#failure to endorse a presidential candidate | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ceilidhtransing · 5 months ago

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I see people saying “a vote for a third party isn't a vote for Trump, no matter how much you try to tell me it is” and while this statement makes sense from one perspective, it also sadly just misunderstands the material reality of politics.

If we're talking about voting purely as something that affects the moral tally of your individual heart, then yes, a vote for the Greens or whatever isn't morally equivalent to a vote for Trump. If the way you think about this is in terms of getting to the pearly gates and being asked “and did you always vote for the purest and most morally clean person?” then yes, a Green vote is not the same as having to say “actually I voted for Trump”.

But down here in the real world where voting isn't about maintaining your own personal sense of having a Morally Untarnished Heart but about, you know, real material consequences, a vote for a third party is functionally, if not morally, equivalent to a vote for Trump. You might not be voting for Trump but you are voting in a way that only makes it harder for the only candidate that has an actual chance in hell of beating Trump to win. There is no world in which that does not simply help Trump. You are splitting the anti-Trump vote and making it easier for him to win because that is how this voting system unfortunately works. Frankly, you may as well be voting for Trump.

“But my vote isn't an endorsement of Trump! It's an endorsement of the exact opposite values of Trump!” Yes, but again, this terrible first-past-the-post voting system does not produce “the average of all the values that people voted for”. Any votes that don't go towards the winner are wasted votes. And the winner, especially if that winner is Trump, will not care that you voted Green. They will govern just the same, and your voice will carry no weight at all electorally.

“Stop blaming people who vote third party for all the terrible things Republicans decide to do! Those things aren't my fault; I didn't vote for them.” There is a certain value to the argument “it's not my fault for voting third party; it's the Democrats' fault for not putting up a candidate I could vote for”. But this slightly falls apart when it comes to the people who have already decided they will always vote third party, regardless of how perfect a candidate the Democrats run, so this whole “it's the Democrats' job to convince me” is purely theoretical. And I too hate the way our society often defaults to blaming leftists for whatever the right does, as if leftists are the only ones with political agency and the right can never be held accountable for anything. But when leftists had an opportunity to prevent the right from doing something evil and they chose their own moral purity over an imperfect choice that would nevertheless have prevented some harm, then no, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to place some of the blame on those people.

US presidential elections hang on relatively tiny numbers of people in only a few crucial swing states. And because 132,476 people in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin decided to vote Green rather than Democrat in 2016, abortion is illegal in 13 states. That's less than 0.04% of the US population. Even margins that small matter. And no, those people didn't vote “against abortion”, but their failure to tactically unite behind the candidate who would have protected reproductive rights and who had a chance of actually winning directly led to the victory of the anti-abortion candidate. I'm sure all the people who now can't access abortion (ironically, none of whom lives in MI, PA or WI) are really glad that those people voted with their hearts rather than strategically. Votes have consequences, and things do change (for the worse, as well as for the better), much as some people like to harp on about how “nothing ever changes” and “your vote doesn't matter”.

“But why are you blaming those people? What about the people who actually voted Republican? Or the people who didn't vote at all?” Well, first off, this post is about third-party voting, not Republican voters or non-voters. But I do feel there is more ground to be gained by talking about the consequences of third-party voting than by discussing the others. Many Republican voters are essentially unreachable; they're not remotely progressive, so trying to convince them that they should be voting Democrat is mostly like talking to a brick wall. And non-voters are the people who didn't show up anyway; arguably they should have shown up, but they didn't. But third-party voters got involved, made sure they were registered to vote, got all the way to the voting booth, and then decided to vote not in the way that would defend at least some progressive values, but in the way that would only make it harder to beat the ultra-regressive candidate. There's an understanding that a lot of third-party voters are on the right side, they're just not making the right strategic decision, which is why so much more progressive energy gets put towards trying to convince e.g. Green voters than towards trying to convince people who aren't even remotely on our side to begin with.

“But both major candidates are agents of capital who will ultimately work for the continuation of the American empire. I'm voting for the benefit of the world, not just for the benefit of a few people in the US.” I'm not going to argue with you over that first sentence, because yes, you are correct. Both Democrats and Republicans ultimately support capitalism and both Democratic and Republican presidents have been responsible for some absolutely heinous crimes of US foreign and military policy. But as a non-American, the idea that voting in a way that makes it easier for Trump to win rather than uniting behind the person who might actually beat him - who is still flawed, but orders of magnitude better than him - is in some way liberatory to the rest of the world is just... what??? Do you not hear the people who are screaming “please stop the guy who's basically in favour of Putin annihilating Ukraine and endangering the rest of Central and Eastern Europe”? The people who are screaming “please stop the guy who seems like he just can't wait to drop nukes somewhere”? The people who are screaming “please stop the guy whose victory will only embolden the far right in our own countries and make it harder for us to beat them here”? Non-Americans are, by and large, not saying “ah yes, we are grateful that you chose moral purity rather than supporting one of the two capitalist candidates who will continue US imperialism”; we are screaming “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T LET TRUMP GET ELECTED; THIS WILL MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE FOR ALL OF US”. Your Green vote does not help the world right now. Please get behind the person who isn't a massive, immediate, almost unprecedented threat to everything we hold dear, and then we can fight for a better world together.

#politics #us politics #american politics #us election #election 2024 #2024 elections #us elections #2024 presidential election #project 2025 #agenda 47 #anti trump #please vote #your vote matters #voting matters #trump #biden #harris #my posts

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justinspoliticalcorner · 4 months ago

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Vittoria Elliott at Wired:

Ahead of the US elections, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, has used the platform as his own personal political bullhorn. On July 26, Musk posted a video of vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in which a deepfake of her voice appears to make her say that she is the “ultimate DEI hire” and a “deep-state puppet.” The post now bears a community note indicating that it is a parody. But many alleged that, shared without appropriate context, the video could have violated X’s policies on synthetic, or AI-altered, media. This was the culmination of Musk’s recent political rhetoric. Over the past month, Musk, after officially endorsing former president Donald Trump, has also boosted baseless conspiracies of a “coup” following Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, and insinuated that the Trump assassination attempt might have been the result of an intentional failure on the part of the Secret Service. After endorsing Trump, Musk announced that he was starting a pro-Trump political action committee (PAC), and initially committed to donate $45 million a month, before backtracking.

Former Twitter trust and safety employees say that Musk’s increasingly partisan behavior around the US elections and other major events is a sign that he is doing exactly what he accused the company’s former leadership of doing: playing politics. “It’s staggering hypocrisy,” says one former Twitter employee. “Musk is smart enough to know social media is media, and it’s a way to control the narrative.”

Three former employees, who spoke to WIRED on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, expressed concern that Musk presents a new kind of actor—someone who seeks to actively use a platform to reshape politics in both the US and abroad, and is willing to endure regulatory fines and declining advertising revenue to do so. “He is consolidating power and has systematically dismantled all markers of credibility at the company,” the former employee says. “However, I think it takes on additional significance when the person he is targeting is a presidential candidate.” Authorities appear to agree. Earlier this week, secretaries of state from Minnesota, Washington, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Mexico sent a letter to X demanding changes to Grok, the platform’s generative AI search tool, after it returned false information claiming Harris had missed the deadline to be on the presidential ballot in nine states.

Musk and X did not respond to a request for comment. Musk has been ramping up to this moment for years. When he purchased Twitter in 2022, he promised free-speech absolutism. After taking over, Musk immediately fired the majority of the company’s policy and trust and safety staff, who were responsible for keeping hateful and misinformative content off the platform. This included those responsible for guiding the platform through contentious elections. As the former employees noted, there is now no one at the company to deal with a flood of election-related misinformation, let alone what Musk himself might spread. “There’s almost no one left,” the former employee says. Disinformation and hate speech on X have ballooned on the site, and a recent Pew Research study found that X has taken on a partisan tilt. Since Musk’s takeover, it’s become more popular with Republican users and less popular with Democrats, who are less likely than Republicans to say their views are welcomed at the site.

Ever since Elon Musk gotten ahold of X (formerly Twitter), he has turned it into a playground for far-right extremism.

#Elon Musk #X #Twitter #Social Media #Donald Trump #Right Wing Extremism #America PAC

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mariacallous · 4 months ago

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Ahead of the US elections, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, has used the platform as his own personal political bullhorn.

On July 26, Musk posted a video of vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in which a deepfake of her voice appears to make her say that she is the “ultimate DEI hire” and a “deep-state puppet.” The post now bears a community note indicating that it is a parody. But many alleged that, shared without appropriate context, the video could have violated X’s policies on synthetic, or AI-altered, media.

This was the culmination of Musk’s recent political rhetoric. Over the past month, Musk, after officially endorsing former president Donald Trump, has also boosted baseless conspiracies of a “coup” following Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, and insinuated that the Trump assassination attempt might have been the result of an intentional failure on the part of the Secret Service. After endorsing Trump, Musk announced that he was starting a pro-Trump political action committee (PAC), and initially committed to donate $45 million a month, before backtracking.

“It’s staggering hypocrisy,” says one former Twitter employee. “Musk is smart enough to know social media is media, and it’s a way to control the narrative.”

“He is consolidating power and has systematically dismantled all markers of credibility at the company,” the former employee says. “However, I think it takes on additional significance when the person he is targeting is a presidential candidate.”

Authorities appear to agree. Earlier this week, secretaries of state from Minnesota, Washington, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Mexico sent a letter to X demanding changes to Grok, the platform’s generative AI search tool, after it returned false information claiming Harris had missed the deadline to be on the presidential ballot in nine states.

Musk and X did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk has been ramping up to this moment for years. When he purchased Twitter in 2022, he promised free-speech absolutism. After taking over, Musk immediately fired the majority of the company’s policy and trust and safety staff, who were responsible for keeping hateful and misinformative content off the platform. This included those responsible for guiding the platform through contentious elections. As the former employees noted, there is now no one at the company to deal with a flood of election-related misinformation, let alone what Musk himself might spread.

“There’s almost no one left,” the former employee says.

Disinformation and hate speech on X have ballooned on the site, and a recent Pew Research study found that X has taken on a partisan tilt. Since Musk’s takeover, it’s become more popular with Republican users and less popular with Democrats, who are less likely than Republicans to say their views are welcomed at the site.

The actual composition of the site’s user base has changed, with people who had been kicked off the platform for violating Twitter’s community standards being let back on under Musk. Trump himself was famously unbanned, but a wide array of avowed white supremacists, conspiracists, and neo-Nazis also flooded back onto the platform, including far-right pundit Nick Fuentes, QAnon proponent Liz Crokin, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and election denier Mike Lindell.

The platform’s new blue check system, which allows anyone willing to purchase a subscription to get a marker that previously confirmed they were who they claimed to be next to their name, has also contributed to the growing misinformation problem. While the system used to be free and reserved for verified public figures, politicians, and journalists, anonymous accounts like @Sprinter99800 and @ShadowofEzra are now able to use the algorithmic boost offered by the subscription model to spread misinformation about the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, respectively. Blue check accounts are, further, incentivized to spread outrageous claims because they can be paid based on how much engagement their posts get.

“He has a very obvious political agenda,” says one former member of Twitter’s policy team. Looking back at the last few years, they referred to Musk’s release of what he dubbed the “Twitter Files,” a cache of internal documents. The documents, according to Musk, revealed the political biases of the platform’s previous leaders—according to others, they showed mundane interactions with researchers and government employees—but also led to the doxing and harassment of former trust and safety employees and misinformation researchers.

Musk has also used the platform to put his thumb on the scale of politics outside the United States.

Last year, after Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro lost his bid for reelection, his supporters stormed the country’s legislature, in an echo of January 6, 2021. In April, Musk defied an order from Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court to remove the accounts of far-right actors who, the court said, violated the country’s laws by undermining confidence in the country’s electoral processes. X then released the court’s confidential orders to the Congressional Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which then made them public. Experts and government officials at the time said the move was a deliberate attempt by a foreign billionaire to undermine the country’s democratic institutions.

While Musk has repeatedly asserted that he took over Twitter to preserve its commitment to free speech, the company has complied with censorship from right-leaning governments. Last year, the company complied with an order from Turkey’s authoritarian government to censor content ahead of the country’s elections and blocked a BBC documentary about India’s right-wing Hindu nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi.

Instances like this, the first former employee tells WIRED, show that Musk is an entirely different actor than other tech CEOs, unbothered by the kinds of laws or norms that could be used to reign in another company. Musk doesn’t appear to be cowed by penalties like fines for spreading misinformation that are meant to keep billionaires and companies in check to protect the public interest.

“Regulation is not written for overtly malicious actors,” says the first former employee. “We don't have good regulation anywhere in the world that thinks about corporate entities like that … and it’s certainly not how we are used to treating a man who owns multiple companies.”

Because Musk’s own politics and priorities appear so clear, even decisions made seemingly without a political agenda can be interpreted as part of one. Last week, the X account for White Dudes for Harris was booted from the platform, causing many supporters of the vice president to wonder if this was Musk’s own political preferences playing out on X in real time. But a third former Twitter trust and safety employee who spoke with WIRED says it appears to be a pretty standard suspension that can happen when someone who has been banned from the platform in the past makes a new account. “Whoever set up the account most likely had an email address, IP address, or phone number that matched an account that had previously been banned on the platform. That would automatically be a penalty.”

The former employee says that the fact that people could not be sure if it was the result of Musk’s politics, or just a good old-fashioned moderation snafu is the real problem: “The fact that we have to ask those questions just shows the trust is gone. The misinformation has won.”

In an interview with the Atlantic, Musk said he would accept the results of the election should Harris win. But whether that will hold true in November is still cause for concern. Last week, after the Venezuelan elections wrapped in what experts said appeared to be a stolen victory for the country’s current president Nicolás Maduro, Musk railed against Maduro on X, even challenging him to a physical fight.

“What does it look like if this same sort of advocacy happens come November or December, in which he really believes that the election has been stolen or the vote counts aren't there?” the former employee says. It’s the same type of question that the former trust and safety teams were asking themselves about Trump during the 2020 presidential election. “It's very eerily kind of the same situation, except it’s the CEO and owner of the platform making those decisions, who also has the final say in content moderation decisions.”

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posttexasstressdisorder · 3 months ago

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/martha-stewart-just-quietly-endorsed-kamala-harris-for-president?ref=home?ref=home

Entertainment

Martha Stewart Just Quietly Made a Rare Presidential Endorsement

‘KEEP IT QUIET’

After declining to endorse a candidate in 2020, Stewart has finally broken her silence on the 2024 election.

Eboni Boykin-Patterson

Entertainment Reporter

Updated Sep. 13, 2024 10:51AM EDT / Published Sep. 13, 2024 10:50AM EDT

Photo credit: Julie Stapen

Martha Stewart has finally weighed in on the 2024 election and endorsed a candidate.

During the 2024 Retail Influencer CEO Forum Tuesday, Stewart shared that she would definitely be tuning in to the evening’s debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump: “Oh, you bet.” But for the first time this go-round, she also said who she’s voting for: “Kamala,” she said, with an emphasis on its correct pronunciation.

Martha Stewart and Joanna Coles at the 2024 Retail Influencer CEO Forum on Tuesday, September 10, 2024.

Julie Stapen

The 83-year-old lifestyle maven has been critical of Trump going back to 2006, when they both had versions of The Apprentice airing at the same time. After Stewart’s version of the show faced low viewership, she blamed Trump for not honoring a deal she said they had for her to “fire” him, making way for her show to be the only one: “Having two Apprentices was as unfair to him as it was unfair to me,” she said at the time.

Trump, in turn, responded by chastising her with a public letter, accusing her of lying about an agreement and later told the press, “I wish she would be able to take responsibility for her failure,” as the two feuded.

She did publicly support Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016, telling CNN, “We just can’t have a country run by someone who is totally unprepared for what comes.”

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Martha Stewart and Donald Trump "fire" up NBC's promo campaign for both "Apprentice" shows. The two icons gathered together to shoot multiple on-air spots for NBC on August 8, 2005.

NBC Universal

After Trump’s victory in 2016, Stewart walked back her previous comments, congratulating him and expressing her excitement about having a “true entrepreneur in the White House.” She then stayed notably silent on the subject when Trump ran against Joe Biden in 2020.

In an interview with The New York Times in 2020, Stewart was asked whether or not she planned to endorse Biden or Trump for president—a question she dodged. “My personal conundrum is, my friends know who I am and what I stand for,” she told the Times, “but in terms of being the owner of the magazine, how do you take sides when 50 percent of your readers might be on one side, and 50 percent on the other? It’s difficult. That’s my answer to that.”

Four years later, Stewart still acknowledges that while discussing politics means she could “lose 50 percent of your viewers and your fans,” she couldn’t help, when asked, to confirm on which side of the political divide she falls.

But don’t expect to hear more from her on that subject any time soon. “I’m not allowed to talk [about politics]. I can’t post anything about politics because first of all, the eyeballs of a parent company come and [I’ll] get a call right away—can’t do that,” Stewart said. “You can’t talk [about that], so—keep it quiet.”

#and fuck your registration “soft-wall” Raw Story!

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 months ago

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Pat Byrnes

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 20, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 21, 2024

I had hoped to write tonight about the farm bill, which Eric Hovde, running for the Senate from Wisconsin although it’s not clear he lives there, could not talk about in the debate between him and incumbent senator Tammy Baldwin on Friday. “I’m not an expert on the farm bill because I'm not in the U.S. Senate at this point in time,” Hovde said. “So I can’t opine specifically on all aspects of the farm bill.”

The farm bill is one of our most important pieces of legislation. It establishes the main agricultural and food policies of the government, covering price supports for farm products, especially corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts, dairy, and sugar; crop insurance; conservation programs; and nutritional programs for 41 million low-income Americans, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) formerly known as food stamps. It must pass every five years but has been held up by Republican extremists in the House and is now in limbo. One would think that anyone running for Senate should know it pretty well, especially in Wisconsin, where in 2022 farms produced $16.7 billion in agricultural products.

Perhaps this is why the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation has endorsed Baldwin, the first Democrat in nearly twenty years to receive their support.

But I cannot take tonight to explain the really quite interesting history of the farm bill (and why it contains our nutrition programs) because the real story of today is that the Republican candidate for president is not mentally able to handle the job of the presidency, and Republican leaders are trying to cover up that reality.

These two stories are related.

That same quest for power that appears to be driving Hovde to seek a Senate seat without knowing anything about a bill that is hugely important to the people he would be representing appears to be preventing Republican leaders from admitting that their 78-year-old candidate has lost the mental capacity necessary for managing the most powerful nation in the world, including its vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

The United States has guardrails to prevent an incapacitated president from exercising power.

The question of what to do when a president was unable to do his job was not really a major question until the post–World War II years. While presidents before then had been weakened—notably, Woodrow Wilson had had a stroke—medical care was poor enough that those presidents who sustained life-threatening injuries tended to die from them fairly quickly. At the same time, the difficulties of the travel necessary for a national political career made politics a young man’s game, so there really weren’t rumblings of mental incapacity from age.

But Republican president Dwight Eisenhower had seen the grave damage military leaders could do when they were incapacitated and unaware of their inability to evaluate situations accurately, and knew that the commander-in-chief must have a system in place to be replaced if he were unable to fulfill the mental requirements of his position.

Eisenhower took office in 1953, and two years later, he suffered a heart attack. Vice President Richard Nixon and members of the Cabinet agreed to a working plan to conduct business while the president recovered, but presidential assistant Sherman Adams noted that the crisis left everyone “uncomfortably aware of the Constitution's failure to provide for the direction of the government by an acting President when the President is temporarily disabled and unable to perform his functions.”

When Eisenhower went on to need an abdominal operation and then to have a minor stroke, concerns mounted. As Congress discussed a solution, Eisenhower took matters into his own hands. He drafted an informal agreement that he presented to Nixon. If the president became temporarily unable to do the duties of the office, the document gave to the vice president the power of “Acting President.”

The need to figure out what would happen if modern medicine could keep alive an incapacitated president became apparent after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Not only did the question of a president’s incapacity have to be addressed; so did the problem of succession. Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson was falsely rumored to have had a heart attack, and both the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate were old and doubted that they could adequately fulfill the duties of the presidency themselves.

Congress’s solution was the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution, providing a system by which either the president or, if they were unable to realize their incapacity, members of the executive branch would transfer the powers of the president to the vice president. Eisenhower enthusiastically backed the idea that the nation should have coverage for a disabled president.

To anyone paying attention, it is clear that Trump is not in any shape to manage the government of the United States of America. He is canceling interviews and botching the ones he does sit for, while falling asleep at events where he is not actually speaking. He lies incessantly even when hosts point out that his claims have been debunked, and cannot answer a question or follow a train of thought. And his comments of the weekend—calling the vice president a “sh*t vice president,” telling a woman to get “your fat husband off the couch” to vote for him, and musing about a famous golfer’s penis—indicate that he has no mental guardrails left.

Today, in what apparently was designed to show Trump as relatable and to compete with the story that Vice President Harris worked at a McDonalds when she was in college, Trump did a photo op at a McDonalds in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where he took prepared fries out of the fryolator. It was an odd moment, for Trump has never portrayed himself as a man of the people so much as a man to lead the people, and the picture of him in a McDonald’s apron undercuts his image as a dominant leader.

But in any case, it was all staged: the restaurant was closed, the five “customers” were loyalists who had practiced their roles, and when Trump handed food through the drive-through window, he did not take money or make change.

"Now I have worked at McDonald's," he said afterward. "I've now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala."

The fact that someone on Trump’s campaign leaked to Politico that he is “exhausted” is almost certainly a sign that people down the ranks are deeply concerned about his ability to finish the campaign, let alone run the country. But party leaders continue to stand behind him, raising echoes of their staunch support during Trump’s two impeachment trials.

In 2019 the House of Representatives impeached Trump for his attempt to coerce Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky and pervert the security of the United States to steal an election. The evidence was so overwhelming that Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) noted: “Out of one hundred senators, you have zero who believe you that there was no quid pro quo. None. There’s not a single one.” But Republican senators—except Mitt Romney (R-UT), who voted to convict on one count—nonetheless acquitted Trump. “This is not about this president. It’s not about anything he’s been accused of doing,” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told his colleagues. “It has always been about November 3, 2020. It’s about flipping the Senate.”

Trump’s second impeachment by the House in January 2021 for incitement of insurrection ended similarly. In the Senate, McConnell refused to change the schedule to enable the Senate to vote before a new president was inaugurated, thus giving himself, as well as other Republican senators, an out to vote against conviction on the grounds that Trump was no longer the president. Seven Republican senators joined the Democrats to convict, but forty-three continued to back Trump. In a speech after the vote, McConnell said he believed Trump was responsible for the January 6, 2021, attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election but that he would have to answer for that behavior in court.

But nearly four years later, Trump has not had to answer in court because the Supreme Court, stacked with his appointees thanks to Republican senators, has said that he cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his official duties. While the courts sort out what counts as official duties, he is, once again, the Republican nominee for president. Leaders are standing behind him despite the fact he is demonstrating deeply concerning behavior.

When President Joe Biden decided not to accept the Democratic presidential nomination after his poor performance in his June debate with Trump, Republicans demanded that Vice President Harris and the Cabinet invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment, despite the fact that Biden’s job performance continued to be exemplary. We learned later that during the time of the debate, he was negotiating a historic prisoner swap involving multiple countries to free twenty-four prisoners, including Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan.

Nonetheless, that one poor debate performance was enough for Republicans to condemn Biden’s ability to govern the nation. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) told the Fox News Channel that “Joe Biden has decided he isn’t capable of being a candidate; in so doing his admission also means he cannot serve as President.”

But Trump has been lying that immigrants are eating pets; calling voters fat pigs; basing his economic policy on a backward idea of how tariffs work; calling for prosecuting his enemies and making the civil service, military, and judiciary loyal to him; and praising a famous golfer’s “manhood”—hardly indications of a man able to take on the presidency of the United States.

And yet with regard to his mental acuity, Republican leaders offer only crickets.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Pat Byrnes #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Farm Bill #Election 2024 #unfit #American history #25th Amendment #MAGA lies

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misfitwashere · 2 months ago

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October 20, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

OCT 21

Perhaps this is why the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation has endorsed Baldwin, the first Democrat in nearly twenty years to receive their support.

These two stories are related.

The United States has guardrails to prevent an incapacitated president from exercising power.

"Now I have worked at McDonald's," he said afterward. "I've now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala."

And yet with regard to his mental acuity, Republican leaders offer only crickets.

—

#heather cox richardson #letters from an american

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kingsonne-zedecks · 1 year ago

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Well fuck.

I guess I just learned the tactic that is going to be used to discourage democrat voter participation.

I just saw a couple of posts on other social media sites talking about "respecting people's decision to follow their conscience in not voting for Biden in the 2024 presidential election due to his actions and stance regarding the Israeli-Palestine conflict."

I cannot possibly understate just how bad faith this stance is. The main people pushing this idea don't care about anyone in Israel or Palestine. They care about preventing your vote by playing to your sense of justice. They care about harnessing that sense of justice to get you to convince other people not to vote.

There is no true moral backbone to this stance. It hides beneath the idea that you can serve your conscience by not voting in a time when every vote counts and Facism sits on the doorstep. I must emphasize that things would be horrifically worse if the Facists were in control of the country. By not voting you would be abandoning your easiest and most essential way to speak out against this.

Its okay to hate the democratic party for not doing enough and for doing bad things. Its not okay to abandon your civic duty at the influence of bad actors.

I don't want to vote for Joe Biden. I am mad that its no support from the Democratic Party for a real primary with alternative candidates to Biden. I would much rather have someone better than Biden. But I would also much rather have Biden than someone worse than Biden and I will vote to make sure that this happens.

If this continues to get pushed you're going to see a big resurgence of arguments how a vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil. It will claim that voting for a lesser evil is a concession, a statement that you are okay with any bad things done by Biden (or any other candidate where this tactic is employed.) This simply is not true. A vote never has been and never will be a blank endorsement for all opinions and policies of a politician.

Abstaining from voting is not the moral high ground. Its only half a step away from Both Sides centrism.

As a moral stance it doesn't say "Here I am, I am righteous and will not support the unrighteous"

It says

"Here I sit. I do not care if the Facists win." The moral highground of the stance is an illusion. The stance looks in the face of every individual who will suffer and die under Facism and pats them on the head and says I'm sorry you are going to suffer and die, but it was worth it for me to feel good about myself.

The bad actors don't want you to think about these things. They will keep the attention on ever failure of the Democratic party and ask you if you condone them. They will accuse you of approving of these actions and showing them with your vote.

There might be people you trust who become convinced by this and share these feelings in what they feel is good faith. They might be convinced and upset if you don't agree with them. It won't be pleasant.

Please look into efforts within your state to overturn First Past the Post voting. Oregon has put Ranked Choice Voting on the ballot for 2024 and the people will get to decide against the system that let's this lesser of two evils argument exist. Instant Runoff Voting is not the only valid form of ranked voting or otherwise non FPTP voting. Look at your state and check to see if there is a petition to get a new voting method on the ballot. Oregon's legislature placed Ranked Choice on the ballot, but a petition was already in place to accomplish the same thing if they didn't. The same might be going on in your state.

Politics sucks and I wish we didn't have to deal with things like this. But we do. Doubt anything someone says that discourages you from voting.

#politics #2024 elections #election interference #every vote counts #civic duty #us politics #fight facism #please vote #vote #I feel like we were just talking about how election interference on Tumblr #How its main goal was to convince people not to vote

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timesofinnovation · 12 days ago

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Elon Musk's social media platform, X, is encountering significant backlash from critics concerning its fact-checking capabilities, particularly in light of the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) recently released a report highlighting deficiencies in the platform's Community Notes feature, which is designed to allow users to flag and correct misleading information. The CCDH examined 283 posts that contained misleading information related to the election. Alarmingly, only 26% of these posts displayed corrected information accessible to all users. This lack of visible corrections has resulted in 209 unrefuted posts that amassed over 2.2 billion views, raising troubling questions about X's commitment to ensuring transparency and accuracy. As misinformation takes on a new urgency during election cycles, the effectiveness of Community Notes is under intense scrutiny. Community Notes was introduced with the intention of empowering users to take initiative against misinformation. However, skeptics argue that relying solely on a crowd-sourced system may be inadequate during pivotal events like elections. Following a recent legal ruling against the platform for an uptick in hate speech, critics are calling for enhanced safeguards. The report notes that Musk's endorsement of Donald Trump, a prominent Republican candidate, may further complicate the platform's credibility, especially given Musk's own history of spreading misleading narratives. In August, a cohort of five U.S. state officials urged Musk to take more substantial action against misinformation presented by X's AI chatbot. Users have reported that this AI technology has propagated unfounded claims about the impending election, amplifying concerns about the platform's efficacy in combating misinformation. The current debate surrounding X's handling of misinformation isn't isolated; it reflects broader issues of trust in social media platforms and their roles as arbiters of truth. The consequences of unchecked misinformation can be severe, as evidenced by past elections that have been adversely affected by misleading narratives. Given X's massive user base, the ripple effects of misinformation can impact voter perceptions and behaviors on a national scale. The company's silence in response to ongoing criticisms concerning its failure to address misinformation is notable. As the election draws nearer, how X manages the dissemination of information will likely be a point of focus for both lawmakers and the public. Experts argue that in order to successfully mitigate the spread of misinformation, platforms like X must reinforce their policies and invest in more reliable verification systems. Moreover, as regulatory agencies worldwide put increasing pressure on technology companies to address false information more rigorously, X's response will be scrutinized. The need for a robust framework to tackle misinformation is becoming increasingly clear as the landscape of digital communication continues to evolve. For businesses and innovators in the technology space, this case serves as a poignant reminder of the responsibilities that come with operating digital platforms. It highlights the importance of not only prioritizing user engagement but also ensuring the integrity of information shared on these channels. Brands leveraging social media must remain vigilant about the quality of content presented under their name, as the consequences of misinformation can impact their reputation and consumer trust. In an era where information is more accessible than ever, stakeholders must work collaboratively to foster a culture of accountability and transparency. This means investing in effective tools for monitoring and correcting misinformation while also empowering users to be informed digital citizens. As the election approaches, the eyes of not just the U.S. but the entire world will be on X and other platforms grappling with similar challenges.

The actions taken—or not taken—by these tech giants will define their legacy in fostering a democratic dialogue in our increasingly digital society. It remains to be seen how X will navigate this turbulent climate, but one fact stands clear: the time for action is now if it hopes to protect its integrity and public trust.

#News #AISocialMediaSafetyWomensT20WorldCupPlayerProtectionSportsInnovation #AIandMisinformation #Elections2024 #FactChecking #digitalresponsibility

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lordprophet · 2 months ago

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Political Sleight of Hand and Remember, Remember, Remember Reality, Please, Before It's Too Late

— a pre-voting, final-hours updated vitally-important read for voters in today's US presidential election of Tuesday, 11-05-2024

Political Sleight of Hand and Remember, Remember, Remember Reality, Please, Before It's Too Late

— a pre-voting, final-hours updated vitally-important read for voters in today's US presidential election of Tuesday, 11-05-2024

Why would an individual pollster and political analyst among many accuse the many others of pressing a finger down on their consensus polling data on the candidates in the US presidential election competition to the favor of Kamala Harris by one point within the margin of error or to show a virtual tie between the candidates and himself contrarily claim a landslide win for Trump? He would do so to get mass attention-grabbing reads of his written election news commentary in major part to temper down the harsh and negative rhetorical attacks, the bad news and bad publicity, against Trump and to have his Trump-favorable commentary and nudging of cautious silence toward Trump viralized. It makes sense that he would be doing this with the ultimate goal in mind of getting the adoption of his controversial, contrarian commentary as belief by much of the public that is followed by its/their sudden mass spread of this maverick conclusion as an expectation that could and might, as a matter of caution and self-concern by others en masse, hush bad publicity and vote-losing rhetorical attacks and endorsements against Trump by socially high-profile figures and organizations of influence otherwise critical of Trump, to a desired significantly beneficial political effect for him in a close election, according to a consensus of the major election polls, in the last few presidential campaign days leading up to the US presidential election of 11/05/2024.

However, it has newly come to my attention in my listening to radio broadcast interviews of objectively-minded political science professors and reputable professional political analysts that other minor, known-MAGA-partisan pollsters have been making the same claim online and in the pro-MAGA broadcasts as that of the hereinabove referred to mainstream election pollster-analyst of a landslide presidential election victory for Trump, a wrong MAGA-partisan private-pollsters polls-based previous election forecast which they (the interviewees) said the same or like folks made in advance, via same communications media channels, of the 2020 US presidential election actual defeat of Trump and win of current POTUS Joe Biden on election day then of 11-03-2020. In essence, they proposed that these dubious private polls of the past may have been the strategic, fallback plan-B, motivational groundwork that set the stage in advance of that election for MAGA-movement attempts to overturn it, if it resulted in a defeat of Trump’s reelection bid, which it did, by various means, such as mass mobilization action of aggressive MAGA political activists, legislatively and administratively within GOP-dominated state legislatures and GOP-MAGAs in the houses of Congress and judicially, by state and federal courts, including the GOP-membership-dominated US Supreme Court, all tried but comprehensively failed means to overturn the election of Biden as US president and retain the Trump Presidency. They say, in overall effect, that the Trump-MAGA team have probably learned from this previous thorough failure to alternatively win the US presidency in contravention of traditional federal Constitutional- and statutory-law institutional protocols and means and this time may be using such partisanly private and dubious election polls and bogus forecasts disseminated on online social media platforms and in right-wing mass media broadcasts, such as Fox, etc., as a same fallback strategy in the event of another defeat of Donald Trump in his current 2024 presidential election bid to overturn a win of that election by current US Vice President Kamala Harris but one with a much improved, better and more effective overturn or insurrection “game.”

All the while the Trump campaign and its compatriots on the sidelines, including those in the mass communications media, illusorily misrepresent the former Trump Presidency as having been an economic success story in which business and households were better off then economically than they are now under the Biden Presidency. It is a fallacious good-old-days mirage of a Trumpian national economic success story in that in less than half way into the second two years of Trump's four-year term as US president, our nation, and the nations of almost the whole of humanity worldwide was/were stricken by the Covid-19 pandemic, which was mismanaged by Trump and his presidential administration by first delaying announcing it publicly, then downplaying its significant danger and delaying taking societal action to contend with it nationally until the casualties from it soared, which resulted in a nationwide economic shutdown, a national shortage of toilet paper, the emptying of and lasting shortage in supplies of groceries in grocery stores, comprehensive spikes in the prices of groceries, extending to soaring price inflation, often seller-gouging price push inflation, of nearly all goods and services and retention of increased prices, and in mass job losses and unemployment, all the product of the soaring-inflation, economically failed Trump Presidency, like his past 6 business bankruptcies.

The Biden Presidency has been the rescue and clean-up crew of the dream economy inherited, and trashed, by former POTUS Trump from the Obama Presidency, in which Biden was vice president, and has restored record-level high employment to our nation, competently managed its takeover in handling the national Covid-19 pandemic and phased our nation out of its crisis status, and it, together with the Federal Reserve Bank, has substantially reduced the rate of inflation it inherited from the Trump Presidency.

However, the economist Paul Krugman explained that never following periods of soaring price inflation have prices returned to what they were before the periods of soaring price inflation, which is the way economic history works. Prices returning to what they were before a period of soaring price inflation would not happen (with the somewhat exception of modestly volatile gasoline prices for automobiles in the short term) if our economy were managed by the economic titans of the past Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman, as well as by the financial titans Mansa Musa, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

It is the deplorables and garbage brains of the Trump team and cult who blame the Biden clean-up crew for the mess the gaslighting, mind-wiping Trump Presidency and political team created by dereliction, mismanagement and incompetent governance and for impossibly not returning the economy's post-inflation higher prices to pre-inflation lower prices. Don’t hold your breath hoping and waiting for the latter to happen.

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yourreddancer · 2 months ago

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Heather Cox Richardson 10.20

It must pass every five years but has been held up by Republican extremists in the House and is now in limbo. One would think that anyone running for Senate should know it pretty well, especially in Wisconsin, where in 2022 farms produced $16.7 billion in agricultural products.

Perhaps this is why the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation has endorsed Baldwin, the first Democrat in nearly twenty years to receive their support.

These two stories are related.

The United States has guardrails to prevent an incapacitated president from exercising power.

"Now I have worked at McDonald's," he said afterward. "I've now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala."

And yet with regard to his mental acuity, Republican leaders offer only crickets.

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justinspoliticalcorner · 1 month ago

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Qasim Rashid at Let's Address This:

This article will upset some people. But my responsibility as a human rights lawyer is not to speak soothing falsehoods, but hard truths. The Democratic Party has lost two winnable Presidential elections in the last three contests, resulting in devastating consequences for the American people. This moment calls for self-reflection and self-analysis. The fate of our republic is literally at stake, and we cannot afford continued failure. What went wrong, and how do we fix this? Let’s Address This.

A Quick Overview

Let’s start with some high level points. Black women and Black men showed up, voting 92% and 78%, respectively, for Harris. White women and white men, meanwhile, voted 52% and 59%, respectively, for Trump. Latino men shifted right 18% from 2020, and 54% voted for Trump in 2024. Latino women shifted right 7% from 2020, and 37% voted Trump in 2024. In short, Black people showed up for Harris, white people showed up for Trump, and Latino’s shifted right to Trump—with the overall majority of Latinos still voting for Harris.

Let’s also acknowledge the continued failure of legacy media. From LA Times and Washington Post refusing to endorse any candidate, to CBS and CNN refusing to fact check the Presidential debates, to the New York Times whitewashing Trump’s clear cognitive decline—legacy media absconded in its responsibility to hold powerful politicians accountable. Many will note that while Biden’s age was a constant state of focus, the moment he resigned media completely forgot that Trump is only a few years younger than Biden. Next, racism and misogyny absolutely played a damaging role in this election. Legacy media gobbled up Trump’s attempts to question Harris’s identity, distracting from issues that matter—like her actual policies. Disinformation about Haitian migrants created fear and hate of Black people and of immigrants. Misogyny and racism continued to dominate political discourse and Harris faced the onslaught of both, undoubtedly costing her votes in ways she had no ability to mitigate.

And finally, third party candidates like Jill Stein, Cornell West, and RFK played their roles in trying to break up the duopoly, with negligible success. Election results demonstrate that Stein did not cost Harris any electoral votes, and little evidence exists that her involvement played any meaningful role in Trump’s win. In other words, she did not pull a Nader 2000. All of the above are factors that impacted the election, but none of them individually, or even collectively, prevented Harris’s victory. It is critical the Democratic Party reflect on the matters within their control that they fumbled—fumbles that directly resulted in a Harris loss and Trump re-election to the White House—if they have any real hope of preventing a third presidential loss in four tries in 2028.

1. Joe Biden’s Arrogance

Let’s be blunt about this. I put the primary blame for the Election 2024 debacle on Joe Biden. And I will be as bold as to say that he set up Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party for failure. Here’s why. Back in 2020 Joe Biden ran for President on the promise of being a “bridge President” to a younger generation, suggesting he would only serve one term and then pass the torch. At numerous rallies he loudly declared,

[Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. I view myself as a transition candidate.]

It was with that explicit expectation that a monsoon of young voters helped him cross the finish line with a victory, earning 7 million more votes than Donald Trump. But when it became clear that President Biden had no intention of stepping down, those who suggested he follow through on his campaign promise were dismissed, decried, and denounced. Even as poll after poll showed that Biden’s support among the young people who helped him win in 2020 was all but gone, those who believed Biden should withdraw were shouted down.

And there are countless such examples. By backtracking on his campaign promise to serve only one term, and then stepping down last minute, Joe Biden denied Democrats a robust primary. How valuable is a robust primary? It is quite literally the difference between winning and losing. The data on this is undeniable.

[...]

Now in 2024, the Democratic Party did not, or was unable to, hold a primary. The end result—Harris lost the popular vote by 4.5 million votes, lost the Electoral count 226-295+, and voter turnout dropped 2.5% to 64.5%—a drop that cost the Democratic Party the White House, the Senate, and potentially the House. Just like in 2016 when a 2.4% drop in turnout was the difference between controlling all of the White House, House, and Senate, and controlling none of them, in 2024 a 2.5% drop in turnout has resulted in Democrats losing control of the White House, the Senate, and grasping at straws to win control of the US House.

To be clear, this analysis does not absolve the very real misogyny and racism Kamala Harris faced. But those two obstacles of misogyny and racism make holding a primary that much more important, because such primaries help build the critical and larger coalitions needed to more effectively overcome the obstacles of misogyny and racism. Likewise, this analysis does not second guess nominating Kamala Harris. After Joe Biden finally dropped out, she was the most logical choice as the Democratic Party’s nominee. This analysis is a critique of the fact that an impossible job was thrown upon her—pick a VP running mate with negligible voter input, speed date 330 million Americans, and define yourself as distinct from Joe Biden, all in 100 days or less. Black women can, and do, many amazing things, but a person can only be at one place at one time. It is revealing that even on Election Day one of the top google search questions was, “Did Joe Biden drop out?” That is not a question any voter should be asking on November 5, and one no voter would be asking if the Democratic nominee had more than the blink of an eye to make her case to the American people via a robust primary.

[...]

Losing the Palestine Argument

Despite the improved rhetoric from Harris on Palestine, when asked whether she has any policy shifts from Biden, the answer was always a firm no. This is significant because polling was absolutely clear that stopping arms to Netanyahu would result in more votes for Harris. Harris could have broken away from Biden by stating that she sees no contradiction between maintaining Israel’s security and upholding American and international human rights law. She chose not to, and Trump was able to commandeer the brand of the “peacetime President.” A YouGov/IMEU Policy Project poll among Democrats and Independents in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, found that the Harris/Walz path to victory included announcing a cessation of arms to Netanyahu.

In Arizona, 35% of voters said they would be more likely to vote for the Harris if she vowed to stop weapons to Israel. Only 5% said they are less likely to vote for that policy—a 7:1 ratio of voter support in a state Biden won by only 11,000 votes.

In Georgia, 39% of voters said they are more likely to vote for Harris if she vowed to stop weapons to Israel. Only 5% said they are less likely to vote for that policy—an 8:1 ratio of voter support in a state that Biden won by 12,000 votes.

In Pennsylvania, 34% of voters in Pennsylvania said they are more likely to vote for Harris if she vowed to stop weapons to Israel. Only 7% said they would be less likely to vote for that policy—a 5:1 ratio of voter support in a state Biden won by only 82,000 votes.

And beyond swing states, a national CBS/YouGov poll reported the following critical facts about American support of a policy change to withhold arms from Israel:

61% of Americans oppose weapons to Israel’s assault in Gaza

77% of Democrats reject US weapons to Israel

63% of moderates reject US weapons to Israel

77% of voters under 30 oppose weapons to Israel

75% of Black Americans oppose weapons to Israel

66% of women oppose weapons to Israel

64% of Hispanic Americans oppose weapons to Israel

56% of white college grads oppose weapons to Israel

American Muslims comprise of roughly 1% of the United States population. The vote some American Muslims withheld due to Biden’s policy on Israel did not impact the election results. But the Biden administration’s refusal to listen to 77% of Democrats, 63% of moderates, and 61% of all Americans, absolutely did.

[...]

Conclusion

The Harris campaign raised nearly $1 billion in just three months, compared to Trump’s $388 million over 10 months. Yet, at the end of the day, Trump found ways to ensure his base came out and voted for him, and the Democratic Party found ways to ignore the critical voters that catapulted them to victory in 2020. Racism, misogyny, media failures, Russian interference, third party candidates—all played a role. But at the end of the day, this was the Democratic Party’s election to lose, and they must take responsibility if they hope to meaningfully reform their fatal flaws and win in 2026 or 2028, and beyond.

Donald Trump is a fascist, and Project 2025 will invite fascism to America. This is the reality we face. The Democratic Party must understand that it will never ‘out conservative’ or ‘out center’ Republicans. Instead, the Democratic Party must stop cosplaying as a left party, and actually become a left party that prioritizes economic, social, and climate justice with meaningful action, not meaningless rhetoric. Today, the Democratic Party has two very distinct paths ahead of it. It can either blame everyone else as racist, embrace war criminals like Dick Cheney, and hold loaded primaries, thereby ensuring a repeat of this election’s failures in the future. Or, the Democratic Party can look inwardly and actually listen to its base and future—young voters, Black voters, Asian and Muslim voters, and Latino voters—and ensure success on the local, state, and federal level for a generation or more.

Qasim Rashid is 100% correct about what went wrong for the Democratic Party in the wake of Tuesday’s loss, and there were multiple factors that played into it: the global anti-incumbency trend, mainstream media’s sanewashing of Donald Trump, racist and sexist prejudice against a Black and South Asian woman leading the nation, Joe Biden’s decision to run for re-election, too much deference to protecting Israel at all costs, and alienating the base by lurching too much towards the center-right.

As for Kamala Harris herself, she help saved the Democrats from an even worse loss. While it was a short-term loss, it was a medium-to-long term win that keeps them alive.

#2024 Dems #2024 Presidential Election #2024 Elections #Kamala Harris #Joe Biden #Donald Trump #Gaza Genocide #Qasim Rashid

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mariacallous · 9 months ago

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The upcoming local elections in Turkey on March 31 offer Turkey’s progressives—the social democratic main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party—the opportunity to challenge the hegemony of the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP). A win would also bolster the chances of Istanbul’s incumbent CHP mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, to succeed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when his term expires in 2028, provided that they display a unity of purpose.

The outcome of the March 31 election in Istanbul, Turkey’s biggest city, will—as has been the case before—be decisive in shaping the course of Turkish politics. Erdogan himself rose to national prominence after serving as mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s.

Imamoglu was prepared to challenge Erdogan in the presidential election last year and enjoyed broad support not only in the CHP but among the opposition in general, but the CHP’s then-leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, imposed his own candidacy. Today, Imamoglu is the only credible opposition candidate. The CHP’s new leader, Ozgur Ozel, who unseated Kilicdaroglu as party leader last November, has said his party will not hesitate to field Imamoglu as its presidential candidate if he is reelected on March 31.

Imamoglu will be a strong contender to succeed Erdogan. He is a centrist social democrat and appeals to both conservatives and progressives. But the polls predict that the race between Imamoglu and his challenger from the AKP, Murat Kurum, is going to be close—and a loss would undermine Imamoglu’s future presidential prospects. Some analysts suggest that the incumbent could be facing defeat, given the loss of support from a key constituency, the Kurds.

Critically, in 2019, Imamoglu enjoyed the endorsement of the Kurdish political movement. The Kurdish voters were the key to his election. Istanbul is home to the largest Kurdish population in Turkey, approximately 2 million or 12 percent of the city’s population. This time, the pro-Kurdish DEM Party has fielded its own, co-mayoral candidates, Meral Danis Bestas and Murat Cepni.

The right-wing nationalist Good Party that supported Imamoglu in 2019 and was allied with the CHP in the presidential and parliamentary elections last year has also broken ranks with the CHP that has made a turn to the left under Ozel and is running an independent campaign. Yet while the defection of Turkish nationalists can prove as costly, the Kurdish defection from Imamoglu has a deeper significance beyond electoral politics. It bespeaks—the CHP’s leftward turn on social and economic issues notwithstanding—the impasse of progressive politics in Turkey.

Imamoglu needs to bring divergent political and ethnic constituencies together to win Istanbul—and would have to do the same to succeed Erdogan. A failure by Imamoglu to sway the Kurdish voters and align the constituency of the DEM Party with the CHP base will demonstrate that progressive unity is beyond reach. Imamoglu needs the Kurdish vote not only to win, but moreover to embody democratic change.

Promisingly, the new CHP leadership has charted a social democratic course, embracing the labor movement and calling for reforms that address poverty and inequality. This is in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Kilicdaroglu, who disastrously distanced himself from the left and embraced right-wing policies and partners. Kilicdaroglu struck a deal with the far-right Victory Party in the run-up to the presidential election last year and vowed to keep removed Kurdish elected officials (accused of “terrorist” links) out of office.

Ozel has condemned the suppression of the Kurds’ democratic rights. While Kilicdaroglu forged an alliance with five right-wing parties that excluded Kurds and socialists, Ozel has initiated an electoral alliance with the socialist Labor Party of Turkey (TIP) and unsuccessfully sought a similar agreement with the DEM Party.

But Ozel has failed to establish his authority over his party, and his colleagues across the country are openly defying him. On March 6, the CHP’s mayoral candidate in the province of Afyonkarahisar, Burcu Koksal, vowed that if she is elected, the doors of the municipality would be open to all parties except the pro-Kurdish DEM Party. Ozel, who was present when Koksal—who is also CHP deputy group chairperson in the parliament—delivered her anti-Kurdish remarks, called them “a minor slip of the tongue.”

But Imamoglu recognized that Koksal had effectively torpedoed his chances to secure the Kurdish vote and demanded that she “either look for a new job or a new party.” The polls pointed to a close race in Istanbul already before the statement, and it elicited a strong reaction from the DEM Party’s Bestas, who said that it amounts to “fascism.”

The persistence of Turkish supremacist nationalism in the CHP’s ranks is undermining the party’s credibility as a progressive force and disabling the left-wing unity that should otherwise have been within reach. The DEM Party insists that it seeks not just to secure the political and cultural rights of Turkey’s Kurds, but that it equally aspires to bring about a broader democratic and progressive change of Turkish society. The DEM Party’s local election manifesto for Istanbul lays out a progressive agenda, including promises of participatory democracy through the establishment of neighborhood and city assemblies, promotion of women’s participation in urban planning, and the rule of labor.

Selahattin Demirtas, the former co-chair of the previous iteration of the pro-Kurdish party, known as the HDP, who has been imprisoned since 2016, in 2021 called on Turkey’s left-wing forces to form a “strong left bloc” to build democracy after the rule of the AKP. Demirtas argued that democracy was going to elude Turkey in the absence of the left and “the voice of the labor.” “A strong left bloc can be built without considering personal and party interests,” Demirtas insisted. Yet Demirtas, who remains a powerful voice in Kurdish politics, has not expressed any interest in the left turn of the CHP.

Indeed, Demirtas no longer proposes that the party join a left bloc with social democrats and socialists. Instead, he recommends that the DEM Party position itself as a third force, equidistant to the AKP and the CHP, and urges it to engage in talks with the AKP to solve the Kurdish issue and to democratize Turkey. “I don’t know if there is meeting traffic between the DEM Party and the AKP, but if there is not, this is a great deficiency for both parties,” he recently said.

Presumably to endear himself to Erdogan, Demirtas paid homage to the Islamic identity of Turkey, saying, “What defines us in these lands is Islamic civilization.” “A part of Turkey’s socialists are unaware of this, and due to their ignorance, they cannot reach out to society,” he professed when he delivered his defense at the last hearing at his trial in December 2023.

It is indeed true that the Turkish left has historically been hampered by its overzealous commitment to secularism, which has alienated the popular masses from it. But Demirtas’s statements about Islam suggest that he seeks something else than a reinvention of the left to broaden its popular appeal. He is not calling for a Muslim left. Instead, he seems to have given up on the left and concluded that Kurdish interests can only be furthered by aligning with Islamic conservatism.

It’s reasonable to assume that Demirtas’s shift is prompted by a recognition that the AKP seems to be entrenched in power and that the Kurds consequently have no alternative but to seek an understanding with Erdogan. It may also be that the deal that Kilicdaroglu struck with the far right last year convinced Demirtas that the CHP cannot be trusted.

In a similar vein, Ahmet Turk, a veteran of the Kurdish movement in Turkey, earlier this year said that Erdogan is the only leader who can solve the Kurdish question, because he “has taken control of all state institutions.”

“But if the CHP were to attempt such a thing, its project would be shattered,” Turk said. Indeed, this was what happened the last time the CHP attempted to challenge authoritarian right-wing power. When a CHP government in the 1970s tried to promote economic equality and expand labor rights, forces in the Turkish state struck back violently and ended the attempt. However, Erdogan is not omnipotent. His attempt between 2013 and 2015 to solve the Kurdish issue met with stiff resistance from within the state establishment, which may in turn explain why the attempt was aborted.

Yet it is increasingly clear that a strong current in the Kurdish political movement is pinning its hopes on a revival of some version of the old feudal deal between the Turkish state and Kurdish tribal leaders. Under it, from the 1950s to the late 1970s, Kurdish tribal leaders were by and large left socially and economically in control of the country’s Kurdish region in return for delivering the votes of their tribes to the ruling conservative parties, the AKP’s predecessors. That was the reason the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) began as a Marxist revolutionary movement in opposition both to Kurdish feudalism and the Turkish state in the 1970s.

Today, the Kurds legitimately demand that election results are respected and elected Kurdish mayors are not thrown out of office and into prison—as Turk was after he was reelected mayor of the province of Mardin in 2019. Turk was dismissed but not arrested, as he was in 2016. Of 65 mayors elected in 2019, 59 were removed from office or imprisoned, or both.In return, the Kurdish political movement is not offering Erdogan its votes, but nonetheless its services by depriving his main challenger of votes.

Yet it is unlikely that the Kurds will be rewarded. Erdogan and his ally Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party, are unlikely to acquiesce to Kurdish party rule in the Kurdish region as long as the challenge posed by the PKK continues to haunt the Turkish state. As PKK affiliates—armed and protected by the United States—have established a de facto state in Rojava across the border in northern Syria, Turkey will remain intransigent on the Kurdish issue.

DEM Party mayors who are elected on March 31 risk being removed from office just as their predecessors were after the local elections in 2019. The strategy of relying on Erdogan is bound to end in yet another disappointment for the Kurdish political movement, shattering its core political project.

A democratic solution to the Kurdish issue—without which full democracy in Turkey will remain elusive—depends on Turkish and Kurdish progressives making common cause. Yet the DEM Party cannot reasonably be expected to withdraw its co-mayoral candidates from the Istanbul race and endorse the CHP’s presidential front-runner unless the CHP lives up to its social democratic pledges and purges anti-Kurdish nationalism from its ranks.

At stake is not only the outcome of the Istanbul election, as important as it is. If narrow-minded nationalism prevails among Turkish progressives, the authoritarian AKP regime—which has run the country for more than 20 years—will become entrenched and outlast Erdogan.

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biblenewsprophecy · 3 months ago

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Kamala Harris and Donald Trump debate, but . . .

COGwriter

Voice of America reported the following related to the debate last night between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris:

Harris, Trump spar from start of their presidential debate

Updated September 11, 2024

U.S. Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump had never met until their presidential debate Tuesday night, but immediately started sparring in a pivotal encounter leading up to the national election on November 5.

The two candidates shook hands at the outset, took their places behind lecterns on a stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and then started assailing each other.

They feuded about the U.S. economy, abortion rights for American women, immigration at the U.S. border with Mexico, the Israeli war against Hamas militants in Gaza, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as Congress certified that Trump had lost the 2020 election.

Referring to the 2020 election that Trump lost to President Joe Biden, Harris said, “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. He has a very difficult time processing that.”

Trump recently said he lost the election “by a whisker,” but on the debate stage Tuesday, he said it was a sarcastic remark and refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the 2020 outcome. …

the world’s top pop singer, Taylor Swift, endorsed the Democrat as the debate ended.

Standing a short distance away from each other, the two candidates shook their heads at each other’s comments, with Harris all but laughing out loud at some of Trump’s remarks. ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis gamely tried to control the flow of the encounter, failing at times. …

On Tuesday, Harris, a former local criminal prosecutor in San Francisco and attorney general in California accustomed to tough courtroom encounters with defense attorneys, repeatedly baited Trump with insults.

At one point, she told him that his staunchest supporters at his political rallies often left early because they were bored with his speeches.

He described her as a Marxist, saying she was taught well by her father, a leftist economist. “This is a radical left liberal,” Trump said of Harris. …

Trump assailed Biden and Harris’ handling of the U.S. economy, the world’s largest, saying the U.S. is becoming “Venezuela on steroids.” She said his plan for imposing up to 20% tariffs on imported foreign goods would prove to be a “Trump sales tax” for American consumers.

She blamed him for the end to a constitutional right to abortion with his appointment of three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. He said that with the 2022 ruling, voters in individual states could now decide the issue.

“The government and Trump should not be telling” women what to do with their bodies, Harris said.

Trump blamed Harris as part of the Biden administration’s failure to control the masses of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump has said he plans to deport 11 million or more undocumented migrants living in the U.S. but twice dodged Muir’s question of how he would arrest people and send them back to their home countries. …

Speaking to reporters after the debate, Republican Senator Tom Cotton questioned why Harris has not worked to implement her policy proposals during her time as vice president.

“Kamala Harris wouldn’t answer questions about what she’s going to do for the American people and kept trying to shift onto other topics. Understandably, Donald Trump defended himself, but what he did the best job of is explaining that things were good when he was president and they have not been good for the last four years.”

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said it was Trump who failed to explain what he would bring to a new term in office.

“The real question is, what does Donald Trump stand for? You can have a conversation about how some of Kamala Harris’ positions have changed, as all of our positions have changed over the years based on new information, or we can ask ourselves did Donald Trump articulate a single plan tonight to help the American people? Besides his reiteration of his belief that we should build a wall with Mexico, I don’t think he talked about one single plan — no healthcare plan, no housing plan, no plan to increase wages.” https://www.voanews.com/a/harris-trump-set-for-tuesday-debate-/7778157.html

The candidates debated, but tended to avoid biblical solutions in their responses.

Furthermore, I saw both of the candidates lie, or at least use hyperbole, to say things that were not so.

After the debate, I saw people on CNN who were excited about Kamala Harris’ strident pro-abortion positions as a reason to vote for her. The idea of voting for a candidate because that candidate is more in favor of murdering unborn babies is a disturbing commentary on the state of the US. Regarding a recent Donald Trump policy statement, check out my post: Donald Trump calls for 100% tariffs against nations looking to drop the US dollar–a move of desperation that, at best, delays the inevitable–but at worst, could accelerate it.

Whoever gets elected will take steps which will help result in the end of the US–which is coming per Isaiah 10:5-11; Daniel 11:39; and Habakkuk 2:6-9.

The so-called fact checkers at ABC during the debate were biased as they 1) mainly focused on statements from Donald Trump, 2) sometimes claimed some true facts from Donald Trump were false and 3) they failed to fact check most of Kamala Harris’ falsehoods.

One of the reason that I am careful about relying on the so-called “fact checkers” on the internet is because they have repeatedly been shown to be highly biased and frequently wrong, though sometimes they can be right.

Anyway, there was a lot of hypocrisy in the debate as well as in the media related to the debate.

The US does not have an unbiased news media focused on facts or truth, but mainly a bunch of political advocates, some of whom are much more hypocritical than others.

The Bible, KJV translation, predicts the end of “an hypocritical nation” (Isaiah 10:5-11).

Now as far as Taylor Swift goes, I have wondered when that promoter of immorality would endorse Kamala Harris publicly. I thought she might hold off until October, but she decided instead to do so after the debate last night:

Taylor Swift is entering her 2024 election era.

The mega pop star has thrown her support behind Vice President Harris, just under two months out from the election … in a post to her more than 280 million followers on Instagram. https://www.npr.org/2024/09/10/nx-s1-5107976/taylor-swift-instagram-endorse-kamala-harris

September 11, 2024

After last night’s Presidential debate, the pop star publicly endorsed Kamala Harris because “she is a steady-handed, gifted leader” who fights for “LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body. . .”

I really try to keep an open mind and understand other people’s opinions. But I personally have an extremely difficult time comprehending how someone thinks abortion and LGBTQ rights are the most important problems facing the country right now.

This is a pivotal moment in history. The United States is in serious decline. Among other critical challenges, the national debt is $35 trillion and is set to grow by at least $22 trillion over the next decade (according to the government’s own forecasts).

The impact of this extreme debt level cannot be overstated. The US dollar will almost certainly lose its reserve status, inflation will soar, and the government will most likely default on key promises like Social Security. (Hickman J. Schiff Newsletter, September 11, 2024)

Promoting sin is not a biblical reason to endorse someone.

What about the two debaters?

As long time readers of this COGwriter Church of God News page are aware, as posted here many times before, I consider that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are evil.

Without going into unique specifics, let’s consider how they are similar:

They do not live like a member of their professed faiths is supposed to try to live.

They support LGBTQ matters.

They have not called for national repentance.

They have not sought first the Kingdom of God.

One is an adulterer and the other an adulteress.

They have all been involved in Administrations that greatly increased USA debt.

They have all been involved in Administrations that have upset the Europeans.

They have all been accused of hypocrisy.

They both have made a lot of public lies–including in the debate last night.

None have the real solutions for what the USA needs.

Now, I am not trying to say that there are no differences. Yes, I know they have differing economic and climate policies as well as different views on abortion and racial matters.

Notice that simply approving the LGBT agenda is condemned by the Bible:

26 … For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, 30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; 32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:26-32)

Yes, the USA election is a choice between evil ones. But do not place your hope in any human political leader.

Now, let’s look at some of what the scriptures teach are to be traits of godly leaders starting with something God had Moses write:

19 Listen now to my voice; I will give you counsel, and God will be with you: Stand before God for the people, so that you may bring the difficulties to God. 20 And you shall teach them the statutes and the laws, and show them the way in which they must walk and the work they must do. 21 Moreover you shall select from all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. (Exodus 18:19-21)

Neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump are leaders who could be called “men of truth,” nor do they truly endorse God’s laws and statutes nor do they hate covetousness.

Notice something else from the Bible:

2 “The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, And His word was on my tongue. 3 The God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spoke to me: ‘He who rules over men must be just, Ruling in the fear of God. (2 Samuel 23:2-3)

Neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump are just nor do they intend to rule in the fear of the true God.

Hence, they are not people that Christians should endorse.

Voting for Kamala Harris or voting for Donald Trump will not save the US.

The Psalmist wrote:

3 Do not put your trust in princes, Nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help. (Psalm 146:3)

Furthermore, the Bible warns:

20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil (Isaiah 5:20).

2 You shall not follow a crowd to do evil (Exodus 23:2)

The “lesser of two evils” is still evil.

The Bible warns:

12 As for My people, children are their oppressors, And women rule over them. O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err, And destroy the way of your paths. (Isaiah 3:12)

16 For the leaders of this people cause them to err, And those who are led by them are destroyed (Isaiah 9:16).

And that second verse applies to both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

Related to Trump or Harris, we put together the following video:

youtube

14:24

Trump vs Harris vs Scripture

Are Donald Trump and Kamala Harris qualified to be President of the United States according to its Constitution? Does the adulterer Donald Trump’s record as a businessman who declared bankruptcy multiple times and who was once President of the USA make him the best choice? Does Kamala Harris’ political positions, one or more were related to adultery, and then later being Vice-President make her the best choice? What about their positions on adultery and LGBTQ matters? Do either of them meet the biblical requirements to be leaders? Could they both be evil? Should Christians put their faith in leaders or in Jesus and His Kingdom? Dr. Thiel and Steve Dupuie go over these points.

Here is a link to our video: Trump vs Harris vs Scripture.

Put your faith in Jesus and the coming Kingdom of God, not in US elections.

We are to pray as Jesus said for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done (Matthew 6).

God will decide who He wants in various offices:

17 ‘This decision is by the decree of the watchers, And the sentence by the word of the holy ones, In order that the living may know That the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, Gives it to whomever He will, And sets over it the lowest of men.’ (Daniel 4:17)

By voting, one could be voting against God’s will. God’s people do not want to be found fighting against God (Acts 5:39). Once, in the 1970s, I actually voted in an election. But for some reason, I decided not to vote for attorney general. If I would have voted for the office, I probably would have voted for the man that won–a man that later had a massive lawsuit against the Church of God I was part of in the late 1970s. Obviously, I would not have done that on purpose, but am glad that I did not accidentally assist in empowering one who was against the COG.

Notice also a disturbing comment from a secular source that generally supports democracy:

All political campaigns lie and mislead. We all know that, and that knowledge is “baked into the cake,” so to speak, when it comes to assessing candidates. (Bookman J. GM on Romney: ‘Campaign politics at its cynical worst.’ Atlanta Journal Constitution, October 31, 2012. http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2012/10/31/gm-on-romney-campaign-politics-at-its-cynical-worst/)

No candidate should lie or mislead. And while I am not agreeing with the statement that they all do, the reality is that it is not godly conduct to lie or mislead, and that not only reflects unfavourably on the candidates, but also the process of modern democracy.

Do NOT think that whoever may win the presidential election in 2024 will fix the problems in the US.

The US is doomed soon without national repentance, which is not expected (cf. Hosea 11:3a, 5b-7).

Yet, personal repentance is something all who are willing can do.