The issue isn’t international trade, you’d have these exact same problems with no trade happening at all. The issue is unregulated (or poorly regulated) markets. So many monopolies and duopolies, and the most extreme income inequality. They need to start taxing the fuck out of the billionaire class and breaking up corporations like it’s an Olympic sport and they’re going for gold. Bring back 90%+ taxes on the billionaires.
Yep, I see it with my own video feed. I’ll watch a video with the faintest right wing connection, say something about a game studio struggling with trolls. Then I’ll start getting videos suggested bitching about “woke games”. I tell it not to suggest those videos and they’ll go away for a little bit, but eventually it starts trying to creep them back in. The algorithm is constantly trying to push people to the extremes.
So I was spitballing some ideas around this a while back, although I was more focused on income inequality at the time. I think the best idea I came up with was something like a progressive taxation system where a company’s taxes were determined by the highest paid employee (including the value of benefits and things like stock grants) minus the lowest paid employee, divided by the company head count. If executives want to keep bringing in eye watering salaries they either need to pay all their employees significantly more, or hire a hell of a lot more of them at current rates. There’s probably some flaws and things that could be tweaked there, but I think it’s a start.
It wasn’t more than half the country, in total 65% of the country voted for any candidate. Trump got about 55% of that, or a bit over 36% of the country. That’s still way higher than it should be, but well below half. There’s a bunch of possible explanations for why the remaining 35% of the country didn’t vote, and only some of those explanations would be tacit support of Trump.
Biden would have done just as bad as Harris because Harris ran on Biden’s platform plus a little extra helping of GOP policies (for some stupid fucking reason). OK, Biden might have done slightly better, but not enough to actually win. Anyone who stood a chance of winning would have to run on essentially the opposite of Biden’s policies instead of pulling Kamala’s “nope, wouldn’t change a single thing” platform.
I’m not sure exactly what the point of this article is. It doesn’t actually allege any wrongdoing, and it seems he hasn’t been to Russia since Zalinsky took office. Even prior to that there could have been innocent explanations for his travel to Russia. Basically this is some smoke, but no actual evidence of fire. It certainly raises some eyebrows, but considering those eyebrows were already raised prior to this this doesn’t really seem to be adding anything new.
We also need competition and for decades now the offices that were supposed to safe guard us from monopolies have been green lighting again and again mergers and acquisitions that result in only one or two dominant players in every market. There should be a blanket rule that if there are less than 10 companies (of somewhat similar scale) operating in some market none of them are allowed to merge or acquire each other.
What? Vote for them? Be incredibly pissed they threw the election and now our democracy is fucked? Yeah.
Maxim 6: If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
While everything you said is true the DNC is also equally to blame. For better or worse FPTP means we only have two parties, which means there’s an onus on them to appeal to as many voters as they can (to do anything less is to guarantee their loss). The DNC for decades now has followed a policy of appealing not to the general public, but to a wealthy subset in order to maximize their own bribes campaign contributions. That has seen a steady rightward shift of their economic (and to a lesser extent social) policies. This rightward shift naturally alienates a large block of those that would otherwise support them. After all if you’re a supporter of right wing policies you would already be a Republican, thus if you aren’t it’s because you’re looking for left wing policies. Something the Democrats increasingly do not have.
There are three possible outcomes for each potential voter. You can vote Republican. You can vote Democrat. Or you can not vote (or vote 3rd party, the outcome is identical either way). Because voting isn’t mandatory, the default state is not voting. Republicans have spent the last couple decades erecting roadblocks to voting, passing ID laws, closing polling places to increase lines, encouraging their followers to harass voters, purging voter rolls at the last minute, etc.
All that means that it takes actual effort to go out and vote. For an increasingly exhausted public, that is struggling just to survive day to day, that might have to take a precious day off from work to stand in an uncomfortable line for hours at a time while being menaced by unhinged MAGA, they need a strong encouragement to put up with all that.
From a purely logical standpoint the threat posed by Trump and MAGA should be sufficient motivation. But people are not always or even often logical. Republicans have spent decades fine tuning their propaganda. They’ve weaponized AM radio, and talking head “news” shows like Hannity, to convince their voters that Democrats are perpetually moments away from rounding them all up and having them executed. That’s the reason Republicans always show up to vote, no matter how onerous the process becomes.
Democrats in contrast have been hesitant to call a spade a spade. They should have been blaring the threat posed by Trump from day one of his campaign in the most explicit language possible. Every opportunity should have been taken to replay highlights of every unhinged statement Trump made to highlight exactly how dangerous he was. Instead they use euphemisms, saying things like “extremists” rather than terrorists, or “Insurrection” instead of attempted coup.
Added to all of that is dissatisfaction with Democrats policies right when they needed to be doing everything they could to convince people that if they just got off their asses and voted things would significantly improve for them.
So yes, this is very much a failure of Democrats. The party failed not just themselves but the American public. Unfortunately now everyone pays the price for that, not just the apathetic voters that sat out, but even those of us that did the sane logical thing and voted for the lesser evil.
Then unfortunately the fascists will keep winning. You don’t win over people by telling them if they campaign hard for you then things will be just a tiny little bit better than they currently are. It’s the motivational equivalent of “Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”. Just look at the voter turnout numbers this election, they were abysmal. Trump absolutely stomped Harris, yet the total votes cast for him were still only a tiny fraction of the total eligible voters. Only ~65% of the population voted. That means if Harris could have inspired a portion of that 35% who stayed home to get off their asses and actually vote she could have won instead.
They aren’t compared against each other, that’s the entire point. For progressive voters Trumps policies don’t matter because they’re not voting for him anyway, the only ones that matter are Harris policies. Likewise for conservative voters Harris policies don’t matter, she isn’t getting their votes. The ones Harris had to convince were the progressive voters and she spent her entire campaign trying to convince conservatives that she wasn’t that progressive.
The fact Harris lost is literally the only proof necessary to demonstrate her policies weren’t good enough. If they were she would have gotten more votes.
You seem to have things completely backwards. It isn’t the voters responsibility to vote for a given party or candidate unconditionally (even though in practice that’s exactly the way Republicans operate). It’s the party and candidates responsibility to convince voters to vote for them. When a politician loses an election, barring complicating factors like gerrymandering and voter suppression, it’s the politicians fault. Full Stop.
For his supporters his talk about attacking “liberals” his racist remarks about “illegals” and wanting to deport not just them but actual Hispanic citizens as well. His claims that he’ll “fix” inflation and improve the economy. All those things greatly motivate his supporters.
The only thing Harris was promising was “not Trump”, which is certainly an improvement but isn’t very motivating. Then she self sabotaged by supporting Biden’s massively unpopular Israel policy, claiming she would be tough on border security, and downplaying concerns about the economy. Making people hate you slightly less than the other guy is not the way to handle a disenfranchised and depressed base.
You know why Republicans just won’t go away? Because their supporters are motivated. They reliably show up to the polls time and time again. Trump took that and threw gasoline on the fire. Sure he’s lying through his teeth and a lot of the people he’s motivating are the worst people in the US, but their votes count all the same.
Democrats lose when they fail to motivate. Election after election they struggle with voter turnout while Republicans can reliably count on their supporters to show up.
Because the presidency isn’t a fucking popularity contest or beauty pagent. People always vote for the policies. The Democrats policies were at best milquetoast, while Republicans were promising their base that they’d make all their wildest dreams come true. Of course the policies were the important thing.
It wasn’t just his age, his policies were shit too, people just hoped someone less geriatric would actually support a progressive agenda instead of the political equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs. Kamala was a smart choice if you paired her with good policy. Instead we got the exact same losing policy Biden was running under. Younger Biden wasn’t what people were asking for.
The Democrats lost not because they’re as bad or worse than Trump, they’re objectively the better option, but because they completely and utterly fail to motivate the public. They’re at best boring. They keep insisting on ignoring any attempts to push for progressive policies in favor of dangling conservative talking points in front of people in some vain attempt to steal votes from conservatives rather than trying to motivate progressives.
You know the last Democrat that actually motivated people? Fucking Obama. Biden just barely squeaked by because people were so god damn sick and tired of Trump’s shit, and Harris thought the same trick would work twice. Well it fucking didn’t, and now we’re all suffering for it.
There will be no appeasing him, that’s a losing play. Trump is a bottomless pit of greed and narcissism. At best you can temporarily become a useful pawn to him but sooner or later he will turn on you, if for no other reason than he needs a scapegoat for his latest failure.
Yeah I’m making sure to tag all of them for future tracking. Learned that lesson with the NAZIs, if this is ever over not going to let them quietly slink away. When this inevitably starts going south and these same assholes are bitching and whining about how the economy is a trash fire and their rights are being shit all over I’ll be there to remind them they wanted this.
Yeah, time to cash out before the free fall starts.
Democrats really are their own worst enemy. It’s shocking how time after time they find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Yes, but now the cheque cleared. Or he’s just trying to suck up to Xi, you know one or the other.