#president election kingmaker parties

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

What’s this about Kamala’s loss weakening Ovsma’s hold on the democrats?

Basically, Obama and his minions were the ones who organized the coup to get Biden off the ticket. He burned a lot of political capital to make that happen, including asking George Clooney to write an op-ed calling for Biden to step down. When Kamala lost, Obama went on a blame tour where he blamed and lectured everyone but himself, which caused people like Clooney to say

So there's a lot of blame being thrown around backstage at the Democratic Party and the influence Obama had isn't there anymore. More publicly, it's shown that the Obama brand is dead politically because, not only did he fail to move the needle for Kamala, but the coalition he created to get himself elected to two terms, the coalition Democrats were counting on to win all future elections, largely went to Trump this year. He made historic or very noteworthy gains with blacks, hispanics, unions, muslims, Jews, working class voters, young voters. Even women didn't flock to Kamala because she fear mongered about abortion and had a vagina. Basically the only group that's left from that coalition is white academia, and you can't win elections with them. The Obama strategy of empty pandering to certain groups while actively governing against their best interests is over, and Democrats are now scrambling to figure out how to win elections, with the base demanding they go further left, the party desperately trying to hold onto the power they spent the last few decades building around themselves, and a few scattered voices calling for moderation and listening to the concerns of the groups they lost ground with.

So that's Obama's legacy now. He not only presided over historic Democrat losses at the local level while he was in power, but all his backroom influencing and kingmaking amounted to Trump getting reelected over the "first female black president" with a giant mandate, more support for his agenda from nearly every demographic, and both chambers of congress for at least the next two years.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s impending move to crash out of the presidential race and endorse Donald Trump is fitting given that his bid was a cynical and transparent right-wing media operation intended to help return the former president to the White House.   Kennedy, a notorious anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist, plans to end his independent presidential campaign and throw his support to Trump, perhaps at a planned event on Friday, NBC News first reported. The apparent move followed reports that Kennedy was seeking a major administration job from Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris in exchange for his endorsement.

Right-wing media stars who want Trump to win the presidency were among the most fervent supporters of Kennedy’s bid. They encouraged him to run for the Democratic nomination, touted his campaign after it launched, then urged him to run as an independent when they thought he would take votes away from that party’s standard-bearer. But they turned on him as it became increasingly clear that his run was actually hurting Trump.

History’s most obvious political rat-fucking attempt is now coming to an end, but its impact on the 2024 race reflects the broader ongoing right-wing turn against vaccinations since the COVID-19 pandemic. And it could still have even more disastrous consequences if Trump’s right-wing media supporters get their way and Kennedy snags a position running a federal health care agency in a second Trump administration.

A right-wing plot to put a “chaos agent” in the Democratic field

Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show was a launchpad for Republican extremists seeking the GOP kingmaker’s support in their election bids. But on the night of April 19, 2023, the candidate receiving plaudits from the Fox star was ostensibly seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.  “Bobby Kennedy is one of the most remarkable people we have met and we are honored to have him on our show tonight,” Carlson told his viewers at the top of their fawning interview. Kennedy’s friendly sit-down with Carlson was characteristic of the glowing treatment he received from right-wing outlets and influencers for the Democratic run he had officially announced earlier that day. His bid drew fervent praise from the likes of Trumpist political operative Charlie Kirk and arch-conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and he became a constant presence on right-wing cable outlets and podcasts. In the early months of his campaign, Kennedy received more Fox weekday appearances than high-profile Republican presidential candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and more mentions on that network than all but three members of that field.

It’s no secret why avowed right-wingers were so interested in Kennedy’s Democratic presidential bid — they thought he could be a spoiler who would help Trump win. Indeed, Steve Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser who had spent years using his streaming show to promote Kennedy’s anti-vax conspiracy theories, reportedly encouraged him to launch the run because he viewed Kennedy as “a useful chaos agent.” Other current and former Trump advisers also talked up Kennedy’s campaign and were not shy about why they were doing so: As Roger Stone put it, Kennedy would “soften Joe Biden up for his defeat by Donald Trump.”

Kennedy was a bad fit for a Democratic campaign. He has one of the party’s most celebrated names, and played a leading role in environmental organizations earlier in his career. But in recent years, he became better known for promoting conspiracy theories about childhood vaccinations, and his extremist views on the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine put him in step with the right-wing propaganda machine. As a candidate, Kennedy thrilled white supremacists by claiming that the virus had been “ethnically targeted” to not affect Jewish people. Kennedy’s positioning made him a better fit for MAGA voters than Democrats. So when he failed to gain traction in the Democratic race and switched to an independent run in the fall, he immediately became a thorn in Trump’s side.

[...]

An anti-vaxxer running HHS?

Kennedy’s campaign had reportedly been trying to secure him a future administration position in exchange for his endorsement. His efforts to meet with Harris to discuss such a deal went nowhere. But Kennedy found Trump more amenable to such a deal. Kennedy reached out to Trump following the July assassination attempt on the former president, using a phone number reportedly provided by Carlson. The pair reportedly talked about Kennedy “about endorsing his campaign and taking a job in a second Trump administration, overseeing a portfolio of health and medical issues.” Kennedy subsequently told The Washington Post he is “willing to talk to anybody from either political party who wants to talk about children’s health and how to end the chronic disease epidemic.”

Trump has since publicly floated giving Kennedy a major job in his administration, telling CNN he “probably would” consider such an appointment. It’s unclear what such a job might look like, and Trump is such a huge liar you’d have to have brainworms to trust him to hold up his end of such a bargain. But Donald Trump Jr. has said of Kennedy, “I love the idea of giving him some sort of role in a three-letter agency and letting him blow it up.” And Trump’s media supporters have proposed offering Kennedy a position as prominent as secretary of health and human services, with Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, suggesting Kennedy should head that department, the Food and Drug Administration, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in order “to really clear house at the agency.”

Granting Kennedy control of HHS and its $1.5 trillion budget, or one of the “three-letter agencies” it oversees, like the FDA or CDC or the National Institutes of Health, could have disastrous consequences. As a report on the prospect from NBC News detailed, Kennedy has kooky health views and “has described wanting to dismantle those offices and rebuild them with like-minded fringe figures.” But such a move would serve as the natural culmination of the right-wing media’s campaign against the COVID-19 vaccines developed under Trump and rolled out under Biden. Carlson and his ilk spent years waging war on those lifesaving medications, falsely claiming they were ineffective and inflating claims about their potential side effects. (By driving down support for the vaccines among Republicans, their effort surely led to the deaths of many members of their audiences.)  Thanks to that campaign, Trump was unable to take credit for the COVID-19 vaccines on the campaign trail. The former president shied away from discussing his administration’s greatest accomplishment to avoid alienating his own supporters during the GOP primary. He’s tried to court Kennedy’s endorsement by talking down childhood vaccinations, bizarrely telling him in a leaked phone call, “I want to do small doses” rather than giving infants a shot that “looks like it’s meant for a horse, not uh, you know, a 10-pound or 20-pound baby.” And on the campaign trail, he’s vowed that his administration “will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.”

The RFK Jr. campaign was nothing more than a right-wing ploy to help Donald Trump in his quest to gain a 2nd term.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The press vs democracy

July 3, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

The media has latched onto the Joe Biden debate performance and has anointed itself as the kingmaker of Democratic politics. They have concluded that Joe Biden is out of touch and unable to focus. They are telling the American people what to believe because—of course—we should believe the press, right? When has the press ever been wrong before? They want Joe Biden out of the race—damn the damage to democracy!

For example, please read the following description of the president and then wait for the reveal at the end:

��For a smart man, President Biden professes to know very little about a great number of things,” said Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. Biden’s problem is not that he’s disengaged; it’s that a lot of his aides are doing lousy jobs, and he won’t fire them. “Those aides seem to tell Biden very little,” said Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker. Peter Baker in The New York Times said, “But if Biden keeps saying, “I didn’t know,” people will begin to wonder “Just how much in charge he really is.”

Sound familiar? It should. It is from an article about President Obama in 2015. See The Week (1/8/15), “Obama: Is the president out of touch? (I replaced “Biden” with “Obama” in the above quotes from the article.)

Here’s my point: The thrashing that the media is giving President Biden was also administered to President Obama. On Tuesday, stories with nearly identical language were circulated among the Trump-curious outlets and then dutifully repeated by major media outlets based on reports from anonymous “senior aides.”

The media is whipping itself into a self-sustaining nuclear reaction of disinformation—because they can smell the increase in profits just over the horizon if they can force Joe Biden out of the race.

As Jason Karsh wrote on Twitter,

The political press seems dug in. The trade-off they seem to want is, ‘Give us a brokered convention—or at least another nominee so we can cover the chaos or we’re going to ignore the Republican effort to end democracy all the way through November. Your choice.’

Karsh’s words hit the mark. Today, the NYTimes wrote about Biden’s challenges and then buried this gem 20 paragraphs into the story:

Mr. Trump, 78, has also shown signs of slipping over the years since he was first elected to the White House. He often confuses names and details and makes statements that are incoherent. He maintains a lighter public schedule than Mr. Biden, does not exercise and repeatedly appeared to fall asleep in the middle of his recent hush money trial. His campaign has released only a three-paragraph health summary. Voters have expressed concern about his age as well, but not to the same degree as Mr. Biden’s.

This is “But her emails” all over again. The Times’ obsessive and unfair coverage of a non-story about emails handed the 2016 election to Trump. The Times now seems hellbent on repeating the same mistake. The Times has not only put its thumb on the scale to disadvantage Trump's opponent (again), but has also removed the scale and said, “Trust us. We know better than you.” The day we surrender our political judgment to the New York Times is the day we lose our democracy.

There is some pushback (noted below), but the fecklessness of Democratic leaders is beginning to hurt Joe Biden. Jamie Raskin was the first to suggest that Joe Biden will “at least” be the keynote speaker (not the nominee) at the Democratic National convention; Nancy Pelosi has had to walk back two sets of clumsy remarks about Joe Biden; Jim Clyburn said he will meet with Joe Biden this weekend to give him “an assessment” of where things stand. And Democratic Rep. Jared Golden of Maine published an op-ed that said Biden will lose, Trump will win, and “I am okay with that.”

Joe Biden deserves better treatment from party leaders, lifelong friends, and congressional colleagues, regardless of their views on his ability to continue. If they have something to say to Joe Biden, they can say it in private. Making qualified, hesitant, or cryptic remarks in public is shabby treatment for the best president of the last 75 years.

But not everyone is giving up. Stuart Stevens wrote a stirring defense of Joe Biden in The Atlantic, The Absurdity of the Dump-Biden Uprising (accessible to all, and I ask you to read the whole article in fairness to Mr. Stevens and The Atlantic after my lengthy quotation below):

Stevens writes,

The Democratic Party held 57 primaries and caucuses; voters in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories had their say, as did Democrats abroad. Joe Biden won 87 percent of the total vote. He lost one contest, in American Samoa, to the little-known Jason Palmer. Suddenly, there are cries in the Democratic Party that, as goes a single territorial caucus [American Somoa], so should the nation. I worked in five presidential campaigns for Republicans and helped elect Republican senators and governors in more than half of the country. For decades, I made ads attacking the Democratic Party. But in all those years, I never saw anything as ridiculous as the push  . . . to replace Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. For many in the party, the event raised genuine concerns about the incumbent’s fitness for a new term. But a president’s record makes a better basis for judgment than a 90-minute broadcast does. Biden has a capable vice president, should he truly become unable to serve. The standard for passing over Democratic voters’ preferred nominee should be extraordinarily high—and has not been met. The fundamental danger of Donald Trump is that he’s an autocrat who refuses to accept the will of the voters. So, [is] the proper response is to throw out millions of votes, dump the overwhelming choice, and replace him with someone selected by a handful of insiders? What will the message be: “Our usurper is better than your usurper”? What is it about the Democratic Party that engenders this kind of self-doubt and fear? At a moment when Democrats’ instinct should mirror what Biden declared in a rally the day after the debate—“When you are knocked down, you get back up”—some in the party are seized by the urge to run, not fight. Think about how this would look: Hey, I guess Donald Trump is right; our guy isn’t fit to be president. We’ll give it another shot. Trust us, we’ll get it right eventually. Madness. Trump is the candidate of chaos, uncertainty, and erratic behavior. Democrats can win a race against him by offering Americans the opposite: steady, calm, and confident leadership. Joe Biden has provided that. His record is arguably the most impressive of any first-term president since World War II. My advice to Democrats: Run on that record; don’t run from one bad debate. Show a little swagger, not timidity. Forget all this Dump Biden nonsense and seize the day. Now is the worst time to flinch. Your country needs strength. You can crush Donald Trump, but only if you fight.

Worth repeating: We can crush Donald Trump, but only if we fight!

In response to the uproar over the debate, Pro Publica published an unedited, twenty-minute interview with Joe Biden from a single camera angle (to prevent claims of misleading editing). The interview took place in September 2023—ten months ago. If you doubt Joe Biden’s competency and want to replace him (even if you don’t), watch the ENTIRE twenty minutes. Joe Biden is smart, coherent, knowledgeable, and truthful. Unedited: ProPublica Interviews President Biden, September 2023. In the interview, President Biden discusses fine points of the Constitution—a document Donald Trump has never read and attempted to overturn on January 6.

To similar effect is Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who makes the compelling point that the election is now about Donald Trump and the extraordinary powers granted to the president in Trump v. US:

The election is about Donald Trump and the Supreme Court, the two forces working to overthrow the American republic. That’s the subject. It’s not Joe Biden. So, both substantively and politically it makes all the sense in the world. The Court has done us all the favor of not always being as aware as it might be of the political and electoral dimensions of the justices’ bad acts. Yesterday’s ruling is a helpful if disastrous reminder of what the election is really about.

I also urge you to watch this four-minute video by the Lincoln Project: Democrats: Stop Panicking.

But . . . there are millions of Democrats who believe President Biden should step down. I feel like I have corresponded with most of them over the last four days. After many unsuccessful, pointed, and heated discussions, I am now focused on process and unity. At the end of the day, Democrats must be unified. Tearing the party apart over this discussion is exactly what Donald Trump wants. We can’t give him that gift.

So, here are my observations:

If you want Joe Biden to resign, you should do everything in your power to promote a realistic path to victory. “Joe should resign” is not a path to victory, nor is “An open convention.” Get behind a competitor, play by the rules, and work your ***** for your chosen replacement to emerge as viable candidate to beat Trump. The convention will be too late. That’s a heavy lift, but if you want change, it’s up to you to bring it about.

Don’t demean and belittle Joe Biden in an attempt to convince him, or others, that he should resign. Some readers have made vile, disrespectful, mocking statements about Joe Biden in attempt to dissuade me from my support for Biden. He doesn’t deserve that. And, at least as importantly, if you adopt the tactic of attacking Joe Biden, you offend the millions of Democrats who love and respect Joe Biden, and who have worked their tails off to help elect him. At the end of the day, you need them, and they need you to defeat Trump. Don’t create divisions or grudges in your effort to persuade the party that a different path is the only way to victory.

Don’t attack those of us who believe Joe Biden is the best candidate and only viable option. We disagree with your view. Don’t accuse us of “gaslighting” you or being “rigid” or “unthinking” in our support. We hold our opinions in good faith. At the end of the day, you need us, and we need you to defeat Trump. Don’t create divisions or grudges in your effort to persuade the party that a different path is the only way to victory.

My final plea is this: Don’t let the media tell you what to believe. The media has lined up in lockstep to hound Joe Biden out of his candidacy. Over the last seven years, we have seen with our own eyes that the media is biased, cowardly, greedy, short-sighted, and inaccurate in its coverage of Trump and his opponents. They have not magically put all those faults behind them and suddenly become paragons of truth and justice.

No, they are up to their old, hackneyed attacks—just like the similar attack on Obama in 2015. With very few exceptions, they are in it for the money, clicks, and fame. Do not allow yourself to fall victim to the media’s campaign against Joe Biden and democracy. That is what Trump wants; that is what Fox wants; that is what Rupert Murdoch wants; that is what the WSJ wants; that is what NewsMax wants; that is what Leonard Leo wants;—and sadly, sadly, sadly that is what the New York Times wants.

Make up your own mind, based on everything you know about Joe Biden and apply your common sense about what it takes to run and win the most expensive campaign in history. Polls are not elections; political insiders are not voters; television pundits are entertainers; and the media prioritizes profits over truth and democracy.

Voters will have the final say, so stop obsessing over what the media is saying and work to convince the 80 million “Did Not Vote” voters of 2020 that they must show up in 2024. That is the most productive use of your time.

Heather Cox Richardson on Trump v. US

Many news organizations are attempting to minimize or soft-pedal the implications of the holding in US v. Trump. Heather Cox Richardson gave a tour-de-force smackdown to the GOP spin that “There’s nothing to see here, move along.” See Historian discusses Supreme Court's immunity decision and shift in presidential powers (youtube.com).

HCR’s discussion is six minutes long but worth every minute. I assume 100% of my readers also subscribe to Heather Cox Richardson, but if you don’t, you are missing out on an essential voice defending democracy. Check out HCR’s Substack here: Letters from an American.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes gets it right

The Supreme Court considered two cases this term that dealt with constitutional provisions that affect the president. The first considered the Disqualification Clause in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibited Trump from appearing on the Colorado primary ballot. The second dealt with Trump's defense of presidential immunity.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes commented on the disparate treatment of those two constitutional questions as follows:

Grimly hilarious to compare the textual foundation for disqualifying Trump for insurrection (right there in the 14th Amendment) and the foundation for absolute criminal immunity for official acts (nowhere to be found in the Constitution despite explicit grants of other forms of immunity).

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[mariacallous]

FP World Brief: The Fallout of European Elections

Mainstream parties secured a slim majority during European Union parliamentary elections this weekend, but far-right groups made the most noteworthy gains in the bloc’s legislative body. “The center is holding, but it is also true that the extremes on the left and on the right have gained support,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday following the end of Europe’s four-day vote.

Among the centrist leaders forced to reckon with the far right’s rise is French President Emmanuel Macron, who called for snap legislative elections on Sunday after opposition leader Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally party delivered a crushing defeat to Macron’s Renaissance party in the European Parliament elections—winning around 31 percent of the vote compared with the Renaissance delegation’s less than 15 percent. France’s snap elections will take place on June 30 and July 7.

“The rise of nationalists, of demagogues, is a danger for our nation but also for our Europe, for France’s place in Europe and in the world,” Macron said in an announcement to dissolve the National Assembly. Regional experts worry that Macron is taking a major risk with his remaining three years in office. If Le Pen gains control of the National Assembly, then France could be forced into “cohabitation,” in which the president is part of a different political party than the majority of French parliamentarians. In 1997, the last time that a president dissolved parliament, right-wing then-President Jacques Chirac lost his party’s majority to the left.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo also took drastic measures following far-right gains in parliamentary and general elections this weekend. On Monday, De Croo tendered his resignation after his Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats party dropped to ninth place—far behind the right-wing New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) and far-right Vlaams Belang party.

N-VA leader Bart De Wever is expected to become Belgium’s next prime minister. De Croo will serve in a caretaker capacity until Brussels forms a new coalition, which could take months; De Croo’s own coalition took almost 18 months to form, and in 2010, the country took 541 days to form a government.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party secured second place in the country’s European Parliament elections, with almost 16 percent of the vote—its best showing yet. “We’ve done well because people have become more anti-European,” AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said on Sunday, citing Germans’ frustration with EU bureaucracy. AfD gains underscored the far right’s strength ahead of next year’s federal election despite the party suffering a series of scandals related to Nazi-sympathetic comments.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni bolstered her image as Europe’s kingmaker after her right-wing Brothers of Italy party more than quadrupled its vote share in the European Parliament. The far-right Freedom Party of Austria gained nearly 26 percent of the vote, topping the national ballot for the first time in history. And in the Netherlands, the anti-immigration Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders, celebrated moving from one to six seats in the European Parliament.

But not all right-wing parties fared well. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s nationalist Fidesz party won the most votes but fell short of surpassing its 2019 success, achieving only 44 percent of the vote versus the 53 percent secured five years earlier. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition secured a narrow win over the right-wing Law and Justice party. And Bulgaria’s center-right GERB party won snap elections on Sunday against the ultra-nationalist Reviva

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Jair Bolsonaro still shapes Brazil’s political right

Would-be successors are pandering to his fans

ON OCTOBER 6TH voters across Brazil will go to the polls to select more than 5,500 mayors and tens of thousands of city councillors (second-round run-offs will follow at the end of the month). The gigantic municipal vote provides a barometer of sorts for the next presidential election, which is due in 2026. Signs in the run-up are unsettling. Two years after Brazilians booted out Jair Bolsonaro, their inept and dangerous former president, right-wing politics remains in his thrall. An acolyte—or perhaps an imitator—could return Mr Bolsonaro’s movement to power.

For a while optimists had dared to hope that the bolsonaristas were a spent force. After losing the presidential election in 2022 Mr Bolsonaro spent a few months in Florida, moping around fried-chicken shops and occasionally posing for selfies with fans. On January 8th 2023—one week after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the left-wing current president, was inaugurated—supporterswho believed their idol’s claim that the election had been rigged ransacked Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace. Brazilians were appalled. And even some of the extremists, unimpressed by Mr Bolsonaro’s wimpy self-exile, ended up feeling let down.

In June 2023 Mr Bolsonaro was barred from holding public office for eight years for having used state television to cast doubt on the reliability of voting machines in advance of the election that he lost. His problems have only piled up since then. In March Brazilian police formally accused him of forging a covid vaccine certificate. In July they formally accused him of embezzlement in connection with gifts of jewellery and watches from Saudi Arabia. (Mr Bolsonaro denies both these accusations.) Numerous other probes are ongoing, including one examining how far Mr Bolsonaro played a role in stoking the riots on January 8th. The chances of him going to jail are rising.

Yet even if he is a much diminished figure, for the moment Mr Bolsonaro remains a kingmaker for the political right. His Liberal Party is the largest in Congress. This year he has proved able to attract tens of thousands—and sometimes hundreds of thousands—of fans to events, such as rallies where he criticises the Supreme Court, which is overseeing several of the investigations into him (he is pictured above at one such gathering, in September). For weeks he has been touring Brazil to drum up support for the mayoral candidates he endorsed. In 23 of Brazil’s 100 or so largest cities, candidates who have gained backing from Mr Bolsonaro are polling in first place. (By comparison, there are 16 races in which candidates supported by Lula, as the current president is known, are likely to win.)

Continue reading.

[beardedmrbean]

In an Instagram story posted on Sunday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, blasted Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein as "predatory" due to her multiple runs for the White House while struggling to grow the third party at the grassroots level.

In 2016, Stein played kingmaker in several key battleground states. Her vote total was higher than Donald Trump's margin of victory in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan—prompting intense backlash from Democrats and political pundits. Not only was Stein widely condemned as a spoiler, but former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was the Democratic nominee during the 2016 election, later accused her of being a "Russian asset."

Ocasio-Cortez accused Stein and the Green Party, which reached its current party status in 2001, for only putting its emphasis on presidential elections. To date, no Green Party candidate has ever held a federal office and only a handful have been elected as state legislators.

Ocasio-Cortez, responding to a question from an Instagram follower about Jill Stein's candidacy, said that "this is a little spicy, but I have thoughts."

"If you run for years in a row, and your party has not grown, has not added city council seats, down ballot seats and state electives, that's bad leadership. And that to me is what's upsetting," the congresswoman said about Stein.

Stein will be on the ballot in Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and West Virginia, according to Ballotpedia's most-recent update.

She will also be on the ballot in Montana, Utah, Nevada, Alaska, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Maine, Maryland and Missouri, Stein's campaign manager Jason Call previously told Newsweek.

Meanwhile, the Green Party is on the ballot in Mississippi, South Carolina and Hawaii.

The reason for why Stein is on the ballot in some states and the Green Party is on in others is because of ballot access procedures.

On its website, the Green Party states that "at least 144 [party members] hold elected office in 20 states across the United States as of February 15, 2024." The list includes Green Party members of local school, zoning and tax boards, as well as several city council members.

The New York Democrat said that Stein had been the Green Party's candidate for 12 years in a row. However, Howie Hawkins ran as the party's nominee in 2020.

"If you have been your party's nominee for 12 years in a row, and you cannot grow your movement, pretty much at all, and can't peruse any successful strategy...and all you do is show up every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, you're not serious. To me, it does not read as authentic, it reads as predatory. I'm sorry, I'm just saying it," Ocasio-Cortez said in her Instagram story.

She also asserted that she's not against third parties, overall, and that she has and will continue to endorse some third-party candidates, even against Democrats.

"What I have a problem with is, if you're running for president, you are the DeFacto leader of your party. I've been on record with criticisms of the two-party system. This is not about that," the congresswoman added.

A spokesperson for Stein referred Newsweek to the Green Party candidate's posts on X, formerly Twitter, in response to Ocasio-Cortez.

The Massachusetts native wrote in one post, "What's seriously predatory is pretending your candidate is 'working tirelessly for a ceasefire' [in Gaza] when in reality they're actively arming and funding genocide."

She wrote in a second post, "Democrats sue to kick us off ballots, hire operatives to infiltrate and sabotage us, lock us out of debates, fight ranked-choice voting, then act concerned that Greens have only won 1400 elections. So which party is authentic, and which is predatory?"

Newsweek emailed Ocasio-Cortez's office Sunday afternoon for comment.

The Democratic Party has gone through considerable legal efforts to challenge third parties from appearing on ballots.

Before independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump, Democratic-funded lawsuits had successfully removed him from the ballot in New York and had tried and failed to remove him in North Carolina and New Jersey.

On Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected an attempt by Democratic National Committee (DNC) official David Strange to knock Stein off the state's ballot this year.

Strange said that the Green Party should not be allowed to nominate presidential electors in Wisconsin because it does not have any state officeholders or legislative candidates to nominate these presidential electors. However, the court ruled that "the petitioner is not entitled to the relief he seeks."

Michael White, co-chair of the Wisconsin Green Party, said the complaint was a "mark of fear by the Democratic Party."

In her 2017 book, What Happened, Clinton wrote: "So in each state, there were more than enough Stein voters to swing the result."

Nationally, Stein received 1 percent of the vote in 2016, just under 1.5 million votes. In the 2020 election between Trump and Joe Biden, the Green Party's candidate, Hawkins, only received 0.2 percent of the popular vote.

When asked recently by Newsweek if she feared a similar backlash after Trump's 2016 victory when Clinton and many in the Democratic Party blamed her for taking crucial votes in several battleground states, Stein said those "smear or fear campaigns by the parties of Wall Street have never stopped."

"The exit polls showed the vast majority of our votes in 2016 were non-voters," Stein said, stating it is nonsense to claim her party took votes away from Clinton. "That campaign has never stopped and doesn't influence my thinking. My thinking is on the climate catastrophe, economic hardships and stopping endless wars."

In addition to Stein, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris could also lose votes in key states to Cornel West, the "Justice for All Party" presidential candidate.

According to the Associated Press, a cohort of Republican strategists, attorneys, and supporters nationwide are striving to influence the upcoming November elections in a manner that potentially benefits Trump. Their objective is to bolster third-party candidates like West who present liberal voters with a different option that might divert support from Harris.

The funding source for this initiative remains ambiguous, but it holds substantial potential to alter outcomes in states that saw extremely narrow margins in the 2020 election won by Biden.

West's campaign has encouraged the effort. Last month, the academic told the AP that "American politics is highly gangster-like activity" and he "just wanted to get on that ballot."

Trump has offered praise for West, calling him "one of my favorite candidates." Of Stein, the former president favors her for the same reason.

"I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100 percent from them. He takes 100 percent," Trump has said.

[head-post]

Italy’s Meloni claims to be right kingmaker

On the eve of the EU elections, right-wing parties are gaining momentum, and Italian Prime Minister and ECR leader Giorgia Meloni already seems to be a contender for the role of kingmaker in the next EU parliament, thanks to her party’s slogan “Italy changes Europe”, Euractiv reports.

According to the latest Europe Elects poll, Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (ECR) party is at the top – as are several far-right parties in the bloc – with 27 per cent, six per cent ahead of Elly Schlein’s Democratic Party (S&D).

As for other Italian parties, the once anti-establishment Five Star Movement, led by former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, is in third place with 16 per cent. However, although the party is not part of any European Parliament group, there are rumours that it may form a new group with Germany’s Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) party.

The other two ruling parties – Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani’s Forza Italia (EPP) and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s League (LD) – currently have 9% of the vote each. A potential surge for Forza Italia is likely to benefit the party, especially as the League will also be far from the high 30% of the vote it received in the last European elections in 2019.

Barely crossing the 4% threshold, separate EU lists from Carlo Calenda’s Azione and former prime minister Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva are threatening Italy’s representation in the Renew European group, despite their leaders’ attempts to merge the two parties into a single list.

On the right side of the political axis, Meloni and her party appear to be emerging as leading players, with polls predicting unprecedented success for right-wing groups.

Currently, however, Meloni is between two goals. She is simultaneously being groomed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and National Rally head Marine Le Pen, two camps that have already rejected the possibility of working together at the EU level after the upcoming European elections.

In addition to Meloni’s recent call for a rapprochement with the right, which Le Pen recently supported, in a recent interview with Skuola.net Meloni also strongly rejected the possibility of uniting with the centre-left.  What makes her a kingmaker is that her actions could dramatically alter alliances in the European Parliament.

For example, while von der Leyen made moves indicating a possible future alliance with Meloni, the left and some of her allies said they would block von der Leyen’s second mandate if she formed a coalition with Meloni.

Meloni has received pushback from her typical far-right allies, including her own ECR group, and the far-right VOX has already announced its refusal to back von der Leyen.

Read more HERE

[battleangel]

Black Mirror, Pigrape & WW3

There is one thing that causes poverty, inequality, food insecurity, houselessness, starvation, unequal medical care & inhumane living conditions more than anything else --

Wealth is passed down generationally to heirs.

Literally, thats it.

Children usually inherit their parents estate.

So, wealth is naturally concentrated amongst the global elite 1%.

Virtually all of the laws in the world allow parents to confer their wealth to the next generation -- their direct heirs -- upon their death.

So, the cycle of the worlds wealth being in the hands of the 1% is never going to change.

You will never get the Waltons (Walmart), the Hiltons, etc. to not keep their money concentrated within their respective bloodlines.

These millionaires and billionaires also give money to politicians that allow their families, companies, corporations and enterprises to continue their profiteering, corporatism, exploitation, non-stop lobbying, union busting and their CEOs making thousands more than the people actually working for these companies.

This will never change.

The politicians want the funding from these millionaires and billionaires to keep flowing to them from the owners, founders & CEOs of these corporations and the families that found these corporations and their CEOs want to keep the money strictly within their respective bloodlines.

This also applies to any real estate, land and assets owned by the parents upon their deaths, per virtually all of the laws in the world, all of this wealth gets passed down to their heirs, usually their children, upon death.

As long as the parents had wills and living testaments and they all do (global elites), the above situation is going to play out every time keeping the elite 1% in control of over 99% of the earth's money.

There are movements for this wealth to be confiscated by the government, etc.

Its theater.

Its Obamas lip service to undocumented folks while throwing more children in cages than Trump.

The policies and laws never actually change because the politicians dont want them to as they are paid off by and funded by these same global elites.

Its why Cruz as a conservative voted for TPP.

Its why Biden as a Democrat is a total Zionist and war hawk.

There are cosmetic differences between the two parties, the duopoly - Democrat "vs" Republican, but the true power brokers behind the scenes and behind the curtain hand pick the people who get to ascend to the US Presidential throne.

All 200+ Presidents are part of the same royal lineage that dates back hundreds of years to the royal family in the United Kingdom.

Please look it up.

Every single one, including Obama.

Figure out who the Reptilians are.

They are the Kingmakers.

They decide all US presidential elections.

All of these things are written decades in advance.

They already know when China is going to demand the US to pay back the debt it owes them.

Our biggest "enemy" is the country who has purchased the most of our debt -- ask yourself what sense that makes if this isnt by design.

The moment China demands that we pay back the debt we owe them (look into how many trillions in US bonds China has bought), the US dollar will instantly crash.

Right now, the US dollar is used essentially as the worlds currency but you can google how weak it currently is.

Geopolitically, militarily and economically (GDP), the US is number 1.

However, we are trillions of dollars in debt to China.

Trillions of government programs are currently unfunded right now due to how massive the government debt is ($17 trillion).

The moment China demands that we pay up the debt we owe them that they have purchased, the US dollar will crash and we will go bankrupt as a nation.

Medicare is an unfunded government program and liability.

So is Medicaid.

So is Social Security.

Military, highways, hospitals, schools.

The US dollar crashing will crash the worlds economy since the US dollar is still used as the standard despite how weak it is due to all of our national debt.

China, with their Yen, will then be in the strongest position.

The Yen will take over as the worlds currency standard.

China will bankrupt the US.

Chinas economy and military will then be #1.

They will attack our extremely vulnerable and purposely antiquated electrical grid and cause nationwide blackouts that last for months via highly sophisticated & coordinated EMP attacks.

There will be Chinese terrorist attacks aided by Iran and Russia.

China, Iran & Russia will also attack London (UK).

They will attack the White House, Washington Monument and the Pentagon.

Watch ID4 and get a clue.

All our symbols of national power will be attacked, eviscerated and incinerated.

They will blow up Mount Rushmore.

They will detonate a nuclear weapon in the mid-west and threaten to detonate additional nuclear weapons in New York City, Los Angeles and other major metropolitan US cities (Chicago, Miami, etc.) unless we surrender.

They will also have a nuclear weapon aimed at the White House but the President will be in a bunker with his family and the Secret Service.

Watch Black Mirror and get a clue.

It will be kabuki theater.

The President, First Lady and their children as well as the VP, spouse and their children will be murdered on a live social media feed if the US doesnt surrender and the above named US cities will be incinerated like Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Unconditional surrender or millions will die instantaneously from the nuclear weapons but then look up the horrific after effects of the radiation poisioning on the surrounding "surviving" populations of Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

The FBI & CIA elite know of these threats now.

The US President & family and VP & family will actually be safe in a bunker but the bunker will have a recreated Oval Office.

Its just kabuki theater.

It will be streamed live on every US TV channel, Netlix, Hulu, Disney+, Facebook, IG, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube & Twitch.

The US will surrender to save the President (nothing but a figurehead exactly like how the monarchy functions -- "God Save the Queen!") and the "millions of lives in the US cities targeted by the nuclear weapons".

The fake explanation will be, "We could fire back with our own nukes but by then the President, First Lady & VP would be murdered and 'untold millions' will have been wiped out in every major US city."

The President ("Commander In Chief") , Secretary of Defense and Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff will negotiate the US' surrender to "save millions of lives" as China will literally have its raised finger above the red button of the nuclear weapon.

And it will all be fucking fake as fuck.

It wont be a real detonation button or a real nuclear weapon.

The President, First Lady, VP and their families are all actually in a secure bunker that just has the Oval Office recreated in it.

There will be a surrender streamed live to China (and Russia and Iran).

This will happen a year or two into World War 3 between US & Israel & London (UK) vs China, Russia & Iran.

I predict WW3 will start next summer (2024).

This dovetails nicely with the US Presidential election November 2024 and also with the fact that student loans just went into repayment this Fall.

I want YOU to give your life for a worthless fucking college degree!

We will be winning until China does the above.

All planned in advance and fake as fucking fuck.

They're nothing but WWE and soap opera storylines, all written in advance, and behind the scenes all the wrestlers hating each others guts and the soap actors bitch slapping each other around all get along really well.

Its nothing but theater for the audience.

Noone is a face, everyones a heel.

Noone is a soap opera villain.

Theyre all on the same side just working the audience up with fake ass rivalries.

All those 18 to 21 year old boys on ALL sides murdered for absolutely fucking nothing.

Hamas' propaganda videos are no different than the US militarys and IDF's (Israel Defense Force) propaganda.

There will be hostages raped and executed live during the social media stream.

Its the pig being fucked in the ass on Black Mirror.

Nothing but kabuki theater.

Its viscera and terror to subdue, sublimate & control the masses.

Its Hunger Games:

President Snow : She's become a beacon of hope for the rebellion, and she has to be eliminated.

Plutarch Heavensbee : I agree she should die, but in the right way, at the right time. It's moves and counter-moves, and it's all we gotta look at. Katniss Everdeen is a symbol. Their Mockingjay. They think she's one of them. We need to show that she's one of us. We don't need to destroy her, just the image, then we let the people do the rest.

Plutarch Heavensbee : Shut down the black markets, take away what little they have, then double the amount of floggings and executions. Put them on TV, broadcast them live, sow fear, more fear...

President Snow : It won't work. Fear does not work as long as they have hope, and Katniss Everdeen is giving them hope.

Plutarch Heavensbee : She's engaged. Make everything about that. What kind of dress is she gonna wear? - floggings. What's the cake gonna look like? - executions. Whose gonna be there? - fear. Blanket coverage. Shove it in their faces. Show them that she's one of us now.

Plutarch Heavensbee : They're gonna hate her so much they just might kill her for ya.

President Snow : Brilliant.

Its to traumatize on a mass scale and induce terror to make the populace sheep that submit and obey.

This is why the fear of death is so critical and why they encourage it at all times.

The fear will be visceral and palpable as death is laughably presented in society as the "worst thing ever to be avoided at all costs" when in fact it is nothing but a beautiful transformation and evolution to your eternal energetic state and a final ascension from the human 3D realm ("real life" aka the simulated virtual reality) back to the eternal limitless 10D dreamscape that we all originated from as the limitless eternal energetic beings that we all are.

We are all gods, small g.

We have all existed for eternity in the dreamscape.

We do not have a beginning or an end.

We are as limitless as our minds and imaginations because we ARE our minds and imaginations.

Its what we literally are.

Our 3D limited physical human bodies are nothing but vessels.

Our souls and our hearts and our minds inside of the physical husk and vessel is what we are truly made of.

We are energy and we are literally nature.

Its why nature is what heals us.

Reiki heals us.

We can heal ourselves.

But we do have a natural end to our lives as physically manifested humans because this is an extremely temporary state that we currently inhabit so to prolong life with endless interventions, harmful medical treatments, surgeries, medications, radiation, hormones, chemotherapy, prescriptions literally makes no fucking sense.

Accept your temporary manifestation as a physical human being.

Heal yourself through self healing practices.

medicinal plants & herbs

marijuana

psychedlics

nature -- rivers, streams, natural sunlight NOT artificial lighting, oceans, beaches, mountains, forests, moon and the stars, the sky, fresh air, trees

shamanic healing

witch doctors

indigineous medicinal practices

market limpia

deep REM restorative sleep = temporary shift in consciousness back to the dreamscape which is why its so restorative

water = temporary human vessel is 80% water it is energy and sustains life - drink 64+ oz a day and minimize juice soda coffee & alcohol

sound bath healing

weightless floating in water

listening to mhz frequencies

meditation

expressive movement of the body -- hula hooping, pole dancing, dance, aerialism, fire breathing, magic tricks, martial arts, trapeze, etc.

expressive art -- poetry, slam poetry, stand up comedy, acting, writing, painting, drawing, clay, pottery, theater, improv, etc.

self reiki

shadow work

somatic work

journalling

sabbatical

solo trip

excursion

inducing your own ego death and killing your human ego

self actualization & self ascension

opening your third eye

kundalini awakening

aligning & activating all seven chakras

eliminate all toxic energy vampires -- malignant narcissists, dark empaths, abusers, sociopaths -- from your energy orbit & aura including and especially spouse, significant others, adult children, parents, mother, father, siblings, brothers, sisters, grandparents, grandmother, grandfather, aunts, uncles, supervisors, managers, co-workers, mentors, coaches, teachers, professors, priests, deacons, deaconnesses, pastors, ministers, nuns, best friends, friends, etc. -- no matter how difficult or controversial or how much you are judged, go low/limited/no contact with all toxic energy vampires -- even the matriarch and patriach of your entire family -- and remove them from your obit and aura so they can stop energetically attacking you and draining your energy and depleting your aura and psychically attacking your psyche which can result in an eventual psychotic break where your literal psyche is broken-- these attacks lead to all kinds of physical and mental maladies, disorders, conditions, diseases, illnesses, compulsions, addictions, etc. that are actually being caused by constant and insidious energetic & psychic assaults and auric attacks

leave any job that has toxic energy vampires -- and this is actually every job as capitalism is based off of the exploitation of the worker via constant and sustained energetic and psychic attacks and auric assaults on your aura -- this includes a passive aggressive supervisor, co-workers, stakeholders, clients, cross-functional collaborators, your +1, your HR generalist or HR business partner, work mentors, work sponsors, executive leadership, officers of the company, CEO, vendors, prospects, etc. -- psychic & energetic attacks at work include constant emails & IMs, unreasonable & unrealistic demands, forced & mandatory unpaid overtime as a salaried employee, golden handcuffs as an executive where you exchanged a fancy title for having a life outside of your big important job, working 70 to 90+ hours a week and essentially living at your job to flex on the gram & LinkedIn at the big 4/financial services/big tech, a cultish environment like Amazon ("peculiar ways", "Leadership Principles", "Every day is Day 1", etc."), humiliations/condescencions/interruptions/belittlements/beratements/insults/being talked down to/talked over at meetings, projects & ideas stolen, microaggressions/racism/misogyny/homophobia/transphobia/misogynoir/unconscious bias/hostile work environments, verbal and mental abuse, being purposely overworked, underpaid & never appreciated, training your own replacement, being laid off when your employer made billions in record profits, being used when someone else takes credit for your work and gets a promotion and you dont, work becoming your identity and central form of validation

leave the 9 to 5 capitalist structure as well as any job in capitalism with a supervisor and mandated schedules including corporate, academia, non profit, retail, food service, medical industry, military, K-12 schools, colleges & universities, libraries, museums, etc.

become a freelancer (delivery driver, rideshare driver, content writer, virtual assistant, cold calling, data entry, etc.)

Get ready for the pigfucking.

Get ready for WW3.

Get ready for the Black Mirror & the Black Parade.

[warningsine]

As Turkey approaches presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is fighting an uphill battle for survival. He is behind in the polls, which can be attributed to three main reasons.

First, Erdogan can no longer rely on his autocratic bargain predicated on delivering economic growth and upward mobility in return for political support or quiescence. This served him well during most of his 20 years in power but now is irreparably broken.

His stubborn and uninformed monetary policy has left the economy fragile and suffering from high inflation. A major erosion of purchasing power generating growing poverty and income disparity ensued in the last couple of years. But the bad news for Erdogan does not end with the economy. 

Second, and perhaps most important, a traditionally weak and divided opposition is now united against him. An eclectic coalition of six parties, boosted with the support of a kingmaker Kurdish political movement, stands firmly behind Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the social-democratic Republican People’s Party and the candidate of what is known as the Nation Alliance. 

Kilicdaroglu is ahead of Erdogan in the polls, but his margin is slim. 

Finally, a third factor also works against Erdogan: the massive earthquake that shook Turkey on February 6 and killed more than 50,000 people. The disaster blatantly exposed the inefficiency and institutional decay under Erdogan’s one-man rule.

To the massive frustration of millions affected, the state was quasi-absent in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Under the corrupt management of incompetent cronies, governmental agencies not only failed in search and rescue efforts but also mismanaged post-disaster relief. 

Under normal circumstances these factors should translate into a major defeat for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Yet elections are no longer free and fair in Erdogan’s Turkey. The government controls most of the media and the judicial system.

In the absence of a strong margin of victory for the opposition, Erdogan may refuse to concede and take the result to the courts or worse – to the streets.

Lacking charisma and oratory skills but with a strong reputation for integrity, Kilicdaroglu, 74, is the architect of the opposition’s newly acquired unity. But he has a losing streak against Erdogan. 

In a two-round presidential election system that is bound to be tightly contested, whether Kilicdaroglu can win in the first round with more than 50% of the vote will end up depending on an unknown: the resurgent candidacy of Muharrem Ince, who has emerged as a populist disrupter, to the delight of Erdogan. Ince, who polls between 5% and 7%, attracts younger voters unhappy with both the AKP and the opposition. 

Given the stakes, the whole country is on edge. A large part of the population is ready for change. But the same societal segment is anxious and incredulous about the prospect of Erdogan losing power.

Aura of invincibility

Like many observers in the West who lack confidence in Turkey’s democratic maturity, many in Turkey find it hard to believe that Erdogan will quietly disappear after losing an election. This brings us to a critically important yet often misunderstood dimension of the drama about to unfold in Turkey: Erdogan’s biggest advantage is his aura of political invincibility.  

There seems to be a fatalistic resignation that Erdogan will find a way to stay in power and that a peaceful transition will prove elusive. The same alarmism sees this election as the last chance before Turkey slides into dictatorship.

Such apprehension may serve to galvanize the opposition. But it is misplaced and ignores reality. Erdogan is not as strong as he seems and Turkey is not an autocracy like Russia or China where polls are cosmetic.

Despite the illiberal nature of strongman rule, elections will continue to matter if Turkish people are not intimidated by Erdogan. Even if he manages to win, the people and the opposition should remain vigilant, make sure the result is not manipulated before conceding, and prepare for the next fight instead of losing hope and faith in elections.

Turkish democracy will outlast Erdogan even if he scores a pyrrhic short-term victory. He is bound to lose even if he wins. 

Finally, let’s not forget that Erdogan lost local elections in all major cities in 2019 when the opposition was united and received Kurdish support. In Istanbul, a 16-million-strong megapolis and a microcosm of Turkey, Erdogan refused the result after a very narrow loss and bullied his way to a rerun.  

He lost in a landslide.

And all this was before the economic meltdown and the hyperinflation of the last two years. Behind the facade of his massive presidential palace, Erdogan is a lonely man, detached from reality, and surrounded by sycophants.

Yes, he has gained a well-deserved reputation as a Machiavellian survivor after 20 years in power. But centralization of decision-making, personalization of authority, and the hollowing out of state institutions have not made him stronger. 

Instead, Turkey’s strongman is now at his weakest. If Erdogan wins on May 14, it will not be because of his capacity to govern or his populist policies raising the minimum wage or lowering the retirement age. It will be because too many Turks still believe he is invincible.

[opedguy]

DOJ Clears Gates of Sex Trafficking

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Feb. 15, 2023.--Department of Justice announced today that they’re dropping any charges against 40-year-old Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.) for sex trafficking.  Many Democrats are disappointed hoping to destroy Gaetz politically, a big past supporter of 76-year-old former President Donald Trump.  Trump announced his third run for president Nov. 15, 2022, counting on loyalists like Gaetz to jump on the Trump bandwagon.  “The Department of Justice has confirmed to Congressman Gaets’s attorneys that their investigation has concluded and that he will not be charged with any crimes,” the DOJ tatement said.  Gaetz, a two-term Congressman, received national publicity for his vocal support of Trump, making him a pariah to the U.S. press.  How the U.S. press gets away with its extreme prejudice against Trump or any other candidate for public office is anyone’s guess.    

News in today’s America is tainted by Democrat political bias, with most members of the press strongly liberal.  Instead of reporting facts, the press skews the facts against Republicans, with Gaetz being one of its favorite targets.  Gaetz, a member of the ultra-right wing Freedom Caucus, unnerved fellow Republicans when he refused to back 58-year-old former House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for House Speaker, taking the process an unprecedented 15 ballots.  Things got so bad on the House floor, Gaetz nearly came to blows with 58 year-old Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Al.), who lashed out in frustration against Gaetz.  But by far, Gaetz has been under the gun with the DOJ investigating whether he participated in sex-for-gifts with teenage girls, something that could have ended his career.  Gaetz was a close friend of former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, who was convicted of sex trafficking.

Greenberg, with whom Gaetz attended the same parties, was charged, convicted and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for sex trafficking with under-aged minors.  DOJ officials investigated a party in the Bahamas where Gaetz took with his hand-surgeon donor Jason Pirozzolo where Greenberg was charge with sex crimes.  How Gaetz got off the hook is anyone’s guess but the DOJ dropped its investigation.  Apart from Gaetz’s scrutiny by the DOJ, he was by far persecuted for his support of Trump, something that could come back to haunt him in 2024.  Gaetz hasn’t announced any endorsement in the 2024 election, knowing that his 44-year-old friend Gov. Ron DeSantis might run in 2024.  DeSantis has a lot of GOP donors encouraging him to jump into the ring, believing that the party needs a fresh face in 2024.  President Joe Biden, 80, has not announced his intent yet.

Gaetz upped his political capital with the DOJ taking him out of the hot seat, dropping its investigation.  Federal prosecutors also looked into whether or not Gaetz improperly took money or granted favors to the medical marijuana industry in Florida.  On those grounds as well, federal prosecutors couldn’t find any credible evidence of wrongdoing by the 40-year-old Congressman.  House Ethics Committee announced in April 2021 that it was looking into any improper dealings in Florida with the medial marijuana lobby.  House ethics investigators aren’t likely to reach any conclusions about Gaetz’s ties to Florida’s medial marijuana lobby.  At age 40, Gaetz plays close to the edge but so far has eluded any serious charges.  If he plays his cards right, he could be a popular conservative in the GOP heading into 2014, possibly a kingmaker with DeSantis looking for support.

Gaetz’s had the media put a target on his back for his past support of Trump, especially in the wake of the FBI’s Aug. 8, 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid.  Gaetz gave Trump the benefit of the doubt all Democrats various charges, especially about the classified files and Jan. 6, 2020 Capitol riots.  Gaetz infuriated Democrats and the press not jumping on lets charge Trump bandwagon.  Now that the DOJ decided to not charge Gaetz, look for the high profile young congressman to rise steadily in GOP ranks.  If Gaetz presses DeSantis to keep the Trump agenda, including his opposition to the Ukraine War, he’ll find himself getting more traction for the GOP nominee.  There’s enough folks in the GOP looking or a new face in 2024.  DeSantis could benefit from the desire of voters to move one from geriatric politicians, whether Trump or Biden, and sneak into the White House in 2024.

Cleared from the DOJ for any wrongdoing in the sex trafficking scandal, the sky is the limit for Gaetz looking to move up in GOP ranks.  If he keeps his principles of limited government and America First, he’ll help DeSantis win over a lot of Trump voters who will eventually realize that DeSantis is more electable than Trump in 2024.  Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, 49, needs to work feverishly to confront pernicious Democrat and media propaganda about how Republicans would rob citizens on their Social Security and Medicare.  Democrats and the press did such an effective job of discrediting Trump in 2020, it handed the public Biden with all that’s gone wrong.  Cleared of wrongdoing, Gaetz looks to jump to the top of the GOP heap, pushing DeSantis in 2024 to carry on the Trump agenda, only giving the party a new look.

About the Author  

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.  

[rampagingpoet]

The sad reality of first-past-the-post voting. All criticism gets counted as an attack by the other side because one side or the other is going to win. And the "Save democracy seems to mean not voice or hold political opinions" group has high overlap with the "all these people suck don't vote for any of them" group. Which is intended as an attack. Or more specifically, a threat.

Threatening to withhold your vote unless one party moves to meet your position is a valid electoral strategy. If it works, you have accomplished your policy goals. If it doesn't, you had no impact on result. It's when you get into convincing others to follow the same strategy that it becomes both more effective and more risky - you're persuading people that would have been one vote for Bad to instead be half a vote for Bad and half a vote for Christian Theocratic Dictatorship.

Like any threat or bribe it needs force, it needs credibility, and it needs to target something the opposing party values. And since there's multiple factions on the board, giving in to that threat must not be more costly to them than ignoring you and facing the consequences.

I think it's become pretty clear that Harris either:

Believes her odds of electoral victory are higher if she persists in making soothing noises at the electorate instead of actually doing something about Israel; or

Values US military access to Israeli airfields higher than she values winning the election.

If we're in case 1, getting enough people onside to vote third-party instead of Democrat could succeed. Once there's a critical mass of people who will not vote for her because of her support for Israel's fascist regime, she'd be forced to cave.

If we're in case 2 though, then things are much more difficult. To stop the genocide, pro-Palestinean voters wouldn't just have to play kingmaker. They'd have to run a candidate for President and beat both the Democrats and the Republicans. Which, notably, the people most vocal about not voting Democrat have not been doing. Zero support for anyone that matches their policies, just refusal to support anyone that doesn't.

This is why I'm so insistent about people getting out to vote. Even if you won't vote for the Democrats, showing up and voting third-party sends two important messages.

First, voting third-party shows that you are, in fact, willing and able to show up at the polls to support a candidate whose policies match your preferences. That in turn makes your threat not to vote for one of the major parties more credible and therefore more effective in future elections.º

Second, it builds the base of your third party of choice. If the two major parties are ever both nearly identical and highly unpopular, a third party could win! But only if you actually show up and vote for them instead of deciding your vote doesn't matter if it's not Red or Blue.

If everyone that "didn't think their vote counted" or "didn't like the candidates" had voted for the same third-party candidate in 2020, that candidate would have had 10% of the popular vote. 10%! That's almost four times more support than any third party has ever received!

Two and a half weeks probably isn't enough time to completely upend US politics and get an Independent elected President, but I'm curious to see who the "Don't Vote Democrat They Suck Too" crowd actually approve of. I've only ever seen them tear down the Democrats, never build up an alternative.

º Assuming the Republicans don't come out of this one with control of the House, Senate, Presidency, and Supreme Court. Trump has openly said "He'll fix it" and that his base will never have to vote again if he's elected. And even if they don't go that far this time, that would put them in control for the next redistricting and let them gerrymander the hell out of the Congressional districts.

[magpiejay1234]

Anyway, some thoughts on the recent USA elections:

**Rust Belt is probably gone away from Democrats' grasp for good this time, the transition to full GOP majority will take time like Ohio/Florida, but the trend is clear. The only reason they trended left compared to the national average was due to intense campaigning, this will not be repeated in the future.

**In contrast, Georgia, and North Carolina are shifting blue faster than people think.

**In general, sheer collapse of the Hispanic vote beyond some key national communities means the recent decade-long push for Hispanic identity politics is over. Emphasis of Democrats (and by proxy most of European centre-left) will shift to dominant ethnic group's sexual minorities (ie. white ones in the context of USA, Poles in Poland etc.), especially in the context of the recent transphobic wave.

***Since this is pretty much a repeat of Bush Jr. Part 2, we can expect a similar antipathy toward non-binary people once heteronormative trans folk get acceptance again.

**Collapse of the Muslim vote back to the pre-2000s standard of being pro-Republican probably also means post-Iraq War hypersensivity for Muslim migrants is over. As Evangelicalism retracts, this likealy means anti-Islamic attidutes among the left will take hold.

**Since South Carolina is one of the few Southern states overall that trended right (compared to the national average), this means Jim Clyburn's decision to make the state the Democratic kingmaker ensures there will be no major Democratic candidate that is left of the national average, which basically means conservative Dem supremacy for presidential elections going forward. It's unclear whay this means electorally, but more neoconservatification of Democrats is likely.

**For all intents and purposes, though, Democrats got what they wanted for years. The white college educated middle class is now their base, they succeeded in ethnic dealignment, and made immigrants feel finally as a part of America. It just so happened to be against them, because they couldn't deflate the prices, and provide housing.

**Left and far right entryism for Democrats/Republicans will continue unabated, but this is largely due to lack of support for centrism, as it is clear neither side can actually take over their respective parties to establish a coherent political platform, not due to a lack of numbers, but due to ideological heterogeneity.

**Unrelated to the US politics, but Trump's reelection probably means some sort of deal between Kosovo-Serbia may be reached.

***

Other heuristics:

**Industrial policy, and direct climate action are probably gone for good as open policies. They will still continue as strategic policies, but they don't win elections, so there is no reason to promote them.

**Immigration issue, much like with the European centre left, has been lost for Democrats. Until significant housing reform occurs (which is anathema for the majority of Democrats, who are landlords, despite the rise of YIMBY sentiment), pro immigration sentiment won't return for generations.

**Since inflation was the big economic issue, the Democrats will likely run on a more open free trade platform again, effectively returning to Clintonism. New friendshoring agreements will have to be negotiated to make geoeconomic trade wars sustainable, which means more trade with ASEAN, and Africa, to replace China.

Democrats will likely break with the agricultural lobby now at national level, and significant deregulation will likely occur.

**Though the Democrats will shift right like the rest of the country, it is unlikely that left punching will be successful, or actually occur. Again, there is no passion for centrism, but more heterodox though. So while a left presidency will not win, Democrats will have to elect people who are actually moderate in many issues, rather than those who triangulate for those positions, while focusing heavily left of issues that are actually popular, and coherent.

Don't be for everything, be for one very big thing, that can be achieved.

**Trans rights movement will have to find an actual coherent single issue, much like marriage equality did for the gay-lesbian rights movement, that will protect their rights, and make them socially acceptable, rather than seeking safe spaces, and permanent government protection.

In the context of USA, arguing from a civil liberties context is clearly the winning strategy, so gender ID laws might be that single issue.

**In general, Democrats will need to push for civil liberties in a coherent manner, while adressing conservative concerns caused by them. Want to protect legal marijuana? Adress the drug abuse issue. Want to protect abortion? Help, and promote child birth against declining demographics by aiding parents.

Don't play defense, play offense in civil liberties, but hold both goals.

**After the midterms, there likely won't be any moderate Republicans left to take into the Democrats, largely due to Trump shifting to a neoconservative position rather than an outsider one. Buyer's remorse will cause a big, but temporary shift to blue. Democrats will need to energize their new coalition of upper income highly educated white population, now they finally got them after decades long of struggle.

Democrats will never again be the party of poorly educated, un-unionised working class, but they can be the party of rapidly unionizing professionals, regardless of education level.

**Democrats will also need to push for a coherent, easy future vision, rather than something abstract. This will likely require some sort of neoconservative vision of imperialism, as Democrats cannot really showcase a vision of future domestic life, but there needs to be something to keep people's expectations that is easily achievable, not promises for ten years later, or extremely abstract like autocracies vs. democracies.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

An original document signed by President Abraham Lincoln four days before his assassination on 15 April 1865. Photograph: Raab Collection

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 18, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

On the third Monday in February, the U.S. celebrates Presidents Day, a somewhat vague holiday placed in 1968 near the date of George Washington’s birthday on February 22, 1732, but also traditionally including Abraham Lincoln, who was born on February 12, 1809. This year, that holiday falls on February 19.

That the American people in the twenty-first century celebrate Abraham Lincoln as a great president would likely have surprised Lincoln in summer 1864, when every sign suggested he would not be reelected and would go down in history as the man who had permitted a rebellion to dismember the United States.

The news from the battlefields in 1864 was grim. In May, General U. S. Grant had taken control of the Army of the Potomac and had launched a war of attrition to destroy the Confederacy. In May and June, more than 17,500 Union soldiers were killed or wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness, 18,000 at Spotsylvania, and another 12,500 at Cold Harbor. As the casualties mounted, so did criticism of Lincoln. 

Those Republican leaders who thought Lincoln was far too conservative both in his prosecution of the war and in his moves toward abolishing enslavement had plotted with the humorless Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, who perennially hankered to run the country, to replace Lincoln with Chase on the 1864 ticket. 

In February they went so far as to circulate a document signed by Senator Samuel Pomeroy of Kansas, a key party leader, saying that “even were the re-election of Lincoln desirable, it is practically impossible against the union of influences which will oppose him.” Even if he could manage to pull off a reelection, the Pomeroy circular said, he was unfit for office: “his manifest tendency towards compromises and temporary expedients of policy” would make the “dignity and honor of the nation…suffer.” 

This was no small challenge: Chase had been in charge of remaking the finances of the United States, and he had both connections and Treasury employees all over the country who owed their jobs to him. In an era in which political patronage meant political victories, he had a formidable machine.

Lincoln managed to quell the rebellion from the radicals. In June 1864, soon after the party—temporarily renamed the National Union Party to make it easier for former Democrats to feel comfortable voting for Republicans—met to choose a presidential candidate, Chase threatened to resign from the Cabinet, as he had done repeatedly. In the past, Lincoln had appeased him. This time, Lincoln accepted his resignation.

But conservatives, too, were in revolt against Lincoln.

Crucially, Thurlow Weed, New York’s kingmaker, thought Lincoln was far too radical. Weed cared deeply about putting his own people into the well-paying customs positions available in New York City, and he was frequently angry that Lincoln appointed nominees favored by the more radical faction.

That frustration went hand in hand with anger about policy. Weed was upset that the Republicans were remaking the government for ordinary Americans. The 1862 Homestead Act, which provided western land for a nominal fee to any American willing to settle it, was a thorn in his side. Until Congress passed that law, such land, taken from Indigenous tribes, would be sold to speculators for cash that went directly to the Treasury. Republicans believed that putting farmers on the land would enable them to pay the new national taxes Congress imposed, thus bringing in far more money to the Treasury for far longer than would selling to speculators, but Weed foresaw national bankruptcy. 

Even more than financial policy, though, Weed was unhappy with Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, which moved toward an end of human enslavement far too quickly for Weed.

On August 22, Weed wrote to his protégé Secretary of State William Henry Seward that he had recently “told Mr. Lincoln that his re-election was an impossibility…. [N]obody here doubts it; nor do I see anybody from other states who authorises the slightest hope of success.” 

“The People are wild for Peace,” he wrote, and suggested they were unhappy that “the President will only listen to terms of Peace on condition Slavery be ‘abandoned.’” Weed wrote that Henry Raymond, another protégé who both chaired the Republican National Committee and edited the New York Times, “thinks Commissioners should be immediately sent to Richmond, offering to treat for Peace on the basis of Union.” 

On August 23, 1864, Lincoln asked the members of his Cabinet to sign a memorandum that was pasted closed so they could not read it. Inside were the words:

“This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.  — A. Lincoln”

But then his fortunes turned. 

Just a week after Weed foretold his electoral doom, the Democrats chose as a presidential candidate General George McClellan, formerly commander of the Army of the Potomac, in a transparent attempt to appeal to soldiers. But to appease the anti-war wing of the party, they also called for an immediate end to the war. They also rejected the new, popular measures the national government had undertaken since 1861—the establishment of state colleges, the transcontinental railroad, the new national money, and the Homestead Act—insisting on “State rights.”

Americans who had poured their lives and fortunes into the war and liked the new government were not willing to abandon both to return to the conditions of three years before.

Then news spread that Rear Admiral David Farragut had taken control of Mobile Bay, the last port the Confederates held in the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi River. On September 2, General William T. Sherman took Atlanta, a city of symbolic as well as real value to the Confederacy, and set off on his March to the Sea, smashing his way through the countryside and carving the eastern half of Confederacy in half again.

Reelecting Lincoln meant committing to fight on until victory, and voters threw in their lot. In November’s election, Lincoln won about 55% of the popular vote compared to McClellan’s 45%, and 212 electoral votes to McClellan’s 12. Lincoln won 78 percent of the soldiers’ vote.

After his reelection, Lincoln explained to a crowd come to serenade him why it had been important to hold an election, even though he had expected to lose it:

“We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.”

Happy Presidents Day. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

Poland’s populist ruling party appeared to be on the brink of losing power, after an exit poll in a bitter and high-stakes national election predicted that the country’s opposition has the clearest path to forming its next government.

The poll projected that the Law and Justice party, known by its Polish acronym PiS, would win the most seats after Sunday’s vote.

But it would fall some way short of a parliamentary majority, and the opposition bloc – led by former Polish prime minister and European Council president Donald Tusk – appeared on course to gain control if it struck deals with smaller parties.

Both Tusk and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the PiS chairman and Poland’s de facto leader, attempted to declare victory on Sunday night. In reality, however, days of negotiations may lie ahead until the make-up of the country’s new government becomes clear.

“The exit poll results give us the fourth victory in the history of our party in the parliamentary elections and the third victory in a row; this is a great success of our formation and our project for Poland,” Kaczynski told supporters.

But in an admission of the tall order facing his party, he added: “We still face the question of whether this success will be able to be transformed into another term of office of our government. And we don’t know that yet. But we must have hope and we must also know that regardless of whether we are in power or in the opposition, we will implement this project in various ways and we will not allow Poland to be betrayed.”

Tusk appeared buoyant, saying: “This is the end of bad times, this is the end of the rule of PiS.” He said his group’s supporters “have won freedom, we have won our Poland back.”

A smaller coalition called Third Way may end up as kingmakers. The centrist bloc has criticized both major parties, arguing that neither represents Poland’s best path forward. But its leader Szymon Hołownia has long lambasted the performance of PiS, and insisted he would not pursue a pact with the incumbent party.

The outcome of this election could have major ramifications for Poland’s future direction, the balance of power in the European Union and the future of the war in Ukraine.

PiS, which has been mired in bitter spats with the EU during its eight years in power, was seeking a third consecutive electoral success – an unprecedented feat since Poland regained its independence from the Soviet Union.

The party has been accused by the EU and Polish opposition figures of dismantling Poland’s democratic institutions during its time in power. PiS has brought the Polish judiciary, public media and cultural bodies under greater control, and has taken a hard line against abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights.

Tusk, by contrast, has presented himself as a leader who would restore and amplify Poland’s standing in Europe. Warsaw has earned goodwill in the West through its response to the Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and smoothing tensions with Brussels could position Poland as a major player in the EU.

During a bitter campaign, PiS shot back at Tusk’s opposition coalition, claiming the former leader would be subservient to Brussels and Berlin if he returned to power.

PiS has overhauled many of Poland’s institutions during its eight-year rule; the judiciary and public media have been brought under greater control, with state-run television outlets essentially becoming government mouthpieces.

Its critics had likened its agenda to that of Viktor Orban, the authoritarian leader of Hungary. Should the opposition oust the party, Warsaw would be expected to reorientate itself towards the United States and Western Europe in terms of foreign policy and reverse many of the domestic changes made by PiS.

But that could be a complicated mission for a coalition government encompassing various ideological groupings. The left-wing party Lewica may be required to prop up a minority Tusk-led government, along with centrists and center-right lawmakers.

High inflation and the security of Poland’s borders have been front of mind for voters during the campaign. Developments were also watched in Kyiv, after a tense period that saw relations between the two close allies sour.

Poland has been a crucial partner to Ukraine as it fights Russian forces in its east, but Warsaw was intensely critical of Ukraine’s government during a dispute over the imports of Ukrainian grain.

Voters were electing members of both houses of Poland’s parliament, with 231 seats in the Sejm – Warsaw’s lower house – needed for a party to clinch power outright.

[honouredsnakeprincess]

Personally, I think it's a tad condescending for you to assume I mean fascism as a hyperbolic description of your empire. I do not.

First, you have two large, mainstream parties which have both concluded that American support for genocides abroad ought to be the unquestioned norm, so long as it supports some nebulous strategic interest, even if it goes against the will of the actual electorate.

Second, these two parties cooperate regularly in order to foil even relatively moderate social-democratic political movements, and so the only permissible state ideology is quite far right. Sanders is allowed to hold office as a token gesture, but he will never be permitted to actually wield power, despite the fact he is still ultimately more loyal to the American empire than he is to social-democracy!

Third, both parties seem to have independently recreated something of their own fuhrerprinzip, which isn't even really required for fascism, but they did it anyway. Any vote not for your preferred right wing lead is a vote against America and freedom and all good things on this earth! If you don't support Trump/Harris, you're supporting that monstrous Trump/Harris, who will take away your freedom.

To elaborate, while your electoral system certainly disincentivizes third parties, it does not actually preclude them from being a meaningful part of the political process, and third parties have played kingmaker during several crucial elections in the 20th century. If you wanted to 'force Biden left', a left-wing (or even just center-right, given the state of American politics) faction that he is forced to negotiate with in order to become president would have been more effective than whatever the fuck you lot have been doing these past couple of years!

I think that even if you'd nuked those evil, evil russkies into oblivion in the 1980s, Trump probably still would have won, considering the wave of reactionary populism sweeping the liberal consensus in recent years. The Russians did not create that, Trump did not create that, this is a response to heightening economic contradictions, fears of immigration, reactionary movements preying upon perceptions of economic instability, and the active and deliberate suppression of even moderate left political thought within the American empire.

Certainly, you hold elections, but you can only ever vote for one party (or maybe the other, but then you're unamerican!) Certainly, you allow economic 'freedom', but people who think that a free market is a feature not present under fascism need to go read up on the economic policies of Hitlerite Germany in the years leading up to the war. Certainly, you can criticize the government, and your right to do so is constitutionally protected (until the police decide it isn't, at which point the government will Back the Blue even over its own decrepit constitutional documents). Certainly, all people are equal under the law (if you ignore the racial caste system), but the Republicans are working to change that, and the Democrats are working to make sure they don't stop them!

Certainly, with its abundance of civil and social and economic liberties for the upper class, with its racially segregated cities and functional single-party state, with its broad consensus in the halls of power that trans women are dangerous predators, with its legions of homeless who could be trivially aided but must remain as a warning to the working class, with its rising cost of living and the need for yet more people to blame, with its media pundits encouraging audiences to entirely disconnect from reality in favour of their preferred sort of propaganda, with a government that has concluded that for the sake of killing Palestinians, they will ignore the voice of their own citizenry, and with millions of people willing to defend it (or an idealized and delusional vision of what they think it could be), America will never fall to fascism.

Worry not! Harris will defend your interests!

I'm not saying there are parallels, but...

[mybharatguru]

Stalin's meeting with Chandrababu Naidu created a stir at Delhi Airport

Chief Minister M.K.Stalin and Telugu Desam Party President Chandrababu Naidu had a sudden meeting. Chief Minister Stalin’s meeting with Chandrababu Naidu, who is the kingmaker in the National Democratic Alliance, has gained significance.The Lok Sabha elections were held in 7 phases from April 19. The votes cast were counted the day before yesterday and the results announced. No party has a…