Honestly you guys are fucked, Even if Biden scrapes a win these are going to be the stakes every 4 years until the US turns into a dictatorship. Fuck knows how that’s going to affect the rest of us around the world in the long run.
One thing that might save us is if Trump dies without managing to get elected. A sizable chunk of the GOP’s base are people who worship him specifically, and if he were gone it might splinter them. But it’s hard to know how that would play out for sure. The situation is definitely very, very grim.
Trump is just the face of the problem. The real threats are the organs; much deeper inside and far more protected than the face.
He is indeed a symptom, but he’s also something more, a cult leader. You’re right that the rot will be there regardless, but the GOP needs every single person willing to support them to vote to stay in power. There are a lot of people who specifically worship Trump, not the GOP.
He’s also a complete moron, therefore easy to control. And lord knows there no shortage of fools that’d line up to replace him. No, the problem runs much deeper than Trump.
easy to control
Yes and no. Do you honestly believe that the GOP likes being attached to him? By all accounts, most people who have to work with him hate him. But they just can’t get rid of him. If he were that easy to manipulate and replace, they would have done so long ago, to get a more predictable stooge. No, there’s something about him specifically that they need, or at least, they think they do.
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It’s the chicken/egg of politics, really. Does Trump represent his base or does his base represent him? Do politicians campaign on the wishes of their constituents? Or do their constituents develop their views based on their politicians?
really? you’re really not sure if a bunch of protestant christo-fascists are cruel and oppressive by nature?
They will just turn to DeSantis or whomever. If you can be sure of anything, be sure that Project 2025 has a list of contingency candidates.
Cults of personality don’t work that way. They don’t get replacements. They can try, but they’re not likely to reach a critical threshold of votes. They may not even reach a House or Senate majority, and Project 2025 can’t go ahead at the federal level without all three.
And while asshole despots like DeSantis are a dime a dozen, Trump is unique in his absolute lack of shame or any kind of self-awareness whatsoever. He won’t stop, ever, unless someone physically makes him.
Exactly this. Also, MAGAs are weak-minded followers types. If their leadership falls, they fail permanently. They are still scum, but they are as they have been for years, squirming under rocks…where they belong.
Best-case scenario is when Trump’s gone, the MAGAts can’t agree on a replacement to get behind. A lot of Trump’s base are people who hate the government, including the GOP, and only vote because of him. We’ll see what happens with them eventually.
DeSantis flopped miserably the last time he tried. The ones that are diehard GOP supporters will indeed flock to whoever is thrown at them, but the GOP has tied themselves to Trump because he has a cult that they rely on to get enough votes to win. It’s been 20 years since they’ve managed to get someone other than Trump elected.
My friend… My poor confused friend.
TRUMP IS NOT THE ENEMY, simply a symptom of a greater disease: the FEDERALIST SOCIETY in addition to our FASCIST OLIGARCHY.
When Trump dies, none of this will go away. NONE OF IT.
Regardless of his importance, Trump is very much the enemy, as are the other things you mentioned. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to find out just how important he was after he’s gone.
Maybe, but Trump unifies the left just as much. If Trump died, how many on the left would continue to hold their noses and vote Biden?
It ain’t just us pal, open your eyes and notice all of EU is falling to these same goddamn fascists.
Not all of the EU. Some countries have managed to recover from a far-right party taking control even, like Poland’s “new” coalition that took power back from the far-right PiS. I know it looks rough when you’re looking at monsters like Le Pen making gains, but Europe still has a chance.
Yes, but at least European countries have more than 2 parties, making them more resilient. It also makes it easier to kick the fascists out of power after they got in.
Fascism is very much growing in Europe as well, but the situation is not as dire.
I disagree with this, I think the Republican Party is waning and they’re now in the sweet spot where they have a large enough base to enact a fascist takeover but not enough to win by appealing to the electorate. If they aren’t able to change the rules in their favor in the next couple cycles I think they become further marginalized and lose their chance.
That’s not to say we won’t face a similar problem again after we have a party realignment, but I do think the GOP specifically has a limited window in which to seize power.
As long as corporate capture isn’t addressed fascism is only going to get worse. We’re angry that our politicians have sold us out. The dim ones will listen to the guy that blames their inability to have a decent life on immigrants, gays, trans, taxes, regulations, ect.
I agree with you there, but I think the upper class is going to increasingly push their agenda through the democrats rather than the republicans, and I think the republicans though perfectly willing to sell out will regardless lose power if they can’t seriously cement their hold somehow.
Yup, as the weak-willed establishment Republicans realize the insane people can’t win anymore, they will turn tail and bail on them. Then the shitty people can go back under their rocks and moderate conservatives can come back into power. Hopefully the Democrat’s constituents can get ranked choice voting through so this doesn’t happen again. Then we can get critical thinking education spread and the lunatic fringe right-wing wond be able to live here anymore.
Yup, sorry my dudes.
where are you from friend? and I agree, we’re fucked 🍻
If he’s such an existential threat (and he is), why the fuck are they not forcing the geriatric incompetent running on their ticket to drop out? They’re sleepwalking into fascism and it’s terrifying.
My semi-secret conspiracy theory adjacent theory is it’s intentional. That not all, but many, of the Democratic national party is in bed with the same big businesses paying off Republicans, and they’re prepared to pull a Hindenburg and install the very fascists they claim to resist once they can no longer hide their betrayal.
I also do think it’s primarily a money issue. Some of it might be those donors wanting the two parties to do different things, by basically leading the democrats into their graves.
Because the most popular alternative is Kamala Harris, but there is no evidence she would do better against Trump.
I stand that Kamala’s best chance is to hold the ship steady as is, and then ask Biden to resign in December or January.
There’s a lot of racists out there. I feel like if she’s at the top of the ticket, she’s gonna get dragged down. Biden truly is serving as an effective shield for her. Either way, Kamala is the implicit vote if anything wrong happens to Biden (which I admit is increasingly likely given his age).
It makes no sense for Kamala to rush to the top of the ticket given her position.
Wasn’t this always the angle, even when people called his age out last election? The argument was that Kamala Harris would step up, and that Biden didn’t want a second term.
Given Harris’ recent comments in the press regarding stuff she’d fix “if given power”, I wonder if she’s even on the VP card this time around? IMO, AOC might be a smarter choice for VP, since the left love her and the right loathe her. She’d bring a lot of younger disenfranchised people back around, and that might be enough.
Biden never any public or official statement about only serving 1-term, in fact when that story started circulating, the official response from his campaign was to say that they were not ruling it out.
There’s a lot of racists out there. I feel like if she’s at the top of the ticket, she’s gonna get dragged down.
This is just preemptive cope to avoid having to reflect on whether the Democratic leadership and its preferred candidates are actually the thing that needs change, and she’s not even an actual candidate yet. Kamala’s biggest problem is not that she isn’t white. Obama was a Black man, but he had heaps of charisma. Kamala has all the charisma of a plate of lutefisk,and people flat out do not like her. She is also irrevocably tied to Biden and his legacy, likely to her detriment amongst the crowds you would most worry about not voting for her because of her not being white.
Most polls put her on par with Biden. Dataforprogress.org has her leading when “fitness” and “strength” are brought into question, but that’s the only poll I’ve seen where she has any lead at all.
Polls of 1000 people are stupid.
Given the number of existential threats we have and are facing, the reaction tracks.
What do you personally do the the face of existential threats? Get ice cream and watch a movie.
There’s nothing that can be done about SCOTUS at the moment. Republicans have House majority, so impeachment and resizing votes will fail.
Something could be done if everyone voted blue in the fall and we had Democratic majority in Congress.
The odds of anything turning blue in November other than maybe the Whitehouse seems slim. I have no numbers or proof and I am completely stating my opinion, but it seems the dems have targeted defective Republicans and centrists and not people on the left. I’d imagine Republicans that can’t stomach Trump are still going to vote red everywhere but the Whitehouse. While the voters further to the left than both our conservative parties will just stay home.
Democrats only need 4 more seats to retake the House. If they win the presidency, there will likely be more than that riding on the coattails.
Agreed. The entire House is up for election in November, along with 33 Senate seats.
My biggest concern is the down ballot effects of sizable Democratic abstentions. If Trump wins, he’ll likely have a Republican Congress supporting him.
While the voters further to the left than both our conservative parties will just stay home
If they stay home they are insuring an extremely authoritarian dictatorship - an extremely stupid move.
The mental gymnastics it takes to say they are “insuring it”, instead of blaming the DNC and the centrists that shoehorned in an obviously senile old man and refused to primary him when he was 4 years older. Actions have consequences.
Exactly. The consequence of not voting for that senile old man is accepting an authoritarian criminal into the White House.
And the consequences of forcing forward an inept candidate for your own personal gain causes the entire country to have an authoritarian criminal in the Whitehouse. Luckily you have a bunch of mindless knuckleheads on the internet who blame the people that do not accept the dystopia you put forth instead of blaming the selfish corpo twats that would rather have a Trump presidency than run anyone even slightly left of center. The bar was so low all they had to do is have someone that could speak a complete sentence and they couldn’t even do that. They had to get as close to that bar as possible. Fuck the DNC and every sycophant that voted for him in the primaries. This is their fault that we are in this situation, not mine.
I will vote against Trump in November, but fuck this system. I am ready to watch it burn, which is where most of Trumps votes come from, people who are ready to watch it burn.
There’s plenty that can be done about the Court. Just tell them no. They made a massive precedent-defying power grab overruling Chevron. If the climate is an existential problem, a constitutional crisis is warranted.
Who do you believe could just tell them no and have them comply?
It would be Congress, but Republicans control the House at the moment.
They could be subpoenaed into a house select committee to undergo questioning explaining their actions . It would at least be a bold move and have them try and explain their reasoning to an equal institution under the republic?
There is no magic bullet, but you need to return some heat or else go under without a fight. It would also completely unhinge the conservative forces hell bent on a dictatorship.
You don’t need them to comply. All they can do is write words. If you tell them they’re making a power grab and you’re not going to just cede power to them, they don’t have anything they can do but write more words.
Defying the Supreme Court would set an extraordinarily terrible precedent. This only works if the masses are doing the defying. And it’s incredibly risky, as the Republicans would very quickly follow suit
Congress could impeach Justices or increase the headcount to properly balance the Court. Those are the legitimate ways to challenge these rulings based on the checks and balances in our governmental design.
That would require Democrats to vote with high turnout for Senate and House elections.
That would require Democrats to vote with high turnout for Senate and House elections.
Instead we’ll give them a razor thin majority and complain when they don’t pass sweeping legislation that requires the GOP to sign on to.
What exactly is the risk when considering the very real danger the court is doing to the country? Tolerating intolerance will only take the country in one direction.
Oh no! A bad precedent. Wouldn’t want to have one of those. Surely precedent will protect us from having reproductive rights stolen, or declaring the president a king, or declaring the regulatory state invalid. The fascists are already on the march and have demonstrated they’re willing to trash precedent without the Democrats making the first move.
But none of that matters. Is this an existential issue or not? If it is, a constitutional crisis is warranted to solve it. You can’t say something is existential and then worry about not doing anything too extreme.
Its long overdue for the Democrats to take some extreme measures. Without the opposing forces we’ll certainly not be a republic by November. I’m ready to protest en masse. Shit I’ll help plan.
Making the Judicial branch unelected lifetime appointments has proven to be a massive failure.
But who, who is “you” in this scenario? Who do you think can just tell the court “no”? Let’s be specific.
My point was what do YOU do? Not what should one do.
Most people get ice cream and ignore the situation.
Treating an existential threat as existential requires the one thing that the Democratic coalition has increasingly struggled to do: prioritization. It means putting aside personal feelings, individual ambition, and subjective preferences in favor of a single goal: success. Otherwise, it’s just empty rhetoric.
As New York Timescolumnist Ezra Klein, who has been pushing the possibility of an open convention to replace Biden, said on his podcast after Thursday’s debate: “If the fate of American democracy is hinging on this election — as Democrats are always telling me it is and as I think there is a chance that it is — then you should do everything you can to win it.” That a strategy, any strategy, might make people or groups uncomfortable cannot be a reason not to pursue it in the face of an existential threat. Not if you believe what you’re saying.
Over a dozen paragraphs and no name brought up to replace Biden if he leaves. (Kamala? Kamala is team Biden)
Glad to see that the prioritization is to attack Biden before you even have a replacement lined up. Good job media, you’re whipping the dumbasses into a frenzy and taking unnecessary risks.
Lets just say Biden is out. Start listing names. Serious contenders. If Kamala (effectively on Biden’s team anyway) is your best shot, then it doesn’t matter if she’s VP or Top of the Ticket, if the plan is for Biden to resign after November anyway.
They sure aren’t. IMO, If Biden doesn’t attempt to exercise his new presidential powers, the Dems will be partially responsible for the fascism that follows.
Seems you forget that an extreme court gets to decide things now. He doesn’t have the powers unless the court says he does.
I was wondering how his hands would be tied this time.
Better to act first than wonder if you have permission. Take the action necessary, let the courts hash it out months later after the election is over. As long as it’s an official action, there should be no problem.
The never do. Despite the system constantly being corrupted in the opposition’s favor, they just roll over and talke it. IMO it’s a money problem. The big donors want the ROI, and big businesses are dictatorships. Those dictatorships align more with fascist/conservative policies more than they do liberal so democrats don’t want to upset the big business donors by inconveniencing their profit stream.
cowards
He’s only a threat in so much as they can turn it into political donations. The rest of us, on the other hand, see an absolute menace ready to implement fascism. But Dems are ok with just having scary news articles and no real action.
Biden’s speech was infuriating. Just came out and basically said “This is bad. I’m not going to do anything about it. This is just the way it is now so I hope we always have good presidents from here unto eternity. Good bye.” and then doddered off stage.
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The pompous condescension completely undercuts any point you were attempting to make. I hope I end up the opposite of whatever you are as I get older. Have a great life.
The pompous condescension completely undercuts any point you were attempting to make.
Centrists use pompous condescension when they don’t have a point.
When it comes to the Democrats and* the left* — from the Biden campaign on down to the activists
What’s with calling out the left on this, when the closest they get to a leftist organization they take issue with is a climate advocacy group. The left has been pretty clear that Biden is not the man for the moment since the go, and for our troubles, we’ve been called everything from stupid and naïve, to privileged white people who don’t care about insert minority group here (and ignore that not all leftists are rich, white people, there are plenty of POC active in leftist politics, though critics, often privileged white people themselves, do love to erase their existence in the same breath they claim to be looking out for them), to either useful idiots or fully cognizant agitators working on behalf of enemy states. Centrist Democrats and liberals have been the ones trying to tell anyone who will listen that the same old play will not just be good enough, but is actually our only option to win, and they’re trying to leave the left to take the fall for their mistake, yet again.
Some of it is political calculation. If the president steps aside, the logical candidate is Vice-President Kamala Harris, but Harris has struggled in office and her poor poll ratings mirror those of Biden. If the Democratic Party tries to sideline Harris and open the door to other candidates through an open convention, they risk alienating her and her supporters and opening up further wounds in the Democratic coalition.
What, risk all four of her supporters? Oh, darn, there go the chances of winning ever again.
Democrats are not going to win with a staid campaign by the usual corporate boot-licking line of candidates they’ve relied on up until now. The sooner they accept that and get behind a candidate who is pushing for systemic changes on issues that actually resonate with your average Americans and the problems they face in their daily lives, as opposed what matters only to their donors, the better for them this time around. Heck, if they actually follow through and make some of those changes, even better.
Not a fan of the article throwing leftists and activists under the same bus with the Democratic party. Also rich how the author claims activists aren’t acting like it is an existential threat but they are dumb for not endorsing Biden.
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A reminder that Trumpy candidates to run against is what some Democrats wanted:
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/28/democrats-colorado-primary-ron-hanks-joe-odea
I mean this strategy is how we got Trump in the first place. Zero lessons learned.
I’ll admit it. I was one of the people who loved it when Trump started rising in the polls. I’m far from a Democrat but I believed that he would be the easiest Republican to defeat. I was so very wrong and my whole view of my country has changed since 2016.
I think the immunity ruling of yesterday ended the U.S.'s checks and balances against a King, Monarch, or in more modern terms, the Unitary Executive. Overturning Roe Vs. Wade was the Judicial Branch warning shot.
I predict that in the future the U.S. will have a new revolution, but it’ll probably be at least a century away. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
just imagine this with other existential threats. “a meteor the size of the moon will crash into the earth in 5 months if we don’t do anything. so please vote for the meteor kindly changing course. btw current polls show that the meteor has higher approval rating than I do so please stop that too”
There’s another theory why this is: calling Trump an existential threat is just a dishonest way to try to make people care about voting. They want to win for reasons that have nothing to do with how much in danger democracy is.
It’s almost as if they are leveraging and exaggerating fear for their own gain.
This is how morons talked in 2016 , leading to the Trump presidency in the first place.
