And so it begins. Nine months still to go before the next US presidential election and already the Republican party favourite and former President Donald Trump is sending eyes rolling skywards with his seemingly outlandish statements.
And yet they will delight many of his supporters.
Suggesting at a rally in South Carolina that he would “encourage” aggressors (for example Russia) “to do whatever the hell they want” with Nato countries that fail to pay their dues has prompted an immediate slap down from the White House. A spokesman called the comment “appalling and unhinged”, saying it was “encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes”.
Nato Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has also responded forcefully, saying: “Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.”
But we are going to elect him anyway, because the other guy forgot a thing once. Just like we elected him 8 years ago, because the other one ran her own email server.
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She ran a shit campaign. Everyone likes to forget that part
Everyone also likes to forget that she won the poplar vote. She lost the electoral college, an anti-democratic institution that Democrats seem to think is really important to keep, despite the fact that keeping it often makes them impotent.
It frankly doesn’t matter whether they want to keep it or not. It would take a constitutional convention to change and in the current climate that’s going to go make things worse, not better.
There is one interesting workaround I’ve heard about from time to time, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It’s a state-level agreement where all the participating member states commit to allocating their electoral college votes to whomever won the popular vote nationally. No need for a constitutional convention since the allocation of electoral college votes is in the hands of state governments, they can decide to do this under the existing constitution.
But you need states to agree to that, which runs into the same issue as an amendment does.
You don’t need as many states to agree to it. Just enough to swing the election.
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We can also double the size of the House (if not more). Electoral college votes are distributed according to the number of House districts (plus 2 for the senators of each state). Congress can simply pass that law. This is a good idea, anyway, since it was last set in 1911 with a total US population that’s less than a third of what it is today. It becomes harder gerrymander lots of smaller districts, as well, and it dilutes the effect of small states having outsized influence with their guaranteed 2 senate seats.
Would probably need to build new chambers for the House. The current one has 450 seats on the floor, plus 500 in the gallery that are normally for staff and guests, not elected members.
It’d be nice to ditch the electoral college system altogether instead of coming up with these workarounds.
So what? The popular vote means nothing. Her campaign was incredibly arrogant. She took the entire rust belt for granted and lost because of it.
“Pokemon GO to the polls.” causes me physical pain to think about.
She ran a shit campaign. Everyone likes to forget that part
And then used Russia as an excuse and got away with it, as evidenced by the downvotes here.
We’re going to get Trump again (barf) because the DNC insists on running shit candidates and refuses to acknowledge that they are bad, instead insisting that the voters are just too ignorant to understand how good their candidates really are.
Hillary Clinton was a horrible candidate: immensely unpopular even with the Democrat base, running on a status quo platform right in the wake of disappointment with Obama’s failure to deliver on “hope and change”, and acting as if she was somehow entitled to the position.
Biden is not as bad as Clinton in most ways, but is utterly lackluster and feels more like a moderate Republican. His unwavering support for Israel during their campaign of atrocities is despicable and shameful. The fact that he’s totally ancient and losing his mind isn’t helpful in the least. Why can’t we have a more compelling candidate from the DNC?!
This post will get modded down and ignored, as will the incredibly common and widespread sentiment that it expresses, and we will get Trump again as the nation and the DNC acts shocked yet again. It’s so predictable and infuriating.
His unwavering support for Israel during their campaign of atrocities is despicable and shameful.
If we’re going to get Trump again it’s in part because of the absolutely all-or-nothing brook-no-compromise attitude of voters. Like this, for example. Biden’s support has not been unwavering, he’s criticized Israel’s actions. But not enough for you, and so he gets no credit whatsoever for any moderation he might have. And that’s why you say he “feels like a Republican” to you, because someone can only be 100% totally on your side or they must be on the other side.
I’d love for there to be a viable fully-progressive candidate who happened to agree with everything I believe in. I’d also love to have a pet unicorn. When elections actually roll around in reality, though, none of the candidates are going to be perfect. And unfortunately in many first-past-the-post electorates the system is set up in such a way that there are only two viable candidates. So pick the one that’s closest to your views. Push for better candidates in the primary, of course, but accept that you won’t always get everything you want.
All the people critisizing “”“Genocide Joe”“” give me a aneurysm when cosidering their alternative:
Attacking Biden, Ben Gvir says Trump would have been more supportive of Israel
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir harshly criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza, accusing it of benefitting Hamas and arguing that Israel would have been better off dealing with a second Trump administration.
“Instead of giving us his full backing, [President Joe] Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel, which goes to Hamas,” Ben Gvir declared in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Sunday. “If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”
Yep. The uninformed gEnoCiDe jOe kids are obnoxious. I’ve tried in the beginning to calmly reason with them and explain how things work and I’ve been met with being reported and even banned from a few instances.
Now, when I see them- I just block them from my feed. It’s not worth it. They don’t want to know what they’re doing is dangerous to democracy.
Get out of reddit and take your reasonable pragmatic opinion with you.
Thats what i did. Day one, and im already banned from world news on Lemmy as well now. For calling out russian talking points when they came up.
Then you’re doing it right my friend. Hexbear and lemmy.world are overrun by Putin sympathizers who want nothing more than chaos and the continued decline of western democracy.
So messaging a mod wasnt a good move? xD
Only if your message was “I’m sick of your anti-American Russian apologists. Please ban me.” in which case that was a BDE move.
I was on lemmy.world and no difference. Just pure, unadulterated, kremlin talking points at every corner. But dont u dare call em out! I saw someone point out the accidental russian spelling of a word to being swarmed downvotes.
Tankie bitches gonna tankie bitch.
Biden has actually done a lot to restrain Israel but the MSM fails, as usual because outrage sells. Too bad people just run with whatever is on hand.
That’s the thing though. Biden doesn’t represent my views and voting for him to keep Trump out will be interpreted by the DNC as an endorsement of him and a reason not to change their platform to better suit the electorate. I’ve been doing this lesser-of-two-evils thing for decades now and the outcome keeps getting worse. Maybe it’s just a bad strategy.
The platform of “vote for us or we’ll let the other guy ravage society” is not a compelling platform and rewarding them for running on that platform isn’t going to end well for us. This will turn out for us how paying the Danegeld always does.
You’ll vote lesser of two evils in most elections pretty much until the other side starts putting up reasonable candidates. Blaming Democrats for not giving you decent choice just completely misses the point: The Republicans choosing fascism means they aren’t a viable choice. They are removing choice from the ballot, not Democrats. You’re not being forced into anything by Democrats, they are simply running a platform that you should have the opportunity to disagree with, but you can’t, because the other side is fascism.
But let’s take the approach of “not rewarding them” for putting out shitty candidates (that aren’t fascist). Do you think once the fascists get into power, that Dems will even have the opportunity to change? What is your end game, because not voting for the lesser evil is the acceptance and indifference of either evil, and allows the worst evil to win.
The time for that fight is the primary, local elections, and between election cycles. Refusing to participate at the ballot box because you don’t like the choices you’ve been given is counterproductive, not just pointless.
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Maybe it’s a bad strategy, but it may still be the best strategy.
The main point of my post is that even if you don’t like Biden, you should at least be truthful in your complaints about him. If you paint him as worse than he actually is then instead of people holding their nose and voting for him they may just not vote at all, or worse.
Just to elaborate, the only real currency we have with the parties is cold hard cash (where we’re hopelessly outgunned) and votes. Giving away our votes without demanding something in return is selling ourselves short. We will /never/ have any sort of real change or progress if we hold our nose and vote for the lesser of two evils. We will only continue to lose ground as we devalue our votes by giving them away for nothing.
I see what you’re saying and I subscribed to that strategy long ago, but in the long run it’s clearly a losing strategy.
So what’s the winning strategy? Let Trump win instead?
The world isn’t perfect. Holding out for a perfect candidate means never voting, at which point you have nothing to bargain with either.
Go ahead and vote your conscience in the primaries, sure. It’s not such a big deal if you hold out for perfect in those. But in the American election system the actual vote for president is going to be between Trump and Biden. It sucks but you get just those two options there.
There’s a phrase I’m reminded of as it’s used in Australian politics quite often when it comes to our Greens party trying amend Labor legislation:
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
That is, don’t let your quest for the best possible outcome one prevent you from supporting a lesser outcome. Don’t let wanting a super progressive president prevent you from voting for the mildly progressive president which lets the regressive president end up winning.
I don’t like him in that he’s further down the wrong path than we’ve ever been with a Democrat president. He’s further down that path than Nixon or Bush Sr. Holding our noses isn’t working out for us.
I think that the Democratic Party needs to really grasp that it has to work for its votes and build a platform that genuinely attracts voters instead of talking them for granted. I thought the first Trump incident would drive that home for them, but maybe it will take another. Holding our noses will only tell them that they will reliably get votes as long as they’re not as bad as the other guy.
Getting rid of first-past-the-post and breaking up the stranglehold that the D/R dichotomy has on our government is the best strategy, and is in progress, but it’s slow and resisted by the same parties.
Getting rid of first-past-the-post and breaking up the stranglehold that the D/R dichotomy has on our government is the best strategy
Certainly. But can you get it done before the next election? If not, the choice will be between Biden or Trump.
Maybe a nation of 330 million people only having two political parties was a bad thing after all?
Fuck Putin.
100%, May he DIAF. Or were you insinuating that any opposition to Biden (and Trump) can only come from Russian trolls?
Fuck Putin.
Before New Hampshire’s primary I thought Biden was fucked.
I’m still worried now, but I’m no longer sure we’re doomed.
What happened at the new Hampshire primary? Im ootl
Shit country continues to be shit, doesn’t seem like news anymore.
Yeah, who is the candidate that has beaten Trunp before anyway?
Not if we beat the drum about him being insane, instead of letting him get away with it as just another wacky thing
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Sorry, but no. You elected him. You don’t get to no-true-Scotsman the responsibility of the American voters for this, enough Americans support this loon that he can indeed win elections.
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What a rigorous and convincing refutation.
How, specifically, did Trump “cheat”?
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I mean, the people did elect her. She won the popular vote, but as I understand it, the electoral college had different plans.
Despite how abhorrent Trump is, what if he actually got elected again simply because Americans are that fed up with establishment politics status quo? Maybe Americans are desperate for change, anything but the same abuse by corporate overlords we’ve suffered since the 1970s, even if we know it’s going to do more harm than good?
Also, if you think the main reason Hillary lost is because of email-gate, consider that your own point of view may be compromised by Republican framing.
But we are going to elect him anyway, because the other guy forgot a thing once
Are you going to pretend the genocide being carried out in Gaza is a non-factor?
the genocide being carried out in Gaza
Biden is not complicit in Israel’s attack on Gaza.
Biden has bypassed congress to sell arms to Israel.
Doesn’t congress know those artillery shells aren’t going to be fired into Gaza? Are they just antisemitic?https://time.com/6551227/biden-administration-bypasses-congress-israel-weapons-sale/
Biden Administration Bypasses Congress Again On Emergency Weapons Sale to Israel
By MATTHEW LEE / AP December 30, 2023 12:22 PM EST
Biden and most of the leaders of the western world are absolutely complicit and some dumbass on YouTube isn’t going to change that fact lol.
If Trump wins and dissolves NATO, and Russia, China, North Korea and Iran start a massive conflict as an axis of evil, tens of millions, if not a hundred million or more could die. More, if nuclear weapons are used.
Russia alone lost 24,000,000 people in the last war alone.
40-50,000,000 were killed in WW2. And that was with ancient technology, by comparison. Going to Normandy and seeing the endless rows of graves stretching as far as the eye can see shows the incalculable loss of global war, something that must not ever be repeated. Far too many paid the ultimate price to keep evil at bay.
I’m not campaigning for Trump. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending that Gaza isn’t a problem will not help Biden win re-election.
Did Trump mean what he said? Probably not. This is typical Trump fare. Say something provocative, grab some headlines, outrage your critics and thrill your fans.
Oh bull fucking shit, don’t downplay his idiocy and danger
Yeah… his understanding of his own lunatic words and actions is of very little consequence when compared their real world impact.
“Appalling and unhinged” describes the vast majority of things Trump has said in the last decade or 2.
But here’s the cool thing: it’s somehow going to get worse!
Can we all agree to say Trump has dementia, and constantly hound him, his supporters and gop about this, beating the drum non stop, instead of just pointing out his wild statements when they come up, we need to question his sanity constantly like they do about Biden senility. If rather have a forgetful old man, than a bonafide lunatic
The good news is that Biden isn’t even a forgetful old man. The media just takes every normal slip up he makes and runs it non-stop.
He’s in pretty good shape for his age, both mentally and physically. I’d still rather have somebody younger. On the other hand, I genuinely cannot think of anyone less qualified than the Orange Baboon.
I would rather have an actual orange baboon as president than Donald Trump.
It would be far less damaging to international relations, that’s for fucking sure.
Dementia Donnie
It’s like Donnie Darko’s creepy uncle.
And dressed in a carrot outfit
Well said!
Donald Trump, traitor.
We can only hope he has a stroke before the election. A massive one.
Slow, painfull.
Could it maybe be with a razor sharp edge, too? And then an encore would be nice. Front row tickets’d sell out in seconds, no contest. Far better men than him have attempted it, but none have deserved to be a spectacle more than that pile of fetid shit.
That tracks, because Trump is appalling and unhinged.
Where is the shocked fry meme when you need it.
Suggesting at a rally in South Carolina that he would “encourage” aggressors (for example Russia) “to do whatever the hell they want” with Nato countries that fail to pay their dues
I would “encourage” people to piss on Trump’s grave when he’s dead.
I would encourage America to piss on his grave while he’s still alive.
According to the dossier, he might like that.
I fucking hate golf courses, they’re a waste of land, so I’m not going to make it. Pee off for me.
I hope this time around he won’t be able to hide behind “he doesn’t mean it, he’d never actually do that”
I don’t think anything Donnie says correlates with reality. Does that mean we shouldn’t worry? Fuck no! He’s a disaster.
I am honestly scared and I don’t think society (not just the US) would really survive if this turd becomes reelected a second time.
Vote. Get all your friends and family to vote. Four more years should buy us enough time while his power is waning.
If there was ever an election that was important to vote and be clear-eyed in, it’s this one.
American exceptionalism is disgusting lol.
Very few people care who your little country chooses to lead it.
The US doesn’t run the world, and is having less influence every year at this point. Society will pull through.
The US military’s influence throughout the world is as strong as ever, and Trump is 100% on board with reducing its presence worldwide. I don’t necessarily disagree with it, but global trade will take a massive hit out of the gate, not to mention the more obvious issues with Russia, Israel, etc. But hey, Trump has been critical of Israel lately.
I’m not saying it won’t be a negative outcome. I’m saying society will survive.
I mean if you’re gonna be technical, “society” will literally survive a nuclear exchange and total civilizational collapse. As long as there’s more than one person and those people aren’t killing each other (or even if they are), there’s “society”.
Donald Trump = traitor
Everyone knows that. Even his voters.
They just don’t care if they can diss the libs.
Which is why each and every drumph voter should be stripped of their nationality for treason and expedited to Alaska or whatever country will have them.
Drumpf was in fact his original family surname.
I’m sure the original etymology is Dumb so the exact letters don’t really matter anymore.
They like he’s a traitor because destroying the government was always their goal.
Since when has calling someone a traitor ever convinced anyone? It’s the political equivalent of calling your opponent bad.
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Vote. Get all your friends and family to vote. Four more years should buy us enough time while his power is waning.
If there was ever an election that was important to vote and be clear-eyed in, it’s this one.
Why should we, America, carry the burden of defending Europe when it won’t pay for its own defence?
I love this sentiment simply because the idea that the US would be spending less on the military if they weren’t in NATO is ridiculous. There’s no stopping US military spending without absolutely crippling the US economy. Other NATO members spending more on their militaries will not save the US taxpayer a dime.
I’s about selling more weapons made by the US military industrial complex to NATO countries. Which does bring more money into the US economy, but only by growing the military industrial complex larger.
Kinda like franchising out McDonald’s but with more death machines involved.
But personally, I like Ike, “Beware the military industrial complex.”
I’m actually okay with the idea that perhaps Europe ought to be more interested in bolstering their own defenses. The part about urging Russia toward aggression I think any reasonable person can see what’s wrong with that.
But the military presence worldwide, in more instances than not, exists to protect corporate interests. I’m almost okay with the idea of scaling it all back. Tax money shouldn’t go to line pockets of the wealthy. The obvious issue is the immediate effect on the economy, but where do we draw the line? I know this site leans towards stopping the global corporatocracy, but I don’t know that anyone’s ready for things to really grind to a halt.
So I guess we will just have to wait til next January and then we will see what happens!
Trump wants to sell weapons to Russia so they can take over Europe. I honestly think Trump just doesn’t like that there’s no many countries and leaders in Europe to keep track of and wishes it was all just run by one guy he can try him art of the deal bullshit on.
The fuck else is new
If the US is stupid enough to elect this idiot a second time, then we deserve to become the banana republic we’ve instituted in countless other countries. I’m not too worried about it. He lost by 7 million votes in 2020 and about 1 million of his voters died with COVID. Plus I know at least a few percentage points of his voters that will not vote for him again. And I don’t know ANYONE that hasn’t voted for him before that are now interested in giving him their vote. It will take unprecedented election interference for Trump to win the electoral vote (there’s not a chance he wins the popular).
If the US is stupid enough to elect this idiot a second time, then we deserve to become the banana republic …
“A banana republic, if you can keep it”
United Fruit Company bitches!
Embrace Idiocracy
There’s always money in the banana republic.
I did the math a few years ago because I couldn’t find anyone else who had published it. This is rough and IANAM (mathmagicman).
Every single day 8,000 boomers and above die, and 12,000 people turn 18 and those numbers are actually accelerating. If you use existing data to estimate conservative/liberal and likely voters within those groups it works out to a delta of 10,000 per day on a national scale. That’s 5,000 votes switching every single day. That might not seem like alot. Because it really isn’t. Out of 155 million votes cast, 10,000 is .006 percent. But here’s the thing. It’s cumulative. And it just doesn’t stop. It is relentless. it’s 300k a month, 3.6 million per year. And that pace is accelerating. Between 2020 and 2024 it’s a 15 million vote difference. By 2028 it’s 30 million.
It used to be that people age into conservatism. But that is not happening with millennials. The demographics are changing, and changing quickly. The most conservative group in the country is dying. While the most liberal group is rising.
We just have to hold on to democracy for a few more years. This will all be behind us. Another 10k today.
And that explains why Republicans have given up on democracy. Thanks for doing the math.
Interesting. But I think there is also a conversion from left to right with age. We are making conservatives as fast as we are losing them. They are converted because we all become fearful with age and Republican mass media preys on that with FUD.
That’s not happening with Millennials. You can debate why, but the data is clear.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/financial-times-millennials-conservatives-age-b2253902.html
This chart in particular is extremely telling.
Fascinating thank you! This is also encouraging for both the US and UK.
It’s not Nato, it’s NATO isn’t it?
It’s Nato according to the BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/grammar-spelling-punctuation
our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms, where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec)
If you don’t like this, then start referring to the BBC as bubbakuh, so they’ll have to change the spelling to Bbc.
Well, the Bbc is on their own on that, because I’ve never seen it done that way elsewhere, including the NATO website. They’re unhinged.
Their English what do you expect?
I see what you did their.
Which Etonian fuckwit came up with this?
