Category: 2020 American Primaries Page 1 of 6

So, the big day is nigh. Another 4 years of Trump, or four to eight years of Biden and whoever actually runs his administration?

Trump’s domestic record has been pretty bad. The economy was doing well before Covid-19, but his complete bungling of the response has thrown millions into poverty and enriched oligarchs. It was possible to control Covid, countries from New-Zealand to Vietnam have done far better jobs.

In terms of civil liberties Trump is even worse than Obama, which is saying something. Environmentally he’s a disaster (he just opened up an arctic reserve to roads and thus logging and mining, not his first such action.)

He hasn’t started any wars but he has ramped up droning and other types of bombing, again over Obama’s already insane levels (which were increased from Bush Jr’s.)

In foreign affairs, Trump has pursued a relatively unilateral policy, trade wars and so on. I don’t agree with all of it, and I think he’s pushing the US towards a cold war with China, but while Biden will be more multilateral, he will also push for a cold war with China (China’s not going to submit to American rules the way DC wants, so insisting it does means splitting the world in two.)

Biden’s very aggressive on foreign affairs, and is more likely to start a new war than Trump. He will be better environmentally though not enough to matter a great deal (his vow to not restrict fracking makes that clear), marginally better on civil liberties but will certainly continue the crack down on Black Lives Matters and other protests.

He will do better on Covid and he will give States relief and not try and cut States off from money the way that Trump is doing if he doesn’t approve of State actions.

While Biden is better on the environment and climate change it’s not enough to change the trajectory of runaway climate change, and he does block the possibility of a good candidate for longer than Trump, since the presumptive next candidate is Kamala Harris.

Both Trump and Biden are senile, but Biden is more likely to let other people run things.

Trump has been doing a fairly significant purge of the civil service over the last year, Biden will end this, and I think that’s overall good. His neoliberal apparatchniks are bad, but they are better than Liberty U grads, though that’s the lowest bar imaginable.

Biden’s likely staffing makes clear this is status quo ante—back to Obama, perhaps a bit more progressive in certain areas.

Because Biden is just status quo ante, he will not change the conditions which lead to Trump, and the next Republican candidate is likely to be a disciplined right wing “populist” and far more dangerous than Trump

As for the campaign, both sides have engaged in voter suppression (Dems against Greens) but the Republicans have engaged in far more of it, and I consider this a red line.

Summary: Biden’s better for most Americans, but definitely not all. He buys people time to make preparations, where Trump will continue the slide much harder. Trump is probably better for non-Americans in countries America is likely to invade, but only marginally. Iranians, for example, will do better under Biden.

Personally if I were American I’d vote for Biden if I were in a swing state, and third party if in a non-swing state (most of them.) In terms of future political activity, I’d probably look into the Democratic Socialists of America; more of the serious activists I respect call that home now than any other party.

Results. There’s no question Republicans are planning on taking this to the courts, preventing ballots from being counted whenever possible and so on, so this may not be determined soon. If it isn’t a blow-out, Trump will declare victory (like Pete Buttigieg did) and fight it out.

As for who will win, polls favor Biden. If you want the argument that the polls are wrong, this is a good version.

I don’t know, I gave up election prediction a while back, I’m bad at it now that I follow politics closely. I do think the odds are with Biden. But if it’s marginal the Republicans will steal it unless Americans take the streets in DC and force them not to.

Best of luck to all, Americans and not. Neither Biden nor Trump will be a good President, but may the one who will do the least harm win.

First: her refusal to resign when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009 (on top of already being old) when Obama could have replaced her has caused an entirely avoidable crisis. She was selfish, put herself first and this is the consequence.

Second: Though far better than anyone Trump will nominate she was on the wrong side of some very bad decisions.

Third: If McConnell replaces her after refusing to allow Obama to name a Justice in an election year, then, yes, the Democrats should remove the filibuster and pack the court if they win.

Fourth: Should they do so, they should do it massively: 15, radical partisan justices. Then pass laws that gut the Republican party for a generation: mandatory mail in ballots to every resident of a State, DC and Puerto Rico statehood, etc, etc… Why? Because once they pack the court, it’s a precedent and the Republicans will do so the next time they can, and should they do so, be sure they will use that to give themselves as permanent a majority as they can. When you go nuclear, really go nuclear: there’s no going back.

Bad, bad times, made worse by one old woman’s selfish disregard for everyone else. If that offends you, so be it. Important people don’t get “don’t say bad things about the dead” when everyone else has to suffer because of their decisions.

Contrary to the mantra of the “Resistance.” “Russia, Russia, Russia,” the primary reason for Clinton losing in 2016 was most likely that she didn’t campaign properly in many battleground states. This is something Clinton had control over, and she just refused to do it.

Biden apparently feels or thinks or some perverse combination of the two, similarly. Time:

“I can’t even find a sign,” Sabbe says outside a Kroger’s in Sterling Heights, where surrounding cars fly massive Donald Trump flags that say “No More Bullsh-t” and fellow shoppers wear Trump T-shirts for their weekend grocery runs. “I’m looking for one of those storefronts. I’m looking for a campaign office for Biden. And I’m not finding one.”

The reason Sabbe can’t find a dedicated Biden campaign field office is because there aren’t any around here. Not in Macomb County, the swing region where Sabbe lives. It’s not even clear Biden has opened any new dedicated field offices in the state; because of the pandemic, they’ve moved their field organizing effort online. The Biden campaign in Michigan refused to confirm the location of any physical field offices despite repeated requests; they say they have “supply centers” for handing out signs, but would not confirm those locations.

This is truly insane. Absolute and complete malpractice.

Democrats are completely vicious when taking down someone like Sanders, but they don’t even bother to try when it comes to winning national elections against Republicans. To all appearances they actually don’t care if Biden wins, or Trump loses.

Or they are completely incompetent.

Why not both?

If Biden wins it will be despite his incompetence at organizing a campaign. But if he loses, we will be treated to 4 more years of liberals saying “it wasn’t anything WE did, it was all Russia and racism and sexism.”

(If Putin, who runs a country whose GDP is half of California’s, is responsible for everything the Resistance claims he is the greatest genius to run a country since Genghis Khan. Of course, the actual fact is that Trump has increased sanctions on Russia, not decreased them, and odd act for someone who is supposedly a Kremlin agent.)

I suspect Democrats lose because not just because they are incompetent but because they don’t actually care. Losing is fine, they’ll still be OK. Pelosi will still be rich as Croesus, Biden will be fine, Harris will fine. Winning is nice enough, but they don’t need to win. They don’t even have a power drive, they’re people with sinecures protecting them savagely, but since they don’t need to win to keep their comfortable lives, only keep control of the party, they are only savage to those who threaten their control of the party (the left), not to the right.

Biden may win, but if so, it will be because he backs into victory. To lose against Trump, after Trump has overseen the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and been incompetent enough to lose at least 150 thousand more lives to Covid than necessary, will, however, be its own sort of awe-inspiring achievement, trumping even Hillary’s loss in 2016.

Bernie Sanders

Yeah, not much to say right this moment. I think this is a mistake; there’s a lot of flux right now. This isn’t an ordinary season, and he might have made it in, though, obviously, the odds were against him. I suspect part of Sanders’ reasoning is that, unlike Biden, he wasn’t willing to urge his followers to go vote during a pandemic and many states were making mail-in voting impossible.

Biden was always most likely to win, alas. There are a lot of people who want a return to the old normal, and Biden, for all his flaws, symbolizes that. Plus, for most people, he’s best known threw memes showing him as Obama’s best buddy (thanks, Onion).

Biden won’t be President for long, if he wins. He’s clearly in decline, even if he’s a figurehead, someone else will be running the show. Or they’ll just hand it to the vice president. His vice president pick is incredibly important, since that person may well be who is actually being elected as President.

As for Bernie, this was his last hurrah. Warren is seen as having betrayed the left; she won’t be able to win if she runs again. I would guess AOC is the heir apparent, but we will see.

Bernie lost because Democrats are actually conservatives (Republicans are reactionaries). Independents tend left, but don’t vote as much as registered Democrats. Likewise, the old vote more than the young, and there was heavy-handed engineering to shut down the votes of poorer or younger people. (For example, shutting down polling places in poorer neighbourhoods, leading to massive lineups in the few that remained. Same with campuses.)

Bernie was the only chance of having a good government in charge in the United States for the next four to eight years.

If Trump wins, we have another four years before a chance at someone decent. If Biden wins, it will be eight, as even if Biden’s VP loses in 24, he still takes up the running slot.

Either way, we’re out of time on things like climate change. We were already past the point of no return, we’ve now lost the serious possibility of mitigation.

So be it. Be well, all and take into account that, no matter who wins, the 20s are not going to be a good time unless you’re already quite well-off.

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We have Idaho primaries (25 delegates), Michigan primaries (147 delegates), Mississippi primaries (41 delegates), Missouri primaries (68), North Dakota caucuses (18 delegates), and Washington primaries (107 delegates).

The polling on this is terrible, it went very south Sunday. Expect bad news tonight.

Fortunately, this is not a big mess of primaries, and there will be a chance to turn it around later, but some luck is going to be required. Perhaps Sanders can take Biden down clearly in the next debate (or, more likely, Biden’s senility will take him down). Perhaps a Biden senile-moment blows up past the media’s ability to filter it. Perhaps something else; obviously no one wants the Coronavirus to decide the primaries or elections, but Trump, Biden, and Sanders are all in the very vulnerable class, and politicians are still exposing themselves to people.

If you’re working to get Bernie elected, I’d suggest you keep working. It’s impossible to know what will happen, but also be prepared for the bad news which is most likely coming.

(Aside: To me it looks like Warren’s repeated attacks on Sanders had the effect of estranging various of her followers from Sanders. She’s not stupid enough not know what she’s doing. So be it.)

Feel free to use the comments to discuss the results as they come in, and so on.

Edit: Corrected the number of delegates Missouri offers.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.