Election 2020

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-10-2020, 05:30 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Unfortunately, Biden was smack dab in the middle of the fray which will make it difficult for him to remain above the fray and he's already standing on thin ice. You still seem to be pretty clueless and arrogant for someone who is walking on thin ice along with Biden these days. Trump deserves a second stint in office. Whether it's now or in four years, doesn't matter to me. The Democratic party isn't as dominant as it once was but it's still the more dominant of the two with all the members of the media, institutions and the courts on its side.

Biden will have enough to do without bothering with Trump. It is Trump who is in trouble and skating on thin ice with his belief that he is above the law. You are projecting again. Trump doesn’t have to shoot anyone on 5th Avenue if he doesn’t pay his rally bills, engaged regularly with tax fraud, and profited from official acts.

I figure that when he valued the economy above lives, he separated himself from most of the voters. That alone made a second term unlikely. If he tries for a second term in 2024 that would only keep the Republican splintered, I doubt he will be in a position to do so. His legal and debt woes are likely to leave him in shambles.

But if you are a resident of Earth 2, if you enjoy your fantasies, you leave yourself exposed to disappointment. Can’t do much about that. Anyone weird enough to fantasize about leaving women naked and helpless in the woods is a lost cause.

[pbrower2a]

(12-10-2020, 04:37 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-10-2020, 10:08 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-10-2020, 07:47 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-10-2020, 04:00 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(12-09-2020, 02:38 PM)David Horn Wrote: I doubt Trump can do anything that would alienate his most loyal followers.  He's right: he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

Scary, isn't it?  That is a personality cult.

Scary, yes, but in any but the reddest state, his loyal followers are enough to make a politician who opposes him lose the primary, but not enough to win the general election.  It creates an interesting dynamic.

Trump moved to Florida to make himself immune to rationality.  Remember, this is the state that ran a raid on the home of a health researcher with guns drawn and children in the house: her crime was telling the truth.

Nothing is outside the bounds anymore.

Isn't that the same state that Clinton sent in a group of heavily armed Feds to enter an American home to seize a little Cuban kid and end a drawn out international custody dispute? Isn't that the same state that we watched the Liberal courts drag out an election result for months as it tried to change election laws after Gore lost the election? Isn't it also the state where a group of heavily armed Feds and a group of CNN reporters were sent to the home of an avid Trump supporter to be arrested on petty charges that had nothing to do with Russian collusion?

His mother brought him to America, only to drown in the process. Family law clearly states that custody goes to the surviving spouse unless abuse, neglect, or child endangerment intervenes. This applies just the same whether the surviving parent is in Cuba or Cyprus. That his father is a Commie does not constitute abuse. 

The judge making the decision, a Reagan appointee, began his statement with "as much as I abhor the Castro regime"... Maybe the child would not be sent to a war zone, but Castro's Cuba is was not a war zone.

The Presidential election of 2000 did drag on in Florida... until not-so-liberal courts stopped the counting of ballots with "hanging chads" with Dubya leading.    

Florida had a Trump supporter, Cesar Sayoc, allegedly making pipe bombs allegedly mailed by an active Democratic member of Congress. Making bombs? Count on the Feds hunting you down to make an example of you. 

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_20...g_attempts

[Classic-Xer]

(12-10-2020, 05:54 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-10-2020, 05:30 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Unfortunately, Biden was smack dab in the middle of the fray which will make it difficult for him to remain above the fray and he's already standing on thin ice. You still seem to be pretty clueless and arrogant for someone who is walking on thin ice along with Biden these days. Trump deserves a second stint in office. Whether it's now or in four years, doesn't matter to me. The Democratic party isn't as dominant as it once was but it's still the more dominant of the two with all the members of the media, institutions and the courts on its side.

Biden will have enough to do without bothering with Trump.  It is Trump who is in trouble and skating on thin ice with his belief that he is above the law.  You are projecting again.  Trump doesn’t have to shoot anyone on 5th Avenue if he doesn’t pay his rally bills, engaged regularly with tax fraud, and profited from official acts.

I figure that when he valued the economy above lives, he separated himself from most of the voters.  That alone made a second term unlikely.  If he tries for a second term in 2024 that would only keep the Republican splintered,  I doubt he will be in a position to do so.  His legal and debt woes are likely to leave him in shambles.

But if you are a resident of Earth 2, if you enjoy your fantasies, you leave yourself exposed to disappointment.  Can’t do much about that.  Anyone weird enough to fantasize about leaving women naked and helpless in the woods is a lost cause.

Well, I'm more in line with those who believe that the cure was worse the disease. It's Biden's economy now. I've been telling you for a while that the covid aftermath is going to be worse and far more challenging than the covid crisis itself. So, do you want to bet on how long Biden is able to remain in office? I'm betting less than two years right now. Biden doesn't have the luxury of riding someone else's coattails like he did with Obama.

[Einzige]

It's amazing how little any of you are willing to question anything systemically.

Let me give you an example from the government.

Herbert Hoover initiated programs that Roosevelt expanded into the New Deal. Carter deregulated trucking, airlines etc. Obama expanded Dubya's drone programs and Trump utilized Obama's concentration camps for immigrants.

The problem is capitalism. This is not to be understood as a mere call from expanded social programs: social programs are intrinsic to capitalism. Nor is it a call directed for a vulgar class war against the rich. A real revolution would require a total transformation in the way we lead our lives. It would require a profoundly radical dropping out from the mechanisms of production and open revolt against all existing instrumentalists of Capital.

Covid is in some ways a fauxdemic in the sense that Capital has been primed for a shift to a distributed form for a long time now. Most manual labor is going to be automated soon. The response to the crisis is meant to facilitate a shift in this direction.

[pbrower2a]

(12-11-2020, 12:14 AM)Einzige Wrote: It's amazing how little any of you are willing to question anything systemically.

Let me give you an example from the government.

Herbert Hoover initiated programs that Roosevelt expanded into the New Deal. Carter deregulated trucking, airlines etc. Obama expanded Dubya's drone programs and Trump utilized Obama's  concentration camps for immigrants.

The problem is capitalism. This is not to be understood as a mere call from expanded social programs: social programs are intrinsic to capitalism. Nor is it a call directed for a vulgar class war against the rich. A real revolution would require a total transformation in the way we lead our lives. It would require a profoundly radical dropping out from the mechanisms of production and open revolt against all existing instrumentalists of Capital.

Covid is in some ways a fauxdemic in the sense that Capital has been primed for a shift to a distributed form for a long time now. Most manual labor is going to be automated soon. The response to the crisis is meant to facilitate a shift in this direction.

295,000 people have already died of it, which is close to the populations of St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Columbus. We have had as many as 3000 people dying in one day of this horrible disease, so there's nothing faux about it. It is not a result of capitalism; the lethality results from a politician bungling it into the disaster that it is, news media (particularly those related to the Hard Right and sympathetic to the quack President that we now have), and, yes, some horrible decisions of Big Business (like keeping people working in crowded conditions. 

Much of the fault lies with people who fail to take reasonable precautions. Yesterday I drove past the equivalent of Hyde Park (London) in my town, and I saw a bunch of people with Trump banners (protesting the 'steal' of the election that their idol claims to have won)... but no masks. People should be washing their hands frequently (although I can't vouch for them not doing so), not congregating in large groups, and of course, wearing masks. A gathering like that is about as dangerous as an HIV party forty years ago when people have reckless, unprotected sex not knowing who is infected... except that, so far as I recall, nobody had that.  But there have been COVID-19 parties... and people have died as the result of the unwise revelry. Yes, I know about spectacular stupidity, like having hurricane parties or throwing objects into Big Cat enclosures at the San Francisco Zoo (I made a comment about that in the Wikipedia article about the incident in which a tiger got out of the enclosure, chased down its tormenters, and killed or mauled them:  

Quote:Provocation of any large animal, especially a large predator, is extremely dangerous. Behind far flimsier enclosures than any zoo would ever have lurk some large predators which have obvious similarities of proportion, behavior, and abilities to those of tigers. They are dogs, and they have knocked down, burrowed under, vaulted, or scaled fences when provoked. Anyone who throws objects at a dog out of malice stands to be hurt. The tigress in question was only about twice as large as some of the larger dogs, but it was a tiger, and merited some wholesome respect as a very large and resourceful predator.

Zoo animals are not as patient with humans as are dogs, but they are not put in zoos to be humiliated or provoked by zoo patrons any more than a pet owner would keep a pet dog to be humiliated or provoked by passers-by.Pbrower2a (talk) 03:52, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Capitalism has been around for several centuries, but I am more likely to fault bad political leadership and corrupt media (although those media are capitalist, there's a huge difference between the main TV networks and FoX News on this one). The combination of irresponsibility with great power, whatever the political system, makes tragedy practically certain at times. 

If I had been told that over 300,000 people would die of some unforeseen cause in America during the Trump Presidency I would have likely ascribed it to some war for profits.  Not that would a capitalist fault, just as it was in part the fault of pig capitalists that Adolf Hitler initiated World War II. Capitalism is simply an economic technique, and like any force or technology -- or for that matter a large predator... can kill people. It's up to the wisdom and morality of capitalists, like everyone else, to not expose people to undue risks.  

How big is 300,000 people? That is roughly the population of St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh. 

Cities with these pro sports teams:

 

The smallest city not a suburb to have a major-league MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL team, Green Bay, is considered a major-league city. (So in case you say that the Los Angeles Lakers really play in Inglewood or call the dump Pontiac, Michigan a former Big League city for having the Detroit Lions... having two or three such teams allays all doubt) None of these cities has an NBA franchise, but they have two (Cincinnati) or three (Pittsburgh and Cincinnati) franchises. 

The incompetence and neglect of our Coward-in-Chief has cost the equivalent of lives of one of three major-league cities. Two more days of carnage of the scale of the one-day horror of 9/11 puts us there. Capitalism? No. Trump.    



Here's my take on Hoover: he was still tied to the ethos of the Gilded Age revival of the 1920s and the strictures of economic thought of Gilded-Age capitalism (keep government small, don't run deficits, make sure that the little man gets hurt because he can either adapt or show his unworthiness to live).  He broke the rules at times, but had he stuck to his relief measures (or as Ronald Reagan said, stay the course) instead of abandoning them when they did not seem to work fast enough he might have gotten some recovery. The real mistake was to not back the banks... and as banks failed, people lost their savings, businesses lost their funds for wages and payables, and.. well, one failure brought about another. FDR backed the banks and stuck to what he started.   

I agree with you on this: Big Business makes Big Government necessary at the least for preventing near-wars between capitalists. The auto industry and Big Oil may have put America on the road, but they compelled America to build roads to accommodate the "gas buggies" that are still around, if very different in style and function, a century later. Big Business also means gigantic corporate bureaucracies that impose their own economic management upon us, and for that we need a welfare state to mitigate the effects of plutocratic choices that can bring mass poverty and catastrophic pollution.

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-11-2020, 12:14 AM)Einzige Wrote: It's amazing how little any of you are willing to question anything systemically.

Let me give you an example from the government.

Herbert Hoover initiated programs that Roosevelt expanded into the New Deal. Carter deregulated trucking, airlines etc. Obama expanded Dubya's drone programs and Trump utilized Obama's  concentration camps for immigrants.

The problem is capitalism. This is not to be understood as a mere call from expanded social programs: social programs are intrinsic to capitalism. Nor is it a call directed for a vulgar class war against the rich. A real revolution would require a total transformation in the way we lead our lives. It would require a profoundly radical dropping out from the mechanisms of production and open revolt against all existing instrumentalists of Capital.

Covid is in some ways a fauxdemic in the sense that Capital has been primed for a shift to a distributed form for a long time now. Most manual labor is going to be automated soon. The response to the crisis is meant to facilitate a shift in this direction.

Even in a communist government, a bad leader can have a few good ideas that his followers expand upon. Not unusual or uniquely associated with democracy or capitalism.

I do agree that labor or some way of acquiring wealth was once and is still required. Automation requires less labor. The adjustment I have promoted is a lessening of the 40 hour work week and retiring an age less than 65. Both numbers were reduced regularly at one time, but have become sacred. If society is less obsessed with luxuries and acquiring stuff, cutting the time spent on work is natural. I can see future societies much more oriented to things like family and sports.

I agree that labor must be rethought, but the basic system is not the problem. There are solutions within the traditional system. The basic response might give a barely living wage to the person not willing to work, or cannot find a job. If you did labor, you would get significantly more. In the extreme we are no where near yet, you could not be allowed to reproduce on the minimum government dole. Much balancing to be done. Little willingness to do it. Among other things, the red are adamantly opposed to anything that smells of giving benefits to the working poor.

Biden’s team has a surplus of economists who are educated, well trained, experienced, and set in the old ways. I’m not sure that the building back better movement can get far enough outside the box. Still, I am looking for more out of Biden’s team that the Marxist thinkers. As they say up in Maine, you can’t get there from here.

[Einzige]

There is no Communist government. That's the point. It will be a radical restructuring of all labor, which will be entirely self-directed, and consequently all society. I'd recommend checking out the Marxism 201 sub on Reddit.

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-11-2020, 05:58 AM)Einzige Wrote: There is no Communist government. That's the point. It will be a radical restructuring of all labor, which will be entirely self-directed, and consequently all society. I'd recommend checking out the Marxism 201 sub on Reddit.

There is a quote at the heart of Marxism. ’From each according to his ability. To each according to his need.’ The reality is more like this. ’To the new communist elite according to their greed. Or else.’ The twin problems are the lack of control of the workers over the elites, and the lack of a tie between the ability and the need.

Unfortunately, the communist twin concepts are a lot closer to human nature than the Marxist ones.

Now I could acknowledge that there is not now and has never been a Marxist government. Marxism is too far distant from human nature. Recent history does not lack for governments that call themselves Communist. Their existence makes most people avoid the scam like the plague.

I visited Marxism 201. I found little but one sentence slogans that gave no clue as to how to bridge the gulf between Marxism and human nature.

You might try to bridge the gulf yourself? How would you try to solve the twin problems? Declining to do this would be regarded by me at least as a total fail?

[David Horn]

(12-10-2020, 04:37 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-10-2020, 10:08 AM)David Horn Wrote: Trump moved to Florida to make himself immune to rationality.  Remember, this is the state that ran a raid on the home of a health researcher with guns drawn and children in the house: her crime was telling the truth.

Nothing is outside the bounds anymore.

Isn't that the same state that Clinton sent in a group of heavily armed Feds to enter an American home to seize a little Cuban kid and end a drawn out international custody dispute? Isn't that the same state that we watched the Liberal courts drag out an election result for months as it tried to change election laws after Gore lost the election? Isn't it also the state where a group of heavily armed Feds and a group of CNN reporters were sent to the home of an avid Trump supporter to be arrested on petty charges that had nothing to do with Russian collusion?

I can't say that was a good use of force either, but the order of magnitude is vastly different.  The Clinton Justice Department was enforcing a legitimate claim by a parent under court concurrence.  There was also a long period of trying to settle it amicably before the action was taken. I the recent case, it was an attempt to cover-up an embarrassing lack of transparency due to the governor's failure to protect the people of the state from a virus.  No court action involved, just force.

[CH86]

I Will Post my thoughts on this election here: First Biden Won the election but demanding that Trumpers disband shows that the DNC does not understand the existing situation. Dems were able to get Biden over the hurdle ONLY because of the COVID crisis started which allowed for an Anti-Trump campaign to be launched due to poor handling, well as the fact that may registered democrats and even some moderate republicans actually want Biden to govern as a moderate. However the above is Definitely NOT the goal of the DNC.

The DNC leaders and the DNC supporters (A strange alliance of Finance classes, 60s radical Liberal activists and their kids and Rural Southern Church Blacks) clearly don't value Biden as a president and clearly secretly see him as a obstacle to their plans. Sometime, probably in late 2022 or 2023 the DNC will betray Biden and try to Install Kamala as president, however Kamala's backers mentioned above would get into a world of hurt if they do so. Actual Moderates and Progressives only voted for Biden because they wanted an actual moderate (in the case of the moderates) or they disliked Trump (in the case of the progressives). They did NOT vote because they support the DNC goals or the DNC/SJW alliance. When Pelosi and Kamala try to 25th amendment Biden, you will see an alliance of everyone not aligned with the DNC form. It will essentially be all parties (Democrats, Republicans and independents) vs about 30% of the democrats.

Classic is only incorrect in that he sees a purely GOP base movement leading the struggle against the DNC. Eric, Pbrower and B Butler Saying that democrats outnumber Trumps post-election diehards is only technically correct, and barely so. It is correct only based on the current alignments of november/december 2020 that exist as we currently speak. But the Great Realignment I speak of is relevant for 2022-2023, said realignment hasn't taken place yet. Moderates, Progressives, and Anti-Trump republicans have no reason to remain allied with Liberals if Trump leaves. The Only reason Kamala is part of the ticket is because the 60s radicals and church blacks threatened not to vote for their own nominee if she wasn't on the ticket.

If it comes to a national plebiscite on "do you want Kamala Harris to replace Joe Biden" there will be an overwhelming vote of NO, with only a string of Rural cotton belt Counties voting YES. America would be reunited and realigned at that Moment with the NO vote. We will not allow boomers to Turn the entire Country into South Carolina DNC politics in order to preserve their corrupt grip on power. Think of it Trumpers, Berners, Moderates, Independents, Latinos, Northern and western Blacks, Asians, Indians and Arabs standing together to fight for the right to be REAL men and REAL women: To stop the globalist feminization of our children by Financial tycoons, Wrinkled Boomers and Wrinkled and Fat church ladies. It will be Glorious.

After the Defeat and political elimination of the DNC/Kamala Cult, Moderates, Conservatives, Progressives and Independents will have long and heated discussions over sensible policy options. With the Boomers and SJWs defeated, these discussions while heated will result in sensible compromise as all parties would be keenly aware of each others interests. The Synthesis of these discussions would be implemented as policy. The Military would be rebuilt, Industry would be rebuilt, Native and nationalized tech capacity would be rebuilt. We will move against Iran (depending on what their countries leaders do then it will either be Peace or War) without having our hands tied by Boomers and NGOs. Will will Contain China, while building our Nuke Arsenal to 100,000 warheads.

[pbrower2a]

(12-11-2020, 07:17 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-11-2020, 05:58 AM)Einzige Wrote: There is no Communist government. That's the point. It will be a radical restructuring of all labor, which will be entirely self-directed, and consequently all society. I'd recommend checking out the Marxism 201 sub on Reddit.

There is a quote at the heart of Marxism.  ’From each according to his ability.  To each according to his need.’  The reality is more like this.  ’To the new communist elite according to their greed.  Or else.’  The twin problems are the lack of control of the workers over the elites, and the lack of a tie between the ability and the need.

Even in Marx' time, the slave-owning planters of the American South were able to enforce "to each according to his ability" from slaves while 'giving'  the barest essentials of life to slaves. The worst thing possible for an elderly slave was manumission, which meant that he was on his own without the means of survival. That typically meant death by starvation and cold. Real prosperity fairly distributed makes the achievement of basic needs easily accessible, and at a certain point makes overproduction (surfeit) more of a problem than underproduction (shortages). 

Maybe the next phase of economic organization will be that powerful entities (governments, for-profit corporations, and powerful non-profit entities) will determine how people consume. I look at the contemporary attitude of many capitalists who deem the duty of the rest of humanity to make those elites even wealthier and  to indulge their often-debased urges (even on sexuality and drugs) while acquiescing to their systems of command-and-control. I see that as a nightmare. Castles and palaces for the elites, complete with harems? Donald Trump would have been a perfect Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. 

As Lord Acton said, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Such has applied to all powerful people, whatever their claim to legitimate holding of power. 

Quote:Unfortunately, the communist twin concepts are a lot closer to human nature than the Marxist ones.

Marxism is obsolete because Marxism antedates the discoveries of Freudian psychology, some of the remarkable technological innovations that were at most scientific curiosities of his latter years (the telephone, the electric light, recorded music, automobiles, elevators, petroleum refining) or were yet to emerge (motion pictures, animation, radio, refrigeration, air conditioning). Social reforms that have nothing to do with socialist revolution (getting children out of the workforce and into school, effective labor unions, and increasing enfranchisement of voters often from the working class) have themselves changed the relationship between capitalist 'producer' and industrial toiler. If you look at one of Marx' scientific contemporaries, Charles Darwin, you will find that Darwin only exposed the controversies that would set the scientific communities on their own paths that would redefi9ne what good scientific practice is. 

Marxism fails to explain innovations in business practice. So why could the Skaggs brothers (founders of Safeway Stores) develop the supermarket? Because conditions had changed enough that people got paid enough that they could not need to buy groceries on credit, arguably a consequence of the rise in wages as children were no longer competing with their parents in the workplace. Why could Henry Ford sell cheap, highly-standardized cars? Because the new high-tech capitalists of his time could start to pay non-starvation wages. The sweatshops of the time were 'low-tech' industries such as textiles.  
 

Quote:Now I could acknowledge that there is not now and has never been a Marxist government.  Marxism is too far distant from human nature.  Recent history does not lack for governments that call themselves Communist. Their existence makes most people avoid the scam like the plague.

The body count, economic orders incapable of competing with the rest of the world due to slow innovation, economic policies that waste such resources as energy... Free markets do far better than do command economies in meeting basic needs, although even a capitalist society such as WWII-era Britain will have to abandon the free market and consumer choice to fend off the danger of the Man Who Shall Not Be Named.  

Quote:I visited Marxism 201.  I found little but one sentence slogans that gave no clue as to how to bridge the gulf between Marxism and human nature.

You might try to bridge the gulf yourself?  How would you try to solve the twin problems?  Declining to do this would be regarded by me at least as a total fail?

Ideologies out of touch with human nature or with basic rules of physical science and mathematics (and economics is to no small extent modeling of the chemical and physical rules of thermodynamics to production and trade)... fail. Chattel slavery died because it was inconsistent with feelings of guilt over the exploitation and dehumanization of slaves. Fascism, including Nazism, failed because it could never promote human solidarity across national lines and depended upon inhuman brutality. I see our corporate bureaucracies and public-system imitators ultimately doomed for their inhumanity as they become increasingly inefficient, unresponsive, and inhuman. 

Do you want to hear of a thoroughly sane economic order? Try the Old Order Amish. I wouldn't suggest joining them, as people accustomed to the consumer society with its mobility and information-age technologies of entertainment as difficult to surrender as heroin for an addict. The Old Order Amish go to school only as far as the eighth grade and keep repeating the eighth grade until school-leaving age. It's not great for anyone who has much intellectual curiosity. But consider this: their material lives are not particularly uncomfortable. 

Theirs is a world of farming and food production, with some carpentry (and it is very good carpentry) on the side. They make some good furniture, and I would take a trip to Amish country to get some if I lived clearly outside it (as in Texas, Florida, or perhaps California). It is solid and plain... ornamentation is for schmucks. They have few white-collar jobs because they have no bureaucracy. No banks or insurance companies. Ostentatious behavior is rare. That's for people who show how rich and powerful they are, most likely by treating others badly. They are mobile enough; they have buggies and bicycles, and a buggy in southeastern Pennsylvania probably gets one around faster than a car in midtown Manhattan or anywhere off the expressways in Chicago. 

I'm not saying that we should go back to Amish standards of education or to abandon the marvels of video and the internet. I consider mobility a good thing. We might be better off with small business instead of giant, monopolistic, vertically-integrated businesses.
,

[CH86]

PBrowers Post: The insanity of the Boomers illustrated.

The only way Amish style life would become in vogue is if there was a general nuclear war so devastating that even the ability to repair what had been destroyed had been lost. Good luck convincing your average millennial, your average gen-z teenager, your average street kid or their suburban counterparts, that boomerism is somehow the future: LOL. Americans, and other westerners for that matter will reject boomerism like the plague. Nor would Asians, africans and even Muslims have anything to do with boomer luddism. We will not submit to globalist/zionist tyranny.

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-11-2020, 03:01 PM)CH86 Wrote: I Will Post my thoughts on this election here: First Biden Won the election but demanding that Trumpers disband shows that the DNC does not understand the existing situation. Dems were able to get Biden over the hurdle ONLY because of the COVID crisis started which allowed for an Anti-Trump campaign to be launched due to poor handling, well as the fact that may registered democrats and even some moderate republicans actually want Biden to govern as a moderate. However the above is Definitely NOT the goal of the DNC...

You seem to be proposing a bad Democratic agenda as such is easier to defeat than their real agenda.

I would include addressing systematic racism, the ever increasing imbalance of wealth, global warming as well as the bug as problems Trump refused to handle that the Democrats want to confront.  It falls out of what was argued about for the overly long unraveling.  The problems are more severe in urban areas, there is a pent up demand to solve them, while the small government, low taxes and me first elites have resisted solutions.  

The tensions were building.  COVID was the trigger.  But the old values being displaced in a large crisis seems almost inevitable.  It has always happened.  What is different is that the major powers usually get involved in a crisis war.  Nukes, insurgency, and proxy wars have made crisis wars a bad option.

The Democrats have four years to provide enough solutions to be given four more.  

The Republicans have to get their voting base back from Trump.  He is a loser.  If they don’t seize back the party, the anti Trump feeling will still be there.  He will lose.  Thus far, the way the establishment is going along with the silly election stealing lawsuits, the Republican establishment are not even fighting for control.  They are just going along with Trump.

Now you have provided a scenario of allegedly sensible compromise.  I could go with Trump being defeated rather than the Boomers and SJWs.  I would have the agenda being cutting the imbalance of wealth, reducing systematic racism, cutting global warming and curing the bug.  Perhaps blending the two agendas will be part of your sensible compromise.  We already have quite the military budget, a lot of nukes, and are containing Iran and China.  You are suggesting the Republican agenda rather than anything like a sensible compromise.

But first things first.  I guess the Supreme Court has the ball.  Biden has to step in.  We will see if Trump remains dominant within the Republicans.  We will see what his debt and legal problems lead to.  All that will shape what sensible compromises are possible.

[Bob Butler 54]

Again, you are obsessed with boomers.  There are red boomers and blue.  They are two groups, not one.  They have agendas which are quite different than you present.  Your obsession renders your vision of what is going on way off.

[pbrower2a]

(12-11-2020, 03:01 PM)CH86 Wrote: I Will Post my thoughts on this election here: First Biden Won the election but demanding that Trumpers disband shows that the DNC does not understand the existing situation. Dems were able to get Biden over the hurdle ONLY because of the COVID crisis started which allowed for an Anti-Trump campaign to be launched due to poor handling, well as the fact that may registered democrats and even some moderate republicans actually want Biden to govern as a moderate. However the above is Definitely NOT the goal of the DNC.

Donald Trump did get 46.83% of the vote this time, which is amazing to someone who thinks that he belongs in the Big House instead of the White House... and by "the Big House" I do not mean Michigan Stadium. In Michigan, the appropriate Big House would be where some of his acolytes in the Wolverine Watchmen are headed if convicted of the insidious plot against the state government. He actually got more votes and a larger total share of votes in 2020 than in 2016 when he won the Presidency by winning the 'right' votes. He has a strong personality cult.  

Someone like Donald Trump, who had no legacy of political service and no connections to a well-established constituency, did become President. I assume that he won in 2016 by playing up fears and resentments that have been building for decades. Many people see a system that has promised much and demanded everything... and disappointed. Figure that people used to be able to get a job on an assembly line in an auto plant or other giant manufacturer if one had a good work ethic and a strong body... and earn a middle income. The biggest private employer in America is now Wal*Mart, and the second is McDonald's. The top twenty:

  
1 U.S Federal Government   2,711,000
2 Wal-Mart Stores  1,500,000
3 McDonald's  420,000
4 Kroger  400,000
5 International Business Machines  377,757
6 The Home Depot  371,000
7 United Parcel Service  362,000
8 Target  347,000
9 Amazon.com 341,000
10  Berkshire Hathaway  316,000
11 Yum! Brands 303,405
12 Hewlett-Packard 302,000
13 FedEx 298,099
14 PepsiCo 271,000
15 Lowe's 270,000
16 Albertsons 265,000
17 Wells Fargo 264,500
18 AT&T 243,620
19 JPMorgan Chase 241,359
20 Citigroup 241,000

The US Government is probably the US Postal Service, the Armed Services, and federal Corrections above all else. Six retailers (including Amazon), two fast-food companies, a giant producer of junk foods (Pepsi), two delivery companies (although the federal government does have the Post Office),  three banks, the big player in telecommunications, two high-tech companies, a conglomerate involved in just about everything not high-tech (Berkshire Hathaway owns GEICO, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, and BNSF). No auto manufacturers. No oil companies. No mining firms. Surprisingly little agribusiness.

Quote:The DNC leaders and the DNC supporters (A strange alliance of Finance classes, 60s radical Liberal activists and their kids and Rural Southern Church Blacks) clearly don't value Biden as a president and clearly secretly see him as a obstacle to their plans. Sometime, probably in late 2022 or 2023 the DNC will betray Biden and try to Install Kamala as president, however Kamala's backers mentioned above would get into a world of hurt if they do so. Actual Moderates and Progressives only voted for Biden because they wanted an actual moderate (in the case of the moderates) or they disliked Trump (in the case of the progressives). They did NOT vote because they support the DNC goals or the DNC/SJW alliance. When Pelosi and Kamala try to 25th amendment Biden, you will see an alliance of everyone not aligned with the DNC form. It will essentially be all parties (Democrats, Republicans and independents) vs about 30% of the democrats.

I see Joe Biden as the sort who seeks to build coalitions or at least maintain what got him to the Presidency. "Radical liberal activists of the 1960's" are now largely a thing of the past as many of those are going into their eighties. They are dying off. Their kids may not be so radical, or if they are radical they have a very different style. "Model minorities" are key constituencies in the Democratic coalition because they legitimately distrust the racist, anti-intellectual, anti-minority-religion, and homophobic populism within the GOP. Well-educated people as a whole lean heavily D, and even among white people they are much more D than other whites.* I would be playing up Millennial-era activists on climate change, police reform, LGBT rights, and economic equity. I would be seeking to strengthen labor unions as one of the most reliable ways to improve life for more people; weakening of labor unions corresponds with the rise of the GOP from Reagan to the Tea Party.

The Republican Party is heavily associated with corporate farming. elites of ownership and management within America's largest corporations, real estate owners, and now racists and those who want America to be a Christian parody of Iran. Small business? It has been squeezing small business into oblivion.    

Quote:Classic is only incorrect in that he sees a purely GOP base movement leading the struggle against the DNC. Eric, Pbrower and B Butler Saying that democrats outnumber Trumps post-election diehards is only technically correct, and barely so. It is correct only based on the current alignments of november/december 2020 that exist as we currently speak. But the Great Realignment I speak of is relevant for 2022-2023, said realignment hasn't taken place yet. Moderates, Progressives, and Anti-Trump republicans have no reason to remain allied with Liberals if Trump leaves. The Only reason Kamala is part of the ticket is because the 60s radicals and church blacks threatened not to vote for their own nominee if she wasn't on the ticket.

Realignment? What realignment? 

The 2020 election, except for the defeat of Donald Trump, looks like a complete surprise to about everyone: a status-quo election. The Trump loss reflects the failure of Trump as President. Trump needed to gain support from his freakish 2016 win of the Presidency by winning the 'right' votes. Trump would have needed to win enough votes to offset generational change, to wit that voters over 55 are about 5% more R than D and that voters under 40 are about 20% more D than R, and that voters under 40 typically replace those over 55 who leave the electorate through death or debility. That's about 1.5% over four years if I assume a 1.5% turnover of voters every year for death and debility. Trump had to cut into the 20% lead of Democrats over Republicans under 40 or make gains among voters over 55 to offset the generational trend toward Democrats. Without that, Trump was going to lose at least Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (he lost all three) and probably would lose Florida. He did not lose Florida, but he lost Arizona, Georgia, and the Second Congressional District of Nebraska instead, which is one fewer electoral vote than Florida has. Republicans made gains in the House, and although Democrats on the net have made gains in the Senate they must win two Senate seats in Georgia in a run-off election. The Democrats' record in special elections in Georgia is historically awful. 

Perhaps most importantly, Donald Trump has successfully entrenched a reactionary ideology in the Supreme Court, one that believes that no human suffering is ever excessive in the support of the will of economic elites who are the measure of America. An upcoming decision of the Supreme Court may decide whether the federal government can regulate business activities without specific legislation, and Trump's three stooges (not to be confused with the entertaining Larry, Moe, and Curly on the Supreme Court have been first choices of a political cult that believes that "he who has the gold makes the rules". That is plutocracy and not democracy.  

Know well: America may be a formal democracy but in practice it is a plutocratic society with economic inequality characteristic of a still-feudal plantation society, some kingdom in which the royal family owns the oil that is the sole source of economic revenue, or some country under a military junta. The Right is basically a coalition of people of the heritage of the plantation and the ethos of Gilded-Age tycoons with the bigots and anti-intellectual types who resent anyone successful especially if smart, non-white, non-straight, or non-Christian.

Quote:If it comes to a national plebiscite on "do you want Kamala Harris to replace Joe Biden" there will be an overwhelming vote of NO, with only a string of Rural cotton belt Counties voting YES. America would be reunited and realigned at that Moment with the NO vote. We will not allow boomers to Turn the entire Country into South Carolina DNC politics in order to preserve their corrupt grip on power. Think of it Trumpers, Berners, Moderates, Independents, Latinos, Northern and western Blacks, Asians, Indians and Arabs standing together to fight for the right to be REAL men and REAL women: To stop the globalist feminization of our children by Financial tycoons, Wrinkled Boomers and Wrinkled and Fat church ladies. It will be Glorious.

That vote is nearly four years away, and nothing says that will be the vote. Besides, I trust Joe Biden to have had good reason to choose Kamala Harris. It wasn't to win over a certain constituency or to solidify a state that Biden was going to have a tough time winning. She was an effective prosecutor, so she knows the law... which is something that I can't say about Trump.  As for corruption... I still miss Obama for a scandal-free Presidency. 

I don't understand what this "real men" and "real women" rhetoric is about. The financial tycoons are decidedly on the Right. Boomers are clearly on the fade as a share of the electorate, with retirement age passing through their generation by 2025. As machismo ordinarily serves extremist causes (which explains why the victorious Allies insisted that women get the vote in Italy and Japan, and that the British and Americans could impress much the same upon its ally France), it might be better that people be sissies instead of fascists and Commies.  

Quote:After the Defeat and political elimination of the DNC/Kamala Cult, Moderates, Conservatives, Progressives and Independents will have long and heated discussions over sensible policy options. With the Boomers and SJWs defeated, these discussions while heated will result in sensible compromise as all parties would be keenly aware of each others interests. The Synthesis of these discussions would be implemented as policy. The Military would be rebuilt, Industry would be rebuilt, Native and nationalized tech capacity would be rebuilt. We will move against Iran (depending on what their countries leaders do then it will either be Peace or War) without having our hands tied by Boomers and NGOs. Will will Contain China, while building our Nuke Arsenal to 100,000 warheads.

In a two-party, first-past-the-post system, electoral politics is basically coalition politics. Trump developed a coalition able to launch him into the Presidency if all went right -- barely -- but that was a fluke. He needed a larger coalition just to offset generational change. The rest? You basically rehash Trump promises that he could not win the first time, promises that rung hollow to just over 51% of the electorate and that won only 232 electoral votes It takes 269 electoral votes and an arcane process in the House, or 270 to win the President. Biden won 306. 

Donald Trump isn't good at synthesizing ideas from diverse sources, especially those not with him the first time.

Do I see compromise possible? Yes. It is possible to stand for strict law enforcement that targets criminals (and most of the crime comes from either gangs or from one-man crime waves) while having cops act more responsibly among black people. Black Lives Matter does not mean any carte-blanche for criminals. I want criminals put away so that people who must live in America's slums at least have the safety that comes from effective, but fair law and order. Don't get me wrong on this: law and order is the most basic of civil rights, and without law and order all the enumerated rights that we have by law are mere cant. 

I see technological change that puts us in a new and often scary era, one in which easy money by meeting scarcity is no longer so easy. Figure that much of what we have is going into storage, which usually indicates that one has more than one needs.  Ask yourself this: do you really need two refrigerators? Two stoves? A third car for the two-income, no kids family? Does clutter make you feel better or does it stress you out? We have a problem, one that we will not solve by simply making more stuff that we really do not need.
  

*People better-educated than the average used to be strongly R in their vote. Ike typically got about 80% of voters with college degrees, although this may reflect that a college degree was an elite characteristic heavily associated with Northeastern WASPS. The GI Bill started getting non-WASPs into college, but there were few non-WASPs older than about 40 with college degrees. In Ike's time, even graduating from high school was above-average education, and such made one have more of a stake in the system than otherwise. Factory workers and miners typically had less than high-school diplomas, and they were highly unionized and unlikely to vote R. As late as 1964, a majority  of college grads voted for Barry Goldwater. 

This said, I cannot say that the typical college grad of 2008 and 2012 was any dumber than the typical college grad of 1952 and 1956. Many of the WASPs who had college degrees could fake their way through college, which is harder with the greater rigor of college education now. Obama won the college-educated in 2008 and 2012, and I am tempted to say that Obama was more similar in temperament to Eisenhower than to any other President. He has to be more similar to someone, and 

(1) both are Reactive types
(2) both refuse to use the power of the Presidency to punish those who dissent with them
(3) neither is a populist
(4) they both respect legal precedent and diplomatic protocol even when such are inconvenient
(5) neither was effective in building a congress to fit their agendas
(6) both had bland, scandal-free administrations
(7) they will both be known for one big change in American life (Interstate Highways, Obamacare)
(8) even their electoral maps largely overlap. Obama got 332 electoral votes in 2012, and except for Hawaii and the District of Columbia, Obama won nothing that Ike didn't win twice. Another telling sign: both won Virginia, a state that had generally been reliable for the other Party and would be generally reliable for the Party who won the Presidency in 1952 and 2008 (or at least, so it looks for Obama) for a long time.

[CH86]

PBrower, your boomerism strikes again. Most Millennials HATE globalist tyranny and UN tyranny. My generation during our childhood in the 1990s witnessed the Boomers embracing cultural feminine decadence while simultaneously making sanctimonious preaching to the rest of the world at the time. Millennials Embraced an alternative youth culture at the time which took several various forms (thank god Gen-x was around to show us actual values). A lot of us young people were not surprised when 9/11 occurred, we saw the obvious weakness boomers showed during the Kosovo war and punitive air raids on Iraq.

Millennials then signed up in droves to fight in the war only for boomers to betray the troops by demanding that they fight with one arm tied behind their backs. The inoculated us against globalist neocons. By the late 2000s we wanted reform. Yes we initially supported Obama enthusiastically however once He got elected, he chose to betray millennials by choosing to enrich the Boomer Tycoons and Support corporate globalists. The embrace of globalism is what summoned the opposition by the Tea Party. If Bush Inoculated us against the neocons, Obama inoculated us against the Neolibs. The Forced acceptance of refugees and mass immigration is what Catalyzed The Rise of Donald Trump in order to put a stop to that insanity.

President Trump was not our preferred option (we wanted someone like Tulsi) but he was a good stopgap measure for a time. Then finally in 2020 we had the opportunity to elect a policy based campaign representing the political aspirations of young People, Xers, Millies and Gen-Z'ers, A policy based campaign representing the Core of the Latino Communities of the western and northeastern cities, the Black Communities of the Northern and western cities and Suburbs and sunbelt cities as well as the new Asian and Arab ethnic constituencies. However the Boomers lead by Obama and Clyburn rigged the primaries AND the Veepstakes; while the selfish Boomers claimed that rich latte liberal Boomers and Southern Black Church ladies were somehow the majority of Non-republican voters. The Boomers then conveniently claimed anyone who disagreed with them was a racist against said church ladies; and what was the Non-Racist position: Conveniently the Human Rights Tyranny political positions the Boomer sixties radicals tried to shove down the electorate's throats since the 1960s.

We now instead have this abomination of a woman (Kamala) who personifies everything millennials HATE about American politics waiting in the wings. Millennials and Gen-Z'ers WILL NOT submit to AIPAC tyranny. Millennials will never support an Israel-Firster and Human rights Tyrant who wants to take aways our kids childhoods. At least the right since the rise of Trump has rediscovered the neccessity of understanding Human nature unlike the boomers globalists who even now whine "why cant we install pro-feminist democracies in Tehran, Pyongyang and Damascus" because you are selfish boomers who refuse to accept the reality of international borders. You Globalists are starting to even make us Millennials even feel a little sympathy toward the motives of our enemies like the Mullahs of Iran and others. Death to Globalism, Death to Human Rights Tyranny.

[CH86]

The Blue Boomers fail to notice sea-change that the 2020 Primary and Veepstakes will have of post-election politics. Yes the dems won the election itself, However because of the blue Boomer actions during the Long "Ticket Formation" phase of the election; crucial segments of the democratic Party are now effectively a neutral bloc now. Had their been no pandemic Trump would have won by an even bigger margin than in 2016, however the pandemic and the delayed response is what undermined his reelection bid.

Even so the DNC alienation of their own traditional supporters made worse by the fact that the alienated elements are the most politically vital segments. These were deliberately alienated by the party in order to embrace the most toxic segments of their coalition. Clyburn is hated by the vast majority of Voters North of the Virginia/North Carolina state line and west of the Texas/Louisiana state line and south of roughly Jacksonville Florida. Trump even won Miami which is almost impossible to a republican to win as that area is filled with traditionally democratic voting constituencies.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-11-2020, 12:14 AM)Einzige Wrote: It's amazing how little any of you are willing to question anything systemically.

Let me give you an example from the government.

Herbert Hoover initiated programs that Roosevelt expanded into the New Deal. Carter deregulated trucking, airlines etc. Obama expanded Dubya's drone programs and Trump utilized Obama's  concentration camps for immigrants.

The problem is capitalism. This is not to be understood as a mere call from expanded social programs: social programs are intrinsic to capitalism. Nor is it a call directed for a vulgar class war against the rich. A real revolution would require a total transformation in the way we lead our lives. It would require a profoundly radical dropping out from the mechanisms of production and open revolt against all existing instrumentalists of Capital.

Covid is in some ways a fauxdemic in the sense that Capital has been primed for a shift to a distributed form for a long time now. Most manual labor is going to be automated soon. The response to the crisis is meant to facilitate a shift in this direction.

[Einzige]

(12-12-2020, 12:32 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-11-2020, 12:14 AM)Einzige Wrote: It's amazing how little any of you are willing to question anything systemically.

Let me give you an example from the government.

Herbert Hoover initiated programs that Roosevelt expanded into the New Deal. Carter deregulated trucking, airlines etc. Obama expanded Dubya's drone programs and Trump utilized Obama's  concentration camps for immigrants.

The problem is capitalism. This is not to be understood as a mere call from expanded social programs: social programs are intrinsic to capitalism. Nor is it a call directed for a vulgar class war against the rich. A real revolution would require a total transformation in the way we lead our lives. It would require a profoundly radical dropping out from the mechanisms of production and open revolt against all existing instrumentalists of Capital.

Covid is in some ways a fauxdemic in the sense that Capital has been primed for a shift to a distributed form for a long time now. Most manual labor is going to be automated soon. The response to the crisis is meant to facilitate a shift in this direction.

Also, all these cultural signifiers you're talking about - "feminization" etc. - are just signifiers of positions in production. There's no overwhelming need to be ultranasculine if you expect to be a cubicle drone all your life. And you expect to be a cubicle drone because that appears the long term trajectory of Capital. Globalism isn't some sinister ideology; it is a mostly unconscious process driven by market forces. Most of life is bullshit production.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-11-2020, 03:01 PM)CH86 Wrote: Classic is only incorrect in that he sees a purely GOP base movement leading the struggle against the DNC. Eric, Pbrower and B Butler Saying that democrats outnumber Trumps post-election diehards is only technically correct, and barely so. It is correct only based on the current alignments of november/december 2020 that exist as we currently speak. But the Great Realignment I speak of is relevant for 2022-2023, said realignment hasn't taken place yet. Moderates, Progressives, and Anti-Trump republicans have no reason to remain allied with Liberals if Trump leaves. The Only reason Kamala is part of the ticket is because the 60s radicals and church blacks threatened not to vote for their own nominee if she wasn't on the ticket.
 

We are leading it now and I expect that will continue throughout the struggle with the DNC.