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Bolivia Has Won. Will Trump Win Too?
It seems that Elon Musk has lost the election in Bolivia:
Even Morales’ nemesis, the rightwing interim president, Jeanine Áñez, conceded the left had come out on top. “We do not yet have the official count, but the data we do have shows that Mr Arce [has] … won the election. I congratulate the winners and ask them to govern thinking of Bolivia and of democracy,” Áñez tweeted.
Congratulation to the Movimiento al Socialismo, its candidate Luis Arce and the people of Bolivia who withstood the onslaught of intimidation and violence from the right and the military. Even as democracy is now restored in Bolivia it would be wrong to let the right and the military get away with what they have done. They will otherwise try to do it again. The coup leaders should be hauled in front of a court. Bolivia should ask Venezuela for advice on how to coup proof its military forces.
As the U.S. regime change operation in Caracas has failed, Washington will now revert to other measures to dispose of the leaders of that country. Sanctions for this or that bullshit reason are just around the corner. Bolivia must integrate itself with other socialist and 'resistance' nations and seek autonomy from imperialist imports.
Now onto the other election that is on peoples' mind.
While most polls show that Joe Biden will win the U.S. election my gut is telling me that Donald Trump will have a second term. The election might well become a repeat of 2016 when Trump won even though most media had predicted that Hillary Clinton would win.
There are two main reasons for this. The local ground game and enthusiasm for the candidates.
The Democrats have neglected the ground game. Their get out the vote efforts seem minimal. Meanwhile the Republicans are going from door to door and have registered large number of voters:
Republican registration has ticked up in key states at the same time Democratic field operations were in hibernation. Democratic turnout is surging in the early vote. But it’s unclear whether it will be enough to overcome an expected rush of ballots that Republicans, leerier of mail voting, will cast in person on Election Day.
There is uncertainty about the accuracy of polling in certain swing states, the efficacy of GOP voter suppression efforts and even the number of mail-in ballots that for one reason or another will be disqualified.
Biden has collected more donations than Trump but money can only buy him advertisement. Trump gets media attention for free due to the constant outrage the Democrats project on him.
The second reason for predicting a Trump win is the enthusiasm of his supporters. Video shows thousands of people standing at the streets to wave at a passing Trump convoy in California. Meanwhile Biden goes out to read from giant teleprompters to empty parking lots.
While Trump will be campaigning all week Biden decided to stay at home to prepare for the next debate. How can he defend himself against the serious corruption accusations that his son's emails seem to support?
The Democrats under Biden have shunned the progressive policies who brought the most enthusiasm to the primaries. Everyone presumes that the center-right Biden is just a stand in who will be removed soon to be replaced by the center-right Kamala Harris. Harris has been Hillary Clinton's choice since at least mid 2017. During the primaries she never polled higher than 2%. Politically she is not an attractive candidate.
The other people behind the Biden/Harris campaigns are just the same warmongers who wreaked havoc all over the world during the Obama administration.
Max Abrahms @MaxAbrahms – 22:14 UTC · Oct 18, 2020
I’m expecting America to get needlessly involved in more conflicts in the name of democracy, freedom, credibility, resolve & leadership. Just listen to folks like Michèle Flournoy, Mayor Pete, Susan Rice. Non-intervention has been branded as a Putin gift. We live in stupid times.
Patrick Porter @PatPorter76 · 5h
I'm skeptical of whether a Biden presidency will significantly draw down US military presence in ME. As well as the general forces that favour inertia, there will always be more pressing things for a new Democrat president to do.
Trump has botched the response to the pandemic. But would a Democratic president have done better against the resistance of many states against harsher control measures? The reasons the U.S. was hit so hard are in my view ingrained in its society. A different president would have prepared somewhat better but the outcome would likely not have been much different.
On most domestic issues Trump is only slightly to the right of a Biden/Harris administration. His foreign policy is less warmongering but more chaotic than a Democratic administration would likely be. That makes him in total more preferable to me.
That does not mean that I would vote for Trump. If I had a vote in the upcoming election it would likely go to where it does the least harm – to some third party candidate who argues for more peaceful and more socialist policies.
Refuting nonsense is time-consuming. My apologies.
Formerly T-Bear@209 abuses james’ ignorance of US history and constitution. “Profound question there, deserves a good response. The best place to look for information would be The Federalist Papers.” The relevant essay in The Federalist is number 68, written by Hamilton…and the perspective is that the electors were to act independently, not merely to vote as their state voted. That’s why most of the essay is concerned with foreign interference with electors or electors canoodling with each other. As I wrote earlier, people were already outraged by the election of 1792 at the notion electors might vote for someone of their choosing, rather than simply casting the result of their state’s vote. People even got upset over electors being lobbied to vote for someone else, even to avoid a tie. The result ultimately was to cause a tie, resulting in a constitutional crisis and the 12th amendment to fix that problem, at least. Men who wrote the Constitution were very much alive but none of them claimed the electoral college was about federalism or a compact of states or any such. All that is modern nonsense revising history and distorting the text for dishonest purposes.
“The history is once the Treaty of Paris was ratified acknowledging the independence of the N. American colonies, the Continental Congress of the independent colonies in confederation, the colonies authority rested upon their royal charters providing their governmental powers, notably taxing. The taxing authority did not extend to the confederated government supporting its operations or debts, depending on the good will of each colony, insoluble problems arose necessitating a congress that wrote the federal constitution (colonies becoming states in the process).” This is rather garbled. The continental congress that declared independence devised a national government operated according to the Articles of Confederation. The national government did not have taxing authority. But the tax powers of the new states had nothing to do with colonial charters. And the “colonies” became “states,” as in independent political bodies long before the federal constitution. Also, the federal constitution was not written by any congress, but by a convention that was called to discuss reforms to the Articles, to be decided upon by the states. Instead, the convention wrote an entirely new national constitution to be voted upon by popular conventions. And it even specified that not all the states had to ratify the new constitution to establish it! If this strikes you as an odd procedure, you are correct. The existing state governments did not ratify the constitution, and the constitution is not in any meaningful sense a compact of independent, sovereign states. It is, as the preamble states, a “more perfect union” aimed *against* such nonsense as this.
“The constitution establishes a federation of states (in congress) having three branches, the states directly electing their congressional representatives by population, their senate (originally state appointed, later changed to direct election by state citizens) representatives having equal representation as a state and the chief and vice chief officers of the executive branch as a aggregate of the state’s congressional and senatorial delegations in the electoral college, their votes controlled by winning the election count within that state from the state’s qualified voters. The number of congressional representations was determined by decadal census to fill a predetermined number of congressional seats. As populations grew and changed locations within the country so did the representatives for each state.” As is typical for the conservative fiction writers, this is not correct. The real constitution says each state shall have at least one representative and there shall not be more than one representative for thirty thousand voters. The limit of 435 is a twentieth century thing. Conservatives are generally delusional and cannot conceive that what they imagine to be time-honored, God-given, human nature simply isn’t.
“About the only rôle the federal government had was assuring the equality of all citizens qualified in the process, that qualification eventually became universal (qualified) sufferance by each state.” Again, as is typical for megalomaniac reactionaries who can’t distinguish their mental confusion from reality, this is wrong. The actual constitution states “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.” Being utterly without moral or political principles, or simple common sense and common decency, much less intellectual integrity, conservatives pretend that the Supreme Court (aka the Highest Cesspool in the land,) shall judge of elections. When the men who wrote the Constitution were still alive the House of Representatives decided the election of 1824. The electoral commission of 1877 that resolved the disputed election of 1876 was created by Congress, not the courts as such.
“As mentioned above, several occasions have taken place where the national popular vote has been greater than the parallel electoral college result but it mist be recalled it is a federation of states that is the basis for election of the executive officer, not a national popular vote (but some cannot get this through their thick skull-bones no matter how well educated (or not)they might be).” At this point I can only remind everyone that this is not what Federalist No. 68 said, it’s not what is implied by the 12th amendment, the 13th amendment, the 14th amendment, the 17th amendment. Even a conservative should be able to read the first three words of the constitution, which are *We the people* not The united states of america in congress assembled or some such. Formerly T-Bear is a liar. It is probable that fake history has been swallowed whole from reactionary leaders blindly worshiped. Still, a lie is a lie, second-hand or not.
And by the way, the parties began to emerge in Washington’s first term, with strife reaching such intensity that both Jefferson and Hamilton felt it necessary to resign to maintain a facade of unity in Washington’s cabinet. It was widely acknowledged to be an anomaly of the grotesque misworkings of the Electoral College that Adams vice president was his partisan opponent, Jefferson. In addition to getting elementary facts wrong, the Federalist party ended up more or less disappearing, leaving only one official party in Monroe’s administration, the so-called Era of Good Feelings. The Whig Party slowly emerged. It’s collapse later was followed by the emergence of the Republican Party. It was the victory of the Republican Party in 1860 that the South refused to accept. Southerners’ feeling the constitution guaranteed them a permanent stranglehold on the national government was every bit as fictional as Formerly T-Bear’s version of history and constitution.
The people who claim the Electoral College is all that matters are pretty much like Shylock claiming that the contract with Antonio was all that mattered, so give him his pound of flesh.
“Trust this might shed some light for you.” False light.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Oct 20 2020 17:58 utc | 219
Trump will win.
Biden is a nobody. He is senile. His political record is abysmal. He has a bad reputation. He has been a presidential candidate twice before, with no success, hmm had to withdraw for lying… Harris is no help (not that the VP pick counts for much.)
Trump is definetly somebody, he is on the ball in a crazy way (like or loathe him), his reputation is not too terrible, taking into account everything that has been done to malign or discredit him… Misogynist, racist, rapist, tax evader, friend of Epstein, liar, cheater, Russia tool, etc. None of it has really stuck, with the Trump as Russia stooge and friend of Putin particularly crazy. And in any case, Trump’s base, Trump voters, anti-Dems, don’t care. They love Trump (or prefer him for x reasons..), and attacks on him have made them more stalwart. Anybody with half a brain can see that the MSM is touting nonsense, propaganda, etc. and Trump regularly attacks them, that is a BIG plus. His reputation as an anti-establishment figure has been enhanced!
Who loves Biden? A vote for Biden is a vote against Trump.
The polls are nonsense, some are outright ‘tricked’ or ‘made up’.
Copied from a post on reddit: Oct. 20, 2020:
Biden Facebook: 3.23 million fans, Trump Facebook: 30.34 million fans
Biden Instagram: 5.1 million, Trump Instagram: 22.7 million
Biden Twitter: 11.2 million, Trump Twitter: 87.3 million
Biden YouTube: 341,000 subscribers, Trump YouTube: 1.44 million subscribers
As for Trump’s political record, his supporters see it as very positive. Foreign policy, well MAGA means standing up to China, right? And ‘no new wars’ is great. (… but see Jack, others..) But more important is internal, his record can be spun positive. As for covid-19, Trump has not done well, but not badly either, as compared to other ‘developed’ like the UK (actually far worse), Sweden, Spain, Italy, etc. Plus, The US is a Federation, so one should compare perhaps with the Eu? Naturally that depends on the method of comparison..
I guess my main point is that this election is based on fantasy, in the sense of image, reputation, appearance, slogans, and a sort of tribal belonging. Not on ‘facts’ – which everyone seems to argue about without reaching any conclusion – ‘opinion’ and ‘adherence’ count for more than any ‘policy proposals’ which hardly seem to exist in any case! (The PTB win the election in any case.)
Now, all this is assuming that the vote is carried out in a more-or-less correct way, that is, with only the usual amount of fraud, objections, etc.
Posted by: Noirette | Oct 21 2020 8:55 utc | 244
c1ue@220 is factually wrong. There was no Federalist party at the constitutional convention. Madison wasn’t even the main leader at the convention, though the fact that he was really the only member who broke their promise to keep the deliberations secret exaggerates his importance by showing us the convention as he saw it. Hamilton was notably unimportant at the convention itself. Hamilton was possibly *the* key play in hijacking a meeting at Annapolis to set up the Philadelphia convention which suddenly turned into a project for a new constitution but that’s not what c1ue is claiming here.
The Federalist “party” was never as well organized, as partisan even, as the Democratic-Republicans. It was very reactive. It’s main leader was Washington who didn’t want *any* parties. Then it’s main leader was John Adams who was also non-partisan in the sense he expected everyone to obey him…when he troubled to stay in town and actually do any leading. It is common for people to complain about how Hamilton kept advising other cabinet members even after he resigned, but that ignores Adams’ sloth, vanity, irritability and administrative incompetence. (Jefferson and Adams dedicated a great deal of late life correspondence to mutual alibis. Read with caution.) Hamilton was only the leader in the sense he was the main man with an actual political program and administrative skills to make it feasible. It is common for people to forget that Jefferson’s opposition kept a great deal of his program from being enacted. Hamilton’s plans for internal improvements were sharply limited, for partisan reasons, as the Democratic-Republicans were happy enough to take credit for internal improvements later on.
Most of all, the notion the electoral college was about small states vs. large states is entirely wrong. That’s the right wing excuse for today. The real divide even in Philadelphia was slave states vs. free states (or freeing slaves/shifting to manhood suffrage states, as the social/political outcome of the revolution—and the American Revolution was a revolution!) The big compromise on that was not the Electoral College but the Senate, along with the 3/5 rule for counting slaves as part of the population. c1ue ignores this because it doesn’t suit the distorted history offered as excuses for right wing positions today.
The Electoral College was part of the committee of eleven’s agenda precisely because less important, technical details had stacked up. The college was an afterthough, which is why the whole thing was such a garbled mess. It caused a constitutional crisis within a mere twelve years! Parchment worshippers who swear the Framers where angels sent by God can’t accept they were fallible and the electoral college was a signal proof of their mere humanity. The alternatives for the election of the president were direct popular election, seriously considered even then and the obvious correct position today. If I remember correctly Gouverneur Morris (later a Federalist by the way, which shows relying on Jefferson’s partisan version of events is misleading,) tried to bring back direct popular election of the president late in the convention which is why it got shoved into the cleanup committee.
The fact that electors were not to be chosen by the state legislatures, as the Senate, shows that the Electoral College was not meant to be a small state vs. large state deal maker. I think the college was retained (only the blatant stupidity about not distinguishing votes for president and vice president was fixed!) was because the 3/5 rule gave the slave states, Virginia in particular, an excessive power. c1ue tries to claim the opposite, that the college weakened Virginia! There’s a reason there was a Virginia dynasty. Again, Jefferson was called the Negro president for a reason. It wasn’t because the electoral college helped small states. It is not an accident that reactionaries try to call black, white. The direct election of the electors by the voters of the state rather than the legislatures makes the electoral college a popular element, more like the House of Representatives than the Senate.
Aside from Adams’ incompetence and erratic temper, Hamilton lobbied electors against Adams in the second election, in 1792. And it was highly controversial, deemed to to interfering with the will of the people as expressed in the votes for electors. That is, within the lifetimes of the Framers, people were conducting politics on the assumption the electoral college was not an independent body of representatives who made their own choices, but mere carriers of the popular mandate. If men who were in Philadelphia did not agree in 1792 that of course the real voters were the electors, and mere popular votes didn’t count as such, then Hamilton would *not* have been condemned as an intriguer. In fact, by the time the crisis of 1800 had come, the prevailing opinion among the majority *including such Federalists as Hamilton* was that defying the will of the people as expressed in the popular vote was a morally dubious proposition, to be embarked upon for only the gravest, most compelling reasons. That was the feeling in the constitutionally mandated resolution of the election in the House of Representatives! No one, in 1824 condemned Andrew Jackson for being a fool who didn’t understand the electors were the real voters when he was outraged that the House elected John Quincy Adams.
Again, and again, and again, every single person who rants about the electoral college is the law, perios, is just a reactionary spouting fake history and abusing reason.
Sorry to take so long, but truth is more cumbersome than lies.
Last, the vulgar rule is, if shit keeps coming out, then it must be an asshole.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Oct 21 2020 15:07 utc | 257
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