this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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The DNC often deals with this, because the nature of federal politics in the US requires them to appeal to the general public, which has left-leaning interests, and then businesses and oligarchs for sponsorship which have right-leaning interests.
Remember they made the Democratic Party primaries less democratic after Carter was elected because he was too left wing. And they've only been able to nominate neoliberals since.
So no, those of us on the left have no candidates. And since its a two-party FPTP system, we only can vote against the worse popular guy by voting for the slightly better other popular guy.
In this case, assuming the election went down as it appeared, the majority of the US voted for the racist autocratic dictator rather than another neolib. (Granted, Biden went further left than we expected and I had hope Harris would as well. Walz certainly seems to understand the US public, but none of them are without ties to industrial interests. We'd still only be able to expect a couple of scraps.)
What this tells me is that most Americans don't get it. They think they have a choice. And now they're going to endure the consequences of their folly.
It's amazing that a naval officer/peanut entrepreneur/devout Christian was "too left wing", especially since he got beat by a Hollywood union boss from California.
Mind you, we just had an anti-elite rebellion led by a thrice-divorced billionaire failson of a New York City real estate magnate.
What would it look like if they "got it"? They'd still have chosen one or the other, I don't know how I'd distinguish between this outcome that indicates they don't get it and one where they apparently do.
As best as we understand the motivation of the constituency, they felt the economy was bad under Biden, that immigrants were increasing crime, weighing down our social programs and taking our jobs, and that Trump will fix everything with his concept of a plan.
In reality, Biden was dealing with the after-effects of Trump's economy, plus the COVID-19 epidemic, and while prices did increase, the US has recovered better than any other nation, so he can't really be faulted on the economy, especially after Trump's initial response to the epidemic of pretending like it's not already in the community, and politicizing mitigation efforts like masks and social distancing.
Then, immigrants are taking jobs that Americans don't want, are paying taxes, and commit fewer crimes than the general population. So all of our concerns about immigrants are demonstrably false.
And if Trump's previous methods of fixing the United States is consistent, then he's only going to break things. An example would be his efforts to repeal the ACA, which turned into the skinny repeal that is, killing the program without a replacement, because making a better healthcare program was too hard for the GOP.
I remember all this, and it's troubling the short memories of the American electorate. It's not the first time, though. They should have remember not just how bad it was under George W. Bush, but how awful Republicans became during that time. Street Republicans were outwardly endorsing torture and suggesting that waterboarding wasn't really torture. It's like they lost all moral direction or even basic sense in favor of party loyalty.
Now as more votes are processed, and as we're able to see how demographics voted, our review of the 2024 election might change, but right now it looks like huge chunks of the electorate are just forgetful and completely daft. More likely they're just racist and bigoted more than they care about their own self interests.
If they got it they'd know that putting a Democrat in office and then pressuring them can get results, which is how we ended DADT and DoMA. The GOP doesn't care what the public thinks.
It's worth tapping the quote (accredited) from Linden Baines Johnson:
I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
Biden was the first president to turn away from neoliberalism this century and the fact that no one really recognized that is alarming.