Biden Has What It Takes to Lose

I think Trump is going to win. People are willing to stand in line and vote for him during a pandemic. I don’t know if it’s a majority, but a lot of Bernie supporters were behind him based on his policy recs, and tuned him out once he started sheepdogging for Hillary and now Biden. So the people who would have voted for Bernie based on the issues are now going to not vote, with maybe a few voting for Biden and some for Trump. I personally think Biden is definitely going to lose, and it’ll be because we’re all just so evil and racist LOL.

Yeah COPE 2020 is in full swing.

Not much on offer except the removal of God’s Chosen Chaos Candidate. Frankly I have had enough divine punishment with the Plague, droughts, fires, and floods. Hopefully the Lord takes it easy on us for a few years.

“I’m bad at predicting elections” – Ian

In the U.S. the content each candidate brings to the table is 90% symbolism and 10% substantive. The symbolism moves the electorate even though it’s the first thing abandoned when the candidate is in office. (A comical dynamic for a populace that loves a good joke.)

You have to turn off your brain and hit the “I believe” button in order to predict this thing.

For several decades now, every time I think of the democratic party (blue party) the adjectives flaccid and impotent pop into my brain. They have no interest in winning let alone doing anything but the party leaders don\’t want to give up their positions. As described elsewhere the choice is between being boiled in acid or being thrown headfirst into a woodchipper.

“so far it’s looking a lot like a replay of 2016”

Could be because the DNCers thought they did a good job in 2016? DNCers only lost because;

Obama voters became rabid racist!!!

Russians stole the election!!!

Or whatever excuse DNCers need to con their sheep into

The DNC is dominated by the same people as 2016, Al From’s “Children of the Corp”

One thing has changed though, Julian Assange/Wikileaks has been broken and silenced, so the DNC’s usual shenanigans will not be reported. And with the abject acceptance at this site [and others] for this Julian Assange’s slow dismemberment and death…I think Hillary’s candidate will soon be Prez. President Kamala Harris will owe Bernie big time for taking out Tulsi Gabbard…eh?

Someone on twitter really summed it up well yesterday: Something beats nothing, and Biden is offering a whole lot of nothing.
I enjoyed the unattributed paraphrase of trump’s mother. When Mary trump called granny about being disinherited due to her aunts and uncles, granny told her “you know what your father was worth? A whole lot of nothing” then hung up.
Are the Dems really this scared to make promises they were never afraid to renege on in the past, or are they intentionally throwing away the election? Just like they immediately threw away their leverage in the CARES act?
One thing the media and so called opposition party seem to avoid as much as possible is discussing the obvious criminality of the trumps. You really have to wonder if the US is basically run by Organized Crime and everyone in DC and NY knows it and is afraid to confront it.

Yes, trump may very well win… Thanks, in part, to NL and the like minded above.

@Che Pasa:

“As usual, the public is not thrilled with either major candidate, and as usual, many won’t vote because of it. This is the now-traditional way of US presidential elections. Neither candidate represents them, by design. They’re left to take what they’re given or not. 40% or more typically choose not to play.”

https://americancompass.org/the-commons/the-non-voter/

Feral Finster

I live in a small town where the majority [~85%] will vote Trump, their issues are Firearms, War and Immigration, so I talk to a lot of Trump voters on a daily basis and I have never heard anything like this:

“I have personally met several people who are convinced that Trump is in regular contact with Jesus Christ in order to discuss policy”

Never.

I think you are having conversations with your imagination, not Trump voters.

Nothing about the NBA players? Of course, it’s a spectacle, but it has never before occurred. Why not fan the flames? But, no, only water for the fire.

neil tuchin
Yes, trump may very well win… Thanks, in part, to NL and the like minded above.

In my view, those who participate in the charade are either misguided or paid propagandists of those who benefit from this political arrangement. There is no intelligent justification for participating in it. If you think you have one, Ok, I am all ears…

I’m one of those Bernie people who just won’t vote. The way the Democrats treated Bernie shows me that they are my enemies. Vote for them? I want them on the dock in the Hague.

I’m starting to steer clear of anyone who sounds like they still identify with either party. Krystal and Saagar’s project is what I follow because their approach feels promising. They host people in either party who are focused on helping main street while they criticize the corporate tools and fools in both parties.

From Automatic Earth this morning. Basically also noticing and documenting what Ian is seeing about Biden’s chances.

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2020/08/are-the-tables-starting-to-turn/

I was thinking that if the Dems lost to Trump a second time, at least they would have to shut up about electability, but I’m probably giving them too much credit.

Here’s another:

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/extreme-donald-trump-fans/7/

Note the look on the cultist’s face.

neil tuchin
“Emotionally I agree with you.” — Gee wiz, what a way to start a reply when asked for ‘an intelligent justification’. Where did I ask you for your emotions? Are you implying ‘intellectually’ you disagree?

Biden will happily pick where Trump left off, and I don’t mean Biden as an actual person or Trump as a actual person, but their administrations wielding the tool of government on behalf of the rulers. Global conditions are shaping adversely for the US for now.

“It may feel good to say fuck ’em all, but what does that get us? ” — what voting has gotten you? You re saying even your house literally burned down…

neil tuchin

Actually, apologies, I misunderstood. Your home is still Ok. Or I hope it is still Ok when you go back.

neil tuchin

I was merely reacting with pathos to a brazen usage of emotion when the question entailed intellect.

But while we can keep on ‘jostling for position’ and what not, the fact remain a fact, there is no ‘intelligent justification’ for voting and for supporting the current arrangements as a universal proposition. Voting has gotten people to where they are right now. Yes, some people are attached to it for various reason, and I suppose one needs to cater to the audience, but in the end of the day if voting made a difference, we would not be here, would we?

After it soon becomes abundantly clear that knee-capping the world to stop the global trends would not work, this place we live in will have to reform itself. And one big issue is that voting for people/oligarchy just does not work.

They say that Trump is a symptom. I say that Biden is as well. Damned Idiocracy.

Krystal and Saagar’s project is what I follow because their approach feels promising. They host people in either party who are focused on helping main street while they criticize the corporate tools and fools in both parties.

I just went to The Hill and watched a few minutes of the K & S reaction to Trump’s speech at the RNC.

I am very suspicious of their project. First, if there is anything less effective politically than voting, it is surely watching television. Second, I remember when NC was reporting on how Krystal Ball and her husband had made a modest fortune from a series of penny-stock pump-and-dump schemes. So, maybe not a person of deep integrity. Third, The Hill!? That is the venue that volunteers to host and promote this!!?? Why? What is consistent between everything else they have ever done and the political tendencies expressed in K & S?

I do find most of they have to say congenial, but I also think they are two actors playing focus-grouped characters. What is the purpose?

@neil tuchin
“It may feel good to say fuck ’em all, but what does that get us? ”

Why don’t we embrace co-determination, direct vote for decisions and not people? Give a say to a widest population, freedom of decision making and democracy for all, stop politics of resentment, and impotence and start practicing what is preached by giving voice in decision-making to the people. Please do not tell me that you believe that populism is a pejorative and janitors are incapable of sound decision making, the ancients did not think so and we must not think either…

The K&S insight was that Trump and the Republicans are counting on riots provoking a law-and-order reaction supporting him. That seems an accurate summation of much of the Republican/Fox News messaging: the Democrats and Democrat Media have gone soft on the protesters/rioters and the violence and looting they have unleashed. I cannot bring myself to watch Tucker Carlson but I understand he is relentless in bringing on witnesses to violence.

Trump in the snippets of speechifying I saw on K&S was (as K&S pointed out) very, very effective in attacking Biden’s record, saying what Sanders could have said if he was not sheepdogging thru the primary.

Biden’s critique of Trump is basically that Trump is too vulgar. It is a matter of personal style apparently, for ham sandwiches everywhere. Biden/Harris cannot attack Trump on policy for the most part and won’t for fear of frightening either the donors or the sheep. It is a formula for losing against the most unpopular and most incompetent President since Benjamin Harrison.

No real idea what’s going to happen in November right now, but passing this along:

https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/08/how-to-win-election.html

different clue: Thanks. You’re right. Now I need to figure out where I can turn for honest news about local events.

bruce wilder: After I posted about K&S I found this:

https://mikekonczal.substack.com/p/the-populist-right-will-fail-to-help

It is a detailed explanation of the actual thinking behind right-wing populist positions. It is depressing stuff but sounds correct based on my own experience.

On yard signs et al.: In 2008, the Obama campaign swept into town and sneered at the local, benighted party organization. Yard signs are ineffective, they pronounced. The future is on the internet. This effectively undercut one of the reasonably important party organizing activities. There was a whole network of people who undertook to make the signs, contact potential voters about them, and deliver them to the willing. It was an easy volunteer activity that got people together, to meet, energize, see results (even if the results were just signs in yards). My impression is that the party paid staff and wannabees loved not having to deal with hoi polloi any more and embraced the new wisdom. The Obama election has become the model for Democratic campaigns. What you’re seeing with yard signs probably reflects a local context.

On the protests and violence: I’m not sure how this will play. People aren’t generally very good at finding language that expresses their thoughts and emotions. That’s why leadership is important, not so much to tell people what to do as to create/advance the narrative that makes sense of it. So now, all of a sudden, there are weeks and weeks of protest about racist policing? I don’t think a sudden populist enlightenment about racism sufficiently explains what’s going on, although our elites are trying to limit the effect to a cause that won’t affect them.

Police actions over the past couple of years have made lots of people feel unsafe. Police have entered the wrong residences and killed the inhabitants by mistake. They shoot children. They gun down people running away. So while people may adopt the language that racism is what they’re protesting, I think a lot of the protests stem from an inchoate realization that doing right doesn’t protect you from the powers of the state. It’s not just police, but unemployment, homelessness, and the other dangers we discuss here. So I don’t know that violence in the protest sites will have the negative effect that it might have done once.

Actually Hugh,

D’s are running on Covid-19 is Trumps fault, vote for our shit sandwich.

And that might work for people who’s ignorance is so complete that they ignore, until the end of February 2020, the D’s sole focus for almost four years was impeachment, by convincing the American public into believing a complete fabrication that Trump was a Russian asset.

Then, Nancy’s Pelosi’s first priority was to pass a bill that gave trillions to the richest sliver of America. So yeah Hugh, shill for the D’s shit sandwich.

Thanks Hugh for making my point, keep on shilling bro!

If Trump had the “very good brain” he claimed to, then why couldn’t he organize all the willing CV patients he’d ever need to participate in objective CV treatment tests?

Oh that’s right. He was too busy declaring it all a Democrat hoax.

Re: Mike Konczal and differences between the left (defined as Mike says, “in the broadest terms” whatever he imagines that means) and the rising “populist right”

Konczal is very smart and connected and he lets us know that. There is something academic in his rhetorical style (“as Greg Sargent has noted, . . .” “In 1972, Trot-turned-neoconservative Irving Kristol wrote . . .”)

If his point is to be that the populist right does not consist of newly enlightened converts to a broadly left sensibility, I would say he has made it. But, who cares?

The point of seeking allies in overthrowing neoliberalism is not to agree on cultural issues. Effective power politics is agreeing to disagree on a whole range of potential issues none of which are being decided in order to exercise power to govern in specific ways, and accepting that allies may rationalize their support for specific action in ways fundamentally different from your own preferred rationalizations.

The point of forming a political coalition is not a philosophic comity, it is power. The Reagan coalition that solidified neoliberal dominance had mainstream economists in the same room with nutty gold bugs from the Wall St Journal editorial board.

To me, Konczal is overly impressed with his own intelligence and capacity to sort thru details. He thinks he knows ” what it is really about” and feels a need to correct other people on what may be largely a difference in perspective or priors. Yes, the populist right emphasizes immigration as a factor depressing working class wages. And, it is a factor as Konczal reluctantly acknowledges, but Konczal feels a need to keep on talking and talking. No where does he acknowledge that the actually now existing “broadly left” coalition also makes a sine qua non out of immigration for the idPol reasons that block a lot of economic reforms favored by that part of the left most worried about the working class.

Yes, if the “Sanders” left (for lack of a better shorthand) ditched Biden (sure to be the most progressive President since Herbert Hoover) for an alliance with conservative populists and nationalists, they would have to support restrictive immigration. Would that be more coherent economically? Konczal tries to sidestep that one. Would that Sanders left get anything else? A raise in the minimum wage? Konczal the all-seeing says, no, but does not really argue the point. The current “broad” left has not gotten a rise in the minimum wage or support for unions from the Dems. That fact ought to be wrestled with before asserting counterfactuals.

Trump oversaw the coronagenic response at the national level. But the TrumpAdmin had major help in spreading the epidemic in New York State and City from Gov. Cuomo and Mayor deBlasio. Cuomo ordered old coronavid-infected patients into nursing homes in order to create super-infection clusters. DeBlasio ordered the schools kept open long enough to get a fast spreading epidemic really going in NYC.

The above interpretation depends on supposing that two fine gentlemen smart enough to get elected mayor and governor were smart enough to know how their lead-in policies would effect the spread and behavior of Coronavid. But maybe they are just idiot-savants. Savants at getting elected and idiots at knowing about cause and effect in the policy realm.

I have been corrected. My county traditionally votes 70% R, 20% D and 10% Other. Even if they don’t like him, and some don’t, the R voters are going to vote for him because they like a bullshitter and bully, and they don’t like Dem pussy-footing and disinterest in the well-being of the non-urban.

That said, the riots and protests this time do not equal 1968 — which Trump and his minions hope to convince people who weren’t alive then that they are. In fact, most Americans were in favor of the draft and the Vietnam War in 1968. Most Americans were conflicted about or against “giving Negroes rights they didn’t earn,” and most didn’t want them living in their neighborhoods or dating their daughters. Anti-miscegenation laws were still on the books and had only been ruled unconstitutional by the Warren court in 1967 — Loving v Virginia.

Riots in 1968 destroyed whole sections of cities and hundreds of people were killed by police and the Guard putting the riots down. The assassinations triggered riots and devastated millions of activists. It was as if the world was coming to an end. And Nixon beat Humphrey like a drum in the fall.

Note: the protests against the War were short-circuited by Nixon’s ending the draft. Not ending the War. That taught the politicians something important. We’re seeing them try to replay that with reference to police abuse. Lots of cosmetics, and only the minimum or less done to meet the demands of the protests — and nothing at all done to abolish (“no cops, no prisons, total abolition”.) Banning police choke holds — that are already banned most places — is pure cosmetics.

Demonizing “Antifa” may be less useful to Trump and his minions than they think, since a lot of the people in the streets dressed in black, even in bloc, are the sons and daughters of the suburban white women they want to win again. And many of them are loved by their families.

The property destruction by the black-clad demonstrators (not all “Antifa” by any means) is highly targeted: mostly police and court facilities and equipment. These are the entities that are being protested in general, and they are not considered sacred institutions (especially not police) they way they once were.

The exaggerations of what’s been damaged or destroyed during the demonstrations doesn’t play well, either. In some cases, such as that of a car dealer who lost most of his inventory in Kenosha, victims of property destruction say that if it is what’s necessary to bring change to policing and unjust courts, then so be it. The rage is widespread, much more widespread than is realized.

But not as widespread as it needs to be.

Bruce Wilder,

Two and a half issues separate “right-wing”, largely rural populists and “left-wing” populists from becoming a political force akin to FDRism 1932-1977. [Not that there is a real left in America]

1] Fire Arms, particularly rifles, but…at this point, D’s have repeatedly shown that every restriction is a “first-step” to total confiscation. So, nobody in rural America believes in “sensible-gun-control” because D’s have been such effing liars on the subject for so long.

2] Immigration, which is wacky since the”right-wing”, largely rural populists hold the same position as Caesar Chavez and Barbara Jordan and other forgotten leftist Democratic luminaries of the 1960’s through the 1990’s.

1/2] Abortion; a significant portion of the pro-life demographic are against late-term* abortion, as I am. 4 months is enough time for a woman to decide, after that the “state” has a duty to what is now a child. I don’t know when “human-life” begins, but it ain’t 0.0 and it sure as hell isn’t 9 months either. The Supremes ultimately decide the matter but, saying there should be a limit…and meaning it, would cost R’s 25-30% of their pro-life demographic.

So there it is, the keys to the kingdom for “leftist”. Support the “populist-right” on those issues and you get power. If the answer is NO, then whine all you want, or do what fascists do, rule through unremitting terror…as many here seem to advocate.

This has been written before by D populist back before the Time of Billy Clinton but was rejected because D’s don’t really want to rule…as Obama made clear, they want power divided so..they can play the good guy who was “forced” to do bad things because of the mean-old-Republicans. And so far, even though D’s openly talk about their cynical ploy, “lefties” still haven’t caught on to the D’s shtick.

* After the child is viable, 4-4.5 months

The Democrat’s goal isn’t necessarily to win the election. It sounds ridiculous but it makes sense. Bear with me for a moment.

The Democratic Party’s base isn’t “progressives” or left-wingers, it’s the members of the very rich donor class that funds the party and the overwhelming majority of its candidates. They ultimately call the shots. He who has the gold makes the rules as the saying goes.

This illustrious club of political influencers includes the slimy Randian tech oligarchs of Google, Facebook and Amazon, the plutocratic CEOs of the leading Wall Street investment banks, the liberal version of the Koch bro, currency speculator George Soros, the paranoid tech billionaire and “philanthropist” Pierre Omidyar and many more lesser known but extremely rich and influential individuals and their foundations.

On economic policy this group is to the right of Reagan/Thatcher and, like most Republicans, almost all of them happen to be foreign policy hawks and/or vehemently pro-Israel. However, unlike their Trump loving counterparts they strongly value their carefully cultivated reputations as good liberals who care deeply about the earth, value fair play and think black lives matter. Like a raucous uncouth dinner guest who leers at the women, speaks impulsively and doesn’t observe upper-class fork etiquette, Trump’s openly avaricious and venal tendencies, his blatant nepotism, unapologetic anti-PC assholery and penchant for inadvertently telling the truth about how the American political and economic system operates appalls and embarrasses them. He pulls back the curtain, revealing to the American public exactly how their country’s sausages are made. It’s a disturbing and ugly scene and reflects and badly on all the elites and top tier political operatives, even the “nice” liberal ones.

So, yes, they would love to see Trump exit the White House in January so the Obamaesque charade of morally sound humanitarian governance can continue. But they all know that they and the players on the other side are really on the same team and they are afraid Trump will destroy their cover. Hence Republican war criminals like Colin Powell and Bush Jr. are welcomed into the fold and even the batshit insane, but always polite on camera, John Bolton is lauded as an “adult in the room” simply because he had a falling out with Trump.

Republicans who less than two decades ago traumatized liberals and were considered off-the-scale right wing lunatics are now speaking at the Democratic national convention. That’s how right wing the Democratic Party really is. Their presidential candidate is a demented geriatric segregationist with a hair sniffing fetish who might also be a rapist. He spouts offensive gibberish on a regular basis and is bought and paid for by corporate lobbyists. He lies regularly and engages in corruption. He is a war mongering hawk. (But compared to Trump he’s low key about it and the media are nice to him.) His VP candidate is a pro-corporate narcissistic cop who lets corporate crooks like Steven Mnuchin, who donated to her campaign when she was running for AG in California, off the hook while punishing poor parents, pot smokers and the wrongfully convicted. But she’s a woman of color with a pleasing facade so it’s all good.

This is the party that says Trump is Hitler 2.0 and the worst dude ever and yet scratch their liberal surface and you get…polite Republicans who know how to control themselves in public. They don’t even bother hide it very well and don’t have a platform to speak of other than “vote for us because the other guys are bad, terrible people.” That’s shockingly weak stuff for zero sum fight of a lifetime that supposedly determines if America will survive in its present form. The “progressive” left wingers of the party, who they claim are their base, get not one concession. None of milquetoast Bernie’s proposals were accepted by team Biden. All the left gets from the DNC is one massive gaslighting operation that tries to shame and bully them into voting for a Bush Jr. era Republican ghoul like Biden and his law and order, put very PC, sidekick. Do they think this anemic strategy guarantees them a win? Are they stupid? Deluded? What the hell is going on here?

It’s pretty simple actually once the pieces are put together. The Democratic Party’s über rich base of phoney liberal elites and Republicans lite don’t like Trump’s personality and his race baiting uncouthness but as they have have demonstrated these last four years they are okay with his actions and policies. When he gets out of line and threatens to draw down the troops he gets slapped into place pretty quick. They are confident that he can be easily controlled.

So Trump = asshole but his policies let us keep and “grow” our looted money, he keeps the rabble in line and his foreign policy fantasies are easily overruled. The deal breaker for the Democratic base is a party that moves one millimeter to the left, that makes one concession to the “progressives.” Remember that guy on CNBC, Donny Deutsch, when Sanders was polling well? He said “step away from the socialism” and said on camera that if Sanders is the nominee he and his peers will have “no choice” but to vote for Trump. The host pretended to be shocked and Deutsch pretended it was a big misunderstanding and he didn’t really mean what he said, but it’s clear that he was speaking the truth in an unguarded moment.

The Democratic Party knows that its base will absolutely not accept even a mildly left wing presidential candidate. So they get a right wing liberal pig, cover it in lipstick and hope that gaslighting and guilt tripping the “progressives” will get them over the finish line. If not, scream bloody murder, feign outrage, blame Putin, Chinese commies and Facebook and try again next time.

The takeaway for “progressives” is that dutifully letting yourself get bullied and gaslit into voting for a corrupt political party that never throws you even a tiny bone is a fool’s errand. Why would they honor their fake promises to you if they know that you will vote for them no matter what? They know from decades of experience that they can get away with giving you nothing and you still vote for them. It’s electoral politics 101. You have no leverage. So stop doing this. Stop taking the advice of people like Chomsky (smart dude worth listening to but not on this issue). Lesser evil voting does not work.

The Democrats move further and further to the right with every election cycle and the country continues to fall apart. Stop playing the masochistic abused spouse and withhold your vote or vote for a third party candidate. Yes things will get worse before they get better (if they ever do) but that will happen regardless of who you vote for. The Democratic Party (and its main opponent) are hopeless causes and while not voting for them guarantees nothing, continuing to vote for them definitely guarantees more of the same dysfunctional insanity until the country finally collapses or tears itself apart.

@Dan: I am not sure anyone feels that strongly for HRC or Biden. Watching Team D stalwarts feign enthusiasm for Biden is like watching a deeply closeted gay man feign enthusiasm for bedding his lawfully wedded (female) wife. The harder they try, the more fake it looks.

I’ve certainly never encountered or heard of anyone who thinks that Biden is in contact with any kind of supernatural or transcendent being. In fact, the entire Team D schtick can be summed up as “Biden Is Not Trump”.

That’s not to excuse Trump or his cult, either.