Ian Welsh

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

Category: Electoral Politics Page 1 of 28

The Absurdity of “Trump Is Worse” Arguments Aimed At American Palestinians

By

On July 23, 2024

Comments

Every time one mentions that Biden has committed genocide, someone says “But Trump will be worse!”

Well, here’s your answer:

If you don’t get this something is wrong with your ability to put yourself in other people’s shoes.

And yes. it is on Biden and Democrats:

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

Also, the idea of “holding them accountable after they’re elected” is almost entirely bullshit. It rarely works. Pre-election is your point of maximum leverage, not after. Especially if a politician is in power, make them do something for you before you vote for them.

But, basically, “Democrats killed your family, but Trump will be as bad or worse” isn’t going to convince people whose families Biden killed to vote Democratic.

If you think it will, something is wrong with you.

My writing happens because readers donate or subscribe. If you value that writing, and you can afford to, please support it.

Joe’s Out And The Election Is No Longer In The Bag For Trump

By

On July 22, 2024

Comments

So, an attempted Presidential assassination, and now Biden has stepped down as nominee.

My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.

Primary pressure seems to have been funneled thru Nancy Pelosi.

The most important thing is that the election is no longer in the bag for Trump. There was no way, minus a deus ex machina that Trump would lose against Biden, but it’s not so sure with another candidate.

Those who would never vote for Biden, mostly because of genocide, are now in play if the nominee can keep from bowing too deep to AIPAC and Netanyahu. After all, Trump spends all his time talking about how he’d have done more to genocide than even Biden did. And Biden not stepping down is helping with this: the nominee can pretend they’re less of a psychopathic mass murderer than Biden or Trump without having to actually walk the walk.

In general this is an opportunity for the nominee to run populist and gut Trump’s appeal.

Odds are the candidate will be Kamala Harris, especially as she can draw on the fund raising already done for Trump/Harris and no one else can, but we’ll see if a viable alternative arises. Drama in the nomination process would keep attention on Democrats and off Trump.

Kamala is a bad candidate, but so is Trump. He was a very unpopular president, and looks good only compared to Biden, who was even more unpopular.

No predictions as to who wins, but the election is back in play.

My writing happens because readers donate or subscribe. If you value that writing, and you can afford to, please support it.

How Much Does Genocide In Gaza Effect The US Presidential Election?

By

On July 18, 2024

Comments

I’ve been saying it mattered a lot for quite some time, but, finally, some numbers:

Foreign policy debates rarely determine U.S. presidential elections, although polling suggests that 2024 might be an exception. Nationwide, nearly 4 in 10 voters (38 percent) say they are less likely to vote for President Biden because of his handling of the war in Gaza, according to a July 2024 Century Foundation/Morning Consult poll of 1,834 registered U.S. voters. Many core constituencies—including independents, swing state likely voters, and Democratic Party activists—are angry at Biden’s unqualified support for the Israeli assault on Gaza.

The issue isn’t that people who hate genocide will vote Trump, he’s pro-genocide as well. Instead it’s that they will stay home or vote third party and that if they do hold their nose and vote Democratic, they’re less likely to donate or, more importantly, to volunteer.

In a close election, and Biden’s best case is a close election, that matters.

To put it simply, Biden decided that mass-murdering Palestinians in service to AIPAC and Zionism was more important than being re-elected, and in affect that all the things he claims to care about which might help Americans are less important than helping Israel commit genocide.

That’s a choice, just like his choice to run again even though he’s clearly in serious decline and obviously can’t act as President for another four years.

Biden has chosen to lose the election, and anyone who blames anyone but Biden for his loss is full of it.

My writing happens because readers donate or subscribe. If you value that writing, and you can afford to, please support it.

Hard To Care About the Attempted Assassination Of Trump

By

On July 13, 2024

Comments

Disputed if this picture is real, but it doesn’t matter, it’ll be the iconic picture.

Obviously it makes him more likely to be elected. Obviously you can’t call someone Hitler and a fascist and a threat to everything good without an increased chance for violence. If he is Hitler reborn, after all, killing him would be the right thing to do.

Blame will be apportioned, whether rightly or wrongly, and it increases the chance and amount of violence and repression down the line when and if Trump becomes President.

I don’t, personally, care much except as regards the consequences. I wouldn’t care if Trump or Biden was killed, not for them, anyway. They’re both mass murderers and Trump has spent the last nine months going on about how much he supports the Gaza genocide.

That said, I wouldn’t kill either myself or advise anyone to assassinate them, as it is counter-productive and pointless. Both of them are symptoms, not causes, and if Trump had been killed whoever replaced him would have been as bad or worse and likely won on a sympathy/vengeance surge.

America’s problems aren’t about any individual. If only it were so.

(Also, I don’t see why everyone’s so worked up. As Trump once said about a school shooting, “get over it.” This is the country the right and neoliberals wanted: all these weapons available + an economic and political pressure cooker. What did you think would happen?)

IanWelsh.net is supported by readers. Please subscribe or donate, and please share articles. The more you help, the more I can write.

Let’s Talk About Joe Biden

By

On July 3, 2024

Comments

The debate made it clear that Biden is in serious decline. Remember that it’s not just about now, it’s about four years from now. The media has turned on him hard, and so have many in the Democratic party.

My first takeaway from the debate was that Biden if Democrats were honest and honorable, they would have already forced him to step down, using the 25th amendment. Being President is a hard job, and he’s not up to it. The Vice-President exists for a reason.

My second is that a constitutional amendment is needed to prevent anyone over, say, sixty-nine, from running for President.

The third is to ask, who’s been running America? I had thought it was no longer Biden, but what we’re hearing is that it is Biden, and that he’s erratic and angry and doesn’t understand much of what he’s doing. Biden has done some good things as President, mostly thru some good appointments, but when age related decline starts, it often moves fast.

As for what’s going to happen—I have no idea. I don’t much like Harris, among other things when she was a DA she deliberately put people she knew were innocent in prison. But she’s not senile, and Democrats are panicking. If Biden won’t go peacefully, they should twenty-five him, get Kamala a good running mate & pray a lot.

The other option being floated is a “speed primary”, get it done in four to five weeks, but that seems problematic.

Either way, getting rid of GenocideJoe and having a candidate who can distance themselves would be the smart political move. I imagine Trump will still win, but it might not be a complete disaster.

America’s in serious decline and this clusterfuck is just a symptom of the elite’s inability to govern effectively. This problem should have been dealt with before it blew up, but everyone was pretending there was no problem, despite dozens of clips of Biden’s decline making the rounds. The strategy was denial, denial, denial. “The Emperor’s clothes are the most beautiful in the world!”

But Biden himself played the part of the kid “The Emperor has no clothes” and the feeding frenzy has begun. There will be more leaks and bad press, the knives are out for him, because other Democrats think he’s going to take them with him. Just as bad for Biden, Obama, who made Joe President last time by arranging for him to win the primary, seems to have abandoned him. Not sure if the Clinton machine is still onside: Hilary is stupid and might be, if Bill’s making the decisions, they will jump ship

If nothing else, it will be quite the show.

Edit: Harris’s numbers are now trending better than Biden’s.

Addendum 2: One thing about Harris is that she’s less pro-Israeli. To win, Democrats need Muslims. Trump is hardcore pro-Israel. If Kamala became president and pushed back against Netanyahu in some way that matters, she’d get a lot on the left and among Muslims. Heck, if she’s good enough, I’d endorse her (not that my endorsement matters). Always go with the person who isn’t pro-genocide. (I recognize she’ll probably bow to the pro-Israeli lobby.)

Your support makes it possible for me to write, if you like my writing and want more, please SUBSCRIBE OR DONATE

If You Believe Either Biden Or Trump Will Halt Decline You’re A Fool

By

On June 14, 2024

Comments

There are those, even some smart people whom I otherwise respect, who think that Trump is a way to halt and reverse American decline.

This is delusional.

 

As for Biden, his claims to success are based on statistics that only a toddler or an economist would believe reflect reality, leaving aside the fact that he’s overseeing the loss of the US dollar as the primary trade currency, which will hurt the US worse than an Israeli shoving a red hot metal rod up a Palestinian civilian’s ass.

I’m on team tariff. I think they’re often a good thing. But tariffs alone cannot fix the US economy. America has too many economic pathologies. Without crushing the rich, dropping housing prices, making Private Equity illegal, forbidding share buybacks, ending stock options for executives, massive anti-trust enforcement and huge number of other policies, the US cannot take advantage of being hidden behind tariffs, especially when China is now producing more scientific and engineering advances than America.

People want hope. They need it. And they will find it, or what passes for it. We saw that with Obama, the ultimate neoliberal wannabe, who immunized bankers from their crimes and helped them steal millions of houses with fraudulent documents, then expanded fracking and bragged about, not just giving up the last chance to slow or stop climate change, but actually lighting gas on fire to speed it up.

Then Obama bragged about how much he had increased oil and gas production. Bragged.

No one is coming to save you if you are American, or, indeed Western. LePen will me a garbage fire. Starmer is one of the most mendacious neoliberal politicians of the past 50 years, an impressive feat.

If you want to do politics, you have to stop pretending that you can fix the major parties, and go third party. Yes, it’s a long shot, but it’s your only shot.

More realistically, national politics isn’t going to save your ass. You’re going to have to do it yourself, ideally with the help of other citizens. Perhaps thru a church, perhaps through a neighbourhood association, perhaps through a maker group: whatever, find a way to get like minded non-idiots together and support each other and start making the necessary changes so that you, your family and your friends have a better chance of getting thru the bad times.

It’s up to you. Climate change will not be stopped. My bet is that it is now into self-reinforcing growth. If it isn’t yet, it will be. The West’s hegemony is collapsing. As I have written repeatedly, Europe is going back to what it was for most of its history: a peripheral shithole on the edge of the Asian continent. The US is losing its empire and when it no longer had dollar privilege or a military that other countries are in terror of, Americans will find out the cost of sending their industrial base to China because if you can’t make it, other countries are going to demand a pound of flesh to send it to you.

Hell is coming and both Biden and Trump lead there, just by slightly different routes.

You get what you support. If you like my writing, please SUBSCRIBE OR DONATE

Lightning Strikes And Third Parties

By

On February 19, 2024

Comments

Here’s the thing about third parties: sometimes they get elected. In first-past-the-post duopolies it’s uncommon, but it happens.

Recently I wrote that voting for the lesser evil doesn’t work.

Most of the time, neither does voting for third parties. But sometimes it does. The NDP (Canada’s most left wing party) had never formed a government in Alberta, then suddenly in 2015 they defied all the polling and won. For most of the 19th century Britain alternated between Liberals and Conservatives, then suddenly in 1924, Labour won—and this is back when Labour actually was fairly radical. The Liberal still exist (as the Liberal-Democrats), but they haven’t formed a government since.

There come times when people are upset with the status quo and truly want to change it. FDR is one, Reagan is another. In both those cases, the change was channeled thru an existing party.

If you can get control of an existing party, that’s what you should do. FDR, once elected, sidelines his Democratic enemies and remade the party in his image.

But, often you can’t, and in such times controlling a third party allows you a chance for the lightning strike; the moment everything changes. If the mainstream parties won’t accommodate it, you can.

The key here is to keep the part aligned with your ideology. A third party which changes its ideology too much to “win’ is not a good third part. A third party’s job is to catch the wave of discontent, ride it to power and displace one of the previous major parties. It is up to them to make the case that they are the “real change” and that the big two aren’t (or big however in proportional states.)

The problem with this, for individuals, is that it’s a long game. Your entire life could pass before the lightning strike. But if you manage it, you can change everything, as indeed Labour did, when Atlee came to power at the end of World War II.

The other option is to create and sustain a faction in one of the main parties. If you can do that, great. But right now, every attempt to do so in the Democratic party has failed. On the other hand, it has been done repeatedly in the Republican party, so if you’re right wing, forget third parties: take over the Republicans or form a faction and wait your chance to do so.

If, on the other hand, you’re left wing, do the third party thing. Keep it on the ballots in every state and wait and work and pray for the lightning strike.

 

You get what you support. If you like my writing, please SUBSCRIBE OR DONATE

Why Voting For The Lesser Evil Is Strategic Imbecility

By

On February 14, 2024

Comments

If a party can get your vote by being slightly less evil than the other party (and this applies to both the Republicans and Democrats to many voters), then they have no incentive to be good.

If you live in a society where parties are tending more and more evil, voting for less evil simply ensures that the trend will continue. Since “evil” in this case means “bad for ordinary people but great for me and people who bribe me”, there’s no reason for politicians enmeshed in the system, who rose under the system to do anything for the majority unless it benefits the rich and powerful more.

However politicians do sometimes change their votes or actions when in power based on needing to be elected.

The key thing here is that you should always vote. Someone who votes is taken more seriously by politicians than non-voters, because it’s easier to get a vote to switch than to convince someone to start voting. Go in, and vote for a third party, or a few down ballot candidates or even spoil your ballot.

Of course, as a single voter, your power is limited. So we’ll talk about political leverage next time. The basic principle under all government types is this: you may sometimes luck into good times, but most of the time you only get what you have the power to enforce, and you never keep anything without power and a willingness to use it.

 

You get what you support. If you like my writing, please SUBSCRIBE OR DONATE

Page 1 of 28

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén