Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Democratic Party Page 1 of 7

Information Overlord: Houthis Roll, Hegseth Bumbles, AI Doomer Hype, Lots of Music Talk

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On September 11, 2026

26 Comments

Nat Wilson Turner = Information Overlord = Flames Up = Phones Out = No Sense of Urgency

From me this week as Nat Wilson Turner

This week at Naked Capitalism I pulled a shift covering the Iran War and tried to connect the dots between Pete Hegseth’s Department of War and what’s going on with Meta and OpenAI.

I also continued my “Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years” series with the first installment of the Ukraine debacle.

More of what I wrote and recorded for The MMA Draw and The Let It Roll Podcast is at the bottom of this post but I wanted to feature the news links and think pieces.

What I’m Reading and Watching

The Iran War

  • The Iran War Has Just Had A Major Phase Change — Ian Welsh. On the interceptor math: the US runs out long before Iran does if Iran chooses to go all out, and hitting only three or four tankers a day was a choice rather than a ceiling.

“As I said day one of the war, the math is on Iran’s side: the US will run out of interceptors long before Iran if Iran chooses to go all out.”

Empire, and what it remembers

The AI trade

The AI Doomers really had their moment this week. I hope y’all know most of that crap is as overblown as the hype.

Money

What the heck is going on with the bond market, private equity, etc

 

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Is Trump Going To Purge Democrats, Seize Power and Rewrite the Constitution?

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On October 12, 2025

19 Comments

What can I say, it’s just the perfect Trump picture.

It’s for sure that there are those with great influence on him who want him to. Thomas Neuburger has the quotes, starting with Stephen Miller:

[This is] Legal insurrection. The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge. Portland and Oregon law enforcement, at the direction of local leaders, have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life. (There are more local law enforcement officers in Oregon than there are guns and badges in the FBI nationwide). This is an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself.

“Legal insurrection … an organized terrorist attack on the federal government”. There are laws against that. Another example, Miller to Hannity:

The Democrat party … is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gangbangers, and illegal alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat party is not a political party. It is a domestic, extremist organization.

Noem and Hegseth agree (see here and here) and seem to be willing, as commanders of government forces, to fight by his side. Trump also agrees:

[T]hey’re throwing bricks at full force into the window and into the car. It looks like it’s a war zone. And I said, never let that happen again. From now on if that ever happens, and I say it here, you get out of that car and you can do whatever the hell you want to do …

Last month, I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room [the Pentagon’s generals] because it’s the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.

So, Thomas thinks this might be the start of a new civil war, or at least that’s what Miller wants and Trump may agree. (I think Trump is too fickle to be sure. But by all accounts Miller is the consummate Trump-whisperer.)

But what I see happening is something else. Just declare the Democratic party a terrorist organization and add in RICO penalties. Send law enforcement after them. Some may not be willing to, but ICE will do the job if no one else does, and other cops or military won’t fire on them, they’ll get the pols. Then put them in an ICE controlled prison. If really smart, set up an administrative court with executive appointed judges to try them, and either have the Supremes ratify it, or if that’s too far even for them (unlikely, but possible), ignore them.

Then, with full control of all legislatures, call a Constitutional referendum and change any and all amendments and the Constitution as Trump (or the smart lads who really do the work, like the 2025 crowd) desire, essentially changing America’s form of government permanently.

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Trump’s not smart enough for this, but Miller and various backers are, he’s got a Cabinet full of yes-men and women to back him, he’s purging the military and the three letter agencies of those who might try to stop him, and there’s no particular reason to think it might not work. There’d have to be a massive uprising, or enough soldiers and various types of police who resist to stop him.

If there are, it’s civil war. If there aren’t, well, it may be a low grade civil war anyway, or he may just get it thru. Hard to see most Democrats actually fighting back effectively, or fighting back at all.

Not saying this will happen. I don’t think they have the guts for it, and Trump is fickle. But there’s a large faction with a lot of influence who want it to happen, and they’re working hard to make it happen.

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What is Woke? Depends on Who You Are Asking

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On November 13, 2024

38 Comments

Simple question for you, what is woke?

To liberals woke equates with the advencement of and/or equality of people of color.

To the vast majority of conservatives–but not all–woke is a dogwhistle, hell, it’s probably a straight out whistle about the transgender ‘agenda.’

Although the media will probably never report how much influence all the transgender scaremongering had over the election–I imagine it had a material impact.

The entire transgeder issue is the ultimate in idenity politics failure.

The Senders stumble into the Terror Dome

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On October 1, 2024

9 Comments

Soundtrack for this post.

William S. Burroughs postulated four political parties in his 1959 novel Naked Lunch: Liquefactionists, Senders, Divisionists, and Factualists.

Per Wiki:

The city is contested by four rival political parties: Liquefactionists, who want to merge everyone into one protoplasmic entity; Senders, who want to control everyone else through telepathy; Divisionists, who subdivide into replicas of themselves; and Factualists, who oppose the other three.

The Senders are a metaphor for mass media propaganda as practiced by Edward Bernays, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Goebbels, and American political consultants.

The Democrats and their allied Never Trumper Republicans are the heirs to this legacy.

The rise of the Internet, then the World Wide Web, and finally social media initially threw them for a loop and played a role in Trump taking over the G.O.P.

Their reaction was to impose a surveillance and censorship regime using the tech monopolies as bottlenecks:

Essentially the Biden administration’s communications policy has been to relentlessly and flagrantly spin, distort, lie

Unfortunately, combining surveillance and censorship with slick media campaigns using the power of celebrity to encourage supporters to form parasocial bonds with politicians is way too much power for anyone to handle.

Because there’s no way not to get high on your own supply.

As YouTuber History Legends said of the Ukrainian war effort:

The propaganda was too strong and too effective.

We have an entire army of NAFO trolls (on) Reddit and Twitter. People that believed 100% everything that was being said by Ukraine.

The Ukrainians will only show their successes to their population as if the Ukrainians are constantly winning.

At the same time we have a million Ukrainian men abroad. We have countless Ukrainian soldiers and enlisted personnel that are not at the front.

We have people in Kiev partying as if there’s no war happening.

The problem for Ukraine is that they haven’t managed to create (a) national feeling of it’s now or never. They always try to portray the war as ‘oh we’re winning. It’s fine.’

So everybody kind of kept their life going because everything is going well at the front but it’s not true and now it’s too late.

The disorientation goes to the top, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s new piece for Foreign Policy illustrates.

The Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago. [Really??] But our work is unfinished. The United States must sustain its fortitude across administrations to shake the revisionists’ assumptions. It must be prepared for the revisionist states to deepen cooperation with one another to try to make up the difference. It must maintain its commitments to and the trust of its friends. And it must continue to earn the American people’s confidence in the power, purpose, and value of disciplined American leadership in the world.

Meanwhile, air alerts over Israel:

All of Israel is covered by air alerts

Eyeless in Gaza, indeed.

Ryan Grim tweets:

This is either a complete and total failure to contain the conflict by the Biden administration -- or this is what the White House wanted and it's the most egregious lie told to the public since WMD. Either incompetence or duplicity--no 3rd option. Malevolent in either case.

Incompetence or duplicity? What do we think?

The Squad and Kabuki Votes

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On June 1, 2021

33 Comments

Back on May 20th, a bill passed to increase funding for the Capitol police. The idea is that the events of January 6th mean they need more funding. They’re already VERY well-funded, and the failure was not due to lack of funding, but lack of preparation for a forseeable event (as it was announced and organized on social media), and failure to call in help. The capitol will become even more locked down, and access of ordinary citizens to it and to their representatives and senators will be more restricted.

This bill passed by ONE vote.

Whenever you see this, you should suspect absolute and complete bullshit.

The progressive defectors have all called to “defund” the police in the past: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) voted present, while Reps. Cori Bush (D-MO), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) voted against the bill, which includes funds for the Capitol Police.

This is an arranged vote. House members who need to be seen to oppose the bill were given “walks.” Because they needed the Squad to note vote against it, three didn’t, and the three who wanted/needed to keep their cred were allowed to vote against.

I am thinking back, and I can’t remember a time that the Squad, when they had the margin of victory, has ever cast the deciding vote against a bill that Democratic House leadership wanted passed. It may be that they have, and that I missed it; I don’t follow legislative matters super-closely.

But this vote was Kabuki, and unfortunately (I really did want to believe) I’m coming around to the view that the Squad is now basically onside. At a guess, I’d say a combination of co-option and punishment/threats have made clear to them their position, as when AOC didn’t get the committee assignment she wanted.

This is a genuinely difficult problem. People who go to Congress and want to play spoiler — to actually use their power when they have a veto, have to be willing to withstand both gestures of kindness and real punishment, along with the genuine hatred of their colleagues. If you’re not a “team player,” if you don’t do what leadership wants, there are prices to be paid.

It appears that those prices are too high for the Squad. Again, I may be wrong, but this isn’t a conclusion I come to anything but reluctantly. Nor, of course, does it not mean they aren’t “better” in some ways than other members. But there appears to be a fundamental dishonesty here that is disturbing, and a lack of willingness to use power when they have it.

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How Will Biden Rule Now That Democrats Control Congress?

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On January 6, 2021

46 Comments

So, Democrats have bare majorities in both the House and Senate, and they have the White House. They don’t have the Supreme Court.

Because the margin is so low, the people who will rule are those willing to cross the aisle to work with Republicans. Pelosi is fairly good at enforcing discipline, but Schumer is not, so we’re back into an era where right-wing Democrats will have a veto on a lot of legislation, as will the Supreme Court.

Because Biden is conservative in the psychological sense, he is unlikely to pack the Supreme Court unless they cross him in a big way, but because of the time-lag between when legislation is passed and when the Supreme Court strikes down the parts it doesn’t like, it’s unlikely he’ll have the emotional impetus to tackle the Supreme Court before the 2022 elections.

There is good news. $2,000 checks have become Democratic consensus, and they’re likely to pass. I do expect Biden to be more competent administratively, since while lazy, he will hire people who are at least capable of getting out of bureaucrats’ way and letting them do their jobs. (We’re not talking actual competence in most cases, remember how the Obama administration couldn’t handle the Obamacare roll-out. But at least they shouldn’t be throwing mail sorting machines into the garbage and so on. Little deliberate sabotage.)

The Biden environmental team is the one group that activists seem actually happy about. I’m still leery on this, given the Obama/Biden record on fracking and Biden’s statements about the issue, but I think if there’s one area that is likely to be better than one would expect given Biden’s record it’s environmental issues.

This is buttressed by the fact that the House rules waive Pay-Go for two areas:  Covid and the environment. AOC and the Squad have claimed credit, but I think the real credit goes to Biden; these are the two areas he seems serious about and Pelosi does usually cooperate with Democratic Presidential agendas.

I would think this won’t mean anything too radical, but we can expect that parks and reserves will be protected and expanded, pollution rules likewise, and endangered species lists taken seriously. Serious subsidies for renewable energy seem likely. It is possible we may get a green rollout across the federal civil service, which is a bigger deal than it seems, as it covers a lot of buildings and vehicles and it helps set up a domestic market for green firms if handled properly.

Biden’s other priority seems to be Covid. I don’t know how serious or competent he will be, but the current rollout of vaccines has been pathetic. A proper mobilization, if necessary using the military and the National Guard, would make a big difference. It’s clear that the US isn’t going to get past Covid without mass vaccination, as US states won’t do proper lockdown, track and trace, or provide proper support to people who stay home.

The issue here is whether Biden and Pelosi will provide enough economic stimulus and support to create a good economy so that Democrats keep the Senate and House in 2022. If they run as much as possible through the Covid and environmental pay-go exception, then the answer may be yes, but the insane opposition from centrist economists and wonks to the $2,000 check shows that means-testing and economic throttling is still Democratic party orthodoxy. They just don’t believe in giving everyone money, bullying the Fed into keeping interest rates low, and letting the economy roar.
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If they give into the neoliberal tendencies of these apparatchniks, Biden will lose the House and probably the Senate in 2022, get impeached, and be a lame duck from 2023 on.

There’s reason to believe this is what they’ll do, simply because they still insisted on putting in the pay-go restrictions. Why have them at all, unless you really believe in them and want to use them to throttle spending on anything you don’t want (like Medicare for all)? By attaching that rule, Democrats have indicated that they’re not really interesting large programs which will have a huge economic effect and ensure they retain control of the House and Senate.

I hope Biden is a good President, and better than I expect. Realistically, he’ll be awful in a lot of ways, especially in foreign affairs and civil liberties. We can hope that he’s good on the environment, handles Covid better than Trump, and runs an economy that doesn’t suck.

But I suspect he won’t have the guts to do what is necessary. He won’t forgive 50K in student debt, for example. He’s not a radical, he’s been one of the key implementers of neoliberalism over the last 50 years, and he’s unlikely to go hard against its orthodoxy. He’s willing to act on environmental issues because neoliberalism is finally coming around to realizing they should do something about that. That “something” is won’t be enough, and they plan on making the peons pay for it instead of rich people, but it’s “something.”

Otherwise, Biden is still a means-testing neoliberal who thinks that if someone is poor they deserve to be poor, and that the rich are rich because they deserve to be rich.

So he’s likely to not do enough, and become a lame duck in 2023.

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Perez Chosen as DNC Chair

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On February 25, 2017

62 Comments

Ellison, of course, was the left-wing choice, endorsed by Sanders, etc.

I’m going to have a lot more to say about the Democratic party, neoliberals, Obama, and Clinton later. For now, I simply note that the most important thing, for those who control the liberal party, is retaining control over the liberal party.

I note also that they genuinely believe in neoliberalism. They genuinely don’t want a $15/minimum wage and will only grudgingly give on something as basic (and really, minor to them) as that.

They want Americans poor. They want the poor to stay poor. They want the middle class to decline.

I mean this exactly as I say it: The policies they prefer make the middle class poor, and make the poor poorer, and have done for 40 years.

This is who they are. This is what they want.

They are the enemy of all people who prioritize any form of kindness to other human beings.  Whether they are better than Trump is irrelevant, they’re just another group of enemies.

More on this later. Perez is only an occasion to mention it, and nothing major: He’s just another sign that, no, they don’t want people who favor decent policies in charge of anything, ever. They would certainly far rather lose elections to someone like Trump than allow the left power.

Enemies.

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It Is Better to Be Feared than Loved, if You Cannot Be Both

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On January 27, 2017

86 Comments

Contra Machiavelli, I prefer ruling through love, rather than fear.

But, if it can’t be love…

marcotte-begins-to-get-it

…then fear will do.

For a long, long time, centrist Dems have loathed, despised, and even hated the left-wing part of the Democratic base. (Obama was quite public about this.)

Republican politicians loathe, despise, and even hate their base, too. Be very clear about that. The difference is simple: Democrats weren’t scared of their base and Republicans are (as they should be).

If that’s changing, that’s good news.

Marcotte, of course, is deranged and essentially incapable of reason due to her strong personal identification with Clinton as the avatar of woman. Her understanding of why Sanders was popular and of why Clinton lost are both deficient, and that’s the point. It is precisely those people who cannot be reached through reason who must be reached through emotion; and because they prefer to despise the people, it cannot be love that motivates them.

And so, fear it is.

(Sanders, by the way, appears to be the most popular federal politician in America.)

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