Yves here. This post provides a useful reminder that the hidden disease at the heart of the politics of most economies is neoliberalism. And as we have pointed out since the financial crisis, in bad economic times, voters tend to move to the right. That propensity is if anything more pronounced when government budget-cutting makes social safety nets a prime target. So the rejection of a working class faux friend like Biden in favor of a wrecking ball like Trump should not be a surprise.
However, there is one claim that needs to be addressed, which is the continued depiction of Trump’s fanbase as consisting only or mainly of less educated whites. In fact, for a Republican, Trump has been getting so much support from Hispanics and blacks that the Democrats are in freakout mode.
One assumption is that the men in these demographics like Trump’s macho posturing. But it seems to go beyond that. Consider this eye-popping factoid from New York Magazine’s The Cut, which Lambert included in last Friday’s Water Cooler:
“How Black Women Feel About Biden, Kamala Harris, and 2024 A Cut survey shows a warning sign for Democrats ahead of Election Day” [New York Magazine]. “The Cut asked 1,200 Black women how they feel about the candidates and which issues are most important to them. More than half said they plan to vote for Biden, foreshadowing a weaker level of support than the 95 percent who pulled the lever for him and Kamala Harris four years ago. ….The survey is the first of four the Cut is running between now and November. It polled Black women ages 18 to 55 between June 3 and June 14 — notably, before the president’s disastrous debate performance sparked calls for him to exit the race, a gunman made an attempt on former president Donald Trump’s life, and Trump announced J.D. Vance as his running mate.”
Only some unspecified “more than half” for Biden????? That means at best three-quarters and strongly implies barely more than half. This is stunningly bad. Black women have long been seen as a core Dem faction. Mind you, that does not mean they would vote for Trump, unlikely their male peers who might admire, erm, Trump’s force of personality. But it’s still terrible.
Admittedly, the same story says these women think better of Harris, but only by five points, and well below the historical 90% black propensity to vote Democrat:
“[T]he survey found that more Black women approved of Harris’s job performance than Biden’s. Sixty-eight percent approved of how the vice-president is handling her role, compared to 63 percent in Biden’s case. Black women ages 18 to 34 were more likely to say they feel moderate or strong pressure to support Harris.”
Perhaps this survey was an outlier. But the sample size makes it hard to dismiss.
By Aman Sethi, editor-in-chief of openDemocracy, who previously was deputy executive editor at HuffPost, executive editor for strategy at BuzzFeed, editorial director with Coda Media, editor-in-chief of HuffPost India, associate editor with the Hindustan Times, and foreign correspondent (Africa) and Chhattisgarh correspondent with The Hindu. Originally published at openDemocracy
Until last week, it appeared the US elections would be about one single issue: Joe Biden’s age. Biden has since stepped aside, and Kamala Harris’s nomination as the Democrats’ presidential candidate is now a near certainty.
This leaves the Democrats facing an arguably even bigger issue. Having been in charge for 12 of the past 16 years, they are the party of the status quo – but US voters clearly want significant change.
In a New York Times poll of voters in six crucial battleground states this May, 55% of respondents said the current political and economic system needs major changes, with another 14% saying it should be torn down completely. Some 70% of respondents felt Donald Trump is the man who could achieve such an overhaul, with 43% thinking that the changes he would make would be good for the country.
Only 23% expected Biden to do the same; he isn’t on the ticket anymore but his vice-president, Harris, doesn’t appear the sort of politician who will torch the system.
Over the coming weeks and months, the Trump and Harris campaigns will seek to frame the election on terms favourable to their respective candidates, but it is worth taking a moment to understand why so many Americans think ‘the system’ needs to change and that Trump is the man to do it.
Wendy Brown is a political theorist at the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, and the author of several books including Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution and In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Anti-Democratic Politics in the West.
Brown spoke to openDemocracy in what seemed like another lifetime, but was in fact, just last week when Biden was yet to withdraw from the presidential race. This interview has been edited for clarity.
openDemocracy: When we look at geographies as dispersed as the US, the UK, Europe and India, there seems to be a pattern of technocratic liberal political parties almost unwittingly laying the ground for reactionary right-wing forces that shift politics so far away from the centre that when the progressives get a chance to rule again, the terms of the debate have shifted decisively right-wards. As a consequence, we never seem to actually get progressive rule even when a new government is voted in.
I’m thinking here of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party coming in after 14 years of Tory rule in the UK; Barack Obama after George W Bush and Biden after Trump; even India’s authoritarian turn under Narendra Modi after Manmohan Singh. How do you read the present? Is there a common strain here or are we confusing categories?
Wendy Brown: I do think there’s a common strain, even as it has diverse tributaries and works differently in different places. Decades of neoliberal devastations of middle- and working-class prospects, combined with fears about climate change, set the ground for our politics today.
The dismantling of social states – the social provisions and social commitments that put a floor under working- and middle-class people when things go wrong – is key. That floor is gone. At the same time, wages became stagnant or worse. Unions became so severely weakened that they lost their capacity to work against capital, and states largely gave up regulating capital. The rise of finance capital which spikes the cost of everything from housing to health care made things worse.
When this kind of thing happens, ordinary people either develop a radical critical analysis, if one is available, and say, ‘What the hell is going on? Capital needs to be leashed and states need to provide provisions and protections of all kinds’ or they turn to the right, and look to protect just their own. And it may be just fantasies of protection, but fantasies are very comforting when you’ve got nothing else.
So a social compact that says or implies, ‘We’re all here, we all deserve at minimum food, shelter, protection from extreme penury’ – that’s gone. What we have instead is ethno-nationalist huddling under the promise that a small group will be taken care of, and everybody else left to suffer or perish.
This huddling is anointed by charismatic figures who proclaim that a certain group of people – whether it’s Hindus in India, or white people in the US – will be made safe again through a multifaceted ‘project of restoration’. Restoring the family, restoring gender roles, restoring racial and ethnic separations and hierarchies, restoring religious supremacy in places where it is faltering.
That restoration promise is false, of course, but very powerful.
One of the things that I struggle with is this trap, where we know the promises of these authoritarians are false, which suggests that ‘the people’ are somehow being misled. But are people really being misled?
On one level, there’s just no question. I think that the ‘Make America Great Again’ agenda – you’ll have lower prices, more money in the bank, better jobs, intact families, an end to an opioid crisis – it’s bullshit, no doubt about it. It’s not going to be delivered.
But what is delivered? What is delivered is the anointing as valuable people who have felt disvalued…in their jobs, in their school curriculums, in representations of them by a liberal elite.
So ‘the people are being misled’ analysis holds on the matter of economic interests because the economic promises won’t be delivered on. But people don’t just have economic interests. They also have psychological, social, emotional and political ones, even if and when they tell you that the economy is their most important political concern. And the right-wing strong men are doing a beautiful job of addressing those other interests by anointing the pain and lifting up the value of their followers.
That’s what ethno-nationalist rhetoric and heteronormative family rhetoric does. It says: ‘You may be suffering. You might have a hard time paying the bills and some of you may be struggling with addiction, depression, anxiety, obesity, or fear of the future. But you’re good people, the best people. Your values are right, and your desires are right. And I will protect you against all of those liberal elites and hipsters, not to mention the radical left totalitarians, who mock those values and assault your worth.’
That’s where we have to complicate the ‘people are being misled’ analysis, by remembering that we are not just economic creatures. Ironically, it’s leftists and liberals who reduce us to this by treating working-class right-wing attachments as false consciousness, insisting that the interests of working- and middle-class people line up only with Biden or Harris.
But the working class will not get what they want from a Biden or Harris agenda.
That’s interesting because if you listen to Democrats and their supporters, all you hear is ‘this is the best economy in a decade’, ‘this is the best economy in a generation’, ‘Biden is the best president we have seen in a long time’. And here in the UK, I can imagine Starmer and his cabinet may just deliver what they brand ‘the best economy in 14 years’ and still lose the election in 2029 to a right-wing reactionary.
The issue you raise adds another layer to what’s wrong with the false consciousness claim. Because the ‘best economy’ does not reach to a lot of the elements neoliberalism has gutted so deeply, for example, affordable homeownership everywhere, or in the US, accessible, affordable health care and higher education. For the working class, these things are gone – basically gone to private equity – and ‘the best economy in 14 years’ doesn’t change that.
You’re in London, right? There’s no chance in hell that a working-class person without inherited wealth has access to home ownership. To have a working-class job and be able to own your own home is nothing more than a generational memory.
So when you say, ‘I’m delivering the best economy we’ve ever had’, how does that actually reach a working-class person? Maybe with a slight rise in hourly wage and with more jobs available.
But a ‘good economy’ – for example, Biden’s economy – that has new infrastructure investment and a roaring stock market and strong growth and low unemployment, does not reach to those crucial places – affordable housing, health, higher education – where families have just slipped and slid down, with no prospect of climbing back up,
And that’s why the myth of restoration is so important and effective.
It’s a myth, but when Trump says, ‘I’m gonna give it back to you, I’m gonna give you back what you or your parents had’, that’s far more powerful as a way to mobilise the working and middle classes, than a low unemployment, modest inflation, high-growth economy, one that still is not making all the important things accessible again.
This is a favourite tack for journalists towards the end of an interview, but what is the way out here?
Look, this is the tough question, not just for me, but for the left more generally. Why has the left been so unsuccessful in harnessing the enormous discontent that most people have with the state of the world? Offering a vision that deals with the very same fears and anxieties that the right has mobilised is utterly crucial.
That means taking very seriously that most people are rightly terrified about the future and are also dealing with a deep sense of loss; lost affordable transportation, education, housing and health, but also lost stability of family, identity and place and with all of this a lost sense of safety, security and futurity. These fears and losses need to be addressed directly – not with the kind of technical accounts that people like Biden offer about insulin prices or a bit of debt relief – but with a compelling way forward to a different order. Even with Starmer, as you say, there’s no clear agenda, no manifesto, no big picture. Yet the big picture is exactly what the right offers, and wins with!
So we need to begin by taking seriously that many working- and middle-class people feel great anxiety, fear and loss, and articulate a collective path forward that is deeply compelling, not one built on technicalities, identities and small fixes.
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“the original sin” of current DNC politics is Obama’s pivot to bog-standard neoliberalism in January 2009. All those 20 y.o. crying while listening to Obama’s Election Day speech are 35 y.o. now—I doubt that this is the future that they envisioned (crushing housing costs, crushing childcare costs, a generational decline in their standard of living when compared to their parents).
Hell hath no fury like a young person’s dream scorned.
Carter started deregulation.
Clinton cleared out the New Deal.
Obama didn’t start anything, but he was the one uniquely positioned to do restore New Deal policy and instead continued to dismantle it.
I’m glad you pointed out that that the rot started with Carter. It’s not that I dislike the guy – I think he has done a lot of good since losing the presidency.
But people like him and major figures in the 1974-1979 UK govt (looking at you Dennis Healey) made awful mistakes that set in motion the descent into neoliberal madness. For instance, it is widely recognised that the UK, having a sovereign currency in high demand, ensured we had no need to go begging to the IMF. Madness.
How many of the items that plague us mopes that became “policies” in that period can honestly be called “mistakes,” rather than deadly intentional choices to favor the oligarchy/War Party?
Salon article from 2014 talks about that, calls Carter, Clinton, and Obama the three neolib presidents, and defines neolib as anti-New Deal. It doesn’t seem to answer its own question of who really runs the party, but maybe I missed that.
https://www.salon.com/2014/12/09/democrats_vs_the_new_deal_who_really_runs_the_party_and_why_it_might_surprise_you/
Fits my timeline for the GFC:
In bank heist terms:
Carter/Reagan administrations – cased the joint and made plans
Clinton administration – turned off the security cameras
Bush II administration – heist occurred
Obama administration – drove the getaway car
Trump administration — started casing the joint again
Biden administration — supplied schematics of any security features added after the first heist
Carter may have started the process, but Obama finished it. And he did it with boldface lies – hope and change. More like despair and status quo.
Obama’s actions will be on the minds of possible voters, not Carter’s.
Subculture writ large. This article isn’t about politics but more of a microcosm. It is great though.
http://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-sociopaths
yep, the real damage started in 1993. and obama made sure there would be no new deal, no smoot-hawley.
trump was actually the best president we had since nixon. it was easy for him to do, any drunk could have tripped over that bar, a bar so low, its invisible.
trump even raised taxes on the rich.
Tariffs are the ultimate tax on the rich and they should be used for more often
Please write to Congress and ask for more of them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalOpinions/comments/dmizx6/the_tariffs_on_china_are_the_ultimate_tax_on_the/?rdt=36722
4 yr. ago
by
Bman409
The Tariffs on China are the ultimate tax on the rich.
…
but but tariffs are always passed along to the consumer, just like taxes, if this is true(AND ITS NOT!), then the end user should get the refunds!!!!
YEEHAW, another crank myth has just been exposed.
TARIFFS are a tax on the rich, they just admited to it.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3211746/us-importers-go-court-seeking-refund-trump-era-tariffs-chinese-goods
“US importers demand refund of Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods worth billions of dollars
Over 6,000 plaintiffs want reimbursement for billions they have paid in duties, saying the US government didn’t follow proper procedure in instituting them.”
…
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMPS tax hike overwhelmingly affected the 1%.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-heroic-congressional-fight-to
The Heroic Congressional Fight to Save the Rich
A handful of Democrats want to hold up a $2 trillion infrastructure bill to save a choice tax deduction for the wealthy, not that you’ll hear it described that way
Matt Taibbi
17 hr ago
209
“However, the SALT cap didn’t so much go after “Democrats” as “affluent Democrats.” It only applied to people who itemize their taxes, which meant the 90% of Americans who take the standard deduction were unaffected. The deduction raised over $70 billion in just the first year, and roughly 56% of that money came just from the top 1% of taxpayers, living in a few states in particular. ”
———–
can anyone name one, just one universal concrete material benefit that americans have gotten since 1993 under twenty years of democrat rule.
the last three democrat presidents can be attributed to turning a first world nation, into a third world nation, a feat that should be almost impossible to attain in this short of time.
With the very able fanatical assistance of Messrs Tony Coelho and Al From.
I remember Coelho and From. Also, Senator Boren was a nasty Bipartisanship Fetishist.
It’s the swamp…..
that still call Jan 6 an insurrection.
Votes do not matter. Voters do not matter. Premise of this article is error. Plenty of support from sources posted here at NC over the last several years. The Biden -> Harris progression completely bypasses any hint of “democracy,” proving the Democrat/Republican UniParty is a private corporation that does whatever its insiders want. “Voter” preferences have zero impact on “policy.”
“We Americans” are riding a downhill, brakeless freight train loaded with toxic and explosive remnant “legitimacy.” Us mopes want and need legitimacy of institutions, but we ain’t gonna get it, no amount of polishing the turds in the shit sandwich (Harris? Trump?) can change the inescapable fact that all the rulers will feed us from now until the end of the line is ever-smaller and ever-more-odious shit sandwiches.
Voters want “change,” whatever that means? Who with any clout gives a tinker’s dam? Voters, that shrinking subset of the body politic, do not count for squat, since the only “voting” choices presented by the owners in the electoral kayfabe are moldy or moldier shit sandwiches.
I agree 100%. The whole “elections” circus is a giant distraction from the fact that the people in charge will continue to screw over us peasants.
And sadly it’s working.
If “they” wanted change, they could vote for Stein. Since almost all the voters will vote for Harris or Trump, revealed preference tells us that they don’t want change….
This.
I’m so sick and tired of US voters acting like they are victims while continuing to vote for these assholes.
You lack historical accuracy. It was Clinton who went for ‘triangulation’ last century.
Hillary would have been even worse- she promised more of the same, without her
husband’s eloquence and charm.
Will Dummkopf effectively be able to run as an “outsider” when he was President of the United States for four years in recent memory with majorities in both houses of Congress and failed to do diddly-squat for working Americans?
Instead he followed the Republican meme of cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy, while as a West Coast lumpen-PMC my taxes went up after he threw a temporary bone with a 1-year sunset! Does a $1200 pandemic check four years ago make him a working-class hero?
Dummkopf has lost the popular vote twice in the past 8 years, but the Ivy liberal/academic pundit-class remain terrified of downtrodden working people and continue drone-on about Dummkopf’s “appeal” to them.
Are people really that stupid? I tend to think not.
Who cares about losing the popular vote. That just tallies New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, etc. – all large cities dependent upon the flow of Financial products and Federal dollars for their survival (it’s not like they manufacture much anymore). Besides, it is the Electoral College that counts.
Also, if the votes from Calif were excluded, trump won the popular vote vs HRC in the other 49 states.
Trump remains the volatility candidate as in 2016 when voters looked at HRC – Trump and thought “with HRC I know I’m screwed, with Trump I might not be.”
Probably on a path to winning the popular vote this time, with that massive drop in the D margin in NY among other things
(Sigh). It remains a fact that only New York and California put more into the
Treasury than they take out.
So what? The US Federal government only ever spends one way — when the Treasury instructs the Federal Reserve to credit accounts on its balance sheet.
BS. The GFC bailout benefited NY way more than Oklahoma or Texas or Kentucky. The constant federal support for disasters combined with Silicon Valley friendly policies benefit California far more than any other places in the country. And then you add all the tax breaks for movies too. And then you take the fact that most of the COVID-19 spread in 2020 came from NY and CA. The bill for those two states is high and far in excess of any tax revenues they generate.
Election recaps at the time credited Bill Clinton’s first victory largely on a laser focus on electoral college math and steering an alternative path to victory than other recent Dem candidates. Apparently, Hillary didn’t learn that lesson.
Ignoring the actual system is like claiming you won a baseball game because you won more innings, despite the other team outscoring you in total. Or you won because you had more baserunners.
Clinton ‘won’ first election because Ross Perot got 20% of the vote. Bush would have won.
No like Bush 1 (or Bush 2), but Perot was the reason, and he truly has been the only candidate for the people in decades.
I largely agree with your assessment of Trump’s presidency. As a predictor of what he has in mind I’m inclined to lend that more weight than any assessment of his public performances, including those following the assassination attempt.
BUT, Tooze’s Chartbook 300 that was recently linked here has given me second thoughts. In a nutshell — and I may be exaggerating his point a bit — Tooze sees the presence of Vance on the ticket as an indicator that Trump is developing an anchor outside of the mass of mainstream corporate CEOs who have been inclined to withhold support from him. Vance is a creature of the Tolkien-themed world of Peter Thiel, a world of tech unicorns. If we play this off the methodology of one of the best articles ever linked here, Thomas Ferguson’s analysis of the political economy of the New Deal, “From Normalcy to New Deal: Industrial Structure, Party Competition, and American Public Policy in the Great Depression,” we can start to consider whether Trump, by aligning himself with capitalists whose antilabor stance is less materially urgent than those who hire masses of labor for exploitation, might acquire some leeway in promoting wage growth.
This is a material basis for the Trump II that Carlson and Vance want to cultivate as they try to further disrupt the largely inertial relationship between labor and the Dems, Gestures like ending taxes on tips are Trump I, a phony Reaganite solidarity against pilfering gummint. Trump II would be a very different matter.
“Tolkien-themed world of Peter Thiel”
Can we stop with this characterization already? Tolkien’s works are among the most popular and read in the history of the world.
It would be like associating pants with a certain infamous WWII mass murderer/war criminal just because he happened to wear them.
Like it or not, Thiel drapes his parasitism in fantasy. But, yeah, I should just go with some derivative of parasite, skilled at finding circulations of value to bite into.
The pants metaphor is something of a stretch…..
It’s worth mentioning, both because the tech “outsiders” do have that tendency to name companies and projects for Tolkien’s works, coupled with Tolkien’s intention that Mordor/ Sauron were the military industrialists of Middle Earth.
These are the same people who misinterpret Fight Club’s Tyler Durden and Rick and Morty as heroic protagonists.
Wow! Can you unpack this a bit?
Tying Rick and Morty and Tyler Durden in the same vane seems a bit much, considering you could hardly tie Rick and Morty to the same moral baseline.
Seriously, if people are misinterpreting fictional characters in your view, please enlighten the rest of us.
Also popular with far right/white supremacist types because of the mythologizing of bloodlines, and the role of ‘lesser races’ like the orcs and Haradrim as adversaries. Which I would say were not the main focus of the books, and just consequences of Tolkien being a product of his time, but people see what they want to see.
Howsa bout Tolkien without a shred of magic. Or maybe go straight
to HP Lovecraft.
No one “just happens” to wear Hugo Boss pants.
Dummkopf?
Your TDS is showing . . .
> Dummkopf
Please, no more blazing witticisms like this. My poor heart can’t take it.
OK, OK. Dummkopf really only worked as a foil to Totenkopf, my double-entendre for Genocide Joe. Now he’s out.
I greatly appreciate hemeantwell’s insight about Vance being Peter Thiel’s cat’s-paw. Theil is every bit as diabolical as Saruman. However, there’s a flip-side to the tech-bro Trump fanboi syndrome: let’s see what happens when Laurene Powell Jobs, Melinda French Gates, and MacKenzie Scott throw their full weight behind Kamala Harris.
Then we’re going to see who really wears the pants…
@David in FH,
Trump is the only post-Cold War US president who did not add to the number of wars involving his country.
Childish name-calling does not change that critical fact.
The question of peace and war is the most important in all of statecraft. During his term, President Trump got that question right.
And yes, Trump is a political outsider. He never controlled Congress, because most Establishment Republican members disliked him. Trump has also faced an intense and prolonged hostile media barrage, the likes of which has seldom, if ever, been seen. There can be no question that Trump has angered many of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world, i.e. the globalist bourgeoisie.
In all sincerity, how many of us could withstand all the “slings and arrows” that have been hurled at Trump, as well as he has? Not me.
It might seem strange, but it’s only fair to state that Donald Trump has proven himself to be a person of stronger character than any other prominent politician on the current Western scene.
South Carolina preferred Biden over Bernie. Yes
a lot of people are stupid. I particularly remember an article in NYT just before the South Carolina primary in 2020 or therabouts that featured an endorsement by Congressman Pharma (Jim Clyburn) for Biden from a Church and it had the photo of an elderly retired African American woman parishioner who reportedly went up to Clyburn after service and admonished him for not endorsing Biden. Her words were ‘it MUST be Biden right?’. On this kick in the pants Clyburn immediately jumped up and endorsed Biden which led to Bernie’s defeat and the rest is history. Yes lots of people especially in the South are afflicted with Stockholm syndrome. I have and still wonder about this old lady. Why exactly did she think Biden was better over Bernie?
I actually want to be contrarian here and say from a purely strategic point Biden dropping out and Harris taking over was the right move strategically. I have no love for the Democratic party, just to be clear, but at worst they’re just swapping out one losing candidate for another. Yes, this whole sad song and dance was done to avoid running an actual primary and calling the US a “democracy” deserves the air quotes it gets, but it’s hard to see how replacing Biden with a candidate actually capable of forming coherent sentences wouldn’t be at least a small boon. At a minimum, it’s a better than the Democratic party brace telling bald faced lies to all of us about Biden’s health and the hushed complicity from the party faithful in ignoring the naked emperor.
The smart thing for Harris to do would be to immediately start trying to patch things up a little with the left. Oh sure, it’ll be empty gestures and things which will almost certainly never come to pass, but even posturing in that direction would go a long way. It’s far more likely she’ll crash and burn in an epic meltdown of a campaign, but in my gut I can envision a path to victory for her if she charts the right course. She wouldn’t even have to start talking like Sanders, we all know the powers that be will never let any of that happen. She could just be a bog standard Obama style liberal, solidly center right and it’d probably get her across the finish line.
The absolute worst mistake she could make would be leaning into identity politics. If I could convey any message to her campaign it would be this: keep the “you have to vote for this female person of color or you are a racist, sexist deplorable” talk to an absolute minimum. No one wants to hear or is buying that rhetoric anymore. She she just waltz in, talk about the issues, and check the woke jargon at the door. If people even get a whiff of it being “her turn” they’ll get PTSD from Hillary and the whole election will be over before it even got going.
If timeline was an Oscar-winning biopic, we are at the turn in which Kamala contemplates the meaning of America in her office, sees the ghost of Christmas past and Christmas future, and then steels herself for the “Rocky” training montage.
Not holding my breath though….
I think she will need to take a stand on crime. Republicans will certainly club her with videos of crime in California, including Oakland. Her potential “Sister Souljha” moment would be to smack down calls for defunding police and/or the BLM movement.
>>> defunding police
I forgot about this….Hispanic Normie-voters, as a cohort, are much more sympathetic to law and order messaging than the activist base of the Democratic Party.
the RNC adverts write themselves even without the help of ChatGPT
While, given that she worked at a prosecutor she’ll have a pretty good alibi. She’s pretty well positioned to weather that criticism if she has the good sense to play her cards right.
All they have to do is play her fellow Democrat Tulsi Gabbard destroying her primary campaign in one fell swoop at a debate in 2019. The content of that was all about her time as a prosecutor and her extreme hypocrisy. She had zero answers for those arguments.. just cackling and then a week of damage control on the mainstream media bragging about her place in the elite tier of candidates. Only to drop out a few weeks later with about 3% of the vote. It certainly got my attention.
[ All they have to do is play her fellow Democrat Tulsi Gabbard destroying her primary campaign in one fell swoop at a debate in 2019. The content of that was all about her time as a prosecutor and her extreme hypocrisy… ]
Surely so. Tulsi Gabbard showed Kamala Harris as lacking in ethics as a prosecutor, and asked how such a lack could be accepted in a Commander in Chief. I remember being startled at how incisive Gabbard was, and realizing immediately how important the criticism was.
While the chance of this happening is just about, if not, zero, howzabout Ms. Harris having a Damascene Moment where she acknowledges what she did in that case was wrong and says that type of thing will not happen again?
Yes, clips of that have been circulating on X. That’s why I think she needs to get in front of it try to make a weakness a strength, as in: people complain I was tough on crime but common folks want a leader that cares about safety on their streets and the streets were safer when I was AG. Whatever version tests best in focus groups.
Rewatch the clip. Keeping free men in prison is radioactive. This should be the only thing Trump airs about Harris in every urban market.
The race is between Kennedy and Trump. Trump will win. Harris is just there to siphon votes away from Kennedy and keep the Croft going.
Harris (or her staff?) has that record of killing a lower level staff strongly recommended legal action against Steve Mnuchin’s One West Bank here in CA .
The same Mnuchin who resurfaced as DT’s treasury secretary.
Kamala could be following the advice from a local bail bondman’s radio ad tagline, “Friends don’t let friends do time”
Prosecuting lower level crime while giving a pass to wealthy, politically connected, people is not a good look for a “tough on crime” candidate.
(chuckles) Crime don’t get no lower than some of the stuff Trump has
done over his career.
This New Deal Dem – will likely now be voting for Trump. I would scarcely have ever voted for Biden – I would never consider Harris –
I can tell from the brief talks with family and friends – I am not alone – nor am I even remotely the loudest with their vehemence. And I am talking about previous very reliable Dem voters. All of them – Dust in the Wind.
Had I ever thought I would be voting for Trump I would have pinched myself to come out of the nightmare – but here we are.
And the other thing to consider – many if not most of the issues that are getting ready to detonate are the direct result of the morons in the DNC. It would possibly be fun to watch Harris et al take the incoming from all that is about to occur. Fun until I consider the horrible consequences for my kids.
I think most voters are already dug in. You said you were already planning on voting for Trump before Biden stepped in which tracks pretty well with my thesis. The question is purely how many people would jump ship exclusively based on the switch to Harris.
Pretty much anyone I know who was voting for Biden would vote for a half eaten Big Mac over Trump. Most Dems are more or less convinced Trump is an existential threat and Project 2025 will be the end of the US as we know it. There’s no plausible scenario under which they switch sides.
At worst, they’ll just stay home. I’m thinking it’ll mostly come down to voter turnout and I think it’s pretty plausible that Harris will bring more energy to the campaign and get more people to participate, simply by virtue of actually being able to talk and function.
No, that is incorrect. I have actually been fairly open about my support for RFK. The instant the switch was made to Harris – is when I realized that I must vote for Trump to end this disaster. The Dems really need some time in the wilderness.
Where I live is not a swing state, however, where the majority of my family is a swing state, all 30 or so of my family members will be voting GOP for the first time in their lives. All working class. I get the idea from what is going on at home that this is not uncommon at all. Multiple my 30 out by hundreds of families – and you get the point.
This is a horrible choice. Anyone who spends any time with either Latinos or the working class whites can tell you that in a heartbeat.
Oh please, I work for a mechanical contractor in the construction industry. I wager I have a great deal more contact with the working class than you do.
No one is changing any opinions based on this, at least that’s my experience.
And the working class around me has been solid Trump the whole way. Even most of the union guys laugh about it.
I wish you the very best of luck. I talk to them all day and every day. When people cannot afford their meds because their Obamacare deductibles are 15K, they tend to spout a lot about politics. But please – continue right on ignoring them – or laughing at them – or calling them deplorable.
It has been the Democratic special since Obamacare. And again – I think it would be awesome for them to have to face the consequences of what they have done. There is a part of me that wants them to retain the Presidency for that reason. But unfortunately that will not be good for the kids – or the society in general.
Sigh, I never argued that Obamacare was great or effective. That is so not the point. Voter preferences are pretty static and I don’t think much of anyone wants to cross party lines over this as I have repeatedly stated. Anybody who thinks that voting for Trump is better because they’re pissed off about Obamacare was never going to vote for Biden either.
And you know, you seem like a smart guy, so the idea that voting Trump into office is making anyone wealthy or powerful in the US “face consequences” is risible. You have to know that’s a crock. They aren’t going to face consequences from this election or probably any other because they run the system front to back. And what’s sad is, thinking that Trump is a protest vote is probably even more delusional than thinking you are somehow stopping fascism by voting Biden/Harris. As if a sleazeball real estate mogul and a washed up author of noble savage, Horatio Alger narratives concerning people from Appalachia were anything but a facelift for the status quo.
The Obamacare issue is the point. It has caused many if not most of these people to have no health care at all until they come up with the 15K.. Absolutely none of that happened before – there were big problems – but nothing like this. But at least the do have “access” to health care. There is that. Means nothing – but it is what they spew at these people all the time. “Just shut up and be happy.”
The “face consequences” line was wishing the Dems to face consequences for what they have done when the wheels stop spinning. It is the one reason I would enjoy watching the Dems win – so they can face the consequences. They are not going to be able to be held back for another 4 years.
And you can call him a washed-up author, etc. This is exactly the kind of thing the elite Dems do not understand. It is like you are talking about these people like zoo animals right over their head. It is deeply offensive.
Where are you getting this 15K deductable for the ACA?
My son and wife were on it for 3 yrs ending this May and their combined deductible was $300. Son has chronic kidney problems and used the hell out of it. He didn’t even have to change his nephrologist. It’s not perfect by any metric but it saved his lfe and was affordable. We are in PA if that makes a difference.
And nothing on earth would make ME vote for ANY MURDEROUS GENOCIDER D OR R.
I’m rather surprised a physician would vote for killers
My entire family are voting Jill Stein. If it’s not time to make a stand for what is right at THIS time, when will it ever be?
Your son is very very lucky.
That is not the story we deal with all the time.
I just this afternoon had a patient who has type I DM – he is on Obamacare – his deductibles are so high he cannot even begin to afford his medicine – and he is now rationing it.
Yes – it happens all the time. I do not doubt there are plans across the country that are not like this – but we deal with what we deal. Instead of single payer, we get plans that are widely different all over the country. It causes much more chaos that way – exactly what they would want.
I just wrote Yves an email this week…. It is so difficult for me right now with all the things going on in medicine that for my own mental health I am probably going to have to disengage from everything online.
Your comment is a classic example. We can no longer talk to each other rationally without accusing one another of “voting for killers”..or other nonsense as if we have any choice on any side. It is very disheartening and it confirms my decision to get as far away from the fray as I could. This week on a social media platform – I made a comment about my disdain for Kamala Harris. Someone I have not talked to in 20 years or so – then wrote a nice long message calling me all kinds of names – etc. Then actually threatened to kill my kids. We are far away from that person – but the platform without my knowledge actually turned the person over to the authorities.
We cannot even talk to each other anymore. It is very disappointing. And not very good for my mental health.
So, I think I am going to take a break for now.
Thank you very much for the clarifying comment. It has been a long time in coming – but I no longer feel good online. I will do what I can going forward in reality.
Exactly.
It’s beyond depressing to even on here see people say they’ll vote for these awful candidates supporting a country committing genocide.
NOBODY is forcing people to vote. People voting for these ghouls are part of the problem – apparently they have zero red lines.
“GoFundMe CEO: One-third of site’s donations are to cover medical costs,” Time, Jan. 30, 2019. I’m sure it’s even higher now in 2024 and all you need to do is scroll on your local Nextdoor site to see constant pleas for help with medical bills. My COBRA for one adult + 2 dependents was 2K/month. Now I switched to Obamacare. The cost is the same yet I essentially dont have access to anything without an enormous deductible getting reached (8K/indivudual-15K for the Family deductible). I am traveling and had to visit an orthopedic doctor to examine my knees and give me a shot of cortisone in each knee. Cost of the entire visit: 120Euros. The US ‘system’ is a total scam.
People get the high deductable because the monthly premium is lower. They complain when they have to have health coverage. For low deductable coverage either they have medicaid or they or their employer has low deductable coverage. Generally it is Medicaid. Lower middle class working people are the ones so negatively impacted by Obama care. The real problem is that the entire system needs to be made non profit and nationalized like the British NHS if we consider health care a human right.
Sorry to lose IMDoc’s very valuable contributions to what on some evidence seems an intentional play to divide and conquer. Whether the posters who trigger kindly folk are acting in good or often bad faith, or are just part of the people entrained and debased by a long-term, carefully cultivated campaign to sow fear, uncertainty, doubt via Mockingbird and troll farm machinations, the effect is real. People of good will are prevented from awakening themselves or others to the false “legitimacy” of the predatory system, and organizing in small or larger ways to work toward something better. Like deceased CIA Director William Casey let slip, “We will know our program of disinformation is complete when nothing the American public believes is true.” Or Jovial Mike Pompeo, bragging that the CIA “lies, cheats and steals” and gets away with it. Decent people tune out and drop out, and the skulch and the blind are left to haggle over the corpse.
So much energy spent here on various theories of the wisdom of this or that strategem to mobilize “voters” to mark a ballot that only lends a spurious and misleading “legitimacy” to a system that kills and loots and is totally unaffected or deflected in its behaviors by any preferences or loyalties of people who still think anything they want and need can be brought to fruition by “voting.”
The purpose of a system is what it does. What it does is kill people, whether they are “voters” or extraterritorial strangers, and transfer wealth (that sine qua non of power) inward and upward. We thinking mopes have to invent or unearth words to describe the behaviors, like “syndemics.” And for anyone still abused by the notions from old Civics classes that we have a government of laws and limited powers, checked and balanced to block it from becoming an autocracy of men of power, has anyone seen Joe Biden in the flesh in the last few days? Who is “steering the ship of state in dangerous waters?” The organs of state propaganda report he is “crickets,” while reporting that billions of dollars in bombs and weapons are still flowing to 404 and Is rael, and numbing us with stats on the latest atrocities in Gaza and West Bank and other places where the Big Boys play the Great Game. But who now holds the end-of-world authority to launch the US’s nuclear weapons, hair triggering an overwhelming rain of fire from Russia and China. Anyone any of us have pledged our sacred electoral allegiance to, in the vain hope that they might let some policy of general material benefit to us mopes slip through the best Legislature money can buy?
So we dumbly natter on about which face of some evil ancient deity we prefer, with nuanced tactical and procedural avisos that are meaningless because “the system is what the system does.” I wish George Carlin were here to recant the formulation of his observation that “It’s. BIG club, and you ain’t in it.” It’s a tiny club in fact, a few hundred or thousand people who let us think that the billions of us have ANY say in how we are ruled.
Voting has no effect on “policy.” It’s established beyond a doubt. Policy occasionally includes propaganda that persuades the mopery that they are getting their desired result, like invading Iraq or waging proxy wars in 404 and other unfortunate places. Hardly expressionist of the popular will.
So recognize your, our, impotence, and try to figure out ways to build systems around the current system that don’t just replicate the original sins of the current system and its minions.
I very much appreciate your comment, JTMcPhee, as well as the comments in this thread posted by c_heale and Valerie in Australia. To IMDoc, I want to echo what these three commentators have said and add that your contributions to the NC community have been invaluable to me on so many levels. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, IMDoc, and my wish for you is that you find peace. Your humanity is clearly showing, and I am grateful that I had the chance to see it.
IM Doc please ignore these other commentators. Especially the ones that write words in all caps.
Your contribution is valuable. Their’s not so much.
c_heale and Yves,
There isn’t the reply button after IM Doc’s last comment and I just wanted to write a response to say how valuable I have always found his writing and comments. IM Doc’s kindness, his commitment to good medicine and science, his intelligence and his experience always has come through and I have trusted what he has to contribute to the discussion. I know it sounds a bit silly, but I always felt a little lift when I saw his name because I knew I was going to read something worth “hearing.” I will miss IM Doc. And Yves, if you are willing, please give him my highest regard and gratitude for all I have learned from him.
IM Doc July 23, at 4:29 pm
Thank you for your many well written and wise comments here. I was particularly thankful for your critical thinking and postings on the covid “vaccines”. The hysteria and very strict measures decided by our leaders, conservative politicans, social democrats tagging along, made me more cautious than I usually have been in public debates. Not a medical professional, my voice carries hardly any weight, I know from experience, and chose to stay away from the toxic debate (lack of trust) on efficacy and safety of these products, to keep my peace of mind.
I advised against vaccination to family and friends. They took heed – as my good doctor (fastlegen) the primary care physician all are meant to have in our nordic single payer health system. He did not object when I said I do not trust Big Pharma after seeing people I love dying from toxic meds in psychiatric care, information of “side” effects not given, ergo no informed consent.
I consider(ed) the vaccine-products an irresposible global experiment after hardly any time used testing and too much money to gain for unscrupulous, heavily fined Pfizer.
Reading your comments gave me courage to resist. I still use social media, but stay away from battles except the very important ones on peace, countering some big lies that keep on creating wars. We have to make noise to resist ignorance, I think, haters, useful idiots, dangerous russophobia, I instantly block. Life fragile and short. We must try to use our time wisely. Gardening, nature, keeps me grounded, most days. I hope to see more comments from you some time.
Many thanks and best wishes from Berit, a “very old” woman, to cite a text on world population data I recently read, comprising persons older than 75 years.
I hope and pray that US leaders, world leaders and our own genuinly homespun Jens Stoltenberg, will have wisdom in their hearts to stop the wars and control the MIC warmongers. Peace.
IM Doc,
You should take some time offline, IMO.
When (if) you come back, you should know that there are people out here on the internets that have great appreciation for your thoughts. (I realize that you already know this, but I’ve never jumped into the fray.)
Best to stop engaging the trolls after a brief and courteous, singular retort, again IMO.
First, thank you for all your invaluable insights during this ongoing Covid pandemic. Observing the US election from north of the border. Yes, I would favour Trump over Harris because of a possible positive shift in foreign policy re: Ukraine and China. Sadly, the Gaza situation would likely remain the same. What sticks in my mind about the first Trump tenure was the abortion issue and his aggressive attitude re: Julian Assange. If I was able to vote in the US election, I would hope to be in a state that had other choices, e.g. Jill Stein or Cornel West. Tilting at windmills, I know.
Isn’t “first, do no harm” an argument against “lesser evilism”?
I haven’t been able to vote for any of the hairballs the duopoly has coughed up in the last 12 years. To mix some metaphors, I confess I did fall for the “hope-y change-y” turd-cone.
It’ll take HRC on the ballot to get me out to vote for Trump, so I hope all those delegates and super delegates have some actual commitment!
The first do no harm issue no longer holds any water for the Dems.
That ship sailed with Obamacare – and corporatizing our entire system – forcing working class people into 10K-15K deductibles for “access” to health care – not actual health care.
Add that on to all the working class patients now that I have that cannot afford things like insulin which used to be 50 cents a month when I was younger.
And then Joe Biden and his vaccine mandates – torpedoing the future of so many of my young patients ( and just so you will know – every last one is alive and well – but more than a few of the vaccinated ones can make no such claim) – and to do these mandates with the entire Dem party screaming for decades up until today – MY BODY MY CHOICE. Without even a hint of irony or introspection.
Unfortunately, no, it is increasingly becoming risible to consider “first do not harm” with anything to do with the Dem Party. Medical care has never been worse since all of their ministrations.
I can’t argue with any of that.
But everything on your rap sheet was a-okay with the Repugnacans too.
In fact HRC tried to do what the Turd-Cone succeeded at based on a Heritage Foundation Plan worked out during CIA Director Bush’s Presidency. So I have a lot of trouble distinguishing the ‘lesser” in the duopolies taiji of evil.
I recall Obamacare getting one GOP vote – although granted it was actually a conservative think-tank idea. Obama just made sure it was even more of a corporate grift. Obama dumped single payer within 5 seconds of winning.
And yes the medical cost issues I lay with Tom Delay – that is where it started. However, the Dems have done nothing about it at all.
At least in my part of the world – and what I can hear from others – the GOP reps were firmly against the mandates.
All of which is a mixed bag. And yes – no one cares about the working class anymore. But one party has become much more evil towards them lately. And it seems to me there may be a real change in the GOP. Who knows?
Yes, I have a comment over at Lambert’s post on Trump’s speech wherein I hope, a word badly degraded in 2008, Trump is transitioning from “heel” to “face”.
Temperamentally, however domineering and narcissistic he may be, I’ve seen him be incredibly sociable, nimble witted and quick to make people around happy and to laugh, this in my direct personal experience.
On the other hand, at this point “hoping” for positive change from within our systems seems like daydreaming. If there is a change in the GOP, it is entirely his doing, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Know them by their deeds, not their words. A long way of saying, if he delivers, I’ll be a Vance voter in four years.
Your calculation is similar to mine. It looks like the Democrats will have the time in the wilderness they deserve.
So I will vote for Stein.
The idea is — were enough people to vote for her social democratic agenda — that there would be an accumulation point for left votes that could be exploited in the future by some opportunist that wants to get around TPTB.
Likely it will not happen this time, but at least it is a possible way out. I don’t see any others.
While I liked Vance’s story about being not being able to buy a refrigerator as good as his 40-year-old fridge for any price, it seems like a pretty chancy bet that the Trump ticket will push any policy that is not pure short-termism.
I agree with voting for Stein. I’ve always been a Democrat but I find I cannot vote for either party. I like some of Trump’s ideas, but I don’t trust him, knowing what happened the last time around and all his broken promises. While I liked RFK at first, his enthusiastic support for Israel has made it impossible for me to give him my vote. I am voting for Stein as a protest vote. I’m hoping more people will do that as opposed to ing home and not voting at all. I hope my vote still counts for something and that something is this message to those in power, “I don’t agree with the Forever Wars and all the suffering they have caused and I want all that wasted money spent at home, helping the 80%.”
Dear IM Doc,
If I understood one of your comments above you are signing off for a while? That is completely understandable and the best for your mental health. Just know that I am grateful for your contributions, especially the early warnings that the Covid “Vaccine” was not all it was sold as. Your comments and relaying your experience allowed me to stand fast against a fair amount of there BS we had flung at us for our hesitancy, no adamant refusal, to be injected with it. ( I’m not criticizing those that took it, you do what’s best for you and your good reasons and I’ll leave you alone).
Your comments, like the massive majority of commenters here, have meant a world of education, enlightenment and intelligence for this idiot typing here.
I always found your occasional descriptions way back when of your gardens, green houses and all matters pertaining to self sufficiency farming very interesting and your mentioning those exploits, even briefly, appeared to give the vibe of being a great balancer to your worklife. If that sentence makes any sense at all.
All the same, I hope, no beg, that instead maybe you will write about that part of your life, and maybe NOTHING about your work, so we may still enjoy your presence here and at least those of us that have small farms and gardens may be able to compare notes. And we all can still support and learn from each other in a friendly way.
Thanks again and be well.
Its probably true that in the income strata and rarified zip code that you occupy, not many will vote for Harris. It’s not as if they were voting or even thinking left (anti capitalist) in the first place, my dear doctor. Perhaps I’ll vote Democrat now, just to own the zips.
And the history books of the future, if we all survive, will ask “why did ‘good’ Americans vote for such genocidal sociopaths?” If you vote D/R you vote for genocide.
I know I sound like an arrogant a-hole, but I am very disappointed that so many otherwise intelligent people WANT to believe in lies, refuse to face the hard truth, because the decision is not based on facts or rational thought, it is based on emotion and a cult-like belief in the myth of US democracy. Collective Stockholm Syndrome might explain it
I don’t see the point of pinballing between D/R either but it’s tempting to vote Republican just as a revenge vote. The more I get pushed and moralized by liberals the angrier I become and want to retaliate. Feeling it in my gut when my usually lovely sister said, “Oh please don’t vote third party.” I have a feeling a-lot of switches like IM Doc are in the name of revenge. I don’t agree, but I get it.
Jill Stein I guess…
I pulled the lever for Shirley Chisholm one time. After that, I should have stuck to the sports pages.
Then I’m an arrogant a-hole too, because I’m asking the same question.
The three major candidates all support Israel. A vote for one of them is a vote for genocide. That is a red line for me – apparently not for many others. Definitely clarifying.
When people check that box, it’s a vote FOR, regardless of their rationalizations.
I still ask myself what point I’m trying to make with my vote. I’m still voting for Jill. Quixotic though the gesture may be, the message is unambiguous.
IM Doc, I came late to this so I am going to jump back to the original comment. I ride the bus. Over the last couple of years my eavesdropping has confirmed many of your temperature readings of public opinion. I have not been on the bus as much lately so I do not have that at the moment, but honestly I fully expect to find it still to be true among the non PMC even the PMC wannabes I ride with.
But even if I didn’t have that experience I would appreciate and value your contributions to this community. There is such experience, wisdom and a deep compassion for humanity that fuel the information you provide. I have learned much. But your calling has even under attack for years and the conditions you toil in deteriorating largely because of the sheer greed and avarice that rules our elected officials. And just as everyone who pointed out the truth that Biden was unfit was attacked until it was okay, anyone pointing out the atrocities you deal with gets pummeled. Your need to step back is totally understandable. If this is it, I will miss you greatly. But I wish you peace,, mental healing and more time to embrace and bask in the joy of your family. And hope the knowledge that your time here has not been wasted despite the trolls who seem to be ever more desperately attacking makes your departure less bittersweet.
Thank You so very much.
I agree that this timeline has gone about as well as it could go so far, given that activist Democrats are activist Democrats. Everybody thinks they’re smarter than everybody else, everybody has a not-smart opinion about the ideal candidate (from Michelle Obama to Joe Manchin) and nobody can understand why it isn’t OBVIOUS to all the other idiots that the party should undertake whatever shenanigans are necessary to nominate their ideal.
If Harris is seen has having given the smarter-than-you activist Democrats a swift kick in the rear, average Americans will like her better for it. If Harris actually removed Biden for cause between now and January it would probably make her look even stronger.
And as somebody said on the Xitter, Harris probably only needs to be about .000483% more humane on Palestine to get a big chunk of the youth vote back onside.
All true. I say what I said earlier not because I believe she’s going to win, but that the race is hers to lose and there is a plausible path to victory if she was smart about playing the cards. At a minimum there’s a fighting chance, more than there ever was with Biden given the circumstances.
One I have seen Harris on the campaign trail and she makes Clinton and Biden look good. And they are really bad at it. She isn’t going to convince anyone who wasn’t sure about voting for her to do so.
Two, when the hoopla of this debacle, and it is a debacle, dies down Harris is going to have the same weights on her that were on Biden with the exception being his deterioration. She might get a small bump from diversity advocates, but inflation, lack of opportunity, immigrants, lack of healthcare, and yes the wars, particularly the genocide in the Middle East will be as much her record as it was Biden’s.
Any rebound they supposedly see (and no I don’t believe the reports) will fade before November. She is not going to win.
I don’t agree. I think the young voters are still idealistic enough to say no to genocide. They are not that easily bought or influenced. Plus, they know that it is their generation that will be paying for the Forever Wars and if it is the case of a draft, their generation that will be forced to fight. Harris has said she will continue with Biden’s stance which could easily lead to a much bigger war in the Middle East. If anything, young people will stay home rather than vote for Harris. But I am betting on their belief that they can make a difference with their vote for Stein. The Lesser of Two Evils is getting old and I don’t think they buy it.
«The smart thing for Harris to do would be to immediately start trying to patch things up a little with the left.»
Unfortunately, Kamala doesn’t know her left from her right.
Have you actually seen and heard dear old Kams?
Correct if there is no true left alternative. We’ve witnessed cases where voters had this alternative and elected accordingly. Unfortunately, the elected left party will dulely cow to financial orthodoxy–e.g., Syriza, Podemos (sold out trying to reach a coalition) or the populist 5 star which had some left characteristics. Mexico has voted for a left party and for the most part that party has tried to legislate against a backdrop of US and global finance coercion. Voters can sniff out BS and will dump any party that quickly abandons their desires.
If history is any judge, fundamental change will only become possible after the corporate oligarchy has been discredited militarily by the Russia, China and Iranian axis and economically by the BRICS, SCO restructuring of the global financial/ economic order. Barring the realization of a nuclear holocaust, the (not so global) financial elite are being forced to increase the intensity of their predation on the people of Europe, North America and portions of South and Central America still under its’ sway. The process of increased predation was signalled by the repudiation of the Sanders and Corbyn movements in the US and England respectively and rudely announced in continental Europe by the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines. As living conditions become more precarious the stage will be set for fundamental change of one sort or another. The only course of action for the left is to begin the hard work of rebuilding the institutions that have been systematically destroyed over the last 75 years. When the collapse comes, the left needs to be ready to offer a realistic alternative.
I agree, but Sanders is merely a sheepdog for the DNC: he is a bait-and-switch artist: he talks a good game to round up the disgruntled D faithful, then always tells us to “vote” for the person with a D. He and AOC et al. criticize the genocide, but then tell us we must vote for genocide and nuclear war. WTF?
This article was written in 2015, but is even more true right now.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/bernie-sanders-sheepdog-4-hillary
Sanders may have ended up a sheepdog, but his campaign showed just how big a constituency there is in the US for social democratic policy.
It was a large enough that the party leaders had to rig the process twice to stop the threat, even unto giving the 2016 centrist stooge candidate a cheat sheet going into the debates. They were scared. It took them while to apply enough TDS propaganda — and Sanders,et al. sheepdogging — to quiet things down, but all those people are still out there, still unhappy.
300%
I think that someone misspelled, “Want to burn the whole corrupt system to the ground.” They spelled it, “Change.”
Understand here that I am not suggesting that wanting to burn the system to the ground is a bad thing, it is a good thing. (Same goes for policing in the USA)
Of course many will think it overly pessimistic, but there is no significant democratic choice and there is no functioning democracy in the US. Unlimited political bribery is now perfectly legal. Gifts in exchange for political favors is now legal. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jimmy-carter-u-s-is-an-oligarchy-with-unlimited-political-bribery-63262/
So how can anybody speak of “democracy” and free and fair elections with a straight face? As they say, it is a cruel joke. It is still remarkable to see how many people still “believe” in the myth of US democracy, it is like a religion or cult, and there are few, if any facts to back it up.
The MassMediaCartel (owned by the oligarchy) tell the public who is a “viable” candidate, they dictate the discourse, they state-manage the melodrama, they also manage the so-called debates. No one can become known to the public unless they have the approval of the gatekeepers. When they say “jump”, you say…
Elections Inc. do a great job of polarizing and dividing the public into only two camps: then they are given “talking points” (emotional, and cultural “wedge” issues) that the two parties and the so called media dictate. In short: the political spectrum and the candidates are determined by the oligarchy. Absolutely no substantive policy is on the table: foreign policy, health care reform, crackdown on corruption, energy policy etc.
Elections Inc. in the USA is the world’s most expensive and lucrative PR stunt: it frames issues very narrowly and determine what topics are discussed, it provides a grand distraction and illusion of choice, and it generates 100s of millions for the D/R parties, BigMedia, consultancies, marketing and advertising firms etc.
In short: the plebs are given their narrow set of instructions to fight among themselves, while the oligarchy pillage the place. And as usual, no matter who wins the sham election, the Washington Consensus will prevail, the Genocide of Palestine will continue, the prospect of nuclear war with China and/or Russia continues, the health care crisis continues, the polarization and dysfunction of the economy continues, the institutional corruption worsens etc.
Most days I agree 100% with the sentiments in this post. Nonetheless, I do think that MartyrMade is *in part* correct in his claim that the significance of MAGA populism from 2016 onwards is that one of the two political parties is no longer firmly in the grip of the establishment. This creates destabilization in the system. Notwithstanding all this, I expect Trump to bend the knee to finance, the military, Israel, and all the rest–and yet it really does seem to be the case that important factions of the establishment, both Dem and Rep, would very much prefer that he not be president.
To me, it all comes down to Ukraine. The difference between Trump and Biden/Harris/Whoever on Ukraine is that Trump *might* find a way out of the morass, whereas the others will definitely more firmly entrench themselves within it. Does Trump have the limited agency necessary to cease one war of the uniparty state? I think this remains an open question. I am skeptical of a positive answer but I do think there is enough evidence to suggest that a negative answer is not 100% guaranteed.
OK but I see no evidence whatsoever to support that, no matter how badly I would like to believe.
The DT had four years, all we heard was the typical lies and hot air. His biggest legislative achievement was further tax-cuts for oligarchy, and he enjoyed bipartisan support. Vladimir Putin has made it clear that it won’t matter if DT or someone else becomes pres. etc. etc.
This article briefly summarizes the difference between substantive policy and the blah blah BS.
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/07/15/donald-trump-threat-deep-state-war/
We can “hope” and engage in wishful thinking all we want, but the facts are clear.
Agreed. Thinking this time DT will drain the swamp, etc. is pure hopium, given his persona and history.
The establishment doesn’t like him because he’s crude, less easy to control and sometimes says the quiet parts out loud.
But make no mistake: in the end, Trump is in it for Trump, not for us plebs. He’s not going to give us single payer, a federal jobs guarantee or provide us with other concrete material benefits.
Yep, seems like doing the same thing over and over expecting different results…
Events, however, are outpacing politics and possibilities good and bad are proliferating in the chaotic wake.
Trump gave Americans the only four years they’ve had this century without adding another war, even though he could have had a smooth ride in office, just by dropping a few more bombs on Damascus.
All the Friedmans and Frums of the world would have been panting to tell us how “presidential” Trump had become, if he had started or escalated another war. And Michelle would be fondly embracing him, too.
Four years without a new war, plus he negotiated an end to the Afghan War. That’s not hot air. That was a hard accomplishment. Trump’s accomplishment.
More likely, Trump was just lucky.
You seem to forget that he ordered the assassination of Iranian IRGC General Qasem Soleimani on a visit in Iraq in January 2020. This could have easily provoked war. Fortunately, there was only a limited Iranian retaliation.
Bullshit. That’s what I’m talking about; instead of reading the link with the facts, you would rather BELIEVE in a fantasy and spout off nonsense. So go ahead and vote for another crook who wants to give away billions more of our resources to pay for genocide.
Hoping the Democrats will actually govern rather than war monger and provide their donor base with government largesse and grift if given another two years is also pointless. If you look at Harris’ record in California, do you really expect her to do a 180 and support more populist ideas? They are as incapable of providing the change required by a majority of voters and are even more likely to continue the entire status quo as DJT.
The best thing for everyone in this country would be for the voters to treat both major parties as the rump garbage they are and to vote third party. It won’t happen, but anymore the argument that the Democrats are less evil has really lost any credibility it has for anyone paying attention. Effective evil does not mean less.
The left has been swamped by the pseudo-left culture warriors and the flood of right-wing money into the political and media environment. Even after McCarthyism, there was still a viable strain of economic New Deal style leftism among the Cold War liberals, but from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s those liberals either aged out of the system or just got outnumbered by the privatizers and “business friendly” wing of the Democratic Party. Where can a disaffected working class person even get exposure to a real left-wing analysis and program of action now? Sure, they can hear the bleating of the pompous academic “theory” promoters and “woke” snobs, but that is not leftism. Certainly there is no major US media outlet promoting real left-wing views as their main focus.
Yeah, nowadays the “left” is defined as pro-oligarchy, anti-labor, genocidal, right wing warmongers with a rainbow bumper sticker and a BLM lawn sign. As Ray McGovern says: they give hypocrisy a bad name. Orwell roll over…
I call this stance “Let them eat Woke.”
Because they haven’t tried.
bingo
see, e.g. the weak NFP that can’t even force Macron to name a government. If they controlled the street (disrupt the Olympics, seems like an easy target), they’d make him turn on his back over like a submissive puppy.
Occam strikes again! The triumph of a parasitic oligarchy has made any notion of politics an absurdity. Assassination attempt followed by removal of the president … by the way where is he? … you might call it a coup if you were so inclined, followed by piling on to support Harris or are they? If you can change horses in midstream once why not twice? It is clear now that the primaries have always been a joke. Who cares what those deplorable voters want? They haven’t tried because they see better days for them by not trying.
Enough. I have plowed this ground too often.
Good point. The ‘left’ like the rest of the US population wants everything instantly. They don’t want to think long term and put out the effort. They think we live in a democracy and ‘elections’ are the answer.
A left that would represent any continuity with past usage of the term would be trying to organize using the same IT tools intermediated into all communications beyond one on one over the last 30 years.
While they were / are being listened to, baited and salted with paid informants and provocateurs, they will be acting with resources constrained by five decades of neoliberal impoverishments.
The rampage of political assassinations from Hammarskjold, Allende and Lumumba to Kennedy, Kennedy, King and X only stopped after the Neoliberal takeover of politics in the Anglosphere of the late 70s where “There Is No Alternative” found its birth in the Powell Memo.
With whatever communication infrastructure survives our accelerating collapse, maybe a real left can institute protocols to manage communication again as a public good rather than the oligarchic toll booth of social control mass media has become: real leftism cannot reach a mass audience in an oligarchically controlled mass media environment. There are tens of thousands trying, but money never sleeps and leftists must.
Those alleged to be “left” in the mainstream and alleged to be the leadership of the left are pacified by asset bubbles.
I have come to the conclusion that “the bleating of the pompous academic “theory” promoters and “woke” snobs” is all that is left of the left at this point. The “real left” is gone, functionally if not in reality.
Blow smoke. Make noise. Look at the shiny object. Isn’t that a cute puppy? Don’t look over there at the person stealing your car. It is all sleight of hand for the movers and shakers behind the curtain as they pull the strings of their puppets on stage.
The US left was systematically extinguished all throughout the 20th century, with the job being substantially completed in the 60s and 70s. The corralling of people who would ordinarily constitute such a political bloc into academia and marginal media jobs where radical thought can’t flourish was a conscious policy choice, and an incredibly effective one.
It seems it is not possible to organize a New New Left, because everyone attempting to do so insists on relying on capital’s own surveillance networks for recruitment and communications. Probably just a coincidence that all such groups are inevitably infiltrated, disrupted and discredited!
This is a longstanding failure of US discourse. I.e. the equation of ‘left’ with ‘liberal’. It is part of the long running campaign of demonisation of actual ‘leftism’, by equating everything Neo-Liberal, or not ‘Republican’ as ‘leftism’ by way of being a slur on both. The US establishments propaganda war on Communism, Socialism and Anarchism goes back at least 150 years and has been a stunning success, aided by the myth of the ‘Frontier’ and the cult of the ‘rugged individual’.
In the rest of the world there is a clear distinction between Liberal and left policies. And in the US there is now no actual organised ‘left’ political party – only the bogey/ghost of the ‘left’, as invoked by the rich establishment.
Great post Yves. Really great to hear from Wendy Brown.
This. This has long been my issue with the Democratic Party. Although many are clearly corrupt (looking at you Nancy, Chuck, et al.), is the entire party just bought and sold? Is there no one there who will stand up and point the finger at the DNC and say:
Paradise is a place of many exits. The entry to Heaven has only one entrance.
Great discussion all around. And I second the shout out to Wendy Brown.
Undoing the Demos is worth reading and re-reading!
As others above have hinted at, the ‘real’ issue is the lack of a true Left alternative in American politics.
As I have said before, older “Left” movements in America had both Political and ‘Armed’ wings. The old Unions had “Mad Bombers” and “Redneck Guerrilla Cadres,” the Civil Rights movement had “Black Panthers,” the 1930s Proto New Deal Movement had the “Bonus Army,” (made up of combat veterans,) etc. etc. This established what Frederick Douglass called a “demand,” without which Power never changes course.
Taking a step back, one can observe the classical functioning of the age-old political strategy of “Divide and Rule” in present day American politics. What else are “movements” such as Woke, DEI, Identity Politics and the rest but methods of division on a social scale? All those can be characterized as Rightwing political tools. One has to search out any mentions of the basic Leftwing political tool; control of the distribution of the fruits of production.
Indulge me and let me steal a meme from the ancient Roman Politico, Cato the Elder: NEO-LIBERALISM DELENDA EST! (Neo-liberalism must be destroyed.)
“Why has the left been so unsuccessful in harnessing the enormous discontent that people have with the state of the world.”
One of the reasons may be because of an almost knee-jerk acceptance/applause for, what in my opinion, is a superficial and worn-out analysis of the political/economic/cultural situation we are now living in.
It is no longer a question of left vs right (these are categories which no longer have much relevance)– it is now a question of being totalitarian or non-totalitarian.
The origins of our collective anger has lots to do with the indignity of living in a world of lies. Our personal sanity is being threatened and we are slowly realizing that we must revolt in order to save our emotional balance.
Perhaps the the name “De Vos” is familiar to you. Or consider the ‘cultural
revolution in China. Education (or the lack of it) is the key. Public education’s original
rationale was to provide line workers with enough skills to be good workers and
of the Plutocracy, an utter waste of (their) money. Carnegie founded the public library
as a salve to his conscience, a way of transmuting the ‘lead’ of his exploitation intoy’s
the higher ‘gold’ of a civilization dedicated to Progress. Even Frick, the most evil
of the Robber Barons founded a museum. Today’s mega wealthy could care less.
Uniparty.
I am really blessed to live in a state that went hard-right rabid radical Freedumb Repugnicrunt.
My vote for Jill Stein will not affect the State’s four electoral votes, which are pre-slated for T and V . TV.
I cannot imagine voting for Trump. Doubtful Harris / ?? will be compelling, or bring to the table a new playbook, slate, platform. Hell, when did either of the two main-stay parties actually elucidate a platform? Project 2025 was not from Repugs, it came from Heritage.
I am not affiliated with an organized political party- I am a democrat
Will Rogers
“Why has the left been so unsuccessful in harnessing the enormous discontent that people have with the state of the world.”
There is no left in the world save a few isolated pockets. Neoliberalism has snuffed it out in most of the first and second world. And anytime it pops up, it too is snuffed out or isolated (See Venezuela). All I see is Center right, Reactionaries, and the faux Leftists in Europe fighting for who can serve their masters better. No one us advocating for working people or seizing the means of production.
> “we know the promises of these authoritarians are false, which suggests that ‘the people’ are somehow being misled. But are people really being misled.”
Reason why people support authoritarians, knowing that what they say is false, is spite. GFC caused a marked shift in sentiment where middle-class came out screwed and trust in experts & those in institutional power plummeted. People want Trump to wreck the place because they expect the elites to suffer way more pain than themselves.
Spite is a very important social force and is a counter-balance to the power of corrupt elites. A dynamic evident in all cultures from Europe to Asia. Spite is a form of altruistic punishment where individuals accept some level of suffering in order to effect beneficial change for society. Spite at broad social levels leads to Spinoza’s observation that real change only happens via revolutions. There is significant risk that spite in the US has reached these levels.
I can’t imagine any of the duopoly’s candidates fixing our late stage monopoly capitalism.
So I get it, Wendy Brown is a sociologist and she has a spot at Princeton. And what is she actually doing all day long? Because:
“These fears and losses need to be addressed directly – not with the kind of technical accounts that people like Biden offer about insulin prices or a bit of debt relief – but with a compelling way forward to a different order.!”
…this nothingness I have read a billion times. Left publications are full of it. You read it and you forget it, you read it and you forget it. There are thousands of thousands of these people in Europe, in the USA producing…nothing of value.
I am great supporter of scholarship but out of 100 studies 1 is worth it.
Any suggestions to what actually should be DONE? Actions? Not parols. Anything of real value?
It they would actually start oganizing, devising laws, creating serious programs and fight the lobbies that are providing pre-packaged laws to the parties in charge, if they would take companies and institutionalized corruption to court.
There is so much to be accomplished. But they are publishing books and studies and books and studies. wow. While things get worse by the year. Which provides them with new catastrophies again… to write new books about. Really impressive.
I don’t think voters necessarily move to the right when times get hard. I think they move in various directions, and the rich block the left, and so movement appears to go right.
The u.s. voters may want change … but the u.s. Power Elite does not, and the u.s. is NOT a democracy and has not been a democracy for many many decades. Biden … Kamala … Trump … whoever … no candidate allowed to run for office, right, left, whatever, will change anything but the rhetoric. Voting, writing letters, sending contributions, party politics — whether local, state, or national — will not change this reality. The existing Power Elite has no regard for the will of the Populace, no regard for the welfare of the Populace, and this is reflected in the laws and expenditures passed and approved by our government by the few, the obscenely wealthy, the people of the very best breeding the u.s. can offer. If every one of us voted “No” to indicate our deep displeasure with the Political-Economic reality we have been forced to endure, I believe NOTHING would change that was not of benefit to the u.s. Power Elite. I believe Jefferson suggested something about how to deal with our present quandaries.
For too many years, the DP pretended that Blacks didn’t care about money. They didn’t care about paying bills, inflation, or medical care and education for themselves and their families.
The DP pretended Blacks only cared about racism and voting rights. Thus, the DP promised to make a goal line defense of these two issues and not much else.
If Blacks, like many others, are getting tired of the DP it’s no surprise.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
Please read this poll. Read it again. Then think about what party on your ballot (if the Ds and Rs haven’t lawfared it off yet) calls for needed change that the Rs and Ds will never touch — and support the [family blog] out of that party.
If you’re lucky enough to have more than one, figure out how to help however many you can. If you don’t have any, start building one now. Don’t hold back, or say “Well, maybe next time; this election is just too important for me to indulge myself voting my conscience and my beliefs — I have to vote for one of the lizards to defeat the other lizard.” (H/T Douglas Adams.)
Pick your own key words for what the R & D folks aren’t giving the people — I’m not putting any party’s name in your mouth, though you can find out mine in a good number of other comments. But make a choice, support it, work for it, vote for it. To borrow an overused phrase, now more than ever.
If this mess we face today isn’t a matter of survival — for US, our families, our communities, our country — what is? . . .
This is an important thread. Lots of sharp comments but it is sad to see people attacking other commentators. I hope IM Doc sticks around as his insights are invaluable.
Pretty much everyone here knows what the problem is.
The problem is hyper capitalism, financialization, or whatever term of art you prefer. I like late-stage capitalism because it implies that we are in the late stages of a fatal disease. Which is true, I believe. I think it is wiser to stop fighting it and just let Mother Nature take her inevitable course.
Not that we don’t want change. First of all we need to understand the problem. And also understand that for a lot of people they live their day to day lives not caring about politics, or are too busy trying to survive, or recognize that they have no power to change anything.
Our neoliberal technocrats want to “rip out the steering wheel” and they have largely succeeded. Having a dementia patient at the wheel is the perfect situation for them. It doesn’t matter where the ship is headed anyways because it’s too late now. laws of physics will determine its fate. Iceberg, dead ahead!
Just for grins if I had to make a list of all the changes necessary to restore America to where it would be a sane and decent place again, here are a few, for starters :
(1) Cut the defense budget to 1% of GDP and end all wars. Any general who resists or talks back gets demoted or fired (remember that the President can do this legally.)
(2) Break up all the monopolies and cartels that have been destroying health care, aviation, education, and other critical areas of the economy. The ratio of patient-facing health care jobs to back office administrators needs to go back to whatever it was in 1970.
Make it black letter law illegal for private equity to own a hospital.
Defenestrate entire corporate boards of hopeless basket cases like Boeing and Google.
(3) Restrain “markets.”
Lots of antitrust laws on the books need to be enforced. New laws are needed to muzzle AI. Clone Lina Khan or something.
(4) Declare that the era of American imperialism is over. Lots of other countries have bigger problems than we do. That’s their problem, not ours. Pull back from the ME and let China do what they want to in Asia-PAC. This pairs well with number one as suddenly we don’t need all these expensive and finicky weapons systems like F-35.
(5) Constitutional amendment to prohibit corporations from making political donations.
Of course none of this is happening anytime soon.
But it will all happen at some point in time. When it does, something like 40-50% of GDP gets vaporized for a few years while things adjust. But in the meantime the government can put a floor under people such that their basic needs are met. Anyone working in a Bezzle or Bezzle adjacent Industry (banking, Healthcare, MIC) who isn’t fortunate enough to be able to retire will have to undergo reprogramming and retraining in order to get a job.
Again this is possible with UBI but it will not be pretty. Most of the job loss will be upper middle class “laptop” jobs that pay well.
Don’t Call it A cultural revolution. But anything other than all of the above doesn’t fix it. It’s a deck chair rearranging exercise.
So enjoy Howlin’ Harris v. Orangeman. It’s a good distraction.
“Sad to see people attacking other commentators”.
Hey, it’s a free country, ain’t it”
America is perceived by the “Rest of the World” as a third world country with a first world military. Capitalism American style is seen as a corrupt joke where cronyism, nepotism, the leaners, grifters and fraudsters get rich and the rest of the hard working in America suffer. The current rules of the American Constitution restrict Political Democracy to just “only one of two parties can win”. One Party better than Dictatorship. The fact that you need $billions to even have a chance of setting up any “third or fourth political force” in the “Land of the Free” is another complete joke! The only reason the “Rest of the World” cares is because we’re scared America will want to kill all our people with their first world military!! America’s Weapons is what keeps us all in America’s thrall. It certainly ain’t America’s Finance, Education or Health system. Good luck to you all in America, but if you want to elect a Republican “Handmaids Tale” future your al on you own.
Haven’t commented in a long time, and this is a good post. We are in a realignment that is much bigger than Trump or Biden/Harris. A new coalition is being built by republicans who for a generation have been largely overlapping with democrat politics, although with lower taxes and slower cultural change. Trump first went after the working class with low culture entertainment and then populist and testosterone filled rhetoric. And it worked. Of course there are lies and promises all over politics, and in the long run results do matter, in that the working class needs to feel better served for the party to benefit. When democrats tried to widen their tent as they became the clear party of the elite and richest states, they were left vulnerable by definition in a two party system. What other underserved demographic was there? minorities, who are disproportionately working class. FDR did the same thing with great success, so it was an obvious move, and now that there is both critical mass (50% approval) and it is harder to just dismiss the republicans with ad-hominim attacks and legal battles, other people are sniffing at the coalition. Labor unions? Libertarian Tech bros? There is no policy that will make everyone happy, which is why no party can dominate indefinitely in a democracy. At this point it does not matter what is promised by any candidate, because the battle lines are drawn. Immigration and globalization and war mean very different things to the coastal educated elite than they do to the working class that could never get a mortgage in a large city. Populism is dangerous for sure, but it is also an agent for change. The parties have switched positions over my life time, and the trend line is for Rs to become more liberal than the Ds in more policy areas.