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Elections Have Consequences – We Just Don’t Know Which
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is selecting a number of hawkish people to fill his cabinet.
There are currently a lot of hot takes what these appointees will do.
- Marco Rubio, the likely Secretary of State, may want to launch a new coup in Venezuela.
- Michael Waltz, the potential national security advisor, is anti-Russian and anti-China.
- Elise Stefanik, a Zionist, will serve as the Israel's second ambassador to the United Nations.
If there were no limits either of these people would launch new wars.
That Trump is selecting rightwing nuts is not unexpected. He needs their backing to push things through.
But the fact that Trump is selecting these people does not mean that he will listen to them or follow their advice. His first term demonstrated that the people he selects often do not last. There is thus no reason to despair over this or that bonehead selection.
There are also objective reason why policies Trump or his acolytes might want to pursue might well be impossible. To lower taxes while the budget deficit is at a record and interest rates are high is not really doable. To push Ukraine towards a victory will fail due to facts on the ground. Any itch to attack Iran carries a high risk of a military defeat.
We will have to wait for the administrations real policy decisions to anticipate where it will go. A good sign will be when Trump succeeds in implementing policies that the hawks he has chosen oppose.
I am not really optimistic about that. My earlier prediction still holds:
[Trump] had previously chosen people who were opposing and sabotaging his policies. He lacked the authority and/or will to rein them in. I do not believe that he has learned from it.
But maybe he did learn from it. I for one will try to stay objective and to give him a chance.
Election 2024 – Random Thoughts
Some random thoughts on Trump's reelection.
Trump's win in 2024 does not prove that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats but it raises a new stink about the issue.
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When Biden was pushed out of the race there were calls among Democrats not to rush a choice, but to hold full-fledged primaries. Barack Obama had called for it. But Nancy Pelosi and the Clinton clan kept pushing for Harris. As a vacuous and unlikable person – carrying all the baggage of the Biden administration – she was the most likely to lose.
This is, hopefully, the end of wokeism and DEI nonsense. And of 'trans' children and teens.
Cont. reading: Election 2024 – Random Thoughts
Election 2024 – Trump Has Won
MoA, two weeks ago:
My hunch is that Trump will win the election. What policies will follow will largely depend on the people he will select to run the show. He had previously chosen people who were opposing and sabotaging his policies. He lacked the authority and/or will to rein them in. I do not believe that he has learned from it.
It currently looks like Trump has won yesterday's election. The presidency and majorities in the Senate and House will be held by Republicans.
That does not change my policy prediction:
I expect the new president to double down on the anti-Russian project in Ukraine and on support for the genocide the Zionist are committed to finish. The U.S. will continue to be bogged down in Europe and west-Asia. The 'pivot to Asia' to counter China's rise will continue to stall. The economic standing of the U.S. will continue to deteriorate.
This is good news for China, Russia, the BRICS project and those involved in it. As the old world order continues to drag itself down the new one gains time and space to evolve from it.
My hope for Europe is that Trump, being afraid of a real confrontations as he is, will lose the contest with Russia. As Emmanuel Todd had summarized:
It is the outcome of this war that will decide the fate of Europe. If Russia is defeated in Ukraine, European submission to the Americans would be prolonged for a century. If, as I believe, the United States is defeated, NATO will disintegrate and Europe will be left free.
Presidential Election 2024
"Neither is qualified. Both deserve to lose."
Video: Prof. Jeffrey Sachs Q & A at Cambridge Union as published on Oct 30 2024
Starting at 48:06 min (automated transcript, slightly edited):
Sachs:
I will not vote for a candidate that doesn't meet the minimum threshold for being president of the United States and we have two candidates, lead candidates, that don't. And so I decided I'm not voting – period. Because I want a candidate that actually has some possibility of doing something.
Now maybe they will but not based on what they say every day.
It is a profession of love for Israel's murderous reign in the Middle East. Okay, by itself I wouldn't support that. That's enough for me because Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza and it's sickening and it's obvious and we see it every day. And if a candidate can't figure out to say something about then I can't support them. Period.
But then Kamala Harris, who would normally be my candidate because I was a lifelong Democratic Party voter. Although with great disappointment whether they won or lost. Because when they won I was disappointed with what they did. When they lost I was disappointed that my candidate lost. So I've never been happy for a while about us politics.
It's been five miserable presidents as far as I'm concerned from Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, awful all of them. They brought us to the brink of nuclear war. I can't forgive them for that kind of recklessness.
But when it comes to Ukraine Harris says we stand with Ukraine. Just everybody understand what does it mean to stand with Ukraine, like Boris Johnson stands with Ukraine. It means 2,000 Ukrainians killed or wounded severely every single day. That's not standing with Ukraine. That is standing with the destruction of Ukraine. It's exactly the opposite. And so that's a purely Orwellian idea that we're standing with Ukraine by continuing this war.
And that's what she says because she doesn't seem to have any idea other than what she's told to say or she says her ideas. And either way I can't vote for her.
And with Trump – don't even get me started.
So the answer is I don't see either of them based on what they're saying right now doing much.
But I think there's another point that is important in this. I'm not without hope for a quite different reason and that is that our politics is not determined by American presidents. Our politics is determined by the Security State apparatus. And what is happening right now is not in America's security interest and so they could change their mind.
President Putin said something actually very interesting in an interview in 2017, I think in Figaro. By the time he had three presidents as his counterparts, Bush, Obama and Trump, and he said to this French reporter in 2017.
He said: "You know I've dealt with three American presidents. Now they come into office with ideas but then men in dark suits and blue ties come to tell them how the real situation is and you never hear of those ideas again."
And this is from a very tough-minded leader who was himself KGB he understands how the American system works very well. He understands what the CIA means for American foreign policy. He understands that American foreign policy is very deeply rooted.
It's not this one wins then Obama changes everything and then Trump comes in and changes nothing like that. By the way this has been a consistent foreign policy arguably since 19 certainly since 1991 and arguably since 1945.
– end of Jeffrey Sachs quote
Election 2024 – Preliminary Assessment
At this point the U.S. presidential election of 2024 seems almost decided.
Today it looks likely that Donald Trump will again become president.
Trump has won the New Hampshire primary and the only other Republican candidate still in the race is the neo-conservative candidate Nicki Halley:
Donald Trump marched closer to the Republican nomination with a sweep of the first two contests, defeating former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley on Tuesday as voters turned out in projected record numbers in New Hampshire’s primary.
Trump’s lead here was decisive enough for the Associated Press to project his win shortly after polls closed. With nearly 75 percent of the vote tallied, Trump led Haley by about 11 percentage points.
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Trump’s victory dealt another blow to critics in his party who saw the New Hampshire race as perhaps the last best chance to stop or slow him.
Halley is kept in the race by some billionaire donations, including from those who tend to donate to Democrats, in an effort to somehow still damage Trump:
Despite her shrinking path to halting Trump’s march to the Republican nomination, Haley’s showing in New Hampshire hinged on independents, who are permitted to vote in this state’s Republican primary.
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New Hampshire voters in the Republican primary split about evenly between people who were registered as Republicans and those registered as independent or undeclared, with a tiny share saying they were not registered to vote before Election Day, according to early exit polls. Independents and undeclared registered voters supported Haley by about a 2-to-1 margin, while registered Republicans supported Trump by about 3 to 1.
The hope of the Halley supporters is that other open primaries may still give her a lead. Democrats turned Independents could flood such elections and make her look like a winner:
Cont. reading: Election 2024 – Preliminary Assessment
Election 2024 – Two Legal Cases And One Winner
The opening of the 2024 election season was launched this week with the House Oversight Committee getting testimony from Hunter Biden's business partner Devon Archer over several documents related to Burisma. The following day confirmed this with the opening of another indictment against Donald Trump.
The timeline proves that these were not independent events.
Andrew Clark @AndrewHClark – 21:15 UTC · Aug 2, 2023
This timeline is actually incredible. I mean come on.
3/17 – Hunter admits laptop
3/18 – Trump indictment news
6/8 – FBI doc alleges Biden bribe
6/9 – Trump indicted
7/26 – Hunter plea deal collapses
7/27 – Trump indicted
7/31 – Devon Archer testifies
8/1 – Trump indicted
The election strategy of the Biden administration and the Democratic party seems to be to deprive Donald Trump of the time and means to go stumping across the country. That however is likely to fail.
As the Economist writes:
The multiplying felony counts against him—78 so far, with more probably coming—are consuming his campaign funds, and Democrats hope they will distract him from the campaign trail. This is wishful thinking. In 2024 the Trump trials will be the trail. They will focus attention on him and his message of fearless challenge in the face of persecution.
I have thumbed through the latest indictment, three counts of 'conspiracy and one of 'obstruction', and find it somewhat unconvincing.
Cont. reading: Election 2024 – Two Legal Cases And One Winner
How Trump Might Still Win
Trump currently seems likely to lose the fight over the election outcome. So far he has not shown any evidence that a significant extend of fraud has happened. While there will always be some votes in doubt the numbers in play now are not large enough to explain Biden's presumed victory. The courts are therefore likely to reject Trump's current challenges.
The media, including Murdoch's stable of right wing organs and the social media giants, have firmly declared a Biden victory and are thereby of no help for Trump.
But the Republican Party and Trump will want to keep fear, uncertainty and doubt alive at least until January 5 when the two Senate run-offs in Georgia get decided.
While the Republican incumbents are leading the race the Democrats will put a lot of resources into the state to move those seats to their side. They would give a Harris/Biden administration control over the Senate.
It is also possible that Trump may actually try to stay in office by manipulating the Electoral College process.
There are several more steps and deadline in the elaborate election process for the presidency.
- Dec 8 – States determine their electors for the Electoral College.
- Dec 14 – Electors meet in their states to cast their votes for the new President and Vice President.
- Dec 23 – Certificates of the electoral vote results get delivered to the president of the Senate, who is Vice President Mike Pence
- Jan 3 – Members of Congress are sworn in.
- Jan 6 – Congress meets to count the electoral votes and declare the results.
Trump could, even without finding the necessary votes, (ab-)use the Electoral College process to shift the result to his side. He can try to block or delay certifications in certain states and/or he can push Republican state legislators to appoint Trump electors.
There is precedence for that from the 1876 election:
Then as now, each state must decide on a group of electors to meet with a joint session of Congress on January 6 where the winner of the presidential election is declared. The normal practice in a state where Biden won the popular-vote total would be for state election officials to certify the results and send a slate of electors to Congress. But state legislatures have the constitutional authority to conclude that the popular vote has been corrupted and thus send a competing slate of electors on behalf of their state.
The 12th Amendment to the Constitution specifies that the “President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.” That means that in the case of disputes about competing electoral slates, the President of the Senate—Vice President Pence—would appear to have the ultimate authority to decide which to accept and which to reject. Pence would choose Trump. Democrats would appeal to the Supreme Court.
Alternatively, if at that point, no candidate has the required 270 electoral votes, the 12th Amendment stipulates, “the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote.” Currently, Republicans have a state delegation majority with 26 of the 50 states and they appear almost certain to keep that majority in the new Congress. A vote of the states would then elect President Trump for a second term. And again, Democrats would appeal that outcome to the Supreme Court.
In both cases the Supreme Court, with six of its nine judges nominated by Republicans, is likely to find in favor of Trump.
There are some variants of such a play:
If a lawsuit successfully stops certification of results in a state, legislators there could step into the void and pick a pro-Trump slate of electors.
- The lawyer, who requested anonymity to speak about the scenario, said Trump's team now appears to be trying to throw enough dirt at the process for counting late ballots to argue that accurate results can't be ascertained.
- The next step could be to try to get federal or state courts to enjoin secretaries of state from certifying results.
- Any move to provide an alternative slate of electors could force the first real test of the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and could land before the Supreme Court.
- Among the key swing states, Arizona and Georgia have GOP governors and legislatures. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have Democratic governors but GOP legislatures.
The Democrats are of course aware of such a possibility. They therefore play up the certainty of a Biden's victory even as the election process is far from decided.
But one should never count Trump out. Despite four years of getting Russiagate bullshit thrown at him he has managed to stay in office and to proceed with much of his program. He is also the first president in a 100 years who resisted the intense pressure to launch a new war. He is therefore unlikely to fold and to concede that he has lost the race.
There is only one person that could stop Trump from being successful with a 'dirty' Electoral College strategy. That is of course he himself. Over the last four years he has failed to select competent advisors. He will now need the best strategists and lawyers that are available. Jared Kushner and Rudi Giuliani will not do. Trump will also need the full backing of his party to put pressure on state legislators. He will have to make concessions to get the necessary support.
Meanwhile we all, as bystanders, will have to up our popcorn supplies to sustain the next two month.
The MoA Election Week In Review
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
> Public PBS and NPR provided extensive coverage to presidential candidates in their newscasts with President Trump receiving 48 per cent of all politics-related news coverage on both channels, largely critical. Former Vice President Biden and his campaign received 18 per cent of such coverage on PBS and 20 per cent on NPR, most of which was neutral. On the three national TV networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) President Trump received 63, 56 and 60 per cent of prime time politics-related news coverage, respectively, most of which was critical, while former Vice President Biden received 20, 25 and 22 per cent, respectively, mainly in a neutral tone. The cable networks were mostly relying on reporting opinions at the expense of balanced coverage. MSNBC, and, albeit to a lesser degree, CNN, portrayed the incumbent President very negatively, and Fox News showed open bias with demeaning vocabulary against former Vice President Biden in some of its evening shows. <
> Though the maths and maps suggests Biden will likely reach 270 Electoral votes, the old saying ‘It ain’t over ’till it’s over’, holds true. The electoral vote scenarios in the key ‘swing states’ would only apply if there is no litigation, fraud or theft. However all three are in play – If you are stuffing the ballot box, you first wait to see what the regular vote is, so that you know how many votes you ‘need’ (mathematical anomalies aside) to push your candidate over the top. Trump, somewhat rashly, gave out the GOP vote calculations at 02.30 on Wednesday, and hey-presto, loads of absentee ballots suddenly arrived at certain polling stations at around 04.00. That seems to have happened in Wisconsin, where over 100,000 Biden votes appeared seemingly out of nowhere on a flash drive delivered by hand from a Democratic district. That put Biden ahead in Wisconsin – but litigation is in process. Likewise, it appears that a huge “absentee ballot” dump appeared in Michigan that heavily favored Biden.
This is just the beginning of a new and more uncertain phase that could go on for weeks. <
> In sum, if the results we have hold, Joe Biden will win the election and preside over a divided Congress. A chastened and anxious Democratic caucus will continue to hold the House. A triumphant Senate Republican caucus will obviously destroy his major legislative agenda. Biden will assuredly turn to policy by executive action, just as Barack Obama did late in his legislatively stymied administration. When he does, Republicans will do all they can to send those actions to a 6–3 conservative Supreme Court Biden will be unable to pack or meaningfully reform. In defeating Trump, Democrats will have avoided their worst-case scenario. Instead, they will have won the worst possible Biden victory, a political situation that will be a nightmare all its own. <
> There is nothing done by the Trump administration that can be rationally characterized as a radical aberration, some dramatic break, from U.S. tradition. Quite the contrary: none of Trump’s actions and policies are in some new universe of savagery, lawlessness, or radicalism when compared to those who preceded him in power. <
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Joseph Dana @ibnezra – 10:06 UTC · Nov 8, 2020
Biden’s acceptance speech in front of a Chase logo pretty much says everything you need to know about the next four years. #USElectionResults2020
Please use the Open Thread 2020-88 for non-election issues.
Why Murdoch Called The Race – by Debs is dead
By Debs is dead
lifted from a comment
People are so concentrated on the forest they are missing the so usual you forget about 'em trees.
I'm shocked at the number of journalists who are acting surprised that the NY Post and Fox News, two of Murdoch's most persuasive Amerikan media outlets, have swung behind the Biden presidency. Murdoch has supported alleged 'left of center' candidates many times before, Tony Blair & William Clinton being a couple of the most obvious examples.
Murdoch doesn't care what 'team' his satraps claim to belong to as long as they do as they are told, so that Rupert can continue to cop his fixer's fee for ensuring megadeals go through.
The NY Post release of Hunter Biden's laptop was a shot across Biden's bow. For all we know Murdoch may have organized the Facebook/Twitter censorship prior to the Post's article being published. Why? – because he wanted to let the Dems know he had a stack of incriminating information on Biden and was prepared to use it if need be.
J Edgar Hoover had nothing on Murdoch when it comes to collecting and using compromat. I'm sure he has plenty more on both Biden & Harris, just as he had plenty on Trump.
In other words Dems should not be celebrating the fact that both the NY Post & Fox are also calling a Biden win, when in reality it is just another Murdoch win.
One more thing – it costs a great deal of money to force a recount. One of James Baker's lawyer offsiders has been blathering that the 2000 Florida recount cost about millions back in 2000. They had to pay rethug lawyers to argue the case and then pay other lawyers to undertake the recount.
Where the hell is Trump gonna find the dough to force recounts in the multiple states he believes he was robbed. Some states don't charge if the recount says you won but others don't refund. Some states give a recount if the difference is less than 1% others don't. Regardless hiring a gang of sharp-suited lawyers to argue a case through state & federal courts all the way to Scotus is a very expensive exercise & orangeutan claims to want to be running different suits in different states.
Coincidentally Murdoch's NY Post ran this story on that exact subject.
So Murdoch reassuring the elites he has this Biden/Harris thing covered makes it highly unlikely that many billionaires are going to shell out on something that (a) could be a loser and (b) doesn't matter since Biden will do what they want anyhow.
Regime Change In Washington Paves Way To More Nefarious Policies
It seems that the powers that be are finally managing to get rid of U.S. President Donald Trump.
While Trump's domestic policies have been as much to the favor of the very rich as those of his predecessors, his foreign policies were remarkably different. A Harris (Biden) regime will return to 'business as usual' and be more aggressive. That is the reason why I for one will miss Trump.
The unceremonial dethronement of Trump will also have domestic consequences. His voters will inevitably call it a fraud. A Harris (Biden) administration is unlikely to have the funds needed to fight the pandemic and its disastrous economic consequences. That together could give rise to a challenger who combines Trump's rightwing populism with political competence. That is a prospect everyone should fear.
Ever since Donald Trump entered the political stage he was fought by the military-media-intelligence establishment with ruthless campaigns designed to regime change him:
The seeds of this scheme were planted several months prior to the 2016 election when Hillary Clinton authorized a smear campaign against Trump alleging that he's secretly a “Russian agent”. It was hoped that this would discredit the race's frontrunner and thus result in handing her the presidency that November. This eventually morph into the discredited “Steele dossier” and the subsequent Russiagate conspiracy theory. The purpose of these information warfare provocations was to delegitimize Trump's election, insincerely present the Democrats as the guardians of America's electoral integrity, and therefore powerfully shape public perceptions ahead of the 2020 election. During the interim, a related narrative was weaponized claiming that Trump is a corrupt lawbreaker and wannabe dictator who'll cling to power at all costs.
Now, as it seems that Joe Biden may win the presidency, there is no longer a need to promote the fake 'Russiagate' stories.
Bryan MacDonald @27khv – 10:37 UTC · Nov 7, 2020
Amazing how quick the "Russian meddling" narrative died, in the US, once it became clear that the 'correct' candidate was going to win the election, wasn't it?
After all, the folk who pushed it don't want to delegitimise Joe Biden's forthcoming presidency.
Just in time for the election three major pillars of 'Russiagate' were thoroughly debunked and quietly buried.
Michael Tracey @mtracey – 14:51 UTC · Nov 3, 2020
Amazing. Hours before Election Day comes news that Mueller aggressively tried to prosecute Assange and Roger Stone for a conspiracy related to the 2016 DNC/Podesta emails, but ran into "factual…hurdles" which could not establish any conspiracy. Perfect time to memory-hole this
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Raw intelligence – Meduza spoke to all the likely sources behind the ‘Steele dossier.’ The report that forever transformed Donald Trump into a ‘Russian agent’ looks less and less convincing.
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Self-styled whistleblower Christopher Wylie and The Guardian reporter Carole Cadwalladr earned film deals and flashy awards by blaming Brexit and Trump on a sweeping conspiracy between data firm Cambridge Analytica and Russia. A British government investigation shatters their claims to fame.
It is no wonder then that Trump's followers now doubt all vote counts that disfavor him.
Max Abrahms @MaxAbrahms – 12:50 UTC · Nov 6, 2020
Mainstream media has played a huge role in eroding American confidence in our elections. They spent four years saying Trump’s 2016 win was just a gift from Putin. Now the media is incredulous that so many Americans don’t trust the electoral system they succeeded in discrediting.
Given the way Trump was fought throughout the last four and a half years it is hard to believe that the current part of the process, especially the counting of absentee / mail-in votes, is handled without similar shenanigans taking place.
Consider what a 2012 New York Times piece on mail-in ballots had to say:
Cont. reading: Regime Change In Washington Paves Way To More Nefarious Policies
Progressive Initiatives Win While Dems Continue To Lose
I am getting a bit stuffed from all that popcorn.
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But hey, they found another bag of 'mailed in' ballots.
Mark Niesse @markniesse – 9:20 UTC · 6 Nov 2020
Biden has taken the lead in Georgia for the first time. He is ahead of Trump by 917 votes after more results were reported in Clayton County.
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This line in a Washington Post report, filed from Taipei, Taiwan, is the most condescending I have seen in a while. What evidence does the writer have to back up that claim?
As the United States tallied votes in a presidential election that appears headed for a court battle and fractious final phase, Chinese commentators and state mouthpieces this week lined up to portray the cross-Pacific superpower — viewed with awe and envy by generations of Chinese — as a politically crumbling edifice in 2020.
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Scott Ritter is unfortunately right:
In the end, the future of the United States and, in many ways, the rest of the world, will be decided not by the American voter, but a much more nefarious form of life – the American lawyer.
Yves Smith diagnoses the Democrats' disease:
Democratic Party insiders are already deploying their blame cannons, and the progressive wing of the party is a big target. One of the big complaints of corporate Democrats who did or nearly lost their seats is that they were smeared as “socialists” in attack ads.
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The Democrats need to quit running from socialism and start explaining that America already practices socialism for the rich (with examples) and maybe it’s time for socialism for ordinary people (with examples). But the problem is that the Dems are culpable of promoting socialism for the rich, as exemplified by the “no accountability” bank bailouts and the reluctance to address student debt and ever-rising health care costs.
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At the same time, as readers know well, there are boatloads of “progressive” policies that are very popular with voters, like raising the minimum wage, strengthening Social Security, providing for more income support during lockdowns, getting rid of the ACA and replacing it with government-provided insurance, and cutting military spending. And if 2016 and 2020 demonstrated anything, it’s that the Democrats aren’t benefitting from being joined at the hip with big corporations and billionaires. Bloomberg spent $100 million on the party’s behalf, for instance, yet what difference did that make?
So the Democrats institutionally could break away from the grip of corporate big money, but too many pols and operatives are in their vise for that to happen. It will take at least another epic failure for them to be rooted out. And in the meantime, the scapegoating will continue.
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The results in Florida seem to confirm that take:
@TravisMenard00 – 3:13 UTC · Nov 6, 2020
Bernie Sanders: "We need a federal minimum wage of at least $15/hr."
Joe Biden: "I beat the Socialist!"
Florida: *Votes for $15 statewide minimum wage, and *not* Joe Biden*
Can’t Count Votes? Just Draw Straws.
It seems that we all will have to fill up our popcorn supplies as the rather comical and disgraceful process of U.S. vote counting is likely to continue until maybe December 8, the safe harbor date on which the states will have to certify their electors.
The race is nowhere near where the Democrats and their supporting media had expected it to go. Just last week polls claimed that Biden would lead in Wisconsin by 17 percent. The current margin is a rather dubious 0.6 percent which upcoming recounts may well eliminate.
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.
There will be protests, probably violent ones, and more legal action from either side. I see no compromise possible that would satisfy both parties. I fear that, should Trump lose this election. Trumpism will only grow and make the U.S. ungovernable.
Maybe Trump and Biden could publicly draw straws to get over with it.
Trump Claims Election Fraud, Says He Has Won
WaPo:
With millions of votes yet to be counted, President Trump falsely asserted election fraud, pledged to mount a legal challenge to official state results and made a premature claim of victory.
Weird to have popcorn for breakfast …
A Weird Election Where The Aftermath May Be More Important Than The Result
Every four years the United States has "the most important election ever" though none of those I remember have really changed anything fundamental.
Today's election is different because the Democrats have threatened to attempt a color-revolution should their candidate not win:
It seems clear that the Democrats will contest the election unless Joe Biden wins an electoral college majority. If Trump wins they will draw out any concession until the last mail in vote is counted and litigated through the last level of jurisdiction. They hope that the accompanying media attention, social media marketing and street action will wear down the support for Donald Trump.
Throughout the last months the required tactics have been tested with Soros funded Black Live Matters protests and anarchist riots in Portland and other cites.
This is, as far as I know, the first election day on which businesses have boarded up their shops because they fear that the election night will be followed by rampages and looting:
Business districts and office buildings in several U.S. cities are boarding up their doors and windows for fear of Election Day unrest and in the days that follow.
The sound of sawing, drilling and nailing filled several blocks around the White House and in New York City, including its iconic Macy's flagship department store.
Police said Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills will be closed down completely on Tuesday, following a large pro-Trump demonstration in the shopping district over the weekend.
Federal authorities planned to extend the perimeter fencing around the White House by several blocks, encompassing the same area fenced out during this summer's protests against racism and police brutality.
Why all this fuss? The difference between the two major parties is slim. Whoever wins will be constrained in his policies to fit the general imperial trends the U.S. follows.
It is funny though how little we know about the most likely outcome. The polls have been more often wrong than right and now show a tight race in those places that are really important. The final result may depend on a few hundred mail-in ballots in some county in Pennsylvania. Or there could also be a landslide in either direction.
My personal hunch is that Trump, who is much less exceptional than the media portrait him, will gain sufficient electoral college votes to stay in office.
If the Democrats react to that as they have planned it is quite possible that the aftermath of the election will be psychologically and historically more important than the election result itself.
It is hard to convey how exceptionally weird this all looks from the outside.
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.
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“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.
Silly Season
Washington Post, November 19, 2017
Justice Department pushing Iran-connected charges in HBO hack, other cases
Last month, national security prosecutors at the Justice Department were told to look at any ongoing investigations involving Iran or Iranian nationals with an eye toward making them public.
The push to announce Iran-related cases has caused internal alarm, these people said, with some law enforcement officials fearing that senior Justice Department officials want to reveal the cases because the Trump administration would like Congress to impose new sanctions on Iran.
Washington Post, October 22, 2020
U.S. government concludes Iran was behind threatening emails sent to Democrats
U.S. officials on Wednesday night accused Iran of targeting American voters with faked but menacing emails and warned that both Iran and Russia had obtained voter data that could be used to endanger the upcoming election.
The disclosure by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe at a hastily called news conference marked the first time this election cycle that a foreign adversary has been accused of targeting specific voters in a bid to undermine democratic confidence — just four years after Russian online operations marred the 2016 presidential vote.
The claim that Iran was behind the email operation, which came into view on Tuesday as Democrats in several states reported receiving emails demanding they vote for President Trump, was leveled without specific evidence.
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Metadata gathered from dozens of the emails pointed to the use of servers in Saudi Arabia, Estonia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, according to numerous analysts.
Reuters, October 22, 2020
U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran, Russia have tried to interfere in 2020 election
The emails are under investigation, and one intelligence source said it was still unclear who was behind them.
…
… the evidence remains inconclusive.
The claims that Iran is behind this are as stupid as the people who believe them.
I for one trust (not) those 50 former intelligence officials who say that all emails are Russian disinformation. They are intended to 'sow discord' which is something the U.S. has otherwise never ever had throughout its history.
Politico, October 19, 2020
Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say
More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails … “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
…
While the letter’s signatories presented no new evidence, they said their national security experience had made them “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case” and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin’s hand at work.
“If we are right,” they added, “this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”
No, this doesn't make any sense. It is not supposed to do that.
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.
Why U.S. Elections Do Not Change Its Foreign Policies
John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle about CIA torture under the Bush regime, warns of the foreign policy a Joe Biden administration would pursue:
Literally the last thing I would do is to urge anybody to vote for Donald Trump. The president has been a disaster in every sense of the word and in both foreign and domestic policy. The country can’t take four more years of a Trump presidency. But Biden is no panacea. He’s a center-right placeholder. [..]
If you think things will change in foreign policy under a President Biden, think again. It’ll be the same old expansionist, militarist policy that we had under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. So go into the voting booth with your eyes open.
In my view Biden is more right than center. Even his campaign slogan is shared with the British conservatives.
A Joe Biden administration would extend the hostile policies towards Russia and China and would continue to push for regime change in Venezuela, Syria, Iran and Belarus. This even as the organ of U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy, Foreign Affairs, states that U.S. induced regime changes never achieve their aims:
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s repeated assertion around the time of the Iraq war that Washington’s pursuit of “stability at the expense of democracy” in the Middle East had produced neither was broadly true. But it turned out to have a corollary—that pursuing democracy at the expense of stability might also produce neither, but at even higher cost.
…
Regime change will always tempt Washington. [..] The long, diverse, and tragic history of U.S.-backed regime change in the Middle East, however, suggests that such temptations—like most quick fixes that come along in life and politics—should be resisted. The next time U.S. leaders propose intervening in the region to overthrow a hostile regime, it can safely be assumed that such an enterprise will be less successful, more costly, and more replete with unintended consequences than proponents realize or admit. So far, at least, it has never been the other way around.
U.S. foreign policy does not change from presidency to presidency. In a recent interview President Bashar al-Assad of Syria explained why that is the case:
Cont. reading: Why U.S. Elections Do Not Change Its Foreign Policies
Why Trump Returned To The White House
Yesterday President Donald Trump revealed this interesting re-election strategy:
bigger
This is a Hail Mary strike taken at high personal risk.
Trump was certainly not well enough to get released from the hospital.
It is not really known when Trump got infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and when he fell ill with Covid-19. The treatments his doctors said they used with him are somewhat conflicting. After Trump was diagnosed with Covid-19 he was given a high dose of monoclonal antibodies which directly attack the virus and lessen the overall growth of viruses. The antiviral drug remdesivir which lowers virus RNA production was also given:
[I]t would seem that if you’re going to give monoclonal antibodies, that they would be best given early in the course of the disease, when therapy is still in antiviral mode. The addition of a five-day course of remdesivir to the treatment regimen fits that as well: both of these are designed to lower the amount of virus present and (in theory) keep the disease from progressing to a more severe stage.
Both therapies make most sense in the first phase of a virus infection when it is still only in the upper part of the respiratory system. In that phase the normal immune system is still building up its defenses. But Trump seems to have already been in the second phase of the infection where the virus is in the lungs and when the immune system starts to attack the body. He at least twice had too little oxygen in his blood likely without feeling it. This "happy hypoxemia" is typical for Covid-19:
Cont. reading: Why Trump Returned To The White House
Election Debate
Anyone watching the presidential election debate tonight?
Wrong time zone for me but if you do please leave your impression in this thread.
And don't follow Matt Taibbi's debate drinking game rules. You would likely end up totally drunk after just 30 minutes and permanently ruin your health :-).
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