled back, the commanders sacked (even as Putin and Medvedev used the quick annihilation of the Georgian forces engaged for personal patriotic clout). In Libya Russia made the no-fly zone possible in the UN security council but then later (again purely for internal consumption) bitched about it from the safety of a fair accompli. In Ukraine it murdered, pushed into senseless meat grinders and disarmed the native Eastern insurgency against the Kievan neo-nazi regime and after using federal troops to take charge of the rebels completely stopped any and all military advances even when the Ukrainian armed forces were practically non-existent (at least in any other role than harassing civilians), extended credit and low gas prices to a regime that was supposedly its enemy on the behest of western emissaries. In Syria Russia pulled out its military advisors when the conflict began, then made Assad give up his chemical weapons to please Obama and went back in only when the situation became completely hopeless in order to secure a few strips of land in a rump Syrian state. Even then they gave in in every conflict with Turkey or US forces even to the point of feigning ignorance as to the identity of their own soldiers, letting them get massacred by the US without any repercussions. The touted s-400 still standing in mighty silence, not letting itself get provoked by raids from various countries’ air forces.
In the midst of an economic crisis and the need to restart their own production in the face of sanctions the Russian regime chose to invest in US treasury bonds (assets of its supposed enemy) instead of investing in their own economy.
If Russia is trying to conspire with NATO & the US, they are doing a horrible job lol
And what about Russia's export market? It's largest trading partner is China, and their exports have increase 600% in the past decade.
The US recognizes Russian-China-Iran as an opposing bloc in the world. Military intelligence in the US identifies "Great Power Struggle", with Russian & China operating as a common enemy, as their focus now that the "War on Terror" is "over." Also, these nations have been holding joint military exercises.
This narrative seemed to have a lot more explanatory power than "Russia is a western pawn."
The Nord Stream project is struggling along only because of Germany's material interest to not be wholly subservient to the US. If Germany gets a better deal the project falls through. And even then Germany has been haggling the entire time, not willing to exchange one energy dependency on another.
And it is on you to show how any of the Russian sabre rattling and military manoeuvres have negatively impacted Western hegemony. Wherever I look I can't see America, NATO, Saudi Arabia, etc. having their power and interests curtailed by Russia in any non-negligible way. But maybe you can...
The biggest example is Nord Stream Two, which will make Russia the primary provider of natural gas to Western Europe.
How is that an example of "building its productive base" when all it implies is pumping of raw materials into the West. If I'm not mistaken not a single technical piece of the Nordstream system has been built or designed in Russia.
How is that an example of “building its productive base”
That's like asking "how is China opening up to the West 'building its productive base?'"
Nord Stream Two will place European energy in the hands of Russia's state oil company, and out of US hands. It doesn't matter who builds it, it is still means of production built in Russia, transporting natural gas owned by Russian companies.
Means of production of what? Oil itself is a resource, not a means of production.
The pipeline is not producing anything except for profits for the Russian bourgeoisie. The paltry part of those profits that gets earmarked for re-investment is then meticulously pocketed bit by bit by all the functionaries and bureaucrats involved in the re-investment. Forget it, Russia is not an ally whatsoever. It is a mafia state that is looking out for itself and itself only. Any opposition it shows to the hegemon is pure trolling, as criminal organisations are always known to do to periodically test the waters of what is permissible and which loot they can grab as opposed to what will earn a smack on the nose.
The pipeline is not producing anything except for profits for the Russian bourgeoisie.
Yes, that is how the means of production work in a capitalist state.
I'm not saying Russia is an ally. I am saying they are an enemy of the American bourgeoisie. I do not understand why it is so difficult for people to understand that there are real divisions within the bourgeoisie. That seems to be a common trend in this thread.
Any opposition it shows to the hegemon is pure trolling
This is ahistorical. They are a weak global power that wants to be a part of a counter-hegemony which opposes NATO expansion into Russia.
But it doesn't matter what they want. The space they might want is already well occupied by bigger players and the Russian state is so terminally corrupt that even any strategy for expansion they devise falls apart immediately due to personal greed and internal contradictions within the Russian bourgeoisie which are at least as large as the contradictions between the global bourgeoisie. Ironically the only source for Russia growing in power is the climate collapse, as it will free up more frozen land for resource extraction and selling off at a premium. Needless to say the Russian citizenry, unless they ever mount a new socialist revolution, will not see anything besides ever increasing austerity and neglect.
I read a lot of words here, but all I'm getting on my end is that posadas was right.
On your point on the differing interests of different classes of the bourgeoisie, I've written previously about this phenomenon and have taken to referring them as the "progressive" and "regressive" wings of the Big Bourgeoisie.
writings
This formula applies to the modern day Democratic party and its representatives in a number of ways. The first is to examine the class that this party now represents in the legislative arena. Contrary to the narrative the Democratic party peddles about itself, since the neoliberal turn of the 1980’s, the party has reconfigured itself in this new political climate to represent the progessive Big Bourgeoisie. This class is the “progressive” forces of a millionaire and billionaire class that is racially diverse and gender mixed that has emerged since the anti-racist and feminist policies of liberation passed in the 1960’s. Typically these Big Bourgeoisie are over-represented in industries like tech, as opposed to the regressive majority white male Big Bourgeoisie found in industries like oil and finance. Since the neoliberal turn and the election of Clinton, the Democratic party has represented first and foremost the interests of this particular class of individuals. A quick outline of the legislative policy agenda of Democrats since the 1980’s will suffice to represent this point.
The Democratic party is ostensibly the party of the poor and oppressed, yet under Clinton passed regressive legislation in the form of an overly punitive crime bill that introduced concepts like the three strikes law, where offenders caught with a negligible amount of weed could be jailed for life, and an aggressively named “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act” that slashed welfare programs for the impoverished, combatted the mythical “welfare queens” of Clinton’s ire, and created a budget surplus in the name of “fiscal responsibility” who's benefits went directly into the hands of the aforementioned progressive Big Bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, Clinton was able to push through a repeal of the much hated Glass-Steagall Act, which set up a firewall between investment banks and consumer banks after the Great Depression. This repeal resulted in massive profits for the financial industry and directly preconfigured the 2008 financial crisis, but provided massive windfall to the Big Bourgeoisie, both progressive and regressive aspects. Barack Obama largely continued this line, passing a massive bailout that went directly into banks’ pockets, oversaw the expansion of quantitative easing to prop up the stock market and drive it to ever increasing profits as it became more and more disconnected from the experience of the average American worker, and passed healthcare reform that did not include a public option but did include a regressive tax that punished the poor for not having healthcare, pushing them to take out policies with the healthcare companies that made up a large part of the Democratic donor base. Likewise, his decision to not regulate the tech industry at all, and allowing companies like Facebook and Twitter to make a profit off the social labour of its users while Google realized its profits from selling the data created and owned by its users to advertisers, resulted in soaring tech profits and valuations that directly increased the net worth of the progressive Big Bourgeoisie. The combination of all these policies is directly beneficial to the wellbeing of the progressive Big Bourgeoisie, with little benefit to those outside that particular class.
That said, the social policies of the Democrats since the neoliberal turn have indeed brought liberation to individuals outside of the Big Bourgeoisie. From Clinton’s championing of abortion and feminist policies in the workplace to Obama’s progressive racial policies and eventual embrace of gay marriage, the Democratic party has indeed pushed forward social issues that have benefit a large part of the United States. However, these social policies are pushed within the context of the liberation of the progressive Big Bourgeoisie. This portion of the bourgeoisie is distinguished from the rest by its composition of individuals beyond the typical white male. Women, LGBT folks, and people of color are all members of this progressive Big Bourgeoisie, and therefore the conditions of their liberation are indeed the progressive social policies pursued by these Democratic lawmakers. Notice that abortion is made legal and championed, but access to those abortions is not materially expanded. Same with affirmative action racial policies, gender reassignment surgeries, and maternity leave: these policies are all made possible, but only if one has the means to access them. The Democratic party, because it represents the rich, generalizes the particular conditions of that class’s liberation as the universal conditions of liberation for all. Hence “Medicare, for all those who want it.” Anything outside the option of liberation is ignored, because the Democrats only represent those who can seize that option with their wealth.
I've taken a lens that's focused more on the economic analysis but we've arrived at the same conclusion. there's a deep split in the bourgeoisie.
Yeah I think we're all on the same wavelength here in terms of what's plaguing the ruling class and why nothing seems to be done. Interestingly (and obviously, lol) this is one of the primary preconditions of collapse that Richard Lachmann in his awesome book, First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers. We're headed for a fun decade.
a split in the ruling class, paralysis in the state, and economic depression is a recipe as old as civilization. thanks for the rec, I'll check it out.
Yeah it's a really great book. Builds on Arrighi's The Long Twentieth Century (which is also wonderful, if you've never read it) by explaining that while Arrighi's thesis of decline of great powers is great, it tends to treat the ruling political class as a monolith rather than his more nuanced class based analysis that exposes rifts within that ruling elite that often trigger the collapse.
oh fantastic. yeah, read that a few years back and the kind of monolithic treatment was exactly what I didn't like (though to be fair, that notion is hegemonic for obvious reasons).
This isn't reddit which has "ban on site for pirating or making fun of slave owners" policy.
PIRATES YE BE WELCOME HERE
Be the change you wish to see! I always link to libgen if I recommend a book, since it reduces the friction of somebody being like "actually yeah, I'd love to read that" tremendously. No reason you can't as well!
you telling me a Trump victory would balkanize the United States? and Biden is the "harm-reduction" candidate?
Imagining intelligence agencies desperately holding on to their behind the scenes power in the midst of balkanization. It won't be pretty.
We are rapidly entering the real shit zone. Thanksgiving is going to be exciting this year
this all reminds me of an incredibly cursed comment on the old forum about Buttigieg becoming American Putin after the collapse
If we find Trump-supporters in the restroom, we will debate the shape of democracy with them in the restroom!
How legit is this? I don't think I understand, but is this saying that there's a large group of democrats who are setting up a plan that suggests straight up secession? Isn't that like very against their rules?
I tend to believe the report because I've been saying this is what's going to happen for about 3 months now. there's an additional bit of class analysis that helps here: there are two major factions within the bourgeois class and they've been building up to a major conflict for a long time. that's why congress is gridlocked and why the state has been made totally ineffective at everything but repression over the last 40 years. this difference is at its heart, economic. the financial and tech sectors have been sucking up all the wealth while, especially in recent years, manufacturing, agriculture, and energy (yes, energy) have been suffering. this division between the land-based bourgeoisie and the metropolitan bourgeoisie has been deepening and covid has driven that split all the way through by making one faction far wealthier, virtually eliminating the petit-bourgeoisie, and threatening to all but eliminate the other dominant faction. these groups will fight over control of the state because the stakes are eliminate your rivals or be eliminated.
this war isn't the only possibility, though. there's also a good likelihood that the movement in the streets continues to escalate with the police while economic conditions for the working class cause bread riots to break out. the state will step in to severely repress the movement if that happens and usually bread riots wind up demanding the collapse of the state pretty fucking fast once that happens.
but either way, we aren't looking at a particularly long horizon for this state. what comes next stands no chance of being communist but there will be a change and with it time to organize for a revolution when the liberal provisional government collapses for the same reasons that are driving the collapse of this state.
there’s a large group of democrats who are setting up a plan that suggests straight up secession?
Yes.
Isn’t that like very against their rules?
There are no rules for the ruling class. Trump has said he will not accept the results of the election. Democrats are talking secession. We're in a failed state.
I linked a screenshot of one of the war games. The once where Biden wins the popular vote & Trump wins the electoral college. In this case, the result was threats of secession and no resolution by February (when the game ended).
God I wish Demofarts were this cool
"TIP intentionally did not game legal strategies in any detail." Interesting. The amount of litigation this election will spawn will be nothing short of disgusting.
it's more likely that Russia and China just decide to nuke and invade the US than any of this happening
This is so funny because in this scenario Democrats do a bunch of real-politik and are led by like a combination of Lenin and Castro and the Republicans rebuttle is to do a phone interview with Glenn Greenwald.
I don't think you understand what this conflict would look like. It's not a "Peoples' Revolution"
February 15 2021
Our supplies are still dwindling, but while he can't fill our bellies with food and magazines with ammunition, Generalissimo Biden can always fill our hearts with morale.
'Tell the cornpop story again,' Comandante Harris insists.
'You got it Jack,' Biden says rubbing her shoulders, 'I got hairy legs...'
Tonight we will not sleep with empty bellies. They are full with laughter.
I don't know if I should laugh or cry :stalin-stressed: best rp I've seen here
February 16 2021
A dove flies above us. Is this a good omen? Oh wait that's not a-
Critical support for the People's Republic of Brunchistan.
