#democracy at stake in 2024 US presidential election

[malenipshadows]

True that.

I really think people have forgotten just how bad things were under the Trump Administration. Literally every day there was news about some service being cut or someone terrible appointed somewhere they shouldn't be or what have you. He constantly flirted with WW3 and military dictatorship. It was such a blur of badness that there aren't big standouts for people to point to to make him "the XYZ president." it was everything. all the time. Why do we not remember this.

[deaddee-anime-brownfanlady]

[ronehmke]

[beemovieerotica]

Trump has openly said he would be a dictator on Day One, reimplementing a Muslim ban, purging the bureaucracy of professional civil servants and replacing them with loyalists, invoking the Insurrection Act to quash protests and take on opponents while replacing military leaders who would resist turning the military into a presidential militia with pliant generals. He would begin immediately to put the 12 million undocumented people in America into detention camps before moving to deport them all. His Republican convention policy director, Russell Vought, has laid out many of these plans as have his closest advisers, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Michael Flynn, among others. Free elections would be a thing of the past, with more radical partisan judges turning a blind eye to attempts to protect elections and voting rights. He has openly flirted with the idea that he would ignore the 22nd Amendment and stay beyond his term of office.

The Biggest Lie Trump–Biden 2024 Rematch Voters Are Telling Themselves

Americans have a normalcy bias. It leads them to believe anyone who tells them that everything is awesome and that a system is “holding”—even as that system is hanging together by way of dental floss...And many journalists have a normalcy bias so acute they wouldn’t know how to cover an authoritarian takeover if it meant that one of the two presidential candidates threatened jail for his political opponents—even as he continues to refer to these journalists as “the enemy of the people.” It also means that they tend to cover “Trump convicted on 34 felony counts” in terms of “how much would this story make us deviate from covering a normal election?” It turns out that we’re normalizing the abnormal, covering the election as a horse race between democracy and illiberalism without mentioning illiberalism or considering the stakes and the consequences, and repeatedly applying a false equivalence to Trump and Biden. We are worried about this baseline assumption that everything is fine until someone alerts us that nothing is fine, that of course our system will hold because it always has. We worry that we are exceptionally good at telling ourselves that shocking things won’t happen, and then when they do happen, we don’t know what to do...The signals are flashing red that our fundamental system is in danger.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

It is hard to imagine a worse candidate for the American presidency in 2024 than Donald J Trump. His history of dishonesty, hypocrisy and greed makes him wholly unfit for the office. A second Trump term would erode the rule of law, diminish America’s global standing and deepen racial and cultural divides. Even if he loses, Mr Trump has shown that he will undermine the election process, with allies spreading unfounded conspiracy theories to delegitimise the results. There are prominent Republicans – such as the former vice-president Dick Cheney – who refused to support Mr Trump owing to the threat he poses. Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under Mr Trump, calls his former boss a “fascist”. America was founded in opposition to absolute monarchy. The Republican nominee models himself after the leader he most admires: Russia’s autocratic president, Vladimir Putin. Mr Trump’s authoritarianism may finish US democracy. He has praised and promised to pardon those convicted in the January 6 insurrection. He has suggested bypassing legal norms to use potentially violent methods of repression, blurring the lines between vigilantism, law enforcement and military action, against groups – be they Democrats or undocumented immigrants – he views as enemies. His team has tried to distance itself from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and its extreme proposals – such as mass firings of civil servants and erasing women’s rights – that poll poorly. But it is likely that, in office, Mr Trump would adopt many of these intolerant, patriarchal and discriminatory plans. He aims to dismantle the government to enrich himself and evade the law. If Republicans gain control of the Senate, House and White House, he would interpret it as a mandate to silence his critics and entrench his power. Mr Trump is a transactional and corrupting politician. His supporters see this as an advantage. Christian nationalists want an authoritarian regime to enforce religious edicts on Americans. Elon Musk wants to shape the future without regulatory oversight. Both put self-interest ahead of the American people. Democracy erodes slowly at first, then all at once. In office, Mr Trump appointed three supreme court justices, who this summer blocked efforts to hold him accountable for trying to overturn the 2020 election: their immunity ruling renders the president “a king above the law”, in the words of the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor. Since Kamala Harris stepped into the spotlight following Joe Biden’s exit, her campaign has been a masterclass in political jujitsu, deftly flipping Mr Trump’s perceived strengths into glaring weaknesses. With a focus on joy, the vice-president sharply contrasted with Mr Trump’s grim narrative of US decline. In their sole televised debate, Ms Harris skillfully outmaneuvered Mr Trump, who fell into her traps, appearing angry and incoherent. She is confident and composed. He sounds unhinged. [...] Political hope fades when we settle for what is, instead of fighting for what could be. Ms Harris embodies the conviction that it’s better to believe in democracy’s potential than to surrender to its imperfections. The Republican agenda is clear: voter suppression, book bans and tax cuts for billionaires. Democrats seek global engagement; the GOP favours isolation. The Biden-Harris administration laid the groundwork for a net zero America. A Trumpian comeback would undo it. A Harris win, with a Democratic Congress, means a chance to restore good governance, create good jobs and lead the entire planet’s climate efforts. Defeating Mr Trump protects democracy from oligarchy and dictatorship. There is too much at stake not to back Ms Harris for president.

The Guardian Editorial Board's endorsement of Kamala Harris for the 2024 US Presidential Election (10.23.2024).

The Guardian’s editorial board gave a powerful endorsement for Kamala Harris, as our democracy’s survival depends on her winning.

[kingalpharhys]

ALPHAS VOTE BLUE: 13 DAYS UNTIL NOV 5TH!

With less than two weeks to go until the 2024 United States Presidential Election, I hope that each and every one of you knows what's at stake here. On one hand, we have Donald J. Trump. A man with an all-around sleazy record, more than 2500 civil lawsuits, and 34 felon convictions with plans to turn back all the progress this country has made. Don't wanna talk my word for it? Read his and co.'s Project 2025. It's horrific. But here's the good news: we have Kamala Harris running against him. A career woman for the people with a background in law as a district attorney, Attorney General of California, and a seat in the US Senate before a successful term as Vice President of this nation. She's entirely pro-freedom; she is for racial equality, a supporter of women's rights, she uplifts LGBTQ+ rights, and she's pro-Palestine with calls for a ceasefire and two-state solution. If you give a fuck about this country, you'll vote Kamala Harris. It's not a fetish to support fascism, and even if you don't think it affects you now, I promise you Trump will come knocking. Don't make excuses, use your right to vote and get out to the polls and vote BLUE.

Vote Harris-Walz like your life depends on it, because it does. Vote BLUE for DEMOCRACY.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“America, I gave my best to you.”

August 20, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Watching the Democratic National Convention was an out-of-body experience—on many levels. The presentations before President Biden’s keynote speech plumbed a deep well of political experience, raw talent, future leaders, unbridled joy, and personal pain. The stories by hopeful couples and rape survivors devastated by Trump’s abortion bans were powerful and moving—unlike anything previously attempted at a national political convention.

There is much to discuss, but let’s skip to the end: Through the selfless act of President Biden, the Democratic Party is more energized and unified than anyone could have imagined or dared hope. If Democrats can defeat Trump a second time—and we have every reason to believe we will—it will be Joe Biden’s victory along with Kamala Harris’s.

President Joe Biden’s speech

In a wonderful speech with many great moments, Joe Biden’s valedictory statement will be the most remembered and quoted. He recited a verse from American Anthem by Norah Jones,

Let them say of me I was one who believed In sharing the blessings I received Let me know in my heart When my days are through America, America I gave my best to you.

And he acknowledged that he put the interests of the nation before his own in giving his best to America to the very last:

It has been the honor of a lifetime. I love my job, but I love my country more.

In a speech that could have rightly been only about himself, Joe Biden was gracious and generous in his support for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. President Biden said,

I promise I will be the best volunteer that the Kamala and Walz campaign have ever seen.

He praised Kamala Harris effusively, saying,

Selecting Kamala was the best decision I made in my career. She’s tough and has enormous integrity. She will be respected by world leaders because she already is. She will be a president who puts her stamp on America’s future.

When cheers of “Thank you, Joe” erupted from the floor, Joe Biden re-directed those chants to “Thank you, Kamala.”

Joe Biden is a mensch. He could not have acted more honorably or selflessly. Even in his valedictory speech, he did his best to ensure that Kamala Harris will defeat Trump.

President’s Biden’s speech was fiery, passionate and—at times—righteously angry. (A few readers worried that he was “strident” or “just angry.”) But in his righteous anger, Biden was speaking hard truths that must never be forgotten:

This is the first presidential election since January 6—a day on which we almost lost everything. Trump says he will be a dictator on day one. He means it. No commander in chief should bow down to a dictator. Trump is a liar. When Trump left office NATO was in tatters. Trump demonizes immigrants, saying that they will poison the blood of our nation.

President Biden reminded us what is at stake in in 2024 and beyond:

All of us carry a special obligation. We saved democracy in 2020 and now we must save it again in 2024. In 2024, we need you to vote; we need you to keep the Senate, flip the House of Representatives, and need you to elect Kamala and Tim. They will continue to lead America forward. Our best days are not behind us they are in front of us. And on this hot August night, democracy has prevailed and must be preserved.

Biden recounted the story of his decision to run in 2020 because of Trump's handling of the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia. Biden said,

Hate was on the march in America. Old ghosts in new garments. Giving oxygen to old forces that had long sought to destroy America — “there are very fine people on both sides” was the response from their president — but in an America where honesty, dignity, decency and hate has no safe harbor, I knew I had to run.

But Biden said that he also ran “to rebuild the middle class”—which he did through the most far-reaching legislative agenda in sixty-years. He gave Kamala due credit for her assistance in achieving success.

In touting his own accomplishments, Biden took several large swings at Trump, saying,

Donald Trump promised infrastructure week every week for four years and he never built a damn thing!

Trump killed the strongest bipartisan border security bill in the history of the nation. He asked for Republican Senators to kill the bill in order to help Trump politically. He put Trump first and America last. Border encounters have dropped by 50% in the last few months--fewer than when Trump left office.

Biden also predicted that Trump would regret the words of Justice Alito in the Dobbs decision, saying,

Justice Alito wrote, “Women are not without electoral or political power.” No kidding! Donald Trump is going to find out the power of women in 2024.

I am running out of time to get this edition out the door, I will simply highlight additional notable comments:

More children die of gun violence than any other cause. It is time to ban assault weapons and demand universal background checks. Americans should have the freedom to love who you love. Women should have the freedom to choose. We must surge food assistance into Gaza now. We must deliver a ceasefire and end this war! Those protestors out in the street have a point—a lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.

The program before Joe Biden’s speech

The choreography of speakers and pre-recorded stories in the run-up to Joe Biden’s speech was brilliant. I wish I could give credit to everyone who spoke because every speaker is deserving of recognition. Of particular note:

A surprise appearance by Kamala Harris to acknowledge Joe Biden’s speech on Monday. Her brief appearance gave us a prelude of the absolute joy and positivity she will exude when she gives her acceptance speech.

Jill Biden was genuine, generous in her praise of Kamala Harris, and loving in comments about Joe.

Ashley Biden was a revelation. Joe Biden’s daughter gave a moving tribute to the genuine love in the Biden family. She said she was confident Democrats will defeat Trump because “my father has shown us the way.” Beautiful!

Raphael Warnock is a force of nature. His speech was exhilarating.

Hillary Clinton—I had to step away from Hillary’s speech to attend an emergency Board meeting, but my wife and Managing Editor watched Hillary’s speech and writes,

Hillary’s speech at the Democratic National Convention was inspiring, emotional, and stirring. She made me proud to be a Democrat, and proud to be a woman. She convinced me that now is our time. Soon there will be a woman in the office of the President of the United States. And we will finally have broken through that glass ceiling. Thank you, Hillary. For everything. We will "keep on going!"

Other outstanding speeches included:

Shawn Fain, President of the UAW, who gave a rousing,  profane, in-your-face speech that called Trump a “scab” for laughing at Elon Musk’s firing of workers who tried to unionize at Tesla.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continued her transformation into a party leader who is a team player while pushing the party to more progressive positions.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett was particularly effective in humanizing Kamala Harris. Crockett told a touching story in which Kamala Harris sensed Crockett’s emotional distress and asked, “What’s wrong.” Crockett broke down in tears as Kamala hugged her. It was their first meeting!

Steve Kerr, the coach of the NBA Warrior and USA Men’s Basketball Team was earnest, effective, plain spoken, and positive.

[theculturedmarxist]

By Roger D. Harris  –   Sep 30, 2024

Left-liberals plea every four years that this really is the most important election ever and time to hold our noses and send a Democrat to the White House. The manifest destiny of US world leadership, we are told, is at stake, as is our precious democracy which we have so generously been exporting abroad.

Let’s leave aside the existential threats of climate change or nuclear war. However important, these issues are not on the November 5 ballot. Nor are they addressed in even minimally meaningful ways by the platforms of either of the major parties.

The USA, with its first-strike policy and upgrading its nuclear war fighting capacity, bears responsibility for Armageddon risk. And, in fact, the land-of-the-free has contributed more greenhouse gases to the world’s stockpile than any other country.

But the US electorate never voted these conditions in, so is it realistic to think that we can vote them out? The electoral arena has its limits. Nevertheless, we are admonished, our vote is very important.

But do the two major parties offer meaningful choices? Apparently, the 700 national security apparatchiks who signed a letter endorsing Kamala Harris think so. They fear that Trump is too soft on world domination. They find a comforting succor in Harris’s promise “to preserve the American military’s status as the most ‘lethal’ force in the world.” And oddly so do some left-liberals who welcome the security state, largely because they too don’t trust Trump with guiding the US empire.

Although a major left-liberal talking point is the imminent threat of fascism, their fear is focused on Trump’s dysfunctionality and his “deplorable” working class minions; not on the security apparatus of the state, which they have learned to love.

But fascism is not a personality disorder. The ruling class – whether its nominal head wears a red or blue hat – has no reason to impose a fascist dictatorship as long as left-liberals and their confederates embrace rather than oppose the security state.

Not only were the left-liberals enamored with the FBI’s “Saint” Robert Mueller, but they have welcomed the likes of George W. Bush and now Dick Cheney, because these war criminals also see the danger of Trump.

The Democratic Party has been captured by the foreign policy neoconservatives, who are jumping the red ship for the blue one. It’s not that Donald Trump is in any way an anti-imperialist, but Kamala Harris is seen as a more effective imperialist and defender of elite rule.

The ruling class is united in supporting US imperial hegemony, but needs to work out how best to achieve it. The blue team is confident that the empire has the capability to aim the canons full blast at both Russia and China at the same time. And they tend to take a more multilateral approach to empire building.

The red team is a little more circumspect, concerned with imperial overreach. They advocate a staged strategy of China as the primary target and only secondarily against Russia. This suggests why Ukraine’s president-for-life, who is at war with Russia, in effect campaigned for Kamala in the swing state of Pennsylvania.

The inauthenticity of the left-liberals While some left-liberals support a decisive Russian defeat in Ukraine, their overall concern is beating Trump.

The Democratic Party was transformed some time ago by the Clintons’ now defunct but successful Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which advocated abandonment of its progressive constituencies in order to more effectively attract corporate support. While both parties vie to serve the wealthy class, the Democrats are now by a significant margin the ones favored by big money.

The triumph of the DLC signaled the demise of liberalism and the ascendancy of neoliberalism. Much more could be said about that transition (viz the Democratic Party has always been capitalist, with neoliberalism being its most recent expression), but suffice it to say the Democratic Party is the graveyard of progressive movements.

Liberals no longer even pretend to have an agenda other than defeating Trump. Their neglect of economic issues that benefit working people has created a vacuum, which opens the political arena for faux populists like Trump.

The now moribund liberal movement is thus relegated to two functions: (1) providing a bogus progressive patina to reactionary politics (2) and attacking those who still hold leftist principles. “Progressive Democrat,” sociologist James Petras argues, is an oxymoron.

Left-liberals have the habit of prefacing their capitulations with a recitation of their former leftist credentials. But what makes them inauthentic is their abandonment of principles. No transgression by the Democrats, absolutely none – not even genocide – deters this inauthentic left from supporting the Democratic presidential candidate.

We can respect, though disagree, with the right-wing for having principled red lines, such as abortion. In contrast, left-liberals not only find themselves bedfellows with Cheney, but they swallow anything and everything that the Democratic wing of the two-party duopoly feeds them.

Consequences of supporting the lesser of the two evils Although today the Democratic Party is arguably the leading war party, we would have cold comfort with the Republicans in power. And domestically the Democrats talk a better line on some social wedge issues that don’t threaten elite rule, such as women’s reproductive rights, although – as will be argued – their walk is not as good as their talk.

Getting back to “this year more than ever we have to support the Democratic presidential candidate,” the plea contains two truths. First, the “more than ever” part exposes a tendency to cry wolf in the past.

Remember that the world did not fall apart with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. No lesser an authority than Noam Chomsky is nostalgic for Tricky Dick, who is now viewed as the last true liberal president. Nor did the planet stop spinning in 1980 when Ronald Reagan ascended to the Oval Office. Barack Obama now boasts that his policies differed little from the Gipper’s.

Which brings us to the second truth revealed in the plea. The entire body politic has been staggering to the right regardless of which wing of the duopoly is in power. This is in spite of the fact that the voting public is well to the left of them on almost every issue, from universal public healthcare to opposition to endless war.

Moreover, the left-liberals’ lesser-evil voting strategy itself bears some degree of responsibility for this reactionary tide.

The genius of the Clintons’ DLC was that the progressive New Deal coalition of labor and minority groups that supported the Democratic Party could be thrown under the bus with impunity, while the party courts the right. As long as purported progressives support the Democrats no matter what, the party has an incentive to sell out its left-leaning “captured constituents.”

Thus, we witnessed what passed for a presidential debate, with both contestants competing to prove who was more in favor of genocide for Palestinians and an ever expanding military.

The campaign for reproductive rights aborted But one may protest, let’s not let squeamishness about genocide blind us to the hope that the Democrats are better than the Republicans on at least the key issue of abortion.

However, this is the exception that proves the rule. As Margaret Kimberley of the Black Agenda Report noted, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, there were protests everywhere but at Barack Obama’s house, “the person who could have acted to protect the Roe decision.”

When Obama ran in 2008, he made passage of a ‘Freedom of Choice’ Act the centerpiece of his campaign. Once elected with majorities in Congress, he could have enshrined abortion rights into law and out of the purview of the Supreme Court. Instead, he never followed through on his promise.

This was a direct outcome of the logic of lesser evil in a two-party system. The folks who supported abortion rights had nowhere to go, so they were betrayed. Why embarrass Blue Dog Democrats and antagonize pro-lifers when the progressive dupes will always give the Democrats a pass?

Angst is not a substitute for action The Republican and Democratic parties are part of the same corporate duopoly, both of which support the US empire. Given there are two wings, there will inevitably be a lesser and greater evil on every issue and even in every election.

However, we need a less myopic view and to look beyond a given election to see the bigger picture of the historical reactionary trend exacerbated by lesser-evil voting. That is, to understand that the function of lesser-evil voting in the overarching two-party system is to allow the narrative to shift rightward.

If one’s game plan for system change includes electoral engagement, which both Marx and Lenin advocated (through an independent working class party, not by supporting a bourgeois party), the pressure needs to be applied when it counts. And that might mean taking a tip from the Tea Party by withholding the vote if your candidate crosses a red line. But that requires principles, which left-liberals have failed to evidence. Angst, however heartfelt, is not a substitute for action.

The left-liberals’ lesser-evil voting, which disregards third-parties with genuinely progressive politics, contributes to the rightward trajectory of US politics. It is not the only factor, but it is a step in the wrong direction. As for November 5th, we already know who will win…the ruling class.

[tomorrowusa]

House Republicans may be relieved that they finally have a Speaker after 22 days of infighting. But the rest of the country should worry that there's a far right extremist second in line to the presidency. "MAGA Mike" Johnson is even more extreme than Trump on some issues.

Election denier, climate skeptic, anti-abortion: seven beliefs of new US House speaker Mike Johnson

He tried to overturn the 2020 election In the modern Republican party, supporting Donald Trump’s lie about voter fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden is hardly an outlandish position. But Johnson took it further. After the election, he voiced support for Trump’s conspiracy theory that voting machines were rigged. Later, he was one of 147 Republicans to object to results in key states, even after a pro-Trump mob attacked Congress on January 6, a riot now linked to nine deaths and hundreds of convictions. [ ... ] He was a spokesperson for a ‘hate group’ Before entering politics, Johnson worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom – designated a hate group by the Southern Law Poverty Center, which tracks US extremists. According to the SPLC, the ADF has “supported the recriminalisation of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ+ adults in the US and criminalisation abroad; defended state-sanctioned sterilisation of trans people abroad; contended that LGBTQ+ people are more likely to engage in paedophilia; and claimed that a ‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity and society”. [ ... ] He opposes LGBTQ+ rights In state politics and at the national level, Johnson has worked to claw back gains made by LGBTQ+ Americans in their fight for equality. In 2016, as he ran for Congress, he told the Louisiana Baptist Message he had “been out on the front lines of the ‘culture war’ defending religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and biblical values, including the defense of traditional marriage, and other ideals like these when they’ve been under assault”. He has since led efforts for a national “don’t say gay” bill, regarding the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues in schools, and is also opposed to gender-affirming care for children. On Wednesday, Rev Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, said: “Johnson has made a career out of attacking the LGBTQ+ community at every turn." His positions are out of touch with the clear majority support for LGBTQ+ equality in our country. His new leadership role is just further proof of the dangerous priorities of the GOP and the critical stakes for our democracy – and for LGBTQ+ Americans – in 2024.” [ ... ] He is stringently anti-abortion Johnson has maintained a relatively low profile in Congress but when last year the supreme court removed the right to abortion, Johnson celebrated “a historic and joyful day”. Though Dobbs v Jackson returned abortion rights to the states, Johnson has co-sponsored bills for a nationwide ban. And as he neared his position of power, footage spread of striking remarks in a House hearing. “Roe v Wade did constitutional cover to the elective killing of unborn children in America, period,” Johnson said. [ ... ] He wants to cut social security and Medicare As those comments indicate, Johnson wants to cut programs on which millions rely. Such cuts are widely regarded as a political third-rail – Trump has used the issue to attack Republican presidential rivals, saying only he will defend such benefits – but Johnson is far from alone in wanting to swing the axe. He is an advocate for ‘covenant marriage’ When he married his wife, Kelly, in 1999, the couple agreed to a “covenant” marriage: a conservative Christian idea that makes it harder to divorce. The Johnsons promoted the idea on ABC’s Good Morning America. [ ... ] He is a climate skeptic In 2017, Johnson told voters in his oil-rich home state: “The climate is changing, but the question is, is it being caused by natural cycles over the span of the Earth’s history? Or is it changing because we drive SUVs? I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver.”

You'd really have to try hard to find somebody worse than MAGA Mike. But we're not without the power of the vote; we need to use that power every chance we get.

November 7th is Election Day in many parts of the US. Most notably...

Ohio's statewide ballot measure to restore reproductive freedom by placing a woman's right to choose in the Ohio Constitution. A YES vote on Issue 1 takes abortion out of the hands of the gerrymandered GOP legislature.

Kentucky's Democratic governor is up for re-election.

The Virginia legislature is up for election. If Republicans gain control of both chambers they will try to ban abortion; reproductive tyranny is part of the GOP agenda whenever they hold a trifecta in a state. There's also a special election to fill a vacancy for a US House seat in VA-04.

The state legislature in New Jersey is up for election.

There are judicial elections in Pennsylvania including for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. There's also a special election to fill a vacancy in the Penn House of Representatives which is currently tied 101 Democrats – 101 Republicans.

All state offices in Mississippi including governor and legislature are up for election. Surprisingly, polls show the GOP incumbent governor ahead by just 1% with 10% undecided.

Like Mississippi, all state offices in Louisiana are up for election.

Rhode Island has a special election to fill a vacancy for a US House seat in RI-01.

^^^ Those are just the highlights. There are elections of some sort in most states on November 7th.

Republicans may grumble at times, but they always turn out for elections. They have a disproportionate amount of power in the US because they vote while many of their liberal neighbors stay home or become too ideologically persnickety.

Allegedly "moderate" GOP House members ultimately fell in line and unanimously backed a far right Speaker.

Elections at all levels count. Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson got his start in politics in the Louisiana legislature. He is now the highest ranking GOP elected official in the US.

There's no such thing as an unimportant election. Vote in the November 7th election and actively encourage like-minded friends, family, and neighbors to do so as well.

Be A Voter - Vote Save America

[darkmaga-returns]

11/05/2024•Mises Wire•Tho Bishop

Today, in theory, will conclude the 2024 presidential election, one of the most bizarre in American political history. From inner-party coups to assassination attempts, Kamala’s Brat summer social media trend to Trump’s courting of comedian podcasts, the campaign cycle has been saturated with the unconventional. It has, of course, also seen its expected share of shallow, political, rhetorical rhetoric and general economic illiteracy, which are the cornerstones of modern democracy.

The general superficial nature of mainstream political discourse, though, should not distract us from recognizing foundational truths about the state of modern American politics. No matter the outcome, the legitimacy of American democracy is broken.

In 2020, this was in full display, as was the response from Donald Trump and his supporters. Fueled by the unprecedented changes to the election under the shadow of covid, President Trump refused to concede the election. Polls showed the majority of his supporters agreed with him, and from that seed of distrust grew renewed concerns over illegal voters, manipulable voting machines, and rising awareness over the security of vote-by-mail ballots. To this day, large portions of the country continue to believe the Biden administration was illegitimate.

How would Democrats have reacted in the face of a similarly close race resulting in a Trump victory last election? While the counterfactual is impossible to consider in practice, hints were already publicly available before election day 2020. In Biden campaign war games, John Podesta, a long-time Democrat operative, outlined a strategy quite similar to the one Trump embarked on. As reported at the time, this included Democrat-swing state governors being pressured into promoting friendly alternative electors to vote in the electoral college under the guise of reversing Republican “voter suppression” efforts. Unlike the Republican response in 2020, this appeal would have been strengthened by blue-state secession threats should Trump have been inaugurated.

Would Joe Biden have followed through with this strategy if this alternative timeline had played out? We will never know. Nor can we know the potential effectiveness of this strategy, though it is likely such efforts would have been treated quite differently than Trump’s response.

Still, as we look forward, what is clear here is that the willingness for either side to accept, without question, the basic machinery of American politics has broken down significantly. The centralization of power within Washington, which consistently elevates the stakes of national politics, coupled with significant ideological shifts (particularly on the left), and the perceived danger Trump represents to American political institutions, regardless of his demonstrated ability to follow through after 2016, has created a dynamic where the incentives to concede power for the alleged “national good” have all but broken down.

Each side is motivated by a spirit of self-preservation, not politics.

[steelbluehome]

1 Nov 2024

US elections: European Greens call for Jill Stein to step down

On 5 November 2024 the world will be watching to see whether Americans choose Kamala Harris or Donald Trump to be their next president. Ahead of these pivotal elections, European Greens have called upon US Green Party candidate Jill Stein to withdraw her Presidential candidacy, and endorse Kamala Harris. 

The stakes of these elections could not be higher. 

Donald Trump has promised that if he becomes President again, he will extend abortion bans, deny members of the LGBTQIA+ community their rights, and deport migrants en masse. Like other ultra-conservative politicians across the globe with whom he has close relationships such as Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, and Jair Bolsonaro he would undermine democracy. 

The European Green family, made up of Green parties from across Europe, advocates for a politics that prioritises the planet, people and peace above corporate greed, systemic injustice, and violence. 

We are clear that Kamala Harris is the only candidate who can block Donald Trump and his anti-democratic, authoritarian policies from the White House. 

This election takes place at a watershed moment in the history of our planet. We face a climate crisis that is worsening every year, with heatwaves, floods, and a loss of biodiversity at a rate never seen before. Climate policies require democratic institutions, which we fear would be dismantled if Trump is elected.

On top of this, wars are raging and authoritarianism is growing throughout the world. In this crucial moment, Europe needs Kamala Harris as President of the United States, to be a reliable partner and to take the urgent, decisive action needed on the climate crisis, and to bring about a just and sustainable peace in the Middle East. 

European Greens also highlight the divergent values and policies of themselves and Jill Stein’s US Green Party. There is no link between the two, as the US Greens are no longer a member of the global organisation of Green parties. In part this fissure resulted from their relationship with parties with authoritarian leaders, and serious policy differences on key issues including Russia’s full scale assault on Ukraine.

Right now, the race for the White House is too close for comfort. We call on Jill Stein to withdraw from the race, and endorse Kamala Harris for the presidency of the United States.

Mélanie Vogel, European Greens Co-chair and French Senator

Thomas Waitz, European Greens Co-chair and Austrian Member of the European Parliament

Groen - BELGIUM

Ecolo - BELGIUM

SF Green Left - DENMARK

Erakond Eestimaa Rohelised - ESTONIA

Vihreät - De Gröna - FINLAND

Les Écologistes - FRANCE

Bündnis90/Die Grünen - GERMANY

Irish Green Party / Comhaontas Glas - IRELAND

Europa Verde  - ITALY

Partidul Verde Ecologist - MOLDOVA

GroenLinks - NETHERLANDS

Miljøpartiet De Grønne - NORWAY

Livre - PORTUGAL

Esquerra Verda - SPAIN

Miljöpartiet de gröna - SWEDEN

Grüne / Les Vert.e.s - SWITZERLAND

Zieloni - POLAND

Partija Zelenykh Ukrainy - UKRAINE

[deaddee-anime-brownfanlady]

STOP PROJECT 2025 COMIC

Different Comic book artists have gotten together to fully illustrate and showcase how scary and horrific project 2025 actually is and what's could happen afterward if Trump wins and if the Heritage foundation detailed plans are fully implemented in America.

This shit isn't a joke, nor is it funny and should be taken Fucking seriously.

Again, it's either keeping Democracy intact or having Christian Nationalism control the U.S. government and turning it into a far-right authoritarian theocratic Christto-Fascist country. This election shouldn't be that hard to decide on....

[mariacallous]

U.S. President Joe Biden delivered one of the most political—and politically significant—State of the Union addresses in memory on Thursday night, laying out in the starkest of terms the stakes of the forthcoming election for the United States and the entire world.

Considering that the United States is not under direct threat of war, perhaps what was most striking about the speech was that Biden opened it by invoking President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s State of the Union from January 1941, ahead of America’s entry into World War II. “I address you in a moment unprecedented in the history of the union,” Biden quoted FDR as saying.

“Now, it’s we who face an unprecedented moment,” Biden said. And then, without ever naming him, Biden cast his almost-certain 2024 opponent, former President Donald Trump, in the menacing role of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. If that were not enough, Biden immediately went on to identify Trump and his “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement with the Confederates who seceded from the union.

“Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today,” Biden said. “What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack both at home and overseas at the very same time.”

In other words, the president seemed to be saying, the nation faces in Trump an even more perilous threat today than FDR and Abraham Lincoln—generally considered two of the greatest U.S. presidents in history—did individually. Biden then proceeded to lambaste his “predecessor”—as he repeatedly called Trump—over and over. Biden accused Trump of “bowing down” to Russian President Vladimir Putin over his Ukraine invasion; fomenting political violence at home (“You can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden said); sounding like a fascist by saying immigrants are “poison in the blood of our country”; and shrugging his shoulders over endemic gun violence.

Biden repeatedly sounded the theme of the combined domestic and foreign threat posed by Trump: that is, peace in peril abroad, democracy undermined at home. “If the United States walks away, it will put Ukraine at risk. Europe is at risk. The free world will be at risk, emboldening others to what they wish to do us harm,” he said. “History is watching. Just like history watched three years ago on Jan. 6, when insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger to the throat of American democracy.”

One thing is clear: Biden and his team were intent on overcoming, all at once, the cascading doubts about his age (81) and his record that have left him with grim approval ratings, virtually turning him into an underdog against Trump with just eight months to go. The president waited until the end of his nearly 70-minute speech to confront the single biggest issue of his reelection bid—his age—but he did it forcefully and without any obvious flagging of energy.

“I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around awhile,” Biden joked, giving his big, white-toothed grin. “When you get to my age, certain things become clearer than ever before. … My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old are our ideas. Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.”

Will it work to save his presidency? Biden’s 2023 State of the Union, despite getting rave reviews, didn’t affect his low approval ratings much. This address, however, landed at a very different moment. Coming only two days after Biden’s big wins on Super Tuesday and the departure of Trump’s last Republican opponent, Nikki Haley, from the presidential race, the speech also served as a harsh reality check for the American electorate. For the first time, it is apparent that Biden isn’t going anywhere and that Trump will be his opponent eight months from now—that only this halting 81-year-old man stands between disaster and the continuation of American democracy, in the eyes of many Americans.

The obvious bet of the Biden campaign is that the threat of a would-be autocrat—much like an imminent hanging—concentrates the mind wonderfully, in Samuel Johnson’s formulation. Suddenly, people no longer have the luxury of wishing they had someone 30 years younger, or more inspirational, to vote for. It’s just Joe and Donald now. People are clearly not excited about a Biden second term, even most Democrats. But if that is all they’re left with—if the choice is a bad cold versus cancer—then the course suddenly becomes clearer.

“People always like to say that they have to choose between the lesser of two evils,” Norm Kurz, Biden’s former Senate communications director, said in an email. “Biden’s refrain that voters should not compare him to the Almighty but to the alternative will begin to resonate.”

His speech recalled past moments when U.S. presidents sought to clarify the stakes at an existential level. None more so than Lincoln’s 1862 State of the Union address, when he said, “The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.” Or John F. Kennedy’s warning in January 1961—at the height of the Cold War—that the nation faced “an hour of national peril and national opportunity” when “we shall have to test anew whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can endure.”

Yet it was also a measure of the delicate balance that Biden has been forced to achieve in his presidency—restoring America’s traditional global cop role while playing to the neo-isolationist sentiment that Trump has awakened—that the president deferred to the millions of voters who believe the United States is overextended in the world. He touted his “Buy American” neo-protectionist approach to national security, saying, “Past administrations including my predecessor … failed to buy American”—and even as he pushed again for a $60.1 billion aid package to Ukraine, he repeated that American troops would not get pulled in.

Biden also sought to stamp out a brewing progressive insurgency over his pro-Israel Middle East policy—hundreds of thousands of primary voters registered their discontent with him on Tuesday, and protesters Thursday sought to block his motorcade to the Capitol—by announcing the creation of a pier off the coast of Gaza that would “enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance” going to besieged Palestinians.

Here, as well, Biden pledged, “No U.S. boots will be on the ground.”

Biden spent the majority of his speech in more traditional State of the Union fashion, spelling out a positive agenda that contrasted with Trump’s “ancient ideas” and reminding voters of his greatest accomplishments. Among them, “the most significant action ever on climate in the history of the world”—cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030 and creating tens of thousands of clean-energy jobs—and his Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including 46,000 new projects “moderniz[ing] our roads and bridges, ports and airports, public transit systems,” as well as a spate of new gun laws. Biden boasted about preserving NATO—“the strongest military alliance the world has ever seen”—and introduced the prime minister of Sweden, the alliance’s newest member, who stood up grinning and waving in the gallery.

The president also announced plans to increase taxes on corporate wealth; remove tax breaks for Big Pharma, Big Oil, and executive pay; and noted he has signed into law a bill that dramatically reduces the cost of prescription drugs. He also hit Trump hard on reproductive rights, which polls show have hurt Republicans badly, saying abortion opponents have “no clue about the power of women” in America. Biden declared, “I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.”

On the issue that has most frustrated him, the economy—which polls show a plurality of voters believe Trump would be stronger on despite strong growth numbers—Biden continued to insist that it’s just a matter of time before voters realize how good they now have it. “I inherited an economy that was on the brink. Now our economy is literally the envy of the world. Fifteen million new jobs in just three years—a record, a record. Unemployment at 50-year lows,” he said. “Wages keep going up. Inflation keeps coming down. Inflation has dropped from 9 percent to 3 percent—the lowest in the world.”

The rhetoric was rousing, even incendiary, possibly a little desperate. But Biden, let’s face it, will never be a great speechmaker. The stiffness, slurring, and occasional stutter that seem to make every Biden speech a breathless high-wire act—one never knows if he’ll get all the way through a sentence without stumbling—were all there Thursday night, accompanied by an occasional coughing spell between applause lines.

Yet the president also didn’t commit any major gaffes and finished as strong as he started. The president was effective, too, in repeating his tactic from last year’s speech in mocking GOP lawmakers who shouted out insults, especially given how ineffective and obstructionist the Republican House has been. Without quite saying so, Biden came close to emulating President Harry S. Truman’s successful 1948 tactic of attacking the infamous “do-nothing” Congress. Over and over, Biden challenged the Republican-led House of Representatives to pass long-stalled legislation, especially the Ukraine national security aid. In any case, the Republicans were repeatedly drowned out by chants of “four more years” from Democrats, which also gave the whole affair the flavor of a campaign rally.

Biden’s State of the Union address was always going to be less about what he said than how he said it—how he spoke, how he walked to the podium, how he responded to his hecklers—and by that measure he succeeded. Above all, Biden was plainly showing his confidence that American voters will come to see, finally, that his programs are working.

The challenge for Biden—and Americans—is that his opponent, the previous president, is now deploying similarly apocalyptic rhetoric. In a speech in late February, Trump also drew comparisons to World War II, saying, “This time, the greatest threat is not from the outside of our country, I really believe this. It’s the people from within our country that are more dangerous. They’re very sick people.” And following his victories in 14 states Tuesday night, Trump said that under Biden the United States had been reduced to “a third-world country.”

The data of accomplishments are clearly on Biden’s side. Even so, Biden can no longer be as confident—as he was after the 2022 midterm elections—that it’s just a question of time before voters appreciate his policies. The day after the midterm elections, Biden projected confidence in the country’s direction, responding “nothing” when asked what he will do differently in the next two years.

That tactic didn’t work. It remains to be seen whether the president’s new one will.

[plethoraworldatlas]

Remember when I said Democrats will start openly calling for him to drop out in less than a week?

Crediting U.S. President Joe Biden with spearheading "transformational" changes since taking office three-and-a-half years ago, Rep. Lloyd Doggett on Tuesday became the first Democratic member of Congress to call on the president to withdraw from the 2024 electoral race, warning that a potential victory by former President Donald Trump would "usher America into a long, dark, authoritarian era."

With just four months until Election Day, and weeks until the Democratic Party formally nominates its presidential candidate, Doggett (D-Texas) said in a statement that the party's "overriding consideration must be who has the best hope of saving our democracy from an authoritarian takeover by a criminal and his gang."

Doggett spoke out five days after Biden faced Trump in the first debate of the presidential campaign and alarmed viewers, Democratic strategists, and aides with his performance. The president, speaking in a raspy voice and appearing to lose his train of thought several times, struggled to make the case for his achievements and to call out Trump's repeated lies.

The debate reportedly sent a wave of panic through the Democratic Caucus, with one party insider telling Politico that names of potential replacements for Biden were being floated.

In his statement, Doggett noted that Biden's poll numbers compared to Trump's were cause for concern for several months before the debate.

"Too much is at stake to risk a Trump victory—too great a risk to assume that what could not be turned around in a year, what could not be turned around in the debate, can be turned around now," said Doggett. "President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2021. He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024."

Doggett's comments came as CNN released a poll showing that Trump is leading Biden by 49% v. 43%, while his lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in a potential matchup is smaller. Trump leads the vice president by two points.

Among Independent voters, Harris has a three-point edge over the former president, while Trump leads Biden by 10 points.

A separate poll released Tuesday by the progressive grassroots group Our Revolution showed that 67% of respondents supported Biden suspending his reelection campaign

Doggett noted that the days following the debate have made increasingly clear the danger of a potential second Trump term, as the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Trump has "absolute immunity" regarding "official acts" he committed while he was in office—casting doubt on whether he can be held accountable for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and rendering any U.S. president, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, "a king above the law."

"Newly empowered with immunity," said Doggett, Trump would be "unchecked by either the courts or a submissive Republican Congress."

The congressman noted that while Biden has spearheaded some far-reaching legislative reforms, the president signaled earlier in his term that he planned to serve only one term.

"He has the opportunity to encourage a new generation of leaders from whom a nominee can be chosen to unite our country through an open, democratic process," said Doggett. "Recognizing that, unlike Trump, his first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw. I respectfully call on him to do so."

Doggett told Matthew Choi of The Texas Tribune that he had notified the White House of his decision to speak out in favor of Biden stepping aside last Friday, the day after the debate.

"After the debate, the risk of a Trump presidency has grown so much that I felt forced to take this action," Doggett said.

Another survey released Tuesday by Puck News showed alternative candidates including Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer polling ahead of Biden in a potential matchup with Trump.

In light of the the new polling numbers, said former Rhode Island lawmaker and lawyer Aaron Regunberg, Democratic leaders who are "trying to shut down this debate are actively helping Trump."

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Asawin Suebsaeng, Tim Dickinson, and Ryan Bort at Rolling Stone:

Donald Trump — the twice impeached former president, Jan. 6 coup leader, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual abuser, and man who mismanaged the 2020 economic implosion and coronavirus disaster that killed more than 1 million people in this country — has convinced American voters to give him another term in the White House.

After a campaign marked by nativism, open bigotry, and aspiring authoritarianism, Trump triumphed over Vice President Kamala Harris, despite being denounced by several of those who worked most closely with him in his first term as a “fascist.” The 45th president will become the 47th in late January. Trump got out to an early lead on Tuesday and never looked back, securing North Carolina and Georgia before shattering the Democratic “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The race was called at 5:35 a.m. EST by the Associated Press after Trump earned 270 electoral college votes by winning Wisconsin. [...]

The stakes of a Trump victory could not be higher for many of the most vulnerable people living in this country. Trump’s central campaign promise has been to embark on the largest mass-deportation program in the nation’s history, a supercharged version of a racist Eisenhower-era program called “Operation Wetback.” Trump has promised to forcibly remove millions, and said that it will be a “bloody story.” He has vowed to employ local law enforcement, sheriffs, and, if necessary, the armed forces.

Trump has also vowed to use the Justice Department as an instrument of revenge on his political enemies, to crack down on media outlets that have criticized him, to hollow out the professional ranks of the federal government (and stock it full of his MAGA cronies), and to impose massive tariffs that will increase the cost of everything from avocados and automobiles to iPhones and apparel. 

America’s democracy has rarely been in a more fragile place. The country has chosen a leader who has promised to govern as a strongman, and who will not be held accountable for breaking the law, thanks to a ruling by his hand-selected, far-right Supreme Court majority that puts the presidency beyond the reach of criminal prosecution. This implausible victory — coming after a chaotic campaign that saw Democrats change candidates mid-election, and Trump galumph down the closing stretch with an increasingly bizarre series of stunts, including dressing up as a garbage man — also has huge stakes for Trump personally. 

As early as the summer of 2021, according to three sources familiar with the matter, longtime political operatives and GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill who had remained in direct contact with Trump were coalescing around a shared belief: If the criminal investigations into the former president keep ramping up, and especially if charges materialize, there is no way he doesn’t run for the presidency again. This conviction was based on conversations these Trump allies had been having with the ex-president at the time, when Trump’s fixation on, and barely veiled anxiety about, prosecution and potential prison sentences was already palpable. As time inched closer and closer to the 2022 midterm elections, Trump would, in discussions with close advisers about running again, increasingly ramble about the unique legal protections from prosecution that a sitting American president enjoys.

Two years, several history-making indictments of a former president, and billions of dollars later, those anxieties continued to fester in Trump’s brain. Over the 2024 election season, he and his allies had brainstormed and plotted numerous ways to shield him from dire legal consequences; earlier this year, the former president personally pressured multiple Republican lawmakers to pass legislation essentially designed to keep him out of prison forever. (This law did not pass, but stay tuned.)  Trump appears in the clear for at least another four years after voters handed him his long-coveted get-out-of-jail-free card on Tuesday. [...]

Trump won this year even though — and, surely in some cases, because — he ran on imposing upon the American people and global community an openly authoritarian regime concerned largely with score-settling. In addition to pledging mass deportations, militarized crackdowns, and disassembling and reconstructing the federal government around protecting and empowering himself, the former president loudly and explicitly ran on a platform of letting fellow Americans die if he doesn’t get his way or if your local leaders don’t bend to his will. Trump has recently threatened to deny potentially life-saving natural disaster aid to states whose leaders don’t bend to his wishes, threats that should be taken seriously given his history of withholding such aid for political reasons.

[...] Trump’s win demonstrates that the most powerful people in the country are indeed above the law. An elderly, foul-mouthed, racist game-show host can try, in broad daylight, while the TV cameras are fixed on him, to execute a coup d’état in our nation’s capital, people can die from it, and in a few short years be rewarded with the full-throated support of his political party, and now the keys to the White House.

For just the 2nd time in American history, A president who previously lost an election wins a 2nd non-consecutive term, as Grover Cleveland was the first to do so.

34x convicted felon, insurrection-inciter, adjudicated rapist, fascist, and vile bigot Donald J. Trump, who tried everything he could to sabotage his re-election bid, won the 2024 elections… this time with the popular vote to likely swing his way.

Assuming the 2-terms limit applies to consecutive and nonconsecutive terms, 2028 will be a wide open Presidential election for both parties (provided that America has free elections still at that point).

[sillymickel]

(via Our freedom, our lives, & all life on Earth is at stake in the November 2024 election... How to acquire my book, *Culture War, Class War 2022*, free, to help a Democratic win)

Our freedom, our lives, & all life on Earth is at stake in the November 2024 election… How to acquire my book, *Culture War, Class War 2022*, free, to help a Democratic win

 https://apocalypseknow.wordpress.com/2024/07/12/acquiringcw22/

 *Culture War, Class War 2022: Truth & Generations* by Michael Adzema (2022) presents a dire warning about the existential threats facing humanity.

 The book covers how the 1% uses Culture War to disguise Class War, and how the current global crises and the upcoming U.S. presidential election will impact the future of democracy and freedom.

 It emphasizes the crucial need for continued Democratic wins to combat fascism and environmental collapse, with a particular focus on the role of Trump, Putin, and the wealthy elite in exacerbating these issues.

#history #psychology #politics #MAGAts #ClassWar #Harris2024 #Trump #Republicans #CultureWar #FilthyRich #60s #media #Roe #resist #gaslighting #corruption #election #confusion #corporations #BlueWave #truth #lies #Biden #psychohistory #resistance #fascism #January6th #BLM #Democrats #RoeVsWade #RoeOverturned___

The book is available for free and aims to raise public awareness and resistance against oppressive forces.