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What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change?
Pepe Escobar is as pessimistic about a Harris (Biden) administration as I am. The incoming foreign policy team would be the return of the blob that waged seven wars during the Obama/Biden administration:
Taking a cue from [the Transition Integrity Project], let’s game a Dem return to the White House – with the prospect of a President Kamala taking over sooner rather than later. That means, essentially, The Return of the Blob.
President Trump calls it “the swamp”. Former Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes – a mediocre hack – at least coined the funkier “Blob”, applied to the incestuous Washington, DC foreign policy gang, think tanks, academia, newspapers (from the Washington Post to the New York Times), and that unofficial Bible, Foreign Affairs magazine.
A Dem presidency, right away, will need to confront the implications of two wars: Cold War 2.0 against China, and the interminable, trillion-dollar GWOT (Global War on Terror), renamed OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) by the Obama-Biden administration.
The Democratic White House team Escobar describes (Clinton, Blinken, Rice, Flournoy) would be an assembly of well known war mongers who all argue for hawkish policies. The main 'enemies', Russia and China, would be the same as under Trump. Syria, Venezuela, Iran and others would stay on the U.S. target list. U.S. foreign policy would thereby hardly change from Trump's version but would probably be handled with more deadly competence.
But Escobar sees two potential positive developments:
In contrast, two near-certain redeeming features would be the return of the US to the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, which was Obama-Biden’s only foreign policy achievement, and re-starting nuclear disarmament negotiations with Russia. That would imply containment of Russia, not a new all-out Cold War, even as Biden has recently stressed, on the record, that Russia is the “biggest threat” to the US.
I believe that Harris (Biden) will disappoint on both of those issues. The neoconservatives have already infested the Harris (Biden) camp. They will make sure that JCPOA does not come back:
Last night on an official Biden campaign webinar led by “Jewish Americans for Biden”, and moderated by Ann Lewis of Democratic Majority for Israel, two prominent neocon Republicans endorsed Biden, primarily because of Trump’s character posing a danger to democracy. But both neocons emphasized that Biden would be more willing to use force in the Middle East and reassured Jewish viewers that Biden will seek to depoliticize Israel support, won’t necessarily return to the Iran deal and will surround himself with advisers who support Israel and believe in American military intervention.
Eric Edelman, a former diplomat and adviser to Dick Cheney, said Trump’s peace plan has fostered an open political divide in the U.S. over Israel, …
Eliot Cohen, a Bush aide and academic, echoed the fear that Israel is being politicized. …
…
Cohen and Edelman opposed Obama’s Iran deal, and both predicted that Biden will be hawkish on Iran.
…
“There will be voices” in the Biden administration that seek a return to the Iran deal, but the clock has been running for four years, and we’re in a different place, he said. And “it will be hard [for Biden] not to use the leverage that the sanctions provide in part because Iran is not abiding by a lot of the limits of the nuclear agreement… They’re about three, maybe four months away from having enough fissile material to actually develop a nuclear weapon.”
For lifting the sanctions against Iran the Harris (Biden) administration will demand much more than Iran's return to the limits of the JCPOA. Iran will reject all new demands, be they about restricting its missile force or limiting its support for Syria. The conflict will thereby continue to fester.
The other issue is arms control. While a Harris (Biden) administration may take up Putin's offer to unconditionally prolong the New-START agreement for a year it will certainly want more concessions from Russia than that country is willing to give. Currently it is Russia that has the upper hand in strategic weapons with already deployed hypersonic missiles and other new platforms. The U.S. will want to fill the new 'missile gap' and the military-industrial complex stands ready to profit from that. The New-START prolongation will eventually run out and I do not see the U.S. agreeing to new terms while Russia has a technological superiority.
Domestic policies under a democratic president will likewise see no substantial difference. As Krystal Ball remarked, here summarized from a Rolling Stone podcast:
But even with a Biden win, Ball doesn’t think it will mean much for policy.
“My prediction for the Biden era is that very little actually happens,” says Ball. “Democrats are very good at feigning impotence. We saw this in the SCOTUS hearings as well. They’re very good for coming up with reasons why, ‘oh those mean Republicans, like we want to do better healthcare and we want left wages, but oh gosh, Mitch McConnell, he’s so wiley, we can’t get it done.'”
'Change' was an Obama marketing slogan to sell his Republican light policies. A real change never came. The Harris (Biden) administration must be seen in similar light.
I therefore agree with the sentiment with which Escobar closes his piece:
In a nutshell, Biden-Harris would mean The Return of the Blob with a vengeance. Biden-Harris would be Obama-Biden 3.0. Remember those seven wars. Remember the surges. Remember the kill lists. Remember Libya. Remember Syria. Remember “soft coup” Brazil. Remember Maidan. You have all been warned.
Posted by: MarkU | Nov 1 2020 4:22 utc | 104
I don’t think I’m doing a very good job of explaining my (and that of many others) theory that the corporate executives and majority shareholders of American media corporations (which are often holding companies and/or companies on whose boards sit members who are also on the boards of several other companies – military contractors, energy, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, etc.). I don’t think the Olbermanns or Schiffs have anything to do with the overarching goals and desires of their respective organizations. Certainly we agree that they are not consciously working for Trump – quite the opposite. But they both also know what their higher ups would consider appropriate to investigate, and it’s always meaningless crap that won’t stick or get any traction with anyone on the other side of the aisle. Now, as you said it’s a very toxic, divisive situation over there right now so it’s also possible that even IF the corporate MSM and Democrats came up with a real legitimate investigation and brought serious charges (ala Watergate or Iran Contra – because I already know something along one of those lines exists), that not a single Republican would fall in line and help push Trump out of office. But that’s a rabbit hole I’m not really that motivated to crawl down into right now.
Did you read the Taibbi piece? Please let me know if you did and whether you sought out any other work from him.
I stand by what I said about the “heel” role that the corporate MSM has for Trump, but there’s an altogether different angle that I haven’t gotten to yet which is another reason that I believe that the paymasters and majority shareholders (not the rank and file personalities, editors or journalists) who are very much happy to keep Trump in office. That other angle is the TYPE of coverage he is given compared to other candidates. Trump supporters in my circles ALL seem to think that the media has been really unfair to him and is always attacking him, but none of them can give me a logical explanation for this. It’s a fact – Trump was given LESS negative media coverage, in the “liberal” corporate MSM than Hillary was. We’re talking NYT, CNN, all the major outlets. Same principle applied with Hillary and Bernie, but it was Bernie getting all the negative press during primary season (see FAIR.org’s archives for examples). Give it a read. Yeah, they get int some of the annoying Democrat tropes about Russia, but CJR never grants any credence to them – in fact in the link I provided above (“this”), they basically say the same thing that b has been saying so often here. That the scope of the alleged Russian fake news ads on US social media was TINY compared to the overall scope of the media’s own content via social media. Here’s an excerpt that I think is relevant:
In this context, 10 is an interesting figure because it is also the number of front-page stories the Times ran on the Hillary Clinton email scandal in just six days, from October 29 (the day after FBI Director James Comey announced his decision to reopen his investigation of possible wrongdoing by Clinton) through November 3, just five days before the election. When compared with the Times’s overall coverage of the campaign, the intensity of focus on this one issue is extraordinary. To reiterate, in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election (and that does not include the three additional articles on October 18, and November 6 and 7, or the two articles on the emails taken from John Podesta). This intense focus on the email scandal cannot be written off as inconsequential: The Comey incident and its subsequent impact on Clinton’s approval rating among undecided voters could very well have tipped the election.
But I really encourage you to read it in full. The article has a US liberal lean to it, but their methodology was sound. And it shows that in fact certain TYPES of coverage were biased in favor of Clinton, but OTHER TYPES of coverage were biased in favor of Trump, and that the scandal type coverage was played up way more on Clinton than Trump, despite some people’s recollection that the media was constantly attacking Trump. It also goes to show that they did this at the expense of policy discussion, so personal/scandal or neutral (mentioned both, no obvious slant) were the vast majority of actual articles published.
To your last point, I disagree. I think that the same thing that has always happened in the US will happen on election day. There will be very long lines in predominantly black and Hispanic areas, and there will be Trump-friendly right-leaning groups doing various things to intimidate those voters. Groups like Antifa and BLM have no reach into areas where Trump voters are likely to come out in large numbers. And it’s just plain hard to believe that young leftists or anarchists would care enough to drive out to suburbs and disrupt voting by (supposedly) majority Trump voters. It’s just never happened like that before; quite the opposite.
On that note, here are a couple of things going on in my home state of Texas this past week that will likely be what happens on and after election day, through the courts and on the streets (highways). Allow me to phrase them in the incendiary terminology that I was used to coming from my conservative friends, the radio personalities they listen to and the illiberal corporate MSM.
On the streets:
Mob of armed thugs stage a riot on I-35, breaking traffic and possibly criminal laws with no citations written or arrests made and numerous innocent drivers endangered. Why were no tickets written? Not in their jurisdiction? Bullshit – I’ve driven that route and any LEO in between those two cities can and does write tickets on I-35. These people blocked the highway, which includes first responders and they put everyone who was trying to peacefully drive in danger. I’m sure a LOT of guns were in those trucks.
Texas Republican dirty tricksters file last minute lawsuit in district court presided over by activist right-wing judge in order to disenfranchise 100,000+ mostly black voters. The next level appeals court is staffed by a Trump appointed judge.
Posted by: _K_C_ | Nov 1 2020 5:43 utc | 107
On the absence of a real left in the US ( is all right and more right..)and of a real program which could include real changes that could make any difference in people´s lives, on that what matters is political technolgy and communication based on demonizing the other candidate which translates in deep polarizing of societies with unexpected unknown consequences..
“Whoever wins, it will take a long time”
“If Trump were re-elected for another four years, it would be a real calamity and armed conflicts could even break out by the most radical groups, so that the country could be paralyzed”
“The ideological profile and policy of the United States is that of the president and, each one, even if they are from the same party, has maintained quite different political lines throughout history”, says Rafael García, professor of International Relations at the USC. For this reason, he affirms that, in North America, “there is no strong party structure, but rather that the party acts as an electoral structure and it is on the candidates of each moment that certain policies are formed.”
DEMOCRATS VS. REPUBLICANS. So much so that, as the professor explains, “the ideological configuration of the parties in the 20th century changed radically”. On the one hand, he alludes to the fact that the Democrat, “in historical terms, was the party of the southern states, when they faced each other in the Civil War; racist states, which lasted until the 1920s ”. Precisely, the political scientist indicates that “it was shortly before when the change took place, with the Roosevelt presidency, that he decided to change the configuration of the Democratic party as a result of the crisis of 29”.
On the other hand, the Republican party, he points out, “was that of the union, that of the northern states, championed by Lincoln; the abolitionist party and that of the blacks ”. So how did these changes come about until today? Rafael García points to “a consequence of the political strategies that the presidents embodied at all times, not because there was an ideological line behind each party.”
TRY TO ASSIMILATE THE AMERICAN MODEL TO THE EUROPEAN. For Rafael García, the Spaniards, when speaking of US politics, “make a mistake in translating our political structures” to those there. In other words, “in Europe the duality between left and right is widely assumed and we unconsciously transfer it to US policy.” “That is a complete error”, sentence.
And it is that there “there is neither right nor left, there is right and more right“, affirms the professor. Which means that there does not exist and did not exist a historical labor-union party as such. In fact, the transmutation that is usually made from the democratic party to ‘social democratic’ is not correct. For García, Biden embodies “a more moderate man than the crazy Trump, but that does not mean that he has some kind of relationship with a left-wing thought.”
RIGHT AND RIGHT. “A multimillionaire gentleman, absolute representative of the establishment” (referring to Biden), and “a traditional gentleman, more conservative” (referring to Trump) “. “Although Biden is a Democrat, who perhaps holds stronger principles and is hopeful, identifying him with the left is still a long way from reality,” he says. Therefore, it is denied that the Democrats are the American left and the Republicans the right.
THE CAMPAIGN LACKS PROGRAMMATIC INTEREST. For the USC political scientist, the US electoral campaign lacks interest: “It is absurd, it seems like a disqualification competition in which a political or government program is not exposed.” And every time Spain is also getting closer to that model of disputes.
“We are Americanized, in the sense that the weight of the parties is also being diluted in Spain in favor of the candidatesThese advisers are responsible for the growing division that is taking place in Western society,” he says.
THE GOVERNMENT IN THE HANDS OF POLITICAL ADVISORS. In Rafael García’s opinion, the decision margin “is shrinking”, that is, “the autonomy capacity of governments to make decisions is smaller, and they are conditioned“. So, what is the difference, in practice, in management, between PP and PSOE? “Little thing, in the end, little thing,” he asserts.
That is why “that little thing can not be said to the voter, but must be mobilized with a degree of identification, unconditional adherence, so that it can be recognized in a brand.” And what is this transformation of Spanish politics due to? The professor is clear about it: “It is a translation of commercial marketing techniques to politics.” Thus, a marketing advisor must “build customer loyalty” and a political advisor should build voter loyalty.
Now, if there are no significant differences between the two options, how to achieve it? “Through a demonization of the opposite and the creation of a hostility that is dangerous, because the divisions to which society is returning are irreconcilable.” In this way, García believes that “it is the work of political advisers who, apart from the difficulties that exist in societies, which are many, polarize them when it comes to building and mobilizing a faithful electorate, to the point that they make no difference what the party says or what the leader says”.
In the United States, as evidenced by this expert, “it does not matter if Trump does the atrocities he does, or if he said in the previous campaign that he could murder a person on Fifth Avenue in New York without anything happening to him.” This, transferred to the Spanish sphere, “assumes that the party can do any outrage: fraud, embezzlement, illegal financing …”. “That is something we are seeing, whatever party it is, but for the faithful voter it does not matter, because their party will continue to be so and will continue to listen to the channel and read the newspaper that supports it,” he says.
THE ELECTORAL RESULT WILL BE EXTENDED OVER TIME. “I have no idea nor do I want to make forecasts, but I consider that Trump is a calamity and that if he were there for four more years it would be an absolute calamity“, says Professor García. However, “there is a state of opinion that fears that the result of these elections will be complicated and that there will be challenges, so that the end result will be a diabolical process of recount, county-by-county challenges, repetitions in certain districts. .. a real madness that can last several months“, he warns, something that,”with this polarization trail, it is not known how it could end.”
“I am referring to the outbreak of armed conflicts; These people have weapons, radical groups, some of them crazy and who can shoot themselves in a demonstration, doing outrages as part of the institutional paralysis in which the country can be plunged”, he asserts.
This is how people, like those at SST, who lied about the real difference amongst Democrats and Republicans in real effective changes of policy, shouting to the four winds that “the Communists are coming”, when they are not, and this way spread hatred and division amongst the US society as if there was no tomorrow so that to conserve their “tax cut”, could end witnessing the total destruction of the US, not only as “Empire” ( a process already in march before Corona-fear and 2020 electoral process, a construct of decades of lying the electorate for the greed of a minority…), but also as a nation state. All these people who, holding privileged insider knowledege of the funtioning of the state as former insiders, should be held accountable for their willing and conscious participation in the build up of the social and economic disastaer to come….
Forecast at the end of the article posted and quoted above:
The future: Institutional paralysis
··· An institutional paralysis like the one that can come after 3-N “could already occur in 2000, in the elections between George Bush Jr. and Al Gore, but the latter accepted the results even though they were open to challenge, and that it avoided institutional collapse”.
··· However, “now it does not seem that either of the two candidates is going to have a gesture of these characteristics, with which, if doubts already appear, it will not only be in the State, but the final collapse may be extremely long and with unimaginable consequences ”, indicates Professor García. “It seems to me that the United States has a terrible situation ahead“, he sentenced.
Posted by: H.Schmatz | Nov 1 2020 12:49 utc | 137
Somebody—Debsisdead?—pretended Trump played the Electoral College game better, which is Trumpery. Trump fluked out. Trump is not a stable genius and only fools drunk on his dingleberry wine can believe anything else.
The notion the Electoral College means the loser can legally take office does not, not, not mean they won the vote. It does not, not, not mean that losers get to crow about how hated the winner of the vote was. It does not, not, not mean that objecting to the folly of a law that permits the loser to take office means the losers can honestly dismiss the objections as partisanship. Again, the notion that notion that the letter of the law is morality is an abomination. Every tyrant in history has preferred to commit iniquities under color of law. Political conservativism is obedience to the powerful, nothing else.
The news media are split, some against Trump and some, especially the shadier, more dishonest news media, are vehemently pro-Trump. Claims of “the” media being against Trump are the lie direct, shameless and untouched by reality. The news media was against Clinton in 2016 and against Sanders even more, blacking him out. Most of all, the news media don’t want ratings, they want advertisers. If rich people, the owners of the country, the elite, the establishment, all those things people pretend Trump is against, were against Trump they wouldn’t buy advertising in the pro-Trump media. They wouldn’t buy advertising in media that was pro-Sanders, much less anyone to the left of him (not hard to be, by the way.) They will pretend it’s about the ratings but puffing Sanders would have puffed ratings too, which proves they’re making excuses to hide their pro-Trump tendency.
The ludicrous claim Trump is an economic nationalist surfaces yet again. Lowering corporate income taxes has nothing whatsoever to do with rebuilding US industry and it is a lie to claim this. Supporting the stock market is the opposite of supporting re-industrialization and that’s what Trump does. Indeed, Trump thinks the stock market is all that matters economically, to judge from his verbal obsessions. Building infrastructure is re=industrialization but Trump has done nothing on this. Higher wages could help re-industrialization by increasing domestic market but Trump opposes higher wages. Increased military spending is wasteful, diverting funds from infrastructure, but Trump has wasted more money than any other president this century. Every single person claiming Trump as an economic nationalist is a liar.
The one who is trying to undermine the election process, especially to undermine its claim to legitimacy, is the one trying to cheat, to follow the color revolution playbook. That one is Trump. There is no Deep State at all, there is only the state, the arena of class struggle. All Deep State “theories” are paranoia masquerading as thought, a fundamentally reactionary attempt to reduce the world to Good vs. Evil, rather than acknowledge the class nature of the state, because once you start down that road, before you know it, you have to start taking Marxism seriously.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Nov 1 2020 14:57 utc | 145
As Trump is going to win (provided the usual conditions pertain, fraud is not over the normal levels, and the whole sh*t-story doesn’t end up in the courts or fought out on the streets, whereupon no reasoned predictions can be made), speculation about Biden as Prez. is a waste of time.
The last part of the Pepe piece in b’s post, which gives reasons to not vote Biden, my take.:
Obama ran on Hopey-Changey and on his projected charm, actually glib con-man gab. Worked wonderfully, imagine getting the Nobel Prize because you had a dead-beat Dad who was from Kenya and you scored B+ for public speaking? Argh. (The real reason: killing will continue, the status quo is preserved..)
Anyway, the ACA was a damp squib, it didn’t solve anything, and depending on pov was in effect a gift to Mega Insurance or was just ‘lame’ or as often, ‘favored some over others’ etc.
Then the Financial Crisis hit. The Obama admin. didn’t prevent it (one might argue they couldn’t … not sure) and it didn’t ‘repair’ as far as the ppl were concerned. Banks and Some Big Cos were bailed out – millions of homeowners were tossed to the curb by Banks. Child poverty, hunger, increased; wages weren’t upped, health stats got worse… No need to go on – this provoked tremendous anger. The 2010 elections saw big R gains, 2014 they took the Senate, iirc.
(Who cared about foreign parts like Ukraine, Syria? is what I’m saying.)
That Trump would win in 2016 was obvious as soon as he became a candidate. He was the cartoon contrast of Obomber – white, fat, orange, tall, R vs. D, outspoken, strident, clumsy (vs. the smooth-talking con), opinionated, stupid, and outrageous in a way. Click bait and viewer bait for the MSM – but not for no reason.
DT’s electoral promises were both opportunistic and more profound: like fire-brand preachers of old, Build The Wall – MAGA – i.e. pledging a return to the past (see, again the opposite of Barry, who hoped for the future) — Stop the wars, undo past mistakes (Dems don’t run on anti-war..!), and, most important:
Drain the Swamp. The Deplorables are not ordinary ppl, but criminals in positions of power. By putting this forward, Trump became a mirror of the ppl, part of them.
Imho, Trump’s record (null or abysmal or whatever depending on pov) is not enough for rejecting him in favor of loathed “failed” policies of the past – Clinton gang, Biden a part of it, Obama, etc. (By US voters I mean.)
but see Kiza 8, gottlieb 63, dave 72, Jack, others, >> no difference.
Posted by: Noirette | Nov 1 2020 15:55 utc | 162
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