Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

The Fine print: The following are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

"Can't Count Votes? Just Draw Straws."

Journal by fustakrakich

That the Democrats lose House seats, do not win the Senate and barely manage to drag their demented presidential candidate towards a stalemate tells a lot about their lack of sane policies. A donor party completely disinterested in what the people really want - medicare for all, no fracking etc. - will have little chance to survive a future onslaught of conservatives with a more competent figure head than Donald Trump. ...should Trump lose this election, Trumpism will only grow and make the U.S. ungovernable.

"Can't Count Votes? Just Draw Straws." | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 86 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Reply to Comment Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2020, @09:40PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2020, @09:40PM (#1073552)

    We dodged the bullet this time, barely, provided that NV does in fact go D or if GA goes D. It won't be so easy next time. Optimistically we have 8 years to build an alternative to the conservative Democratic party. However, I think we only have 4 years. Biden/Harris is going to be more status quo (hence conservative) neoliberalism. The failures of neoliberalism will drive a more powerful fascist movement in 4 years.

    ISA/Socialist Alternative USA: Drive Out Trump and Shut Down the System! [internationalsocialist.net]

    This election shows that the Democrats can’t decisively defeat the far right. Socialist Alternative thinks we need a new party based on the working class, which stands for seizing the wealth of the top corporations and putting them under democratic workers’ control and management.

    In a FoxNews exit poll yesterday, 72% of voters said they’re in favor of a government-run health-care program. In Florida, where Trump won, 61% of people voted for a ballot measure for a state-wide $15 an hour minimum wage. This shows that a clear appeal to working-class voters, which Bernie could have done effectively, would have likely defeated Trump in a landslide.

    Trump has criminally mishandled the COVID pandemic — leading to hundreds of thousands of U.S. deaths — overseen mass unemployment and a further slide into poverty for millions of Americans, and yet the Democrats did all they could to “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.” They put up an embarrassing candidate who was kept out of the public eye, didn’t have a “ground game” for their campaign in key swing states, refused to adopt wildly popular policies like Medicare for All and taxing the rich, and didn’t conduct a mass voter registration campaign to get millions of new voters who despise Trump. Yet the Democrats’ biggest failings weren’t just “mistakes” but instead due to their fundamental nature as a pro-corporate party controlled by billionaire backers.

    In the final days of the campaign, Biden made clear he would never ban fracking, would never cut police funding, and would accept yet another right-wing addition to the Supreme Court. He (again!) said that cops should shoot suspects “in the leg” as his solution to racist police murders, and he refused to support Medicare for All as the election took place at the height of the pandemic. It comes as no surprise that an Axios poll showed that over 58% of Democratic voters were motivated to cast their ballots “against Trump” rather than “for Biden.”

    All this left space for Trump to portray himself as an “outsider” despite being in the White House! Trump criticized Biden from the “left” on Biden’s racist 1994 Crime Bill, as well as his support for ongoing wars and pro-corporate trade deals. This was combined with a vicious cocktail of Trump’s racism, sexism, authoritarianism, appeals to the far right, conspiracy theories, and “law and order” rhetoric.

    The Democratic Party leadership fought harder and more effectively against Bernie in the primary than they did against Trump in the general election. Yet the liberal pundits will seek to play a “blame game,” claiming that this situation is due to people who didn’t vote (especially people of color), independent voters, racist ideas in the white working class (which is a real factor), or Democrats being associated with the “radical left.” Instead, the Democratic Party leadership needs to look in the mirror to see who gave Trump the opening to try to steal this election. In addition, Sanders himself shouldn’t have capitulated to Biden, and he shouldn’t have self-censored his previous criticisms of the Democratic Party. This helped give room for Trump to appear as the anti-establishment candidate.

    (emphasis mine)

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Total Score:   1  

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2020, @12:00AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2020, @12:00AM (#1073588)

    However, I think we only have 4 years. Biden/Harris is going to be more status quo (hence conservative) neoliberalism. The failures of neoliberalism will drive a more powerful fascist movement in 4 years.

    Indeed, I think you are correct. Biden/Harris will need to score some quick victories which appeal to a broad bipartisan swathe of America. If they can manage to do that, they might manage to get four more years and pull the country back from the brink of fascism. God, I really hope they succeed in that!

  • (Score: 0, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 06 2020, @06:31AM (1 child)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday November 06 2020, @06:31AM (#1073657) Homepage

    This just might be a Pyrrhic victory for the Democrats -- even I have accepted the possibility of a Biden/Harris presidential win, however, they should be careful what they wish for. They've inherited the double-whammy of Antifa/BLM and COVID lockdowns, so it will be in peoples' minds to blame Democrats/progressives whether or not those problems magically disappear upon the Biden coronation (thanks a lot for costing small business owners our livelihoods, assholes), or if those have become Golems outside of their control and ChiCom Pelosi and her army of Jewish pedophiles in Californian government want the lockdowns extended for another couple years. Everybody knows that Trump fought the lockdowns (saying that he didn't believe in 'science' or something), so now the Democrats are stuck either further oppressing everybody or tacitly admitting that it was all a sham.

    It's now mainstream in my city that businesses are going to disobey any further lockdown orders, I'm seeing more and more people shed the masks even in official capacity. Keep the people locked down and we might just see patriots fighting alongside Antifa and BLM, and it won't be pretty for Jewish neighborhoods -- though it would be the desired outcome for Chinks and Jews who want to see America fall and buy cheap property as results of strife and misery. Big tech already pissed off people (except Jews) on both sides and revealed who they actually are, and that even folks who toe the line can be deplatformed on a whim.

    Should Biden and Kamala win, their best option is to do nothing and pretend Republicans are stopping them from doing anything, just like how the last 4 years have been. Americans will still be broke while Israel gets its billions of funding and American soldiers dying for them in the sandbox, but at least domestic unrest will be staved off around the homefront.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2020, @09:17AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2020, @09:17AM (#1073684)

      Poor Ethanol_fearaddled! The Jew-bear is gonna get him. Now he has no where to hide, unemployed, friendless, in Greenland?