(by Prasanna H)
The Real House-Whites of Trump and Biden
“Why do celebrities wash their dirty whites in public?” an exasperated Naseeruddin Shah once said. It really makes you wonder, especially when reality TV stars do it more professionally. It is not an exact quote, meaning Naseer would have denied it completely if he were Trump. If he were Biden, he would have called me a clown and asked me to shut up. You get the gist. I have not gone over the policy positions and the actual arguments in the debate here because they are discussed widely elsewhere.
The votes are in, and the first presidential debate between Trump and Biden was total chaos. It utterly failed as a political debate with both parties failing to prove why they are better as presidential candidates. They did not listen to the questions, put forth their policies coherently, and address the nation’s concerns regarding their ability to do their job. They failed as they attacked each other constantly over getting the facts wrong. Admittedly, this stems from Trump’s debating style of always discrediting the opponent without providing counterfacts or a valid alternative. However, Joe Biden used it to his full advantage by calling Trump a liar and a clown to divert from the flaws of his alternatives. Basically, they were calling each other a loser who doesn’t know what he is saying for an hour and a half.
First American Presidential Debate 2020 as Reality TV
So, how did it fare as TV? For people who tuned in for a gritty political debate, it was a disappointment. Unfortunately, it was also a disappointment for people who tuned in for the reality TV show.
However, it had all the elements of a well-produced reality TV show. Serious conflicts based on different positions held by similar people: Neither want to question the system that enables them to keep their power. Establishing assumptions only good for superficial arguments and not practical solutions: Neither can be held to their word regarding follow through of the policy positions they espoused in this debate. Raising the stakes by talking in hyperboles about how policies affect the people involved: Rather than be vulnerable, listen to people, and understand what they are going through, these candidates are only concerned about their voting perspectives. Seemingly neutral third-party hosting the conflict showdown: By making quirky observations and laughing off the flaws, the third-party ensures the real problems remain untouched while being completely aware of it, playing both candidates off each other.
Then, why did it fail?
Like every other reality TV show, the characters make or break the show. Both candidates were seriously guarded and lacked a basic range of emotional reactions. They were exasperated when interrupted, indifferent to name-calling, and not invested in their relationship with the audience enough to make the presidential debate work. There was so much bitterness it reminded me of the wedding lunch at which my Chithi grabbed the bucket of rasam, went to the caterer, and asked him if he made it with bitter gourd juice. [She stopped the lunch, gathered a few others, and fixed the rasam with lime juice. I wonder why America keeps its Chithis from power.] In the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Kim was medicated and unable to respond coherently when Brandi called Kim’s sister a bitch. But she was so intent on defending her sister that she infamously called Brandi a slut pig. Unlike Kim, Donald Trump, especially, was just numb to all the name-calling. This showdown was devoid of the emotional back and forth that provides the uncanny whimsy of reality TV. Trump talked at everyone and refused to acknowledge any other point of view, even ones favorable to him. Biden tried to win his votes by talking to the people, rather than to Trump. For him, it was a speech and not a debate. This closed off, repetitive sledging was bad reality TV. After Trump attacked Biden’s son Hunter, Biden said he was proud of Hunter because he worked through a drug problem. Trump said Obama didn’t do his job, and so they were fired, a callback to his days firing people on reality TV. Momentarily, it made them human. Otherwise, it was one note, devoid of warmth, camaraderie, or respect to anyone.
Over the years, Trump’s rhetoric has become so predictable that Biden could read a prepared script, including reactions and comebacks, and make it work. Trump is a seasoned reality TV host, and he does the basics really well: deny everything, make counteraccusations. He broke the rules by interrupting far more than Biden, constantly questioned the credibility of the neutral host, and made personal attacks against his opponent. His arguments were incoherent and denials blatant as usual, but not enough to make him seem honest. In the previous election too, his premises were flawed and his statements were illogical, but the force with which he backed them was vehement and stoic. It created a fortress for him and his supporters to fight the enemy. This has considerably withered. For example, he started talking about forest cities in Europe in response to a question on climate change’s effects; it wasn’t coherent enough as a response or a vehement attack on climate change consensus through emotional storytelling. This vague in-between was a feature throughout that dulled down any position he took and made it unengaging, a new low for Trump. He was just taking blows lying down.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, kept talking about plans. He loses it right at the beginning, saying he is the Democratic party now, possibly to show strength against future attacks of being a radical left puppet. Biden comes off as factually vague and egotistic. But, Trump’s own ego drowns these out as problems. Biden uses every two seconds of silence he gets to address the people directly. He matches Trump gesture for gesture with exasperation and denial of lies. He comes out better at name-calling than Trump. Biden called Trump Goebbels before the debate. He calls Trump Putin’s puppy in the debate, which is an alliteration easier to remember than all of Trump’s rants about the radical left holding Biden hostage.
Reality TV is unique because it mimics reality, not the three act stories with a hero, a villain, and closure. There are no definitive winners and losers here, only winning and losing positions. It is about engaging in your core emotion to the extent of indulgence, taking an emotional situation and milking it to the fullest. If they make it engaging enough, reality TV stars who assume a winning position can lose and those who assume a losing position can win.
Trump is a career reality TV star. He positions himself along one story: he was betrayed, and so are his people, by those who make him lose. In the COVID crisis, China betrayed them. In the Paris climate accords, emerging nations (including India) betrayed them. In immigration, Mexico betrayed them. In everything else, the Democrats betrayed them. To be betrayed and to assume a position of a loser, you have to lose something. But the loss has to be superficial for him to still be in the game. These losses are real.
The very reality TV instincts that proved vital in his victory in 2016 are endangering him here. He has already won and the experience in the White House has been fraught, wearing him down, because he has to constantly play the losing position. He says that if he loses, the election process, essentially America’s democracy, was betrayed. Unfortunately, real-life events like death of a loved one, divorce, adultery, and break-up play an important part in the plots of reality TV. The cruel indifference of reality TV usually involves playing personal losses as a losing position to win audiences. The sublime irony of reality TV is that the very reality that is trivialized and minimized provides great material for superficial storytelling, often co-conspiring with the showrunners. Therefore, to milk this situation to the fullest, Trump has to lose the election so that he can win the reality TV show. He and his people keep fantasizing how colossal a betrayal his loss in the election would be. And he wants to lose; all his reality TV instincts tell him to. When the world’s most powerful man wants something, he usually gets it.
Being a career politician, Biden sees this farce and refuses to debate Trump. So, Trump is carrying on this farce on his own. Biden has clearly fallen into the niche where everything untoward he does is a reaction to Trump, and therefore not reflective of who he is. If he wins, Biden promises relief from Trump’s aggression, and given that people have had a tumultuous year, they may prefer it. But, Trump losing and Biden winning are two different things. It is very clear that Biden needs people to want him, not just want to let go of Trump. So, we have to wait and see if he lets Trump lose as he did in the first debate.
Of course, the actual result of the election depends on so much more than this reality TV show. COVID, national economy, and environmental disasters are all real issues that have consequences for real people including these reality TV presidential candidates. While the consequences are real and terrifying for them too, they have to project an alternative narrative that makes these issues engaging. Unfortunately, they are the ones with real power to create systems of support to get us through this problem. Thus, it is clear that the reality from which this debate distracts us is the one that matters.
The problem with this reality TV style debate isn’t that one can lie and get away with it. When the lies do get called out, it becomes immaterial because it has already made the desired impact. The problem is that the truth and facts become immaterial. We have the distractions of reality TV so that we can deal with reality, not the other way around. The consumption of lies gives immediate gratification, canceling any value that this debate can inform any policy decision in the future. With the U.S. presidential debates becoming one bad reality TV show, it seems the systems by which people choose who govern them need dramatic changes to work. Until then, people really are on their own against these unprecedented issues, unfairly burdening our Chithis to fix it.
Baradwaj Rangan 
Madan
October 2, 2020
It was indeed the ugliest spectacle you could imagine and the logical culmination of America’s long standing nonsensical obsession with theatrically enacting the process of elections which in other developed countries is an uneventful affair as it should be.
However, I don’t agree that both candidates failed to prove they are better as presidential candidates. We cannot look at Biden in a vacuum. In the first place, with Trump interrupting him constantly, he did not get to make a case. So you couldn’t have a conventional debate where both candidates would have made out why they should be President. This was about Trump glowering like a cornered tiger, pouncing mid sentence the moment a Biden talking point threatened to nail him. Said another way, I refer to an undecided voter in Luntz’s focus group who said Biden was unpresidential for calling Trump a clown or a liar. Well, when the President doesn’t behave anything like a President is supposed to and in fact debates worse than a schoolyard bully, normal standards do not apply.
You will note here that I am not exactly a resistance lib and have repeatedly urged the liberal side to listen more to the other side and not get caught up in evaluating the aesthetics of vocabulary. But what I saw in the debate was not the usual nasty but funny Trump, poking fun at the pomposity of establishment politicians out of touch with their base. This was an angry and terribly condescending Trump (“don’t ever talk about smart, Joe”), joyless and unhinged, extremely anxious about defending a terrible record. When the President simply insists on interrupting to avoid Biden getting to the punch, that does not constitute a ‘win’, that constitutes a dodge and the people need to ask whether they want a President who even in a public debate refuses to answer questions about his handling of covid or race relations with even a modicum of honesty.
Which brings me to the next point. That is that when the President talks about poll watchers, fraudulent mail in ballots and even the SC to award himself the election and also refuses to condemn white supremacists unequivocally, it is no longer an equivalence between two terrible candidates. Biden is NOT the best candidate the Dems could have come up with by a long distance but he is certainly better than the Trump of 2020. So to the “But Biden’s platform isn’t appealing” argument, well, with four more years of Trump, there won’t be a platform. I say this likewise to those who want to double down and vote for Trump to preserve the SCOTUS and vote Repubs downballot to preserve the Senate advantage. Honey, there won’t be a SCOTUS, a Senate or a House if this keeps up. I am not being even slightly alarmist. A President saying openly that he will not respect the results of the election has to be beyond the pale, there can be no both-siderism to that. Just as a contrast, when Modi appeared for his infamous NewsNation interview, he assured Chaurasia and his co-interviewer that he had experience working with politicians from rival parties and would have no problem managing a coalition if it came to that. Even Modi feels compelled to promise that democracy will remain a going concern and the legitimacy of the process will not be called into doubt (it is in fact the Opposition that has done that time and again to attempt to discredit his victories). That the President of the United States won’t do that should lead to much greater outrage than it has. It hasn’t because Trump has already said a million outrageous things which dampen the impact of this one which is of a different stripe in terms of how grave it is. It also hasn’t caused outrage because the Republican Party would rather drown in an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico than be called upon to comment on it.
Among the very few who did (and even he would not name Trump but did make abundantly clear who he was talking about), was Charlie Baker, Governor of Mass. who won the biggest victory by a GOP candidate for Governor in the state since Bill Weld and in the middle of the 2018 Mid Term sweep by the Dems. There’s a Republican (as opposed to the spineless scumbags that make up the party today).
If we decide that the words he used about democracy and what it means to the people are no longer sacrosanct, then more of Trump is what we’re going to get.
Pre-emptively I will state at the outset that others are free to post conspiracy theories that in their eyes validate Trump’s claims about mail in fraud but I will not humour you with an argument about that. Not interested. And if that is actually an issue, it is the responsibility of the President to ensure mail in can be done in a surefire way; it does not give him a pretext to dump the election results. A difference that should be amply clear to those who aren’t punch-drunk on the ‘red pill’ as they call it.
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H. Prasanna
October 2, 2020
@Madan Point taken. I think America’s system for political debating, at least, runs more on good faith. That is why the debate kept going on when Trump clearly broke the rules repeatedly. Trump is allowed to do that because the show must go on even though it may cost us an insight into who will be the better candidate. So, we can tell who is the better reality TV star now, who is better at getting in a few words inside a loud chamber, calling out their opponents at every instance, and the most engaging personality for the people to watch. Biden cannot be held to any of the things he said in the debate because Trump was unfairly trying to peg him down the whole time. All parties know this, but they don’t want to do anything to change it. I felt these are essentially reality TV rules, and the debate can more appropriately be evaluated as reality TV show.
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RK
October 2, 2020
These debates aside, how exactly is Trump’s rule in last 4 years? I don’t know much about American politics and I keep on hearing lot of negative things about Trump, mostly about his comments and behaviour. But when I visited New jersey this year January on office work, my American and Indian colleagues were saying that most likely he will get re-elected. They were not his fans or anything but have opinion that he is nasty but still ruling ok. Also they sounded tired of media trials in him. Not sure if situation has changed.
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igsram233
October 2, 2020
Hi Prasanna, first things first. Excellent article!!!!.
Is it ok if I share this link on Twitter?
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Anu Warrier
October 2, 2020
@ Prasanna, what Madan said…
Joe Biden went to vote. The clown in the WH came to bully and intimidate. You can’t blame Biden for not being able to voice policy. He wasn’t allowed to speak two words before he was heckled, interrupted, and verbally attacked. I’m surprised that ‘Clown’ was the only insult Biden offered.
Biden may not be the best choice (he wasn’t mine) but he’s a decent man, who’s well-liked across party lines. If we need to unite the country, we need someone like him. If the man-I-will-not-name steals this election (as he has openly said he will), then we can soon witness another Civil War, bloody and ruthless.
@ Madan, Charlie Baker is a Massachusetts Republican. And one of the few Republicans who have an actual spine. He may not have mentioned the orange dotard by name in this clip, but he has called him out by name several times, especially in the last year.
He’s an extremely effective governor and very well liked in the state. For a Blue state, we have consistently elected Republican governors, and they have been very good for the state.
But if he ever wants to run for President, he’s toast if he stands as a Republican. The Party of Trump will never forgive him for being against their Führer.
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Madan
October 2, 2020
“But if he ever wants to run for President, he’s toast if he stands as a Republican. The Party of Trump will never forgive him for being against their Führer” – That’s the sad part. I think Baker would probably if not definitely make a better President than either Trump or Biden. If registered Republicans weren’t so cultist, by and large, it would be possible for a Baker to primary Trump. Bill Weld tried too this year and gained zero traction.
Anyhow, while I cannot wish somebody non recovery from covid and won’t do so for Trump as well, it is karmic considering his own disdain for it, particularly in the early months, and his doubling down on spreading dangerous disinformation about it. He won’t admit it but he now finds himself confined just at the moment when Biden is doing a course correction and OKing door to door canvassing in the swing states. For at least two weeks, Trump is going to have to sit back and watch the man he sneered at so jarringly in the debate build up even more momentum, momentum that could well prove insurmountable. Can’t say he wasn’t asking for it.
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Madan
October 2, 2020
RK: I don’t live there but have family and friends in the US and follow it closely. Especially in these last few years have been doing so. Have white American online acquaintances too that I correspond with.
Based on their feedback as well as what the media reports, covid basically upended Trump’s plan to ride on the economy to negate the critique about how he conducts himself. It is another matter that the US economy was slowing down already by the last quarter of 2019 and would likely have entered a recession by this summer. But the covid recession has been way more brutal and his own ineptitude in handling it compounded matters. It was after covid that Biden began to pull comfortably clear of Trump. Until then, the race as per the pollsters (albeit polling in Jan/Feb means nothing) was close. Him being perceived as encouraging violence in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and seeking to cynically exploit an uptick in the white vote from the same hasn’t helped either.
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Anu Warrier
October 2, 2020
@Madan, I wouldn’t wish non-recovery from Covid on anyone, but as you say, he was asking for it. (Though, he ensured that everyone around him was tested all the time, so basically, he was okay with other people getting it, just not him.)
Having said that, I especially want him to recover from Covid. I want to see him escorted out of the WH and made to stand trial for all the irregularities and downright illegalities that he has committed these past years. Death by Covid would make him a martyr to his cult. I want him alive to face the consequences of his actions. At least once.
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Aman Basha
October 2, 2020
Honestly, I expected Trump to trounce Biden in debate since he, let’s be honest here, was very good in the debates against Hillary. It may not have won the popular vote but won enough of a vote to make him president, something that no one expected to happen. We can go on about Russia and Comey but it’s amusing to watch Americans complain of external interference in elections and it doesn’t really matter. Can we confidently say no election anywhere has ever seen foreign influence before?
But in this debate, Trump was a sweaty, insecure trainwreck. Responsibility clearly weakened his showmanship and he not only didn’t let Biden make a point but ended up making no sense either. What really surprised me was how “Sleepy Joe” gave Trump back a good deal, and that line about empty chairs resonated quite a lot, it’s karmaic to think Trump who gave so much misinformation about COVID and which his supporters called a hoax, is now positive and can’t come out or campaign for a while which is enough for his rival to clinch the election.
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Karthik
October 2, 2020
Very nice writeup, Prasanna!
There has always been a reality show component to modern American politics, but there used to be some reality not far from the show that was worthwhile. One of my favorite moments from a Presidential debate was at the end of the final debate between Romney and Obama, when the families walked up on stage. Romney joking with Michelle, Obama bending down to play with Romney’s grandson. For a moment, there was this genuine sense that despite significant differences, there was shared virtue.
Somewhere between then and now, even a veneer of civility has all but disappeared, and what’s left is what makes reality shows so popular. The exploitation of our desire for kinship with otherwise remote TV personalities, and promotion of cathartic pleasures when they demonstrate the same emotional excesses that we often chide ourselves for. That a well honed reality show runner should seize the reins and grow this aspect of politics is, well…
That said, I continue to maintain a naive curiosity about the reality behind the show, but the glimpses have been far too few and far too faint.
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Madan
October 2, 2020
“Somewhere between then and now, even a veneer of civility has all but disappeared, and what’s left is what makes reality shows so popular.” – And this has happened in three major democracies at almost the same time – US, UK and India. And in all three, it is the Right that decided to dispense with civility, correctly calculating that the honesty would be viewed as refreshing and thus propelling an outright power grab.
In the specific US context, the Republican base had been cultivated on xenophobia and racism long before the party itself became comfortable voicing it. There is the famous clip from the 2008 election where Republican supporters called Obama an Arab terrorist and it was McCain who expressed pained disagreement with that characterisation. Even as the Tea Party gained greater and greater control of the party, the establishment managed to keep the presidential nomination in more sophisticated hands via Romney. This mask may have peeled off a little in 2016 even had Cruz won, albeit not to the extent that Trump revealed the ‘reality’ behind the ‘TV show’. Had it been Jeb Bush or Rubio, the GOP would have kept up this deception for longer. But they were lurching towards Trumpism one way or the other.
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Karthik
October 3, 2020
decided to dispense with civility, correctly calculating that the honesty would be viewed as refreshing
Madan, I agree with you about the “refreshing”, but I’m not so sure about the “honesty”. I know plenty of people who “speak their mind” and “call things as they see it”. They can be termed insensitive, but not dishonest and its not that difficult to look past their rough exterior. But I dont think that description fits Trump (or Trumpism). It’s hard to see his public persona as more than a shiny object that makes people feel good about themselves. Like an ad, it has little to do with what’s real (or what he believes to be real).
The room for both civility and honesty in the realm of (hugely popular) public discourse has been shrinking, and Biden’s nomination, to me, is kind of a referendum on whether that could change. But I dont know if that question will be answered by an election in the middle of a pandemic, with an unprecedented share of mail-in ballots, and an October surprise with even less precedence.
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Rahul
October 3, 2020
“The Party of Trump will never forgive him for being against their Führer.” I disagree. If, or when, Trump loses he will be thrown under the bus if not immediately then eventually. Trump is not a religious nut. In fact if you see his views from 20 years before, he used to be pro choice. Even as a narcissistic self serving guy, right now , he is going to nominate a justice that will not help his election prospects one bit.
My theory is that Trump is being tolerated because the Republicans are able to fill plenty of seats in the judiciary. After the nomination of the latest Supreme Court justice Trump would be useless to them. These guys care about religious things and race more than they do about winning an election.
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Madan
October 3, 2020
” but I’m not so sure about the “honesty”. I know plenty of people who “speak their mind” and “call things as they see it”. They can be termed insensitive, but not dishonest and its not that difficult to look past their rough exterior.” – I mean honesty in the sense the Right dispensed with civilities by taking the view that they were nothing more than a shroud of hypocrisy when both sides wanted to grab power. They began to brutally call out and criticize the other side in a way that hadn’t been done for a long time by politicians and which mirrored how ordinary people talked about politicians. That’s why it came across as refreshing to the people. What we then saw is when the Right did grab power, the people excused all levels of brazen hypocrisy from them in their efforts to maintain power while continuing to attack the Left as if it were still the Establishment. This is a particularly curious phenomenon in the UK where the Tories were in power when the Brexit referendum happened and have generally held power longer and more often than Labour.
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Anu Warrier
October 3, 2020
These guys care about religious things and race more than they do about winning an election.
Oh, no, make no mistake – they care about power very, very much indeed. They will cynically play whatever game they need to play to keep it.
And yes, they will throw Trump away, but Baker is toast because they don’t like being called out, you see, and he called all of them out. Baker is now more popular among Democrats than he is among the Rs. But he’s an old-school R and won’t switch parties. And he’s an even stranger thing in politics – he’s a decent man. With integrity. And he’s shown his leadership right here in our state. I’m Independent (registered D this election) but I will vote for Baker any time.
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H. Prasanna
October 3, 2020
@igsram233 Thank you. Go for it! I m not on Twitter, but am interested in the comments it may get there. Do share them here if something nice, quirky or insane turns up. Is this your Twitter handle too?
@Karthik Thank you. Reality TV has become a fascinating allegory for the political process, especially the perpetual campaign. Essentially, reality TV started out by mimicking the electoral process: campaigning and voting. Audience engagement has become very important to a point where every spin of the story is explored in every corner of the Internet. Perhaps during Obama and Romney’s time, the rules of political engagement still prevailed. But now that Trump’s disruptive campaign has been allowed to happen and succeed, other elements of reality TV have been infused into the campaign process, perhaps irreversibly.
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H. Prasanna
October 3, 2020
@Anu and Madan
I understand that Biden was heckled, but his reaction to the heckling was a reality TV star’s reaction not a leader’s. When Trump repeatedly ignored the rules, Biden should have called for the debate to be stopped. Or, they should have found some other way to enforce the debate contract, knowing Trump will do this. But, neither the host nor Biden wanted that, because these new Trump reality TV standards work for them.
By continuing with the process in spite of what Trump did, they colluded with him to make it the new normal. (As you and Madan have said, there were other better Democratic candidates. But, they are not here because everyone is measured against Trump now.) Biden and Wallace forgot to respect the people watching it for gaining insight into who will be the better presidential candidate. (Only thing I know after the debate is that Biden has benefitted from this system and won’t fix it. He has said it himself, although not in so many words.)
This is why I used the Chithi-disrupting-the-wedding-lunch metaphor. When the rasam isn’t good, guests crib about it, talk in hushed tones, or at best stop eating rasam. But someone needs to stop it and say enough is enough, and fix it. America is a nation built by fixers, who moved (forcibly or otherwise) from other countries because they weren’t allowed to fix things there (when it was not forced). In a way, Trump is a disruptor, a wedding guest who made the loudest noise. Instead of gathering around the noise and joining the debate, they need to elect someone who will fix the rasam.
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Madan
October 3, 2020
“When Trump repeatedly ignored the rules, Biden should have called for the debate to be stopped.” – He can’t. He is not the moderator. Wallace is. Wallace tried and tried to get Trump to obey the rules. You can blame Wallace too if you like but Wallace was working here for the news channel hosting the debate (though he is NOT on this particular channel’s rolls) and they would not authorize him to shut down the debate. So I don’t agree that this is because the reality TV standards work for THEM and more that it works for the network. Or the network thought it works. It didn’t. The viewership was way down from 2016.
Yes, someone needs to stop it and say enough is enough but why shouldn’t it be the person wielding maximum power? I don’t understand still the need to draw an equivalency here. I would have gone along with that in 2016 but there is no reason for Trump to continue to operate this way, not now that he is President. It was within his power to let Biden speak. When a guy doubles down on interrupting again and again (for the record, it added up to nearly twice per minute), I am not going to blame the others trying to restrain him from interrupting, I WILL blame him and him alone.
“There were other better Democratic candidates. But they are not here because everyone is measured against Trump now” – This again highlights your misreading of the situation. Biden is the Dem candidate because he is the median least offensive candidate the various disunited factions of the Dem party could converge on. He won big with older voters, especially older black voters in the South, and with blue collar voters in general and won just enough from other groups like suburbanites and young voters to beat the next largest coalition (which was Sanders’). What I am saying is this would in fact have turned far more acrimonious with a Sanders or Kamala Harris as the nominee. Or a different moderator for that matter. They would have been less willing, if anything, to put up with Trump’s nonsensical strategy of butting in repeatedly to not let them get a word in and would have used even more unparliamentarian language. It ended up the way it was because Wallace is a very experienced operator, probably the best TV journalist in the US, and Biden is in fact more wont to shrug off nastiness from the other side with a chuckle or a laugh.
The requirement to be parliamentarian or civil cannot be unconditional or one sided. And there also cannot be an onus to walk out of battle if the other party insists on breaking the rules. What you then do is retaliate just often enough to let them know you are not taking this lying down but without descending to their level. You are entitled to a view that Biden and Wallace descended to Trump’s level but I would not agree with you there. And of the three main actors in the show, the only one I really respect is Wallace. So this has nothing to do with political allegiances. I don’t like Reagan but as a debater, he was like 1000x the quality of Trump, one of the best there was in recent times. If you repeatedly jump the signal and bully your way into traffic, don’t complain if somebody with a big fat SUV lets you bang into their vehicle and damage yourself.
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Srinivas R
October 3, 2020
Not following US elections but for social media chatter. I did see an utterly shocking video of Joe Biden in what looks like posh dinners. A series of clips showing him touching kids inappropriately( kids are visibly uncomfortable), asking a 5 year old girl about dating( seemingly as a joke). I was shocked and am convinced that he is a paedophile. I am shocked he reached this stage. Last election Dems sidelined Sanders for Hillary and they have sidelined him for Biden. Big mistake, IMO.
Trump is a bigoted, lying, racist, narcisst etc. But surely thats not reason to back a peodophile.
I am open to counter opinions, as i am not following US elections. The video was so repelling, i am not able to shake it off.
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Madan
October 3, 2020
@Srinivas R Is Biden a pedophile? He might be, if evidence to that effect is provided. I have seen the videos you mention and I concluded him to be a creep who loves to get handsy with women, even or especially much younger women (or underage girls). Would he necessarily have gone past being handsy to committing an actual unconsensual sexual act? Again, absent evidence I cannot accuse him of that.
For context, in a previous org, I knew this septuagenarian senior colleague who was incidentally a Tamil Iyer. Quoted something from Thirkurral during his 35 years completion celebration. And LOVED, LOVED to shake hands with women. “She is like my daughter” nu solli tightly hug somebody, more tightly than she wants. Naturally when he once offered a lift to a young female colleague, she with our assistance invented a pretext to avoid the ride.
BUT he never went beyond that. Never. Like Biden, he only married once and remained married to the same person last I knew of him.
That does not make handshakes that linger on ok, or touching girls or women without asking if they are ok. But if you say pedophile, it would imply something more malignant than that and I don’t know if he is one.
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Anu Warrier
October 3, 2020
Srinivas – Biden a paedophile? Those are right-wing talking points. No one has ever accused Biden of being anything other than a touchy-feely guy. Even the one sexual harassment allegation against him was proven to be false. (Or do you think the Rs would have left him alone?) In fact it is the orange dotard who has been close friends with a man who was in jail for having sex with underage girls. And been accused of the rape of a 13-year-old, and has 26 women on record accusing him of sexual harassment and rape.
This was the same allegation that dogged the 2016 allegation – that the Democratic party was running a paedophile wing. Let me point out that the only legislators who have since been arraigned for possession of child pornography have all been Rs.
The Biden video is probably a doctored one. (Actually, why am I even saying ‘probably’? It is.)
As for asking a 5-year-old about dating? My son was 5 when his coach’s wife joked about how handsome he was and asked if he had a girlfriend. This is America.
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Anu Warrier
October 3, 2020
@ Prasanna – But, neither the host nor Biden wanted that, because these new Trump reality TV standards work for them.
You’re completely misreading the situation here. Biden can’t stop the debate. And what Madan said. (I think I will just copy and paste this everywhere.)
And when the election commission said they would enforce the rules for the next debate, Trump has outright refused to have them changed. This is the state of the US today – we have an autocrat in power, and a set of lackeys to say ‘yea’ and ‘nay’.
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Rahul
October 3, 2020
“Oh, no, make no mistake – they care about power very, very much indeed. They will cynically play whatever game they need to play to keep it.”
Of course, but let me give an example about what i meant. There is still overwhelming support for legal abortion in the USA but every one of them are prepared to die on that hill. Trump is an insecure guy who likes all the fawning party men , and they do not mind either because he is doing their bidding, despite not being a religious conservative.
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Aman Basha
October 4, 2020
@Anu Warrier: Along with the Orange dotard, so were Bill and Hillary Clinton. And guess who tried to raise objection to Weinstein’s expose by Ronan Farrow, Hillary’s publicist. Who were informed of Weinstein’s predatory behavior by Lena Dunham? Hillary’s campaign. And what did they do about it? Nothing. In fact, more than Trump, Bill Clinton was on the ‘Lolita Express far more times. Hillary always stands up for herself and herself alone, good thing that she rightfully lost after fixing the primaries.
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Madan
October 4, 2020
” There is still overwhelming support for legal abortion in the USA but every one of them are prepared to die on that hill.” – And this is something that is really hard to get about where the US right wing politics is at on abortion. If they were opposing a liberal move to completely free up abortion via federal law, it would be one thing. But overturning Roe v Wade? Why indeed? Roe v Wade permits states to ban abortion completely in the third trimester. That is reasonable enough, or so one would have thought. I have come across a few conservatives saying now that they are so uncomfortable with Trump that they are prepared to put up with the Dems’ position on abortion for the sake of protecting the office of the Presidency. But it’s a few. That Trump is still ‘only’ nearly 8 points behind Biden as per the polling is stunning. And this is not same movie as 2016 syndrome. He has demonstrably proved himself unfit for the office in this last week. Through his own words in the debate and not because of anything the media alleged.
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H. Prasanna
October 4, 2020
@Anu and Madan
I didn’t mean that they could stop the debate while still following the rules of the debate. I was asking them to break the rules of the debate and stop it, as a protest. They are not going to send the cops to pull Wallace and Biden off the stage. That’s what a leader would do when the system stops working for the people. Everyone knew Trump would talk over the other and disrupt the debate before it happened. Wallace and Biden went along with Trump’s strategy rather than try to find a solution to the problem Trump has crystallized. These reality TV rules are the new rules of debating now, until someone steps up and protests. The more Trump undermines the position of US president the easier it is for people like Wallace and Biden. They know this and went along with this.
They went along because it works for them to not challenge the authority that gives them the privilege to do their job. But there are millions of Americans who can’t afford that. And they are the ones who these people are supposed to represent.
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Madan
October 4, 2020
“Everyone knew Trump would talk over the others and disrupt the debate before it happened” – If that is so, the Trump team should not have agreed to rules that clearly specified both candidates would get 2 uninterrupted minutes on each question. Who was being disingenuous here? Trump, not Biden or Wallace. What Trump did was like Ponting in the infamous Sydney Test asking the umpire to accept a very doubtful catch because the two captains had a gentleman’s agreement to take the other’s word in case of catches. Now what did Kumble do? Following your logic, he should have thrown a fit like Gavaskar and asked the batsmen to walk off. He didn’t do that. He fought valiantly to the bitter end and then declared in the press conference that only one team played in the spirit of the game. And while Biden didn’t say words to that effect, it was implied. Your logic somehow comes across as if Biden and Wallace had a responsibility to save Trump from himself. They don’t. Trump is not a child though he frequently acts like one. He is an adult and he is responsible for his actions. Biden and Wallace did the right thing letting people see Trump in his full ugly splendour. Because the American people need to know. They need to be not given a make believe option, a choice to hide away from the truth. With the President unfiltered and unhinged, there was indeed no place to hide. You saw Fox’s John Roberts declare on air he was sick of it.
The ‘it’ being indulging in nonstop whataboutisms and other dubious defenses to protect the President’s ‘side’. And this it moment had to happen for there to ever be a reckoning of Trumpism at all. And the only way it would happen would be because the President and his enablers finally pushed even his allies over the edge. Because when the liberals, when the Democrats said the same thing, they wouldn’t even hear of it. And I think that answers your question too. For more than four years, one side has repeatedly urged Trump to be Presidential, not because it would make it easier for them to beat him but because he owed it to the nation he was serving. Sorry, what responsibility do the Democrats bear now in a debate for Trump’s behaviour? He could have listened when they told him not to go there several times.
And if the American people want to know what Biden stands for, he has been giving numerous speeches on the campaign trail. So it’s not like a skewered debate leaves them in the dark. Here’s Biden again urging people to wear masks. Will they listen now or will they sink their heads deeper into nonsense conspiracy theories?
If it sounds like I am taking this personally, it is. My cousin and her husband got covid. They live in Michigan, the same state where righties marched against the oppression of masks, bearing arms to boot. So I do not take kindly to the President mocking his rival for wearing a mask. Him getting covid has comeuppance written all over it. And if his words have hung him out to dry in full public view, exposing himself and America to the world, that’s really too bad. They knew all this in 2016. They could have at least not voted for him if they found Clinton unpalatable.
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H. Prasanna
October 4, 2020
@Madan I agree that Trump’s behavior is not the responsibility of the Democratic party. But upholding democratic processes is. If Ponting repeatedly disregarded the rule to the undermine the game itself, then there would have been no other way but to walk out. The batsman still edged the ball within the rules of the game and the umpire declared him out within the rules of the game. What Trump did was akin to wave at the batsman from behind the bowler when he was going to play the ball. There is no other way to deal with it other than stopping the game. The answer is not the runner distracting the bowler when he is bowling, which is what Biden did. And Kumble genuinely did not know Ponting was going to do that. Biden and Wallace knew Trump will deliberately disrupt the process.
I am just coming at it from a different angle. If the opposition party is not interested in upholding democratic processes, we are on our own.
The system does not work for common people like it does for people like Biden and Wallace. They can afford to not protest and still retain their respective positions without any real consequences. But, when democratic processes don’t work for us, we protest. We are always held to that standard. When we go to renew our license, for example, and the person at DMV is acting like Trump did, we protest. We have real consequences if we don’t get our licenses, or even if there is a delay. We can’t afford to walk out or let the guy do whatever he wants if we don’t get our licences. We have to find a way to make it work. We can’t afford to wait until he is reprimanded or voted out of office. Guys like Trump act with impunity because they are not held to those standards. Biden and Wallace are supposed to do that. They are representatives of people at the DMV, of those without power. They cannot say I can also act with impunity because these are the new standards now.
I am not saying they should protect Trump, I am saying they should protect democratic processes. They can’t just pass the responsibility onto the voters and let him do whatever he wants until then. Implied assignment of responsibility is not enough when there is such blatant disregard for democratic processes.
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Madan
October 4, 2020
“I am saying they should protect democratic processes” – And I don’t see how stopping the debate would have done that. It would have only provided more cannon fodder for Trumpist conspiracy nuts to claim MSM is rigging the process to favour Biden. The key word is democratic. Democratic implies the will of the people. So you HAVE to let the voters decide. And if the voters decide to bring back Trump, they have to live down that choice. They cannot blame it on other political parties or politicians.
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Cathy Cooper
October 4, 2020
Mr Prasanna, apologies for asking this but are you a resident of the US? I respect your views however your reading of Mr Biden’s options during the debate, aka walking away from the debate, was never on the table. Anu and Madan have explained this very well so I will not rehash the same.
I wish the President a very speedy recovery and good health. This will of course further strengthen his base. The million dollar question(s) are the swing states. Sadly that’s still very open despite everything that has gone wrong in the last 4 years.
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H. Prasanna
October 4, 2020
@Cathy, Madan, Anu
I accept that it was never an option. I have not watched any other American presidential debate. I am not used this uncontrolled disruptive behaviour of Trump. And also someone was calling the president of America a clown and he was really numb to it. It was kind of unnerving, and I just wanted it to stop. I was surprised there was no option to do that in the US, which led me to think they have really started approaching it like reality TV.
@Cathy I am not a US resident.
@Madan
I wish your cousin’s family have a full recovery. Someone who lives opposite my parents’ place contracted the virus last month. They got better, but the quarantine period was really scary. It is a troubling time.
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Anu Warrier
October 5, 2020
@Anu Warrier: Along with the Orange dotard, so were Bill and Hillary Clinton. And guess who tried to raise objection to Weinstein’s expose by Ronan Farrow, Hillary’s publicist. Who were informed of Weinstein’s predatory behavior by Lena Dunham? Hillary’s campaign. And what did they do about it? Nothing. In fact, more than Trump, Bill Clinton was on the ‘Lolita Express far more times. Hillary always stands up for herself and herself alone, good thing that she rightfully lost after fixing the primaries.
@Aman – Bill Clinton was a known skirt-chaser. Back to when he was the Governor of Arkansas. But he has never been known or accused of paedophilia or even an interest in underage girls. And there were plenty of chances while he was in power and during the #MeToo movement for anyone to come out. His affairs were consensual, and while I think the behaviour is sleazy, it does not border on the criminal. Or do you think that when Ronan Farrow uncovered the Epstein scandal, he would have not named Clinton if he was involved?
The only major accusation against him has been by Juanita Broaddrick, and that was dismissed for lack of evidence. Was she right? Did he rape her? I don’t know. I am willing to hear the evidence, and believe what that shows me. So far, there hasn’t been anything credible.
As for her publicist objecting to Farrow’s article, he’s on record denying that. It’s a fact that Weinstein’s donations were not accepted by the campaign. Farrow himself said (in an interview to Rolling Stone) that Hilary Clinton cancelled an interview with him about Weinstein. He’s also on record saying he doesn’t know what specific concerns were expressed by Dunham to the campaign, how actionable those actions were, and how far up the campaign were these concerns communicated.
Finally, it comes down to this – neither Clinton is on the Democratic ticket today. Joe Biden is.
In his 35 years of public service, there has not been one allegation of sexual misdemeanour against him. Not only that, when told that his behaviour had made several women uncomfortable, he openly took responsibility for his actions and apologised. Not a non-apology, like most politicians give, but a serious ‘come-to-Jesus’ moment of reflection and regret.
The man’s decent. If nothing else, and even if he only serves one term, he will do his best to unite this country, and bring civility back into public discourse. Never again will so many of us have to hang our heads in shame at the actions of the man who represents all of us. If he doesn’t win this November 2, we can forget the idea of a United States of America. Or indeed, of an America at all.
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Anu Warrier
October 5, 2020
@ Prasanna – What Madan said. 🙂
Seriously… are you seriously suggesting that Biden should have walked off to protest the farce of a debate?
You’re holding him responsible for managing Trump’s tantrums? His despicable behaviour?
Can you not see what would have happened if Biden had done that? Trump and his cronies would have been crowing that he “won” and that “Sleepy Joe” couldn’t debate because he was old and senile!
Chris Wallace has already been accused by the Trump team of ‘haranguing the president’ and the president having to ‘debate both Wallace and Biden’. Can you not understand what would have happened if Wallace had stopped the debate?!
You seem to live in a world where one side – the one which is going by law and the rule book, and is being restrained and civil is being held to a higher standard than the one who raking the muck. If ‘clown’ and ‘Putin’s puppy’ are the harshest things that Biden said on that stage that made him “as uncivil as the other side”, then you know what? I will take it. Incivility and all. I’m sick of the whataboutery here.
Trump is a lying, cheating, despotic, bigot and wanna-be dictator. Oh, and did I forget rapist? Tax launderer? Braggart? Conman? Scammer? And worse of all, incompetent.
But just as in 2016, “But… Hilary’s emails!” became the watchword, perhaps this year, it will be, “But… Biden called him a clown!”
I really do think the people who make a case for Trump deserve Trump.
Only… what about the rest of us who have done nothing to deserve this excrescence? Where do we go?
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Anu Warrier
October 5, 2020
@Cathy Cooper – I wish the President a very speedy recovery and good health.
*You’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.”
I don’t. I wish he recovers, sure, but that’s only so I can live to see him marched out of the WH, and standing trial for his crimes and misdemeanours. He has the blood of 207K (and counting) Americans on his hands. I want to see him in an orange suit that matches his fake tan.
But in the meantime, I want him to suffer – so he knows what he put millions of Americans through. Even this – he knew he had been in the vicinity of someone who had tested positive for Covid-19, and he still went to the NJ fundraiser, infecting so many others, who in turn have infected many more.
The average American is not going to have a team of doctors watch over him 24 hours. Or the medical attention that he gets by virtue of being president – all paid for by our tax dollars. I give a rat’s patootie if he suffers. But I do want to see him held accountable – at least once!
(My husband’s cousin died of Covid yesterday; another cousin and her daughter and son-in-law have been infected. I’m literally shaking with rage as I write this.)
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Madan
October 5, 2020
@ Anu Warrier: I am mildly hopeful that “clown/shut up” will not become the email scandal equivalent of 2016. And the reason is what you said earlier. Biden simply doesn’t inspire that kind of animus. At worst, he inspires ennui and in an election with high negative partisanship, that is not a bad thing. The Democrat side will stay put with him while Biden being bland makes it easier for Independents or Republicans who dislike Trump to switch than in the case of Clinton. One never knows until it’s over. But RCP/538 shows me a map where Trump’s leads in Alaska and Missouri are no bigger than Biden’s in PA/Michigan/Wisconsin (i.e. the ‘swing states’, with states like Virginia not even being in play). The map Biden is playing with is a lot bigger than in 2016 and that should ordinarily help. Ordinarily.
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cleanchittobillclinton
October 5, 2020
@Anu: you are just spouting left wing talking points. Clean chit to Bill Clinton lol . Decent man, it seems. The high horse on which ppl like you sit! Have SOME objectivity. Or be more humble. The double standards are SO hard to swallow. That’s why Trump will win. AGAIN.
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Amit Joki
October 5, 2020
I saw the debate purely for entertainment. And here’s my thought on the candidacy. Elections are now being won by domineering/alpha/strong personalities who can stand their ground rather than the policies they back.
You can see this being played out almost everywhere. It is true even in New Zealand where Jacinda Ardern has been elected. She gives me a vibe of someone so sure of herself and that invokes my confidence in her. Hillary/Biden on the other hand, didn’t. Rahul didn’t. Unless the candidates are equally charming/confident personalities, we won’t be seeing elections being contested purely on the basis of the policies.
Trump interrupted a lot. But Biden should have been equally up to the task, forsaking public decency/presidential behaviour if need be because it matters lot less than winning the election.
Obama was a confident lad. He would have absolutely blown Trump out of the water. Just bad timing.
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H. Prasanna
October 5, 2020
@Anu
You’re right. At the end of the day, I too felt like I was making a case for Trump. But, that was not my intention. I intended to say that Biden and Wallace did not fight him harder or in the right way. But, once again, as you and Madan have said that is also not on them.
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Madan
October 5, 2020
“Trump interrupted a lot. But Biden should have been equally up to the task, forsaking public decency/presidential behaviour if need be because it matters lot less than winning the election.” – Well, but that contradicts what Prasanna is saying, right? And then there was an undecided voter talking to Frank Luntz saying Biden wasn’t presidential enough because he used the word ‘clown’ on the President (which exactly echoes Prasanna’s argument). So there doesn’t seem to be a ‘right’ way to counter Trump.
I also don’t see Jacinda as an alpha type at all. It is just easier to look confident when dealing with another centrist (in this case Judith Collins). Which is what Obama ‘benefited’ from as well. There is no comparison between debating John McCain/Mitt Romney and debating Trump. If you don’t believe me, watch some of Biden debating Paul Ryan. Trump does not follow debate rules. And in general does not seem any longer at least to respect any democratic norms (democratic here not being a reference to the party). IF voters want that, even at the cost of incredibly bad handling of covid, because it makes them feel macho, that is the govt they will get.
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Anuja Chandramouli
October 5, 2020
Very nice article Prasanna. This reality TV style brand of politics will be the death of us. It has come down to a politician’s ability to make his shit take on the sheen of gold and sell it to his loving fanboys and girls. These will no doubt continue to adore him even after the jig is up because the rabid supporters will dismiss the truth as fake news peddled by the left or right anyway (depending on which side they have allied with) and sadly, everyone seems to believe the news (or whatsapp forwards) only if it supports their existing POV. The whole thing is an unholy mess and I shudder to think that the future belongs to social media influencers who are full of shit and little else.
‘I am mildly hopeful that “clown/shut up” will not become the email scandal equivalent of 2016. And the reason is what you said earlier. Biden simply doesn’t inspire that kind of animus.’ I agree, Madan. Ordinarily that would make Biden the winning candidate and hopefully he goes on to win. But I have grave concerns and more than a few doubts about how this may play out.
I can’t help thinking that Trump’s Covid diagnosis and the comments that he deserves it, etc. might work in his favour. Besides let’s talk about the ‘Putin’s Puppy’ thing. I find it rich that this is such a trigger for so many Americans especially since the CIA goombahs have devoted themselves towards actively dethroning democratically elected leaders to install puppets and tyrants in so many parts of the world just so they can enrich themselves at the expense of others for yonks now. Suddenly the shoe is on the other foot and it hurts. When a moral compass is lacking among those who govern and are governed, this is exactly the kind of ugliness we can expect when the chickens come home to roost.
Moreover, I can’t help but think that Trump himself came to power mostly because a big chunk of white America shares his bigoted views even if they wouldn’t actually admit to it (even to themselves let alone pollsters). Hate crimes against the minorities were hugely prevalent even before he came to power, and I feel the only difference is, in his reign, people no longer bother to even pretend to embrace diversity. Hopefully, I am wrong about this or else the worst can be expected and Trump will wind up winning by a bleeding landslide.
It is pretty much the same in India. The caste/class divide continues to widen simply because those on the privileged side of the divide have no wish to share the riches and are perfectly content for the downtrodden to remain buried in the gutters while they live it up in luxury and comfort. Which is why our elections tend to have lamentable outcomes too.
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Srinivas R
October 5, 2020
I feel come what may and who wins the election in US, the days of USA as the global power are in it’s last legs. Over the next decade, I foresee them more to be in the middle of the pack and lose their global influence. I can’t clearly articulate why I feel this way. It’s a mix of their extreme capitalism , where the big fat cats don’t face any liability for the risks they take and the price ouging they do + the battering of lower economic section of the country. This cannot continue for long now without serious consequences.This process of great economic divide, ( which accentuated the existing divide of racicism) started somewhere in mid 80s and successive regimes have kept it going.
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brangan
October 5, 2020
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Aman Basha
October 5, 2020
@Anu Warrier: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/12/lena-dunham-harvey-weinstein-clinton-campaign
“I just want to let you know that Harvey’s a rapist, and this is going to come out at some point,” Dunham said she told Kristina Schake, the campaign’s deputy communications director. “I think it’s a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because it’s an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault.”
Schake seemed surprised by the remarks, Dunham told the Times, and said she would alert Robby Mook, the Clinton campaign manager. Dunham said she also told Clinton spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod about Weinstein. When reached by the Times, Elrod and Schake denied that Dunham had specifically mentioned rape to them. Mook said no one had ever reached out to him about Weinstein.
Nick Merrill, the communications director, gave the following statement to the Times: “We were shocked when we learned what he’d done. It’s despicable behavior, and the women that have come forward have shown enormous courage. As to claims about a warning, that’s something staff wouldn’t forget . . . Only [Dunham] can answer why she would tell them instead of those who could stop him.”
Though there are disputes about this particular account, it goes without saying that Weinstein did not lose his access to Clinton, nor did he lose his gilded reputation in Hollywood at large—a reputation that has since been destroyed.
-https://variety.com/2017/politics/news/harvey-weinstein-clinton-foundation-1202590796/
Weinstein raised money for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and helped organize fundraising events, including an October, 2016 star-filled gala at the St. James Theater on Broadway. She stepped away from foundation activities during her presidential campaign.
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Anu Warrier
October 5, 2020
Clean chit to Bill Clinton lol . Decent man, it seems. The high horse on which ppl like you sit! Have SOME objectivity.
Where, in my comment, did I give a clean chit to Clinton? Please, show me?
And ‘decent man’ was my description of Biden. I believe he is. Across party lines, that’s how people know of him. How is that a ‘left wing talking point’?
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Madan
October 5, 2020
Srinivas R: Absolutely. They have held an edge in technology for long but now China is closing that gap as well. US is roughly where Britain was after it began to lose in the free market battles. USA has long ago ceded any hold over consumer products nor do they compete particularly well with European manufacturers in hi tech/capital goods. Ironically, it is actually easier for those European countries to deindustralize (as Canada or Australia have) because of their small populations. With 300 million people, USA doesn’t have a choice but to retain a large manufacturing presence but it doesn’t seem like its business leaders appreciate this. Or maybe they do but they feel extracting a bigger bottom line by outsourcing manufacturing is the only thing that matters and to hell with the consequences.
I have read this book called “At Any Cost: Jack Welch, General Electric and the Pursuit of Profit” by Thomas F O’ Boyle. I am quoting a para from the book:
“Today, although there’s a Wal-Mart on the outskirts of town, the factories and downtown stores are mostly gone. So, too, are the manufacturing jobs that supported whole families, and gone with them the faith in the future they represented. [] To some extent, then, it is not surprising that frustrated, angry men would turn out one snowy February night to hear Mark Koernke, one of the chief spokesmen of the country’s growing militia movement, [] No doubt some were passionate “gun people”; Meadville is in a mostly rural area where hunting remains a way of life. No doubt some were military castoffs, tax evaders, survivalists, misanthropes, anti-Semites or white supremacists. But some who heard Koernke’s message of hatred and distrust were another type of dispossessed – conservative, patriotic, God-fearing men who once voted for Ronald Reagan and once belived in the rules but now think they no longer apply. They are men who search for meaning in a world that has passed them by and doesn’t care about their welfare.”
These words were not written after or around Trump got elected but in 1999! Boyle brilliantly predicted the consequences of Jack Welch-ization of corporate America, both for GE itself (which is now a shell of the behemoth it once was) and for the American economy. The pathologies that created Trump have been around for a long time and the pathologies that created coastal intolerance for blue collar crowd have likewise been around before Trump got elected (remember Obama ranting about older Midwest voters clinging on to guns, racism and religion…well, what else would they cling to if politicians and big biz take away their work and their dignity).
Independent films were made on this subject in the mid 90s, like this one about Lima, Ohio which becomes verily an acronym for Lost In Middle America.
For too long, these problems were left unheeded…until Trump’s ascension made it impossible to ignore. But for one, it may be too late now to fix the loss of manufacturing. For another, Trump being replaced by a moderate like Biden will only kick the can down the road. USA will have to reckon with the fundamental problems and get down to fixing them. But that will require thinking of others’ problems as their problems, not an easy prospect in an individualist society like theirs.
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Tambi Dude
October 5, 2020
“And ‘decent man’ was my description of Biden. ”
Perhaps you meant decent ladies’ man 🙂 and that too a forced one
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Cathy Cooper
October 5, 2020
@Anu, I am very sorry for your loss. This is a horrendous year!
To all the other comments taking umbrage at Biden being described a decent man, I did consider typing out a reasoned out comment but then I realised that these people are already drunk with the Trump kool aid.
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Tambi Dude
October 5, 2020
Dems too have consumed Kool Aid along with their BLM brothers and sisters. The rampage we saw in the last few months – if that does not wake up Dem supporters, nothing else will.
I hope every Dem voter experience firsthand when his/her business/home is looted and burned by BLM goons while Kamala Harris cheers them on like she did recently.
If this pleases you, I think Trump is going to lose. His conduct has been disgusting. But the Dem party of today is a worse poison. I expect slow brain Dem supporters to realize this in another 5-10 yrs when AOC, Rashid Taleb, Ilhan become the next generation Dem leaders.
Good luck.
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H. Prasanna
October 5, 2020
Thank you @Anuja.
@Anu, sorry for the loss. I wish your husband’s cousin’s wife and daughter a full recovery.
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Rahul
October 5, 2020
Tambidiot, no matter how much you suck up to Trump and apply fair and lovely, in the eyes of Trump supporters you will still be what you are – a Tambidiot.
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Anu Warrier
October 5, 2020
@Tambi Dude – I’m heartily sick of the right-wing conspiracy theories regarding BLM. As in every protest anywhere, anti-social elements take advantage of legitimate protests to create chaos and vandalise property. And where the protests did turn violent, blame the continued oppression of Blacks in the US – since George Black, how many black lives have been lost unnecessarily in blatant police shootings?
But sure. Talk about the liberal Kool Aid. And yes, I hope AOC, Rashida Taleb and Ilhan become the face of the party. I’m tired of Old White Men deciding our fates. In another 5-20 years, the Squad will be tempered by experience and learn how to navigate political shoals. But I hope their idealism doesn’t waver. Nor their commitment to the people.
And no, Joe Biden has never been known as a ladies’ man. There hasn’t been a breath of scandal concerning the man. Yes, he’s known to be touchy-feely, and is probably part of his nature, but he’s sincerely apologised for that. Considering his team consists of 54% women, who all stand staunchly by him, I am fine with going out on a limb to say, “He is a decent man.”
@Cathy – thank you. I appreciate it.
I did consider typing out a reasoned out comment but then I realised that these people are already drunk with the Trump kool aid.
Yeah, me too. I’m outta here. Not been quite well for some time, and I don’t have the energy any more.
Keeping all my double digits crossed for Nov.3.
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Enigma
October 6, 2020
Joe Biden is a decent man and I hope he wins. But the next generation Democratic party leaders are either far left, like AOC, or fundamentalists pretending to be leftists, like Ilhan Omar . It is quite sad that the moderate, centrist voices are being drowned out. I hope Biden’s victory (hopefully) will trigger a wave of centrism and moderate policies right across the world,
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Santa
October 6, 2020
Madan: Regarding Obama’s quote about older Midwest voters clinging on to guns, racism and religion, the following are his exact remarks:
“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”
He was saying exactly what you are saying, empathizing with the older Midwest voter, and not ranting about it.
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Madan
October 6, 2020
Santa: Thanks, guess I missed the context. And that may have happened because the sentence standalone sounds inflammatory. Maybe he could have phrased it differently but I respect that the intent was bonafide.
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Aman Basha
October 6, 2020
Talking about COVID, I am absolutely confused by what is going on. The lockdown in India was very strict but doesn’t seem to have worked except in harming livelihoods and the mass exodus of migrant workers. Case numbers are increasing (although it is much smaller given how populous India is) and what is the talk about this second wave? It seems to have hit Europe now, so is India next or are we in second wave right now?
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Arjun
October 6, 2020
Blaming Trump is just a fashion statement at this point. He sets a bad example personally, sure. But I have yet to hear anyone lay out what exactly he could/should have done policy wise. It’s not like other liberal democracies are handling Corona in a stellar manner either. Modi’s disastrous, unplanned, unthought out lockdown has been a double whammy – spreading corona to the hinterland due to migrant workers returning and causing an economic crash. If at all, what this has shown is that if you are solving only for Corona and not broader public health and well-being, authoritarian regimes like China are the most efficient at dealing with it. Sure, Orange man bad, but can anyone point out what he could have done but didn’t? With US’s federal system, no Dem president would have been able to implement state border closures or mask mandates (both of which have been pretty useless in India and elsewhere anyway). Sweden is the only western democracy that had a long-term sustainable plan from the beginning. And they seem to have avoided a massive second wave so far…although the winter will be…interesting.
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Madan
October 6, 2020
“But I have yet to hear anyone lay out what exactly he could/should have done policy wise” – Oh yes, the classic defence akin to what BJP supporters resort to when questioned about his policies. A lay person does not have access to the data that the President or others in positions of high power and responsibility do. Ergo, the onus is not on the lay person to provide alternative solutions. But the criticism has several legs to stand on. For one, Trump had intelligence in Jan that he didn’t act on. He knew privately that the virus was deadly, we know this because he said so to Woodward and he hasn’t denied it. But he publicly put out an extremely irresponsible message that has hampered efforts to control the spread of the virus from the get go. There was absolutely no need for something like masks to become a divisive issue…unless you too are one of the conspiracy theorists who believes a mask has no impact (and, I may add, would like to cling on to that belief in spite of the ill fated Rose Garden event spreading covid thick and fast among several of its attendees). I wonder if you have seen the video where Trump supporters had gathered for an Ohio event and booed down the (Republican) Lt Governor advising them to wear masks when they visit supermarkets etc. Whatever you want to think of India’s response (which has indeed been deeply flawed), at least we don’t fight over masks of all things. I will add that you are trying to have it both ways when you characterize Modi’s response as disastrous and in the same breath attempt to say nobody else could have done anything differently to what Trump did. No…if Modi’s response was disastrous, then Trump’s has been cataclysmic.
That is, that I don’t think US with its size, population and diversity would have ever got Nordic-like numbers on covid but I also think the response was inadequate and that the President himself was an impediment to an effective response rather than enabling it.
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Enigma
October 6, 2020
@Aman Basha, the Indian lockdown was strict in paper but poorly enforced. During the height of the first lockdown I knew of people moving around freely. Anyway, with India’s population and size I don’t think anything can be done. China literally welded people in their homes, India could have hardly done that. I think of all liberal democracies, Australia and New Zealand handled it the best. I live in Sydney, the shutdown here was very well enforced. However, people were still allowed to go to work. It is another matter everyone chose to work from home. We had a second wave in Melbourne, that is also now under control. Let us see how things pan out.
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Srinivas R
October 6, 2020
@Anu – I am surprised by your support for Ihan of all people, there is enough information out there to indicate that she is religious radical.I would be worried if she becomes a mainstream face in US politics.
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Aman Basha
October 6, 2020
@Engima, I think it was a mixed result. Some areas were done very strictly, especially tier-2 and tier-3 cities, but the major problem was the migrant exodus which spread the virus to the hinterlands. Yes, Australia, New Zealand and even South Korea are said to have handled the crisis very well, and are China’s death figures really accurate? Everyone everywhere questioned them and I think Australia wanted a UN probe in Wuhan, to which China responded with economic sanctions.
Anyway, my question is still whether India is in a second wave or is entering into one? And what are the possible ramifications of such a second wave? Will it lead to much stringent measures or another lockdown like some of Europe? Will it be more dangerous and how long will this one last?
And though US is on its last days as a Global superpower, I hope the next President is strong enough to bring other nations to take on China. I don’t think it’ll bode well for India if that doesn’t happen.
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Tambi Dude
October 6, 2020
Anu: Majority of BLM riots happened in blue states. Policing and law and order is a state subject in USA.
You don’t need to tell me about the white cop violence. I am a big critic of it. However, I am not going to link it to Trump because all this has happened during Obama admin too.
We also need to be bit more nuanced. There is a bigger number of black-on-black killings which liberals convenient pretend does not exist so that their narrative is not punctured. Blacks also need to do a lot in their community. Crime and gun violence are lot higher among them and so is single mom family. Kids growing up without a father figure at home may end up on the wrong side of the law.
That being said, let me state it categorically. No ethnic group in USA can claim to have been shafted more than the blacks. I do empathize with them.
Dem party has changed. May be even Bill Clinton cannot find a place. Didn’t AOC herself say that in no other country she and Biden will be in the same party. I understand that over a period of time policies of a party changes Back in 1971 Nixon and Kissinger were terribly anti India but Dems were pro India. However, Clinton admin gave lot of grief to India regarding Kashmir (around 1995). PVNR had to use the services of ABV to wade it thru.
The present Dem party is clearly far more anti India than R. They are the ones annoying us with questions on revocation of 370, CAA. Ro Khanna, a congress member from the Bay area, CA is now totally on the side of Pakistan. Privately he told his dismayed Indian supporters that he has no other option than be pro pak because that is the only way he can grow.
Dem party has lost desi supporter base by about 15-20% after 2016. You do not have to think hard for the reason.
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Tambi Dude
October 6, 2020
“Anu: Majority of BLM riots happened in blue states. Policing and law and order is a state subject in USA.”
Also, some blue mayors chose to do nothing while rioting was going on because that served some political purpose for them. Example, mayor of Portland refused any helps from feds. That city saw some 60+ days of non stop riots.
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Tambi Dude
October 6, 2020
Desi Americans supporting Dem should look at one country. UK
UK desis use to be big time Labor supporters. Today they have moved to Conservatives lock stock and barrel. So did British Jews. Reason is not hard to guess. Labor has consistently espoused anti India and anti Semitic. In the last election early this year L got a drubbing.
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Madan
October 6, 2020
Not related to the debate or the discussion on covid, but a very interesting article. While it does not explain why parts of the college educated white demographic still support Trump, it gets down to the heart of why the Midwest and Appalachia support him. And no, it’s not guns, racism etc etc…the reasons will surprise you. What will surprise you even more is to then consider the disconnect between the national Democratic Party leadership and these city/state leaders.
https://thebulwark.com/the-other-democratic-party/
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Arjun
October 6, 2020
Madan: This is one of your typical verbose rants with no substance. You also seem very defensive about Modi and India. You also clearly dont understand statistics, so no point arguing with you.
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Tambi Dude
October 6, 2020
Why is that when it comes to Republican party we are supposed to judge the entire party as a party of scums, but when it comes to Dems, we should ignore genuine nut cases like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Prameela Jaypal and other nuts will be fine when they taste power. Matter of convenience or plain wishful thinking.
I do not want to encourage R claim of mail in vote fraud, but Ilhan Omar has a serious charge of vote fraud in her district.
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Srinivas R
October 6, 2020
@Arjun – Of the many things I have read in comments section, Madan being defensive about Modi takes the cake and the bakery 🙂
I think what Madan is saying is that yes India didn’t handle it all that great, but at least wearing a mask didn’t become a political issue, at least Modi didn’t say COVID is just a flu. Small mercies I know, but US with much lesser population has double the number of deaths than India and that could certainly have been avoided.
The only few countries that have tackled COVID well – Taiwan, NZ, South Korea etc. have a terrific or at least reasonable public health system, insisted on transparency in spread of cases (unlike India or US where the focus was to keep the numbers low, even if it meant reducing the testing) and yes the citizens were far mode responsible.
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Madan
October 6, 2020
” You also seem very defensive about Modi and India.” – Bullshit, you know full well I am the biggest critic of Modi and get grief from the righties on this space for doing so. It’s ok if you don’t want to argue, but don’t make up shit.
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Madan
October 6, 2020
” I am surprised by your support for Ihan of all people, there is enough information out there to indicate that she is religious radical.I would be worried if she becomes a mainstream face in US politics.” – She won’t. She is only a Rep because she is from Minnesota herself and represents a part of it that has seen Somalian immigration. Same deal in essence with AOC. She stood from one of the safest Dem seats – Brooklyn. So what if she won? She would never be able to do what Bullock or Sherrod Brown did.
There are actually way more moderates in the Dem Party than there are straight up lefties. So what gives? A constant and insidious gaslighting by the media to ensure the Overton window is always tilted to the Right in America. You don’t hear people say the Republican Party is nothing but figures like Roy Moore or Michelle Bachmann. Uh, you might today when their President says, “Stand back and stand by” but certainly not in the days of John McCain or Romney (and Bachmann was winning term after term in her Minnesota seat then). If you define a political party by its extremes, most any party can be made out to be a terrible threat to humanity. The extremists get the vote out and hence parties make a pact with the devil and give them a safe home. Like our Pragya Thakurs or Owaisis. I wish they would not do that but, to quote an extremely popular figure of our times, “It is what it is”.
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Arjun
October 6, 2020
” Bullshit, you know full well I am the biggest critic of Modi and get grief from the righties on this space for doing so. It’s ok if you don’t want to argue, but don’t make up shit.”
Ok…and
“The extremists get the vote out and hence parties make a pact with the devil and give them a safe home. Like our Pragya Thakurs or Owaisis”
This is where you display full well your middle-class islamophobia and BJP-lite colors, comparing an actual terrorist with a Muslim leader who swears by the constitution and renounces violence explicitly.
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Arjun
October 7, 2020
“Anyway, my question is still whether India is in a second wave or is entering into one? And what are the possible ramifications of such a second wave? Will it lead to much stringent measures or another lockdown like some of Europe? Will it be more dangerous and how long will this one last?”
The wave dynamics are mostly a function of changing seasons and to a lesser extent population-level behavioral changes – Spontaneous social distancing, mask wearing etc. As fatigue sets in, people will become more lax in observing these. It also depends on how many people got infected during the first wave. So one might expect some sort of second wave in north India in November-January. South, probably less so. In general, India, Pakistan, Africa are doing better mostly because of the younger populations…little to do with how perfectly they locked down.
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Enigma
October 7, 2020
@Aman Basha, “…are China’s death figures really accurate?”. I don’t think so and also you cannot trust anything that comes out of China. How is it that Iran and Italy, thousands of miles away, bore the brunt of the first wave of the infections in March whilst Chinese cities near Wuhan had nearly no cases. Either the CCP is lying or they deliberately exported the virus overseas to cause chaos. For China only their public image matters, even if the entire population of Wuhan had got infected, they would have continued to deny it. I also agree with your point on Trump standing up to China. America needs to be strong to prevent the Chinese bullies from taking over the world.
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Madan
October 7, 2020
Arjun : disguising lack of arguments with polemic is very easy to see through. But thanks for trying. I can repeat what Shri Akbaruddin Owaisi said here but it is pointless as you are bent on arguing in bad faith.
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Aman Basha
October 7, 2020
@Madan: I think he’s talking about Asauddin Owaisi and you’re talking about Akbaruddin? Explains the confusion
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Madan
October 7, 2020
Aman Basha: Possible. I don’t have a high opinion of Asaduddin himself but I will certainly allow that he is not a terrorist by any stretch of imagination and neither is Akbaruddin (who, though, is clearly more inflammatory). But that wasn’t even my point. I was simply giving examples of rabble rousing type politicians from both sides. You don’t have to tell me who is worse. Unlike the ungrateful traitor ‘deshbhakts’, I respect Karkare as a martyr because I used to work in South Bombay during 26/11 and could have been there when it happened. I cannot and will not tolerate insults against him though criticism of his methods is surely to be welcomed. I was already set on voting against BJP by then but if they had any chance of wooing me back, Pragya Thakur was the never again point.
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Santa
October 8, 2020
Adding to Madan’s response to Arjun’s question about what more could the Trump administration have done.
Let me start by saying that this pandemic would have challenged even the most competent administration in a country as large and populated as the US. But here is one thing that I feel would have helped tremendously: throwing money at the problem.
Money for states: State budgets are stretched beyond breaking point. A cash infusion by the federal government to the states would have helped states ramp up on testing, contact tracing, etc. It would have allowed states to keep a lot more essential services running without having to furlough employees.
Money for people: The initial money being sent to people was definitely a good move, but slashing it during this period of high unemployment will drive more people to venture out to work, which will hamper efforts to curtail spread. I understand there is a bit of a balance to be struck here. There is an argument that excessive cash payments might end up disincentivizing people from working and that could in turn impact the smooth running of essential industries. But I don’t think that the initial payments or the current lower ones are anywhere close to that balance. Instead there are bailouts for big companies (which are also needed, IMO) but those don’t get passed down to their employees.
Money for healthcare: It’s pretty simple here. Don’t let people be on the hook for thousands of dollars to treat covid. They won’t seek care and will only end up spreading it more.
Money for education: Schools are funded by counties and not states. Public schools are underfunded at the best of times. Now, there is additional need for protective equipment, more classroom space (for social distancing), more staff (administrative and medical, in addition to teachers) to support on-site education. None of that is happening. Instead, we just hear Trump tweeting “Schools must open NOW” or something to that effect.
Money at the elections: Make earlier voting and mail-in voting easier, so that people will not have to stand hours in a line potentially spreading the virus to others. Spend money to have more polling places, and for the increased load for the postal service. Remove this one big anxiety hanging over people’s heads. But we know precisely why the opposite will be done.
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Apu
October 13, 2020
Late to the debate here, and I think “What Madan AND Anu both said” should be my leading line.
Also @Santa: good points in response to Arjun’s question.
@Arjun: With US’s federal system, no Dem president would have been able to implement state border closures or mask mandates”
– Are you open to an answer? Because if you are, you did not need to be so theoretical about what Trump could have done, the answer was staring at you in the face.
But as you asked, here goes:
(1) He could have taken it SERIOUSLY rather than calling it a “China flu” and claiming “it will go away”
(2) He openly called to US citizens to defy lockdowns and mask mandates in states where Governors tried to enforce them. His loony followers obeyed him, because he followed his own advice and refused to wear masks.
(3) He held back money from states that needed them for PPEs because the Governors did not agree with him
… and these are just a few.
The latest is the fact that in spite of knowing that Hope Hicks was tested positive with COVID and he had every chance of testing positive too, he did tell anyone about it till after the debate. He asked secret service to drive him around so that his supporters can see him when he was being treated.
Oh and he gets treated by the best medicine available without paying anything because “insurance” and “coverage for pre-existing conditions” when he/his party is fighting against it.
These are so obvious that I am surprised you asked about it.
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Apu
October 13, 2020
@Tambi Dude: Appreciate you being non-hypocritical in your support for Trump as much as you support Modi – at least you are honest.
“mayor of Portland refused any helps from feds. That city saw some 60+ days of non stop riots.”
– The mayor of Portland knew how to handle it. The federal agents are not supposed to be deployed to citizens. But of course, you will not understand.
Frankly, if no one feels the fury of Blacks and keeps calling them rioters rather than protestors – you have lost the plot. I have only been following this for the last 5-6 years here, and I am amazed that this did not happen earlier.
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Tambi Dude
October 13, 2020
@apu
“The mayor of Portland knew how to handle it. ”
yeah 60 days of non stop burning and riots and the mayor knew how to handle it. Got it buddy.
“Frankly, if no one feels the fury of Blacks and keeps calling them rioters rather than protestors”
Jewlery shop owned by an Indian in Jackson Heights, NY were looted while it was calmly filmed by someone. Similar looting of other mom/pop shops.
Yeah sure we need homily from you about the difference between protestors and rioters.
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Tambi Dude
October 13, 2020
“@Tambi Dude: Appreciate you being non-hypocritical in your support for Trump as much as you support Modi – at least you are honest.”
Regardless of my support, I feel Trump is gone on Nov 3. His conduct has been really disappointing.
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Madan
October 13, 2020
Trump could lose the election and still win the EC. He has already telegraphed how – by completely disregarding mail-in ballots and leaving it to House Legislatures to decide. However, he may have erred in saying the quiet part loud for long lines are being reported for in-person early voting in the sun belt states. If THEY return in favour of Biden on Nov 3, Trump’s whole plan of stealing the elections in Michigan, PA and Wisconsin would come to nought.
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Nathan
October 15, 2020
When Trump leaves the White House, I am willing to bet he starts a reality show titled “Who Wants to Run for President” and with every last scrap of information from the White House that he can use with impunity, he takes his crusade of converting American politics into a giant orange smokescreen to its rightful destination.
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Apu
October 17, 2020
@Madan and @SrinivasR, leaving this link here to give some perspective to the theory of “Is Biden a paedophile?” or rather “Are all Democrats paedophiles?”
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Aman Basha
November 3, 2020
Today’s Judgement Day for not just America, but the entire world. What Americans decide today could be a seminal event in the 21st century, with consequences for all of us.
The US is struggling in transitioning from an industrial to an information economy, the blame of all that has happened from Nov 2016 lies on every president and policymaker since Reagan perhaps. Reagan’s encouragement of televangelists to Bill’s repeal of Glass Steagall to Bush’s general idiocy to Obama’s failure to live up to promises. All this has slowly and steadily led to the building of a very strong divide in America. Perhaps some in the US were not ready to see a black man named Hussain in the White House, yet as long as men like McCain stood firm to their values, the extremists didn’t have a voice. But with Trump throwing every norm of dignity, decency and any political value out of the window, the fault lines are wide open. Blame for this must go to narcissistic loony toon Hillary who not only rigged her primaries but also gave credence to this Pied Piper. Sanders would have whipped his fat ass if given a chance, but now, now no matter what, Biden has to win, or else this is the last day of US’s superpower domination or the beginning of an era that won’t bode well for anyone.
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Nathan
November 3, 2020
Sanders would have whipped his fat ass if given a chance
America’s always preferred crooks over communists.
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Madan
November 3, 2020
Aman: Even a Biden win would not guarantee a return to normal. Because it was the normal that led to Trump. Nor is it predictable exactly how a Trump second term would play out in terms of the US’ economic performance. Rejecting Trump requires that the American citizens decide that certain things should be beyond the pale for a President. They did not make that decision, net net, last time. Remains to be seen whether they will now.
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Aman Basha
November 3, 2020
America has preferred crooks over communists, but I don’t think any crook has been like Donald Trump. Further, months before the election happened and even before the primaries, people like Michael Moore already predicted a Trump win. Trump appeals to his base’s worst instinct but Bernie can court that same base to their best instinct. Sanders would have won the primaries if not for Obama’s meddling (if everyone’s worst fears come true tomorrow, Obama will have completely destroyed his legacy with his own hands, or whatever’s left of it after he backed Clinton). Plus, there is no way Trump could have done anything against Sanders, his rhetoric would only at max blabbering “socialist” at every 2 seconds.
This was Sanders at 2003, you think this guy couldn’t whoop Trump’s ass? He’s spoken every point that has been attributed to Trump’s rise. Let me say it, HILLARY WAS A CORRUPT CROOK WHO DOOMED AMERICA IN 2016. Every poll shows favor to Sanders’ ideas and they are now part of the mainstream.
But Trump is a far greater evil, a truly evil genius. It is not the circumstances of his rise, but the consequences that are far too scary for anyone looking at global trends. Anyhow, despite what happened at the primaries, Joe Biden has to win. At least with Biden, we can think of making a start from somewhere. What do we do with Trump or McConnell? Any way, this might turn out to be an ugly day for America.
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Srinivas R
November 4, 2020
Elections are running too close to call now. What is clear is even if Biden becomes President, there is no turning back to normal from the deeply polarized politics of USA. I see parallels to this in India too. Modi might have his detractors, but as long as the electorate is polarized and he keeps his base intact, no one’s going to stop him.
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Tambi Dude
November 4, 2020
This should be the end of the polling industry. it is clear they are clueless.
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Madan
November 4, 2020
You know, a friend of mine currently based in Austria (but originally from India) and I plotted likely EC maps last week and we gave 270 to Biden. Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona but no PA, no Florida. It IS possible that Biden could yet win PA (lots of votes from Philly and Pittsburgh yet to be counted) and North Carolina, MAYBE Georgia (but looking more difficult). But I really do wonder about the pollsters and pundits who predicted Biden winning a state like Ohio. It stands to reason that swings like 8% back to the Dems would be rare. Possible yes, but you can’t really bet on it. It happened in Arizona but that is a growing state where the population of likely Dem voters in particular has been growing. There are no such extenuating factors in Ohio. It’s a red state now. Looks like Florida might be too now.
It seems like there is a strange lack of awareness among many in the punditry class today in America about how to read polling data. The polling itself actually isn’t bad. If you were to compare to opinion polls here in India, the polling in US performs a lot better and they are able to get much closer to the actual vote shares. But the media is not attaching the necessary discount value to such polls, you know, telling people to take it with a pinch of salt. Because a poll means nothing, only an actual vote cast by a ‘likely voter’ counts.
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brangan
November 5, 2020
For me, these results are a confirmation that politics (and by extension, people) will never return to the values ones cherished: honesty and decency and all that on the personal side, development and economy and foreign affairs and all that on the professional side.
After four Trump years, you’d imagine Mickey Mouse could stand opposite him and win. 🙂
Biden may still win, but the America is inherits looks nothing like the land all of us wanted to migrate to! It’s become as polarised and right wing as the rest of the world.
PS: The above to be taken solely as the words of a regular Joe, not a political pundit 🙂
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Madan
November 5, 2020
BR: US is the country where Andrew Johnson betrayed Lincoln’s mandate after the latter was assassinated. He wound up becoming the first President to get impeached, though he could not be removed. And only a strong Republican controlled Congress curtailed his damage. US also celebrated Woodrow Wilson, him of the Birth of Nation infamy, as a great President until the post Civil Rights epoch made it impossible to. Joe Kennedy (not JFK, his father), Tricky Dick, Dubya, the list is long.
I guess it’s we Indians who had a fanciful impression of how the US system works from afar. As the web and social media make information more easily accessible, we see that their system is flawed and so are their people. Like democracies in general. The contrast is so stark with Western Europe (or Canada/Aus/NZ) more because of how heavily urbanised these countries are and their small populations. US is huge and diverse and in many ways, many unedifying ways, a lot like India. Thank God our Framers had the vision and the benefit of hindsight (from the democratic experiments in US and elsewhere) to design India as a Union Republic and not a Federal one. Can you imagine the confusion we would go through with our population if every state had its own system of counting votes? What makes US unique and what also creates the problems seen today are its State Rights system. That cannot be undone without rewriting the Constitution and is unlikely to get enough support until the sea of Red you see down the middle (the Lower Midwest and the South) is also sufficiently urbanised to start seeing eye to eye with the so-called Left Coasts.
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Madan
November 5, 2020
A great piece:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/04/democrats-trump-voters-434100
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H. Prasanna
November 5, 2020
@BR Shah Rukh Khan said something similar on Letterman about Trump: “Let me say it as politically correct way as possible. We look up to America. As Indians, we aspire to be there. But we are like okay with you.”
Meanwhile Biden is moving closer to victory like Nagaraja Cholan MA MLA of Amaithipadai since last night.
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Amit Joki
November 5, 2020
Word! Popular media depiction of America has almost always focused on the bright, shiny, liberal parts of it. For most of us, America is synonymous to San Francisco, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Hollywood and maybe New York where all the bling exists.
I’ve come to realise that America is a huge country and those shiny parts are not aa true representation of the country just like how Mumbai, Bangalore aren’t microcosm of India.
Canada, New Zealand and may be quieter, cosier places in Europe are far increasingly the better migration prospects for those who are hell bent on it.
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Madan
November 5, 2020
Amit Joki: True. I remember reading a Quoran’s answer on her experience of moving to America and her shock when she landed up in St Paul’s airport. Because she had imagined all of America to be New York.
From my travels there (restricted admittedly to the Eastern side but starting from the Midwest to Virginia down South), I would say the majority of USA lives in the suburbs. From the early demographic vote split data coming in, it is the suburbs that narrowly decided the election for Biden just as they did for Trump four years ago. Which is why the cliches about backward rural areas holding back ultra modern cities are so simplistic. The suburbs are what keep America a moderately center-right nation, leaning more to the right than their West European counterparts or Canada but less rightwing than a country like Poland. The suburbs need for taxes not to be too high but also high enough to support basic facilities.
In fact, in that sense, there is a striking uniformity about American suburbs. Sure they start to look different in a place like California where real estate is costly. But broadly, across the Midwest, the Sunbelt including both Virginia/Georgia in the South East and Colorado/Arizona/Texas in the Southwest, the suburbs have more in common than what differentiates them. I think without saying much, Biden understood this and hence ran a campaign as bland but calm as the American suburbs. He quipped tellingly during the debate that Trump wouldn’t know a suburb unless he took a wrong turn. It is STILL too early to write post mortems because Nevada is close and Biden is trailing in PA/NC/GA. But IF he wins, it will come down to understanding America for what it is and going beyond the cliches and the media driven hysterical narratives.
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Anuja Chandramouli
November 5, 2020
This deserves to be read. On why all US Presidents suck. Not just Trump. I don’t get why folks insist on believing that Biden is some kind of great white savior.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/03/donald-trump-us-presidents-joe-biden
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H. Prasanna
November 5, 2020
@Madan The difference between Trump supporters and Trump voters is also a factor here. I think most career Republican politicians will not miss Trump that much, and same will be true for traditional Republican voters who vote regardless of candidate. However, the fact that they will go along with someone like Trump to keep the power, does make it terrifying.
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Aman Basha
November 5, 2020
It is regrettable and highly dangerous what we’re seeing in the States, that people are now so blinded by ideology that even the massive mishandling of a health pandemic that took a quarter million lives doesn’t seem to matter for many. The right and left have grown so apart that they threaten to tear the fabric of society. These ideological glasses is blinding them to facts and ground realities. Just for an example, yesterday, when Arnab was arrested, the liberal favorite NY Times ran an article describing the Shiv Sena, of all people, as progressive and right wing intellectuals like Abhijit Iyer Mishra were cheering for Trump and later claimed election fraud when a dead legislator won in N Carolina, forgetting the legislator was in fact republican.
America’s fault lines are on the surface, but a start can be made somewhere with kicking Trump out of office and all we can do is…..hope.
About immigration, the day Trump won, Canada’s immigration website crashed 🙂 But apparently, the States has higher economic opportunities which attract immigrants.
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Heisenberg
November 5, 2020
After all that happened in past 1 year and if Trump can come so close (still has a chance) to winning a second term, then there’s a serious defect in America’s electoral system.
More alarmingly he’s not much behind in popular vote. Over 68 million people still voted for him. It can’t be brushed away that most of these people are racist/dumb QAnon believers.
I do see eerie parallels to India and BJP. Except for Trump we have even more shrewd polarizing figures with a deadly cocktail of religion, nationalism and a trip to glorious past. And there’s no sight of a strong political movement/coalition to stop it yet.
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Rahul
November 5, 2020
If one looks into why Roe V Wade is such a big issue in America, many things will start to fall into place. (about understanding it)
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Madan
November 5, 2020
Anuja : Great article. Riffs on the Chomsky talk where he explained how every post war US President would be found guilty were the principles of the Nuremberg Trials to be applied. Also echoes Peter Hitches saying that what has happened lately in UK or US is basically colonialism coming home to prey on its own people as opportunities to prey on others dwindle.
Whether or not that is an overly pessimist read, regarding Biden, the circumstances of him getting elected echo not 1980 but 1920. When a pandemic had then too ravaged the US and Wilson was too ill to run again. With the administration entirely discredited, Warren G Harding won the Presidency merely by appearing respectable. His Presidency went down as one of the most disastrous. What if anything would forestall Biden emulating Harding is that he is not likely to win the Senate as per current trends and will have to work with the Republican Party in the short term for pandemic relief.
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Eswar
November 5, 2020
Amit: I’ve come to realise that America is a huge country and those shiny parts are not aa true representation of the country just like how Mumbai, Bangalore aren’t microcosm of India.
Amit, why do you think this is not true for other countries you have listed like Canada and Europe. Veetukku veedu vaasappadi
Aman: that people are now so blinded by ideology that even the massive mishandling of a health pandemic that took a quarter million lives doesn’t seem to matter for many
Aman. This is not just have to be based on ideology. These people who support a party irrespective of the way the pandemic is handled, their non-pandemic issues continued even during the pandemic and will continue even after the pandemic. So when pandemic is not a bigger problem to them than their exiting problems how can they base their votes on the management of pandemic.
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vijay
November 5, 2020
The biggest issue was still economy post-covid, not the pandemic and Trump supporters believe he is still the best to handle it. That could partly explain why he majorly retained his voter base, besides other ideology-related factors
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Tambi Dude
November 5, 2020
BR: There are two americas
– Coastal cities where college educated liberals (dems) live
– inner heartland where Republicans live
The trouble is, the first category is clueless about the second one and lives in the bubble
world of liberalism, with or without gaanja. We saw that in every poll.
Remember 73% of americans do not have college degree.
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Amit Joki
November 5, 2020
Eswar: Canada because of the stereotype that Canadians are nice guys and I don’t hear much alarming news that would outrage me from Canada in the mainstream media.
New Zealand – much of what goes for Canada is true here but more importantly, it is the land that has elected Jacinda who’s a whiff of fresh air as far as career politicians go, so I am willing to give them a chance.
Europe – I said cosy, quieter places – scenic countries with good happy index, basically Scandinavian countries.
Of course, I am not considering the economy, opportunities, more like, if one worked remotely and would want to enjoy their life away from conservativeness (the countries I mentioned may still be conservative but their conservative is still very much liberal to our conservativeness).
Madan:
Yes. It is a wonder that I hadn’t heard much of other parts of America in films/TV. I happened to watch a few episodes of Supernatural which takes place all over America and it showed parts of America which did not have skyscrapers everywhere you look, where life wasn’t always bustling, the rural America, in other words.
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Tambi Dude
November 5, 2020
Dems did poor in down ballot. Reps held on to their seats. What does it tell? That voters had issues mainly with Trump more than Reps. They also showed that they are not enamored by crackpot Dem identity based woke world. If Dems continue to pamper woke c***panti, I expect house and senate to flip back to R in 2022.
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Madan
November 5, 2020
Amit Joki: Well, there are actually lots and lots of films which don’t show America as a place of just skyscrapers. Fault In Our Stars happens in a bland Indianapolis suburb. Forrest Gump too shows the suburbs. Bridges of Madison County is in rural Iowa. Air Bud was in a suburb again. I guess it depends which of the images registered most with different people. You had New York featured in lots and lots of movies be they comedies like Home Alone, romances like One Fine Day or monster movies like Godzilla. As also gangster movies. But when I visited US for the first time and took in the ride from O Hare airport to some upmarket Chicago suburb, I didn’t even feel much surprise at what I was seeing because the scenes felt so familiar from the movies. Big, big highways with billboards lined up along them and leafy suburbs with G+1 homes with a front and back lawn.
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Madan
November 5, 2020
Tambi Dude: I have been saying it for a while. Woke fixation will propel GOP to a supermajority eventually. The decks are almost in place now with a 6-3 SCOTUS majority, secured in part because RBG didn’t want her supreme progressive credentials to be ‘ruined’ by a moderate replacement and therefore didn’t step down when Obama was still President.
Even after a pandemic and even after the Senate refused to pass the Dem-majority House relief bills, Republicans have held onto the Senate and even curtailed the Dems’ majority.
I say this as someone who doesn’t completely agree with you on this issue. I don’t think woke issues are unimportant. I just think you can’t tell people it’s ok for your jobs to get shipped overseas and your lives to get f***ed just as long as we get to tell the world how virtuous we are. Oh, and you have to offer a platform yourself, just saying Trump BAD is not going to get votes.
And it’s not even ‘privileged’ whites saying that. Latinos continue to offer too much support to Trump for Dem’s liking. And though black voters did turn out in good numbers to vote for Biden, you saw that MSNBC video where three young black women who were interviewed laughed at the notion that Kamala Harris was meant to get young black people voting for the Dems in large numbers.
The Dems chose to beat up any such critique with a stick holding out the threat of existentialism. It is now clear that for the second time around, that threat didn’t work. But what will they do if they can’t run against Trump next time? They have demonized him so much now that even Ted Cruz is going to appear super moderate in comparison.
I had written about this in my blog a week or so before Election Night:
The Left actually understood the moment and came out to vote in historically unprecedented numbers. Otherwise Biden would have been crushed by the red tsunami. And he could still lose IF Trump runs the table with all remaining undecided states. It looks tough because Biden only has to win Pennsylvania of the remaining states and IF Arizona does still remain in his column after all votes are counted, he would only need Nevada. But the fact that it got this close speaks volumes about the incompetence of the Democratic Party. You can keep venting shock that voters came out in such large numbers to support Trump but the fact is nobody knew just what Biden was supposed to do as a President other than, well, distribute vaccines and masks.
Lastly, whether people like it or not, nationalism is a vote-driver. And, well, erstwhile liberal leaders seemed to understand this. Even the Make America Great Again slogan was used by Bill Clinton. If you adopt a stance where it comes across is American identity is something to feel shameful and guilty about, you may well appeal to the intellectual cognoscenti but you are not going to get votes with. And you also have no right to lecture some hard up working class white dude about that. Because if America is indeed so shameful, maybe you as a member of the elite that controlled power had more to do with it than said white dude.
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Tambi Dude
November 5, 2020
“I don’t think woke issues are unimportant”
Madan: I also think wokes have done few good things.
1 – In US retailers like Walmart/Target use to pay slavery level wages. There were reports of Walmart employees living on food stamps. Due to incessant naming and shaming by wokes, all of these retailers voluntarily increased wages four times in the last decade.
2 – AOC, whom I otherwise dislike, took on her own party. Dem Governor Cuomo and Dem Mayor of NY De-Blasio rolled over to Amazon and gave them a tax free deal just to have their second HQ in NYC. AOC rightly asked the wisdom of that decision of the dole handed over to a cash rich company. Because of the stink she created, AMZ quietly dropped out of NYC for their second HQ.
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Eswar
November 5, 2020
Amit: You are probably right about these countries. My larger point is it is easy to get dragged into local issues in any of these countries if one wishes to. At the same time one can alienate from most issues and live their own life peacefully even if they live in the USA. Unless, one is part of a group that faces more challenges than others. A crude example: It is not uncommon for women to work in IT in India, in spite of the challenges they face in everyday life. But in the UK the pipeline for local women to get into IT is broken at multiple stages. For all the freedom women might have in the UK, getting into IT is a challenge for them. A society’s broader fairness or unfairness view, does not necessarily apply for every group. So if one is part of the affected group then it does not matter how the wider society is. The opposite is also true. If one is not part of the affected group, then they can live unaffected even if the society is troublesome at large.
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brangan
November 6, 2020
Even if Joe Biden wins, he would be leading a deeply divided country
“In retrospect, the Democrats badly misjudged the mood of the country, thinking people would vote for a grandfather figure who promised safety. Against Trump, Biden seemed doddery and a relic of Washington politics, even though he is only four years older.”
https://scroll.in/article/977746/even-if-joe-biden-wins-he-would-be-leading-a-deeply-divided-country
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tambidude100
November 6, 2020
America is deeply divided. Both coastal liberals and hinterland Republicans are not talking to each other.
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Srinivas R
November 6, 2020
This was 2008
How did America slide so much?
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Srinivas R
November 6, 2020
@Madan and @TambiDude – Andrew Yang saying exactly what you are saying.
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Srinivas R
November 6, 2020
@madan – read your article, very insightful for someone like me who is not close to US politics. So Dems sort of rigged primaries twice to “save democracy”? Wow, i am unable to wrap my head around that. Why are they scared of Sanders so much? That karma is what is biting them now.
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Aman Basha
November 6, 2020
The biggest woke ch***yapa is, was and will be Hillary Clinton’s stupid ‘I stand with her’ campaign. That was the point where Democrats had lost all sense and all credibility, especially after WikiLeaks. I remember seeing Assange being interviewed and the only question was, why not hack Trump? The fact that an Election Committee was colluding with a candidate seems to be brushed under the carpet. In fact, the reason why Trump won his party was because all his contenders had participated in shipping jobs off or authorising regime change war, the exact profile Hilary fit into. ‘Nasty woman’ might be sexist but try telling that to coal mine workers, people suffering in Libya, Iran and the Middle East or the workers who lost jobs due to NAFTA.
That media outlets called Hillary the debate winner and actually criticized Nate Silver for predicting only a 70% chance for her was so obviously stupid and Trump was just waiting to happen. In hindsight, he wasn’t that bad either, for example, his stimulus bill was something even Republicans thought was too high. When Yang pressed on Nancy to approve it, he gets labelled a sexist, something every progressive from Kyle Kalinski to Krystal Ball condemned. The establishment is truly to blame here.
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Madan
November 6, 2020
“Why are they scared of Sanders so much?” – Because they, like the Republicans, raise lots and lots of money from corporates and Sanders’ agenda is antithetical to theirs. The Dems don’t want their party taken over by populists. Neither do the Republicans which is why they quickly coopted Trump into the standard GOP agenda. That’s the irony; Trump delivered everything the GOP wanted. He has kept the Senate all four years, lowered taxes and got three conservative judges appointed. And that is why he is ultimately losing. Because the standard GOP agenda didn’t work in a pandemic year and people, as much as they may have felt Trump was more on their side than establishment politicians, sensed he was now simply carrying out the GOP’s agenda even at the cost of stopping stimulus.
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Aman Basha
November 6, 2020
About the establishment, nothing becomes more obvious than when Hillary Clinton started making baseless and fraudulent allegations against Tulsi Gabbard of being a Russian agent. Even Fox News had to defend a Democratic candidate. Why? Because she, being a war veteran, strongly opposed the military industrial complex which Eisenhower described decades ago.
One can’t go into the exact origins of this great divide that has happened in America, but I would say that they never really grew out of the Cold War. I remember reading this article about how all the Russia allegations against Trump and their investigation were started under Obama (which is what Trump had meant by Obamacare) right after election night. They were grossly overplayed so much that Putin was actually happier since it was way easier for divides to foster without his own effort, thanks to the Democrats.
This greater influence of corporates and lobbies may be the legacy of Reagan’s era, but Bill Clinton fully accepted and even in some ways, nurtured it. This is based mostly on Primary Colors and Alter Egos, but the continued policies of Clinton and Bush, regards to jobs, factories, economic crises and wars, had already created a great disillusionment with the establishment that the Republicans tried to counter with maverick McCain.
But McCain was nowhere as fresh and dazzling like Barack Obama was. He was young, idealist, upcoming, charming and black, I’d assume that Clinton tried to play dirty with Obama too perhaps with some support from the lobby groups and establishment, but she lost. Obama won, but found himself opposition everywhere. He was a moderate centrist but had way too many obstacles, in fact Obama and Clinton were said to have great differences. The Senate played way too hard with him and given the whole environment, he found himself in, he had to compromise. The removal of a public option from Obamacare, not going hard enough on Wall Street, they all seem like a deal with the devil, but ultimately disappointed many. Even Obama seemed nowhere as fresh or charming, his smile seemed more weary and cynical than genuine. A fun comparison could be with how @Madan thinks about Shah Rukh Khan 😉
The only lesson that the establishment took from Obama was that he won, because he was black. The Democratic establishment have played identity politics and used political correctness to knock down anyone who opposes them. Hillary was as disliked as Trump yet they didn’t realize that people could see through her bullshit and found nothing but sheer opportunism, his bullshit had a core, a core of missed opportunity. It was the exact same platform Sanders was running on, one that he succeeded in popularizing despite opposition from every Dem news network like CNN, MSNBC enough that the establishment is cracking. Trump came to drain the swamp, but played court jester and the role of useful idiot to Mitch McConnell.
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Bala
November 7, 2020
As a person living in india, I can’t agree that “mail-in-voting” is as good as in person election day voting. What about the concept “secret ballot system”. One of the main reasons for exit polls to get the predictions wrong last time was that many Trump voters were ashamed to publicly accept that they voted for him. So, in a postal voting system, it is completely possible that a significant portion would have been peer pressured in to voting against Trump.
If it was India, nobody would accept such large scale postal votes. After all, why do we need so much police and military to work for months, if we think that people can easily send mails by post
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Madan
November 7, 2020
Aman: I would say that rather than a continuation of Cold War, the end of the Cold War made the corporates think they no longer had an obligation to support workers (since the worker-focused communist model had failed). They began to ravage the working class all over again just as they had in the pre-New Deal years. It’s funny because only FDR stopped fascism rising in the US in the Great Depression years and, of course, it took firm root in Italy and Germany during that time. And yet, the ruling class never learnt their lessons. They also had this arrogant belief that they could move labour and equipment to China but the brains would remain in New York because Chinese would never be able to develop technology of their own or run such large companies. Now that China has begun proving them wrong, they are sweating.
The long term prognosis remains grim for the US. As you said, the bullshit Trump spouted in 2016 at least addressed the concerns of those left behind for the last few decades. That establishment politicians don’t even want to talk about their issues speaks volumes. Dems think a coalition of women, suburban professionals and people of colour will get them enough votes to ‘get away’ with ignoring blue collar voters’ needs and GOP thinks using racism and Christianity is enough to sway blue collar voters. Neither think actually talking about how to get them jobs again is worth it.
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Madan
November 7, 2020
“So, in a postal voting system, it is completely possible that a significant portion would have been peer pressured into voting against Trump” – Nope, if anything, voting by mail from home would insulate you from having to answer anyone asking who you voted for. Mail ballots are even more confidential than in person voting because nobody, be it so called poll watchers who were really Trump supporter bullies trying to intimidate voters or media wanting to know who you voted for, can ask you who you voted for. If you don’t understand why, you don’t understand how mail ballots work, that they are sent in a closed envelope.
In fact, in Arizona, a very high proportion of mail ballots were indeed votes for Trump. The reason it wasn’t the case in other states was Trump scared people off mail ballots even when Republicans were telling people to vote by mail. Why did Republicans themselves not agree with Trump? Huh, because in a pandemic, having to vote in person and expose yourself to more risk was unnecessary if you had the option to vote by mail.
Another thing, there was lots of mail voting in Texas and we still got to know the result on Election Day. Why? Because Texas Republicans never feared losing to Dems and count their mail ballots as received. In Pennsylvania, the Republican legislature, to show their fealty to Trump, insisted that mail ballots should be counted only after all in person votes were counted on Election Day. This is why we are still waiting on PA. Trump is entirely to blame for this mess. Had every state simply counted mail ballots as received, you would still know the winner on Election Day.
And no, it’s not ‘librul’ media saying this. Rick Santorum said the exact same thing here:
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KayKay
November 7, 2020
“Oh, and you have to offer a platform yourself, just saying Trump BAD is not going to get votes.”
ABSO-FREAKING-LUTELY!
You can’t keep flogging this horse without offering viable alternatives. I reckon it’s not that there’s any great love for Biden “Tata”, but that a lot of people despise the deeply polarizing Trump.
I’m especially annoyed because this depressingly parallels political events in my neck of the woods.
2 years ago we voted out an endemically corrupt regime, the siphoning out of RM2.7Bil from the State Fund 1MDB by ex-PM Najib Razak the straw the broke the camel’s back. We voted in an opposition that played this up to the hilt but on hindsight didn’t exactly offer a solid alternative plan or policy in place to redress the weaknesses in the previous administration.
Result? A fractious coalition that barely lasted 22 months, ousted by back-room horse trading that put another fractious coalition in place, comprised of some of the same kleptocrats we voted out of office previously!
So, even if Biden “Tata” and Kamala “Aunty” win, it will be by the slimmest lead in US History, and they face a Republican majority Senate and 3 ultra Conservative Supreme Court Justices appointed by The Orange One- his “Trump” card so to speak.
Good luck.
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Madan
November 7, 2020
I said earlier that the polls weren’t really that off if you knew how to use them. Expanded on that in this write up:
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Aman Basha
November 7, 2020
@Madan: The best way to look at polls is how Michael Moore put it to account for the ‘shy’ Trump voters, halve Biden’s lead. His prediction was right the last time and he’s right this time too.
This perfectly sums it up:
I’d keep back the hopes of a Republican Senate (though I’m starting to think that’s what the establishment on both sides want), there are two senate runoffs in Georgia, a Red state that just flipped blue. Lots of progressives are heavily disappointed with Biden tata or Kamala aunty, but if they manage to flip that runoff with a candidate who’s not establishment (AFAIK) and get the Senate into a tie. Pelosi’s been weakened and most of the candidates of the old stripes are the ones who lost, the Squad, Ro Khanna, everyone else is re-elected. What makes me think all this? Just listen to Sanders talk here:
Now about the corruption in the Democratic establishment, which flopped big time in this election and only got lucky, there’s Ed Schultz who literally said that MSNBC didn’t let him cover Sanders because of their closeness to the Clintons:
Now in 2015, all of a sudden, everyone from Jon Stewart to Ronan Farrow suddenly leave their jobs?? Trump was actually right in calling her corrupt.
Honestly, the electoral college is an excellent choice, do you think the concerns of so many people would have come up if not for this system?? I think in history, Trump will easily overshadow and eclipse everything Obama has done, just by his election and by the frank truth that simply by bringing the Saudis and Israel together make him a better candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize than Obama ever was. It is the ultimate insult to Obama who is a legacy obsessed man, whose actions will only lead to the further irrelevance of his own legacy in time to come.
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Madan
November 7, 2020
Aman: I agree with most of what you said except Trump being a better candidate than Obama. I think Obama had a huge mess economically to correct and did an OK job of getting things back on track. It’s just that the recovery, such as it was, was even slower in the Rust Belt and other areas that had already been bleeding jobs for years and years. On foreign policy, yes, Obama was a disappointment as he merely continued the neocon agenda on that front. Trump has done more to resist the Deep State than US Presidents in a long, long time. Some of it is just the US weakening and needing to pause with a newly ascendant Russia. But the neocons had much bigger plans to destroy Iran, plans that Trump didn’t go through with. The Middle East peace deals is something I view more cynically as it is based on the common opposition of Saudi and other Sunni nations as well as Israel to Iran. Worldwide terror funding hasn’t come from Iran in a long time. They are being punished for being foes of US’s Gulf Friends and Israel. Not that Iran is a doodh ka dulha but I don’t see why they deserve such harsh treatment with Saudi’s terror funding as well as its bombing of Yemen is tolerated with nary a word said.
About Schultz, Krystal Ball too left MSNBC for similar reasons. More so than the Obama years, it was during the coverage of Hillary Clinton’s campaign that MSM seemed to dump objectivity. MSM, whether CNN or MSNBC, is anyway infested with ex-politicians and even CIA operatives known and unknown (Anderson Cooper being a known one). They are better, much better, than Fox, yes, but they need to do a lot, lot better than that. The Guardian’s Anywhere But Washington series gave a much truer picture of both elections and what voters felt than these channels.
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Bala
November 7, 2020
@madan, genuinely interested in knowing your thoughts. Do you think an indian general election with over 60% of votes being postal votes be fair? If not, why do you think USA is different. If yes, why do you think we are spending crores in military and police protection on election day, staggering the election across months? Afterall, postal service has been around for so many years.
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Madan
November 7, 2020
Re The Electoral College, my view is between the extremes of supporting the EC as it is now and moving to the popular vote. I would like all states to follow the system Maine and Nebraska already follow, which is to assign one Elector per Congressional District. Doing so would show Americans that they are not as divided as they think or that there are blue cities and suburbs and red towns and villages rather than blue/red states. Blue cities in red states (New Orleans in Lousiana) would matter and so would rundown towns in Upstate New York or Illinois outside Cook County.
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Aman Basha
November 7, 2020
@Madan: I don’t dispute Obama being a better candidate than Trump. I meant that Trump will leave a bigger legacy in terms of what he has exposed, the blatant corruption and cronyism that we openly flaunt in India, became clear to every open eye there. America is literally the emperor with no clothes now and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised at this point if some form of vote fraud had happened against/for Trump. We ought to send these privileged a**holes a documentary on Bihar elections before they mock our third world country status. My uncle, a proud NRI, had literally no words when I mocked the US’s handling of COVID. He only went with official figures are low, when I just asked what makes you think Trump wouldn’t do that?
In fact, I think a lot of the books, article and other things that have been done against Trump smack of conspiracy by Deep State to take him down. Progressives like Ball, Kalinski, Yang, Gabbard and Sanders opposed the whole farce of impeachment which only strengthened Trump’s base. That he was an highly unfit candidate to drain the swamp was true, but whose fault was it in not letting Sanders run against him? Obama. Despite the fact that he himself opposed Clinton over American intervention and his desperation to not be called the ‘Drone’ President, he actively endorsed her, drank water at Flint, and despite himself making Biden speak as little as he could, overthrew Sanders for ole’ Joe.
Obama’s single minded determination to hold onto his legacy and try to prove Trump was an aberration than an inevitability is only going to ruin his standing. If in fact, the establishment goes to ‘business as usual’, the day is very close when Obama will only be a footnote as first Black president.
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Madan
November 7, 2020
Bala: US has less than a third of the population of India with a much larger land area. They are also wealthier and less corrupt at least at the every day level. So extrapolating their situation on ours is a fallacious argument. Lastly, since they use paper ballots anyway, they have the right to reject paper ballots whether cast in person or by mail. Something our Election Commission cannot do since we use EVMs. You are next going to say that is precisely the point, officials can fradulently reject ballots cast for Trump. Except that majority of state legislatures and most of the battlegrounds in turn are controlled by Republicans. If they had to find pretexts to reject mail ballots, they would. The low rejection rate of mail ballots shows that such fears are unfounded.
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Karthik
November 8, 2020
Its a bit of an unfair characterization to say that Biden’s campaign doesn’t have a platform beyond “I’m sweeter than orange”. In fact, Biden has a fairly nuanced platform for most challenges from energy, and healthcare to justice and law enforcement. Foreign policy is the only place where he’s broad-brushed and as the article Anuja forwarded so clearly elucidates, US foreign policy is a beast of its own. While not a progressive caucus wet dream, his domestic platform is an honest one with steps in their direction which is why he has managed to not only appeal to the Trump-weary apolitical class (which, from years of living in multiple swing states, I can assure you is sizeable) but also bring the far left into his fold. Otherwise, there was no way he would have been able to combat the monstrous turnout machine called Trump.
One of the biggest differences between Hillary’s and Biden’s campaign was that Biden’s political approach is shaped by the old adage that “all politics is local”, and this worked well with his natural empathetic style which stood in stark contrast to that of Trump. Hillary’s biggest argument was that “she was most qualified to lead”, which was exactly Trump’s argument, and he did it with a blowhard’s chutzpah and an outsider’s shine.
With someone who has a reputation for being a “gaffe machine”, the smart tightness of Biden’s campaign has been pleasantly surprising. Their measured approach adapted very well to an uncertain changing political environment. Even the speech Biden gave last night was not what he originally planned for or what his supporters anticipated, but it was sharp, stuck to his overall theme, and played to his strengths. They’ve also been super careful not to demonize colleagues on the left or right. As someone who’s experienced gridlock governance, he’s no stranger to the perils of playing politics at the wrong time.
A lot of credit is also due to the first Chithi-in-Chief who showed an equal adaptability both to his platform and to her base after a most disappointing primary campaign. For those who are (with good reason) wondering “what happened to the America I knew”, her election to the vice-presidency is the closest sign that things may not be as bad as they seem. Or maybe its just a culmination of the era gone past. Only time will tell. For now though, there is hope in their victory which, as the growing vote count shows, was no squeaker.
Obama, who is legacy obsessed
Oh, boy! I love the guy- his introspective, academic personality was so refreshingly unique in the political realm. But he can really be annoyingly self obsessed. Amongst the myriad of reasons that Trump won in 2016, Obama’s “legacy obsession” would certainly be close to the top. In fact, the way the Biden campaign deployed Obama was one of their shrewdest moves. They separated him from Biden’s platform (almost every Obama speech focused on Biden and not on his policies), and, to counter the scorched earth post Covid superspreader campaign, they deployed Obama’s most understated quality, his competitive endgame, neatly dusted off from the Obama/Biden 2012 playbook. If the RNC/Trump campaign are scratching their heads over what happened in Georgia, thats where I would start.
And really, Biden’s campaign has significantly outperformed the overall democratic establishment which has been left to do its own head scratching after having flooded failed campaigns for senate and congress (and not for the first time). And here’s where the difference between the two parties is stark. The Republican establishment has never really had a national platform beyond small government, big defense and no taxes. Their politics has always been local, aided in no small part by their dominance of local radio across the country. The biggest criticism that’s been laid on them, that their party is “ideologically deficient” is in fact their biggest strength, which allowed them to not only bring in the growing extreme right into their fold, but also co-opt Trump who’s no conservative, fiscal or otherwise.
The Bernie movement has yet to translate their dominant social media presence into national electoral success, and their struggles are further accentuated by the top-down, special interest driven democratic establishment. Biden’s victory is their best opportunity to nurture the movement and marry old-world retail politics with new age twitter globalism. But thats not going to happen without a leadership shakeup, and the clock for that is ticking. As a running viral tweet says, “the surest political prediction right now is that Republicans will wrest control of the House in two years”.
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Karthik
November 8, 2020
Madan Nice piece on the polling. Fivethirtyeight is a great portal and is as close as it gets to scientifically sound political commentary. I’ve been following them for many years, and its been great to see them grow from a purely poll driven political site to a more wholesome social/cultural portal which supplements its core data driven discussions such as
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-pretty-convincing-win-for-biden-and-a-mediocre-performance-for-down-ballot-democrats/
with more personal ones such as:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-trump-changed-america/
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Enigma
November 8, 2020
So the polls were not off by that much after all, considering that Biden us set to win 300 plus electoral college votes. Of course it is not a landslide and he could not flip Ohio and Florida but still as narrow as everyone thought a couple of days ago.
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brangan
November 8, 2020
Aman Basha: Trump will leave a bigger legacy in terms of what he has exposed, the blatant corruption and cronyism that we openly flaunt in India, became clear to every open eye there.
One thousand per cent.
Trump / Bolsonaro and people like them are absolutely necessary once in a while to shake us out of the la-la-land bubble we live in sometimes.
Earlier, leaders did vile, vulgar, non-liberal things behind the facade of a suit-and-tie and civil words in public — and thus offered us the veneer of a just, nice, civil world. But Trump proved that a lot of America thinks like him and wants him. (If you check the vote percentage, it’s 50.6% (Biden) to 47.7% (Trump). That’s a lot more telling than the electoral seats gap.
I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, and we will soon see the rise of the radical right even in countries that now seem to be a, well, la-la-land.
At the very least, there should be attempts made to understand WHY people keep wanting Trump, and what can be done to address their issues so that they no longer think they NEED a Trump. But I doubt that will happen 🙂
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An Jo
November 8, 2020
** But Trump proved that a lot of America thinks like him and wants him. (If you check the vote percentage, it’s 50.6% (Biden) to 47.7% (Trump). **
Trump has won close to 70 million votes. It is no small achievement at all! This, after folks seeing him for 4 years, calling Biden sleepy, calling Nancy nasty, mocking people with disabilities. But, the way he spun the narrative was really Machiavellian. His talks on the first one to start the Chinese ban [ remember, he began his presidency with a travel ban; not infrastructure, not health]! Here’s the thing, he knows his audience, but not the people that are behind the audience. Over my stay here, I have noticed that there are 2 kinds –
1> They believe that Democrats will never ever care about the working Joe. When I was working in PA as an Indian IT coolie, I remember the stares I was getting in bars or walking down on the streets or even in theaters, them clearly having their brains tattooed that I was the one who stole their job at the ‘mills.’ I was flabbergasted as to how I would explain to them that I might be responsible for one American IT guy to lose his job; but not your job at the mill!! And to add to that, I look the opposite of Neil Nitin Mukesh.
2> One set, who truly believe that Democrats are the ‘elitist’ , coastal party and care a damn about the steel-belt or the southern belt. The folks, as an example, the manufacturing/assembly facilities for instance in Florence, SC are cocooned in their own world. Their faces turned redder when BO was elected. They, ‘literally’ thought BO was ‘ruling’ them.
One thing is for sure, ‘Trumpism’ is NOT going to go away. All that Trump needs is for the Democrats to continue ignoring the non-coastal Joes, he will be back in 2024, or at least that Junior fellow..Mark my words, the next 4 years, Trump will bombard all the local radio stations that are being over-taken and continue with his conspiracy theories and make sure the bed is lain for 2024. He will make sure this election is the equivalent of ‘Did the holocaust happen or not?’
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Enigma
November 8, 2020
“At the very least, there should be attempts made to understand WHY people keep wanting Trump, and what can be done to address their issues so that they no longer think they NEED a Trump.”
@BR, I believe that the arrogant, sneering, snobish left play a big part in the rise of the right. It is important for centrists/moderates to distance themselves from the far left crowd to prevent people from being pushed into the right wing camp. The Democrats did well to ensure that Sanders and his lot did not get anywhere near the ticket.
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Aman Basha
November 8, 2020
@Enigma: Actually, if you checked any poll, most of the Trump supporters were willing to vote for Bernie Sanders. The arrogant, sneering, snobbish left embodied by Hillary Clinton is nothing similar to the Sanders progressives. I know because my aunt participated in the Sanders campaign and I took a special interest. In fact, if not for the DNC colluding with Clinton or later Biden after Buttigeg and Copmala failed (special thanks to Tulsi Gabbard), Sanders would have comfortably won. It was my pipe dream to have Sanders as president and Gabbard as vice president.
The neoliberal ideology is to ignore class inequality completely to favor their corporate masters and do cultural tokenism at all points. These are the people who voted for Iraq, for God’s sake. I think of that as a higher crime than any p*ssy Trump bragged to grab.
I do think progressives should stop discussing cultural issues or even defunding police. They should focus solely on economics, something everyone from Gabbard to Yang to Ball agrees on. You might disagree with them, but when every poll goes wrong except Saagar Ejanti and Krystal Ball’s gut is right. They clearly know the pulse of the nation.
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Enigma
November 8, 2020
@ Aman Basha, I do agree with your point that the so called ‘progressives’ should focus on economic issues and stay away from the cultural and religious ones. The left’s endless mocking of religious and cultural practices will result in them being reduced to non-entities. Here in Australia, there was a lot of sneering at Scott Morrison, who is a devout christian and member of the Hillsong congregation. The Liberal-National coalition, which he heads, was projected to lose last year’s general election, but they ended up winning it. In India, we have seen the left (at least the ones on social media) consistently ridicule Diwali, Holi and other religious/cultural festivals. As long as the left keep doing this, the ordinary voters will keep moving to the right. Interestingly I just read this on my news feed:
” After media outlets projected President Donald Trump’s defeat, Kasich—one of the Republicans reportedly being floated as a potential Cabinet choice for Biden’s administration—said “the Democrats have to make it clear to the far left that they almost cost him the election.” “. I don’t know much about US politics, but I’ve seen a couple of other commentators too talk on similar lines.
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Aman Basha
November 8, 2020
@Enigma: The thing with America as I have realized is that what is radical left to them is what is european centrism and normal left of centre in Australia. I’d say to never ever believe the MSM about this, tell me which poll was right except the estimates of Michael Moore, Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball, all of whom are? The MSM vastly overestimated Biden’s lead and he frankly got lucky. It was more an anti Trump vote which even interestingly didn’t happen in areas with the highest COVID surges (in fact, 92%). So much for Kasich who lost and didn’t deliver Ohio for Joe Biden, when Donald Trump himself admitted in a private tape that he wouldn’t have had a chance against Bernie Sanders.
This mockery of beliefs, individuals and religion is something that is the signature of Hillary and Co., Hillary mocked the economic status of US citizens sitting in India of all things. This woke identity politics is something that establishment Dems have been expertly playing, I remember seeing these Black women laughing at the thought of change from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It’s already well known how the DNC actively worked against Bernie, Yang and Tulsi and failed till Obama came in.
AOC has already turned on the Establishment since the losers were actually neoliberals and I remember seeing this list (which I need to scour to find) where swing districts were actually won by progressives more than neoliberals. It’s not without reason that even Chuck Schumer wants Biden’s first 100 days to rival FDR’s. Let’s see how many write in votes Sanders gets, the last time it was almost 1% nation wide vote
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Karthik
November 8, 2020
In fact, if not for the DNC colluding with Clinton or later Biden after Buttigeg and Copmala failed (special thanks to Tulsi Gabbard), Sanders would have comfortably won.
Aman, thats really a bit of a stretch. It is true that the “establishment” has a non trivial influence on the primary process. Part of it is codified through superdelegates, part of it is under the surface through “unofficial” endorsements and money, and yes, some of it is underhanded (like the debate collusion in 2016). But people make up their own minds about whom to vote for, and the sad truth is, every bias and prejudice they have plays a role in that process. And, in this day and age, at a national level, the preference of the “establishment” often does not matter much. The Republican establishment was far more openly antagonistic to Trump in the 2016 cycle, and he still went on to win the primary handily. Even in this election, Trump won more votes than any previous president in the history of the US. That despite what everyone has seen in the last four years, and in the middle of the most tragic mishandling of a pandemic.
Where the democratic establishment has really failed is in not understanding (and continuing to ignore) that the Bernie/AOC movement is a bottom-up people’s movement, and focusing on the perceived unpopularity of catchphrases (“Defund the Police”, “Socialized Medicine”) instead of recognizing that the long ignored motivations that lead to those solutions are much more widely shared by the people. Its almost tiresome to say that “an election is a wake up call”, but you can only wake up an establishment that is actually asleep, not one that, as you say, “favors their corporate masters and does cultural tokenism.”
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Rahul
November 8, 2020
In 2017, Roy Moore was defeated narrowly by Doug Jones. Moore got 48 % of votes. Wonder why so many people voted for him ? Because of snobbish left?
This year Lindsay Graham and Mitch Mcconell won. Someone like David Perdue got the highest votes. If only left wasn’t snobbish, these crooks won’t be getting elected.
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Madan
November 9, 2020
Rahul : I don’t know if you have looked more closely at those races. Moore lost because he was too unpalatable even for Alabama. Jones lost this time, seeing a reversion to the norm.
As for Mitch, big donors poured money for Amy McGrath’s candidature and drowned out her progressive challenger in the Primary. They did not understand that the progressive would have better mobilised votes of people of colour or even working class. Or maybe they do and they don’t care. A MODERATE winning is more important than a progressive on the Democrat ticket. As long as this dynamic continues, the Dems will be self imposing a ceiling on their performance. They used to be a Big Tent party with room for conservatives, moderates and progressives. That’s narrowed a lot making it mostly a party of moderates. If people didn’t pay so much attention to the disproportionate coverage given to ‘The Squad’, they would see this more clearly. Nor is The Squad all that conservatives fear. AOC was pretty quick off the blocks in dumping Bernie for Biden. She didn’t take the duration of one term to become the next Crawley. New boss same as the old boss.
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Rahul
November 9, 2020
Madan: My point was about the redness and blueness of respective states. It was not that Moore lost, but that the margin was very close. When even a pedophile like him can get so many votes, then why is it surprising about Trump ? Again, if one wonders about Trump then you have to go into the history of why the red states are red and the blue states are blue.
The narrative about jobs is from 2016. which is not relevant now. After all , Trump is the incumbent. Why would people vote for him again if there are no manufacturing jobs? (By the way, the jobs are a separate discussion. The jobs are gone due to automation and will never return)
Progressives will make their way in due course of time. Its noteworthy that there is a long history of voter suppression , by both Dems and Rs, if I may add.
Here is a recent article on it
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/26/opinion/new-voting-rights-act-is-long-overdue/
Stacey Abrams is getting the credit for grassroot mobilization in GA. If Ds win the 2 Senate GA races then the progressive faction will become more powerful. However, there are some unpopular causes that they may have to forego like Amnesty, Defund the police etc. There was significant cross racial support for non violent BLM. BLM cities like Detroit and Atlanta had huge voter turn out.
America is a complex country and when the pollsters and data scientists are not able to explain everything even with hindsight then any reductive explanation will likely be wrong. It is possible that if there were 2 new states and same kind of voter mobilization like GA then the margin of victory would have been greater. Republicans enjoy multiple layers of durable structural advantages.
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Srinivas R
November 9, 2020
I attempted to put my views about Biden presidency. Based a lot on what I have read about his proposals. Do take a look.
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Madan
November 9, 2020
Rahul: We are somewhat at tangents here. The explanations for why Alabama went back to the Republicans or Kentucky stuck to McConnell are different from why some ‘newly Red’ states stayed Red (Florida/Ohio) and why some others flipped with great difficulty (PA, Michigan and Wisconsin).
States like Alabama are part of the solid South. Once voted solidly Democrat when Democrats used to be the part of, there’s no nice way to say it, the Confederate States. When they realized that after the Civil Rights Act, the Dems were no longer their friends, they flipped to the Republicans. Not right away, in 1968, the Confederate States were essentially stateless (how I wish it had lasted longer) and Alabama voted for George Wallace. But after Carter ’76, Alabama has never voted for the Democrat nominee. Kentucky used not to be a Solid South state and was in fact a bellwether true to 2004. But like Kansas or Nebraska, its heavily white and rural demographic makes it a solid Republican state again. These states will vote Republican no matter what which is wrong but “it is what it is”.
Now coming to the question of why a state like Ohio that Obama won solidly both times is now firmly Red and why Florida is slipping out of the Dems’ grasp, why have PA and Michigan become so competitive (Wisconsin always was competitive, just used to eventually vote Democrat). It is here that, to borrow your word, I find the explanation of racism reductive. To be clear, there is an element of it but it is also that working class voters had some faith in Obama but none in Clinton and only a little in Biden.
Biden did chop Trump’s margins a little in many working class counties in these Rust Belt states which had a role to play in his victory. But the question still remains, who after Joe. And had Biden not been Obama’s Veep, he would have had barely more nationwide presence than a Sherrod Brown or Steve Bullock. He was just a sleepy old Senator from Delaware. Somebody like him being VP came in handy for the Dems this cycle and ‘gave permission’ to Republican voters in Arizona or Georgia to vote for him out of their disgust for Trump. It will be tougher next time. I hope I am wrong but demographics aren’t going to change dramatically in these very states that the party is struggling in. They need a plan for that.
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Madan
November 9, 2020
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Aman Basha
November 10, 2020
@Madan: “She didn’t take the duration of one term to become the next Crawley. New boss same as the old boss.”
I don’t really get what you meant by that, AOC and the Squad pretty consistently supported Bernie and they’ve all turned against Pelosi and the establishment already, if you go by AOC’s NYTimes interview or their tweets. Adding to that, they are right to complain about the moderates blaming progressives for their loss.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/08/democratic-leaders-play-ridiculous-blame-game-with-progressives/
I do have hopes for some reason that Trump accept his defeat and while leaving, does something crazy like pardoning Snowden or legalize weed just to piss off the establishment on both sides. AOC and the Squad are quite unreliable for the Dems since they could go up against Amazon and Cuomo. Hopefully they press hard on the Biden administration especially against another regime change war (thankfully, DT didn’t start one).
They really need to reduce focus on cultural issues, in fact, Indians seem to get along better with themselves than Americans. Even more pertinent is the need to control labelling Trump supporters racists, when he has won more share of vote in the minority communities than he did last time. Economic inequality is still the major problem and it is simply insane to keep focus on woke culture politics.
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Rahul
November 10, 2020
” there is an element of it but it is also that working class voters had some faith in Obama but none in Clinton and only a little in Biden.”
Madan, the question is why? As I said before, Trump is the incumbent. He is unable to talk policy or for that matter anything coherently for 10 secs.His bluster towards China in tariffs has not paid off, and post covid China is an even stronger position. Biden is not running against Obama, he is running against Trump. Racism manifests itself in many ways , but let’s assume that racism does not have to do with white folks feeling victimized and nervous about demographic changes. By his relentless and pathological lying and misrepresentation, Trump has created a post truth world in which nothing matters to his cult. Facebook and twitter are major players in how an election battle is fought and won. Twitter has now started flagging Trump’s posts after years of activism. The situation is similar to BJP supporters who still claim that demonetization is a masterstroke
On the other hand, AOC has been posting about how the sponsors of Medicare for all and Green new deal have all won reelection. By the way I know that all progressive agenda is not widely supported (like defund the police or amnesty). In fact with the balance of senate being what it is(50 – 50 in the best case scenario for the Ds) , none of that will be supported for the coming 2 years. I don’t know the way forward for the D party .
The point of my posts has been that people who blame wokes\progressives for elite liberals should ask the Trump voters that if their voting strategy is to own the libs then they should own Trump as well instead of blaming other people for him. This is similar to Tavleen Singh type excuse that she was so fed up with pseudo secularism that she started supporting communalism.
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Madan
November 10, 2020
Rahul : AOC wasn’t on the ballot though. Biden was.. Biden was just a milquetoast moderate who didn’t inspire the working class but who, as I said, gave permission to Republicans to dump Trump and vote for him.
In the next cycle, they will need to either find another Biden or embrace the Sanders agenda. And that is where the picture gets muddied. Corporates are far more comfortable with wokeness, that is, social progressivism, than with economic progressivism. They don’t mind the performative aspect of it just as long as they continue to pay way low taxes. That is where Dems are losing a lot of their erstwhile blue collar voters who would vote for a Sanders but don’t like the combination of economic conservatism and social progressivism.
@Aman: She is trying to talk a big game NOW but was pretty quick off the blocks in the election cycle in ditching Bernie and endorsing Biden. I don’t object to the endorsing Biden part, it was necessary for progressives to work with him as the lesser evil. But she also said something to sort of gaslight Bernie. Don’t remember what it was but Rising, Jimmy Dore all latched onto it.
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Nathan
November 10, 2020
Trump accept his defeat and while leaving, does something crazy like pardoning Snowden or legalize weed just to piss off the establishment on both sides
Nope. He will pardon Flynn, Manafort, Gates, and make it even harder to legalize weed if he could.
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Rahul
November 11, 2020
“Biden was just a milquetoast moderate who didn’t inspire the working class but who, as I said, gave permission to Republicans to dump Trump and vote for him”
Yes, okay, but almost 50 % of the population still voted for the guy who asked to inject bleach . My point in referring to AOC was that there is a substantial progressive faction within the democratic party and on the other hand you have Trump and his acolytes. You can say that Biden didn’t inspire voters because he is not that progressive. I saw the interview you posted where the two gentlemen were wondering what does Biden stand for. Did they also wonder what Trump stands for? They said Trump did many rallies unanswered. All these rallies were frequented by mask deniers. Trump was himself the biggest sort of disinformation on COVID.
Sometimes the democrat alternative will not be progressive enough. Sometimes it will be too far on the left. Bottom line is , the shitshow called Trump got so many votes again even after running as an incumbent. Though he was never an unknown quantity but now there was even the last 4 years to refer to.
If you question this in terms of racism, or hold the feet of the media who enabled Trump to fire, then they will whine about cancel culture. Also , republicans will whine about how they are feeling stifled by political correctness. Whatever glimpse you get into the behavior of the police, it hints towards existence of deep racism. If you look at the kind of people Trump surrounds himself with, and his own statements all through the years , then it is easy to see that he is not just a racist, but an incompetent clown whose one and only skillset is self preservation and polarizing. But sure, Biden is not very inspiring and lets leave it at that.
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Srinivas R
November 11, 2020
WIll BIden become the president on Jan 20, Trump and his team are doing everything they can to ensure the 75 year old kid stays in the White House.
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Madan
November 11, 2020
“Yes ok but almost 50% of the population still voted for the guy who asked to inject bleach” – Because you can’t expect voters to repudiate a bad leader without offering a convincing alternative. I think Dems were lucky and America was lucky this time in that they ran a referendum for Trump for the second time and won. There was record turnout for the GOP and Biden still prevailed. America is the only country in recent years that has managed to reject a right wing populist. This is partly because Trump is not as competent a politician, let alone leader, as classic populists like Modi, Erdogan or Orban who, unlike Trump, never get tired of winning. It is partly also because the American electorate is wealthier than India’s, Turkey’s or Hungary’s and the suburbs voted on civic values which does not tend to happen when populists are in charge.
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Anu Warrier
November 12, 2020
I have not commented here so far because I’m sick of the whataboutery.
Joe Biden may or may not be many things, but he’s a decent man, and despite not being ‘charismatic’ is a competent one.
And this election is not ‘close’ – Biden’s winning by more than 5 million votes at this point, and counting.
I like Sanders, and I like much of the Progressives’ agenda; I just don’t think the country was in the right mood to accept such a shift and hence Biden was a better choice. Bernie would have been as polarising as Trump.
As for some mention of Tulsi Gabbard – ugh! She’s no progressive or even liberal. Her voting record for progressive causes is abysmal. She’s virulently anti-gay; anti-abortion; refused to sign the assaults-weapons ban, etc., etc. So to think of a Bernie-Gabbard ticket as some sort of a manna from heaven is laughable.
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Madan
November 12, 2020
“Biden’s winning by more than 5 million votes at this point” – But the US system decides Presidents by electoral college and not popular vote. That is no different from the Canadian Parliamentary system in which the Liberal Party won a second term in spite of securing fewer votes (but more seats) than the Conservatives. And in the EC, a bunch of states are close – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona. Of the states Biden absolutely needed to flip, only one, Michigan, was won by a margin of more than 1%. PA MIGHT edge up to 1% by the time counting is done. But the discussion isn’t about delegitimizing his win but that the results are hardly something that the Dems can feel jubilant about. They have yet to find a solid new path to the Presidency again after the Obama years. And by the way, I didn’t call Trump’s win last time a landslide either. One of the reasons he lost is he and his cronies mistook a narrow win for a landslide and kept telling themselves that liberals are going to be terribly wrong.
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Aman Basha
November 12, 2020
@Anu Warrier: I agree about Joe Biden being a decent, empathetic man who is equipped with dealing with the massive tragedy facing lots of people in the US, completely unlike the Orange sociopath currently in office. The thing about Trump and people who fear him is that even to be some authoritarian like Putin or Erdogan, you need some basic competence. Trump’s followers are the sort of bumbling dolts who mix Four Seasons with Four Seasons Landscaping.
But Biden seems more like Herbert Hoover than an FDR. Hoover was an experienced, empathetic old hand with a good conscience but was simply not far sighted enough to deal with the Great Depression. I’d be happy to be proven wrong on this count.
“winning by more than 5 million votes at this point”-still doesn’t take away from the fact 70 million wanted Trump, again after his disastrous handling of COVID. The statistics of his voter base are absolutely shocking and warrant serious concern. This article might be a good start:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/which-is-the-real-working-class-party
Also, we can’t just whitewash the very serious allegations against Biden’s son, like how the MSM have done, the same MSM who have said that Joe Biden was the best candidate and that Bernie would have lost. The same MSM which predicted a Biden landslide and whose every poll went wrong, except the progressives, who were right two times in a row. I don’t need to get into the details of the DNC this time again.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored
“Tulsi Gabbard – ugh!” How I hate to point out how you are spitting out “Fake News” talking points here. If all you say is true, then why does Ms. Gabbard’s voting record get a 100% from the Human Rights Campaign for LGBTQ issues, is a part of the LGBTQ Caucus, and also has a similar 100% from Planned Parenthood and NARAL for her abortion legislation. She has apologized for her positions held when she was 17, and a civilian. The president and vice president elect have far worse records as lawmakers, for which they have not apologised till date. She resigned from the DNC to endorse Bernie in 2016, enough proof for being a progressive. I won’t even start on her refreshing foreign policy ideas, but calling Hillary the ‘queen of warmongering’ is a good example.
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Anu Warrier
November 12, 2020
Also, we can’t just whitewash the very serious allegations against Biden’s son, like how the MSM have done,
I have no idea where you get your news from but these are right-wing talking points. God, man! This was election year. Joe Biden was the candidate. Do you honestly not think that Hunter would have investigated in and out during this period? The mainstream media did NOT ‘push this under the carpet’ as you claim. They covered it, as they should. Only, facts are pesky things, they sometimes derail the narrative that’s being peddled by the opposition.
For your information, Hunter Biden was the subject of not one, not two, but three investigations. First, by the US intelligence agencies, who cleared him of an wrongdoing. Two, by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, which also found nothing inappropriate. Three, by a Republican-led delegation whose only job was to find something, anything, to smear Joe Biden – and failed.
How many more times do you want a man investigated? And cleared?
If even the opposition can find no instance of wrongdoing, despite working overtime, why should the mainstream media focus on a nothing-affair? I have no qualms in saying that you are simply parroting right-wing talking points here.
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Anu Warrier
November 12, 2020
Re: Tulsi Gabbard – ‘Fake news’? Pardon me, I live here. I have a stake in the elections here. Do you honestly think that I did not look at all the candidates very carefully during the primaries? Biden was not my candidate – I’d hoped for a Bernie-Warren ticket (Mayor Pete was too young and too inexperienced in my opinion, but I’m keeping an eye on his future prospects – I hope to see him run – and win – one day) but I knew that Bernie is, in his own way, as polarising as Trump.
I’m aware of all those ‘endorsements’. I hate to break it to you, but none of them really are; those rankings are automatically tabulated based on a ‘Yea’ or ‘Nay’ vote. They do not take into account her ‘no vote’. Gabbard has not voted on 37% of the issues that came before the House. She ranks third among senators who abstain. It’s easy enough to spin anything.
And she lies – her website claims she stood for raising the minimum wage to $15. So she voted for it, right? Wrong. She held her vote. That was Bernie’s platform (and the Democrats’) which she piggybacked on – because who the hell is going to check her voting record? Right?
She resigned from the DNC to endorse Bernie in 2016, enough proof for being a progressive.
Wrong again. At that point, there were serious concerns about her being a Russian asset. It wasn’t proven – at least, we haven’t heard an intelligence briefing on the same – but her talking points then were pretty much the misinformation Russian bots were spreading. She was seen as an effective Russian vector to sow dissension among Democratic ranks.
Her foreign policy? American isolationism. Her closeness to authoritarian leaders, even defending Bashar Al-Assad. Consistently.
Anyway, I won’t make a dent in your opinion of Gabbard, and honestly, I don’t care too much either. I didn’t mean to be drawn into this argument, so peace and out. 🙂
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Anu Warrier
November 12, 2020
Madan, no arguments from me there. I’ll just point out that the Democratic Party had had no real hopes for 2020 and were working towards 2024. And of course there are issues within the party.
I’m an independent; have never voted straight ticket ever, with the exception of this year.
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Anuja Chandramouli
November 15, 2020
‘While it is cool that Biden and Harris won by insisting that both are sweeter than a rotten orange (which is hardly saying much), it is hard to comprehend the euphoria that has gripped America and the rest of the world. It has been ages since India had its first lady Prime Minister, woman President and Chief Ministers belonging to the female gender. Though iconic, the consensus is they all had more of the sinner than the saint in them. None of them spent their terms working tirelessly to promote the feminist cause, empower the girl child and alleviate the evils of a world that has been ruined by the male of the species.
On the contrary, women and the rest of the citizens continued to muddle along while the divas like the dudes before them went about the dirty business conducted in the corridors of power which is usually not discussed openly unless one fancies being locked up in jail without the prospect of bail. The question is why is everyone assuming that Kamala, more power to her, is some sort of wand-wielding, fairy Godmother type who is going to magically transform the world and make it a better place?
The only major difference between India and America is that in these parts, corruption is worn as a badge of dishonor, and ordinary folks are dully resigned to it, especially since it seems to be part of the job description for career politicians whereas in the US of A, leaders do the vilest things from behind the polished veneer of their fancy suits and glib tongues espousing liberal values while throwing their weight behind everything that is anything but.’
Hey folks! Sharing am extract from my article for The New Indian Express:
https://www.newindianexpress.com/magazine/voices/2020/nov/15/kamala-harris-a-white-saviour-in-another-hue-2222984.html
I wanted to share it here because it was inspired and informed by this piece by Prasanna.H and the utterly engrossing discussion that followed. It was one of those days, when I had a looming deadline but was exhausted and though my head was buzzing with a number of column ideas none of it was materializing on MS Word. So I was browsing through the comments here, going through the articles shared and slowly, something concrete emerged. Conveying my thoughts on this hot potato of a topic using 465 words was a challenge but I think I managed it.
Thanks so much to everyone who have articulated their ideas so well and provided links to informative articles in this space, particularly Madan (that Chomsky piece was gold!), Aman Basha, BR, TambiDude, KayKay, AnuWarrior.
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Madan
November 15, 2020
Anuja: My pleasure. And you have written a good article within the constraints of a very stiff word limit. It is not possible to fully unpack the implications of the election in a 500 word limit. I THINK aside from celebrations in Kamala’s ancestral town, most of the euphoria is being megaphoned down to us by MSM. Those of us on the outside have seen too much of the dark side of the US starting with Bush Jr to trust this white saviour narrative ever again. Whatever faith Obama rekindled, he destroyed it with the ill advised Libya excursion, one that Clinton no doubt was exceedingly proud of.
And that some Americans now look upon Bush with nostalgia only serves to underline how flawed the notion of attaching so much importance to the veneer of civility is. I think Biden-Harris have much repairing to do both at home and their alliances abroad. India and the UK, due to their own self-inflicted wounds, may be among the very few partners who will welcome them with open arms; continental Europe has already signaled they will wait and watch. The internal divisions within the Dem Party as well as Republican control over the Senate won’t help matters. Not even winning both Georgia run off seats will help. Manchin has already promised to vote against eliminating the filibuster. So get this. Manchin will help the Republicans ensure Biden/Schumer (the current Senate Minority Leader) can’t do to them what Trump/McConnell did were either or both of Breyer/Thomas to pass away.
If I were a betting man, I would bet on the current mood of relief sooner or later giving way to concern that if not Trump, some other white supremacist on the GOP ticket will run again in 2024 and maybe win as well.
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Madan
November 15, 2020
I have spent a lot of time on this space criticizing the Dems so let me make the case against Republicans here. Or more specifically the Solid South. Both the Solid South and the Republicans follow a negative strategy that yields success in politics because of how perverse politics itself is. The Solid South’s obduracy can be compared to Jinnah’s doubling down on Partition come what may. He won, Nehru-Patel-Gandhi lost. Likewise the South won even after losing the Civil War. Because after coming back into the Union, they doubled down on disenfranchisement of black people and resisted Abolitionists’ efforts to hold them to account until the latter got exhausted and moved on. A strategy that has worked perfectly for the South but at the cost of holding back the USA. If a region doesn’t want to move on with time, it becomes the weakest link in the chain. And you know what they say about the strength of a team being measured by its weakest link.
Similarly, Republicans gave up on being a party for all Americans and decided the way to securing their future as a political entity was to represent white interests above all. And to that end, do anything and everything possible to thwart the ability of minorities, particularly black people, to vote. Again Trump simply brought this out in the open to a degree that made his fellow Republicans uncomfortable…because they did this back in Reagan’s time too! This again is a strategy that helps them in a narrow sense but not the country. You need for both parties to fight over ideology, not racial identity. The Conservative parties in Canada or UK are not so beholden to majoritarian community politics as the GOP are. They have diagnosed this themselves whenever they lost. And still refused to do anything about it. Their defeatism – the defeatist belief that they cannot be a better party for the minorities than the Dems are in spite of being the party of Lincoln – costs America dearly.
I criticize the Dems a lot because in a two party system, only they represent the interests of the dispossessed and they do a worse and worse job of it lured as they are by corporate money. However, the larger long term issue of where US politics is at is the myopic defeatism of both the Republican Party and the Solid South. James Baldwin warned white Americans that racism would ultimately consume America itself. In the wake of this hyper-polarized election, we can sadly see this warning starting to come true.
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Tambi Dude
November 15, 2020
A video is worth 10,00000 words.
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Madan
November 15, 2020
Tambi Dude: I really do not understand how mainstream, National Democrats got here. We were discussing soon after the George Floyd incident on whatsapp and we all agreed that even IF it did have only an intent of reform, defund the police was just a bad way to advertise it. And ‘we’ here were all liberals. Maybe we are not liberal enough for San Francisco colleges but, huh, they don’t run the world for all that they seem to believe they do. You cannot defund like remove or curtail police as an institution itself in civil society. You just cannot sell that. You should take away military level weapons and give them better training. But those can be sold without a phrase like defund the police. Biden had to work very hard throughout the cycle to distance himself from such phrases and, in essence, to negate the Trojan Horse angle. A Democrat who supports healthcare for all along with trade and immigration restrictions as well as does not support things like defunding the police will do well. And if there really isn’t any Democrat with those positions, they will continue to find the going tough.
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Aman Basha
November 15, 2020
@Anuja: Great piece. I’m of the view that the biggest of the countries will always try to exert their will or push things their way. Soviet Russia or even Putin’s Russia must have participated in as many terrible atrocities as the States for sure. It’s simply better when the said bully at least has the veneer of a democracy, where criticism is frequently flung and inside information is freely available and circulated. I sleep easier when I know the big monster is the US and not China.
While people seem to realize the US is heading down the path of getting screwed after Trump won, I realized how screwed it was after Jeffrey Epstein and his weird, weird murder in jail. Come on, Epstein didn’t kill himself. I honestly wonder if such a weird situation played out in India. The fact that the media, as the unfunny but politically astute Bill Maher observes, makes such mountains out of Joe Biden’s eccentricities which are quite normal for people his age and other things, but buries stories as extraordinarily infuriating as Epstein, what better way to describe the oligarchy of USA.
At least JFK has a conspiracy of your choosing, but this one is just mind wrecking. Any guesses from anyone here on what the fuck was going on with this guy?
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Madan
November 15, 2020
Aman: I am sure you remember how Hollywood biggies literally groaned whenever Ricky Gervais joked about Epstein. He knew too many people and was too well connected to be allowed to remain alive. It’s not just MSM that has warped priorities. Queen Elizabeth II threw Markle and Harry under the bus but protected Prince Andrew, especially so after he got thoroughly exposed in the brilliant Emily Maitlis interview. And it’s also not just Hollywood that wanted Epstein out of the way. Trump would have too, he knew Epstein well. As did the Clintons. There was all-partisan support to get Epstein out of the way.
Also agree with what you said about preferring a democratic hegemon to an avowedly non-democratic (as opposed to merely ‘undemocratic’) one. That way, you have at least some chance of getting through to the electorate in that hegemon and influencing their opinion. It’s a long shot but it worked for India under British rule so it cannot be completely discounted. That said, it’s also a question of where countries like India figure in US’ geopolitical priorities (not very high until recently). In the Middle East in particular, they had no qualms about destroying democratic governments or attempts to install democracy in favour of keeping their own lackeys in power.
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Srinivas R
November 17, 2020
https://glineq.blogspot.com/2020/11/what-we-owe-to-donald-j-trump.html?m=1
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Aman Basha
January 7, 2021
This is the worst day for Democracy today, utter, utter shame in every which way. The Republican Party is dead, and Trump better get impeached, properly this time.
Distressing parallels between this and the Sacking Of Rome.
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KayKay
January 7, 2021
For the next idiot who watches Olympus Has Fallen and tells me…
“Storming of the White House by terrorists? That’s some Hollywood bullshit right there”,
I have some choice words for you
None of them printable…..
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Madan
January 7, 2021
Either impeach and remove the clown or invoke the 25th. Otherwise America will never recover from this. And even with it, the outlook is bleak.
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H. Prasanna
January 7, 2021
@Madan, Aman
Nothing (yet) from Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris regarding accountability through impeachment/25th (still a “radical” idea) or even arrests/investigation.
I think they don’t want to rock the boat now that they have won power. The more I see this the more I believe the same systems that protect Trump gives the privilege of inaction (or political performative action) for people in power. Having said that, it is still not on them until Jan 20th to act. It is on Trump and the Republican party. They, as we know now, will not act.
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Aman Basha
January 7, 2021
I’m still shocked at what I just saw, like a scene of a Gerard Butler movie, and it’s depressing because that despite all our celebrations at this new year, the threat of right wing authoritarianism to democracy is stronger than ever.
One might hate the US, but there is no denying that the “shining city on a hill” has always been the great example of democracy and to see it desecrated like this play right into the hands of Russians and Chinese, who’ve been gleefully putting the images on repeat in media.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, the day was supposed to have news about how China suppressed its own innovator and company, while not co-operating with the WHO. Democracy was supposed to be celebrated as a Confederate state elected a Jew and a Black pastor as senators.
@Madan: More than impeached, he has to be made an example. His head ought to be on a pike as a warning for wannabe authoritarians. The Right thinks they can get away with this by equating it to BLM protests, but they have to be made to pay, dearly.
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H. Prasanna
January 8, 2021
Looks like I spoke too soon and too wrongly. They are pushing for the removal of Donald Trump soon.
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Eswar
January 8, 2021
Aman: the threat of right wing authoritarianism to democracy is stronger than ever.
If ‘terrorism has no religion’, then authoritarianism knows neither left nor right. Attaching qualifiers to wrongdoings and atrocities is a stepping stone for divisiveness and incitement.
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Aman Basha
January 8, 2021
@Eswar: Terrorism has no religion, but Islamic terrorism is called so because terrorism is encouraged and incited by religious figures. There was some thread about Islamophobia here where typical Right wingers were loading off on Islam, IIRC and then calling the blog a woke rag.
This monster was made by the Conservatives and the Right, and they need to own it up.
For anyone who’ll try to equate BLM to this, how many riots have broken out in the US due to racial tensions over time? And how many times has a sitting President, unwilling to accept his election loss, launched an insurrection on the US Capitol?
The German Finance Minister said, “Today is the worst day to democracy. Authoritarians are celebrating around the world.” Those words have far greater significance than we can grasp right now.
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Eswar
January 8, 2021
Aman: Terrorism has no religion, but Islamic terrorism is called so because terrorism is encouraged and incited by religious figures.
I agree thats how it is called. So, for me, to qualify this as ‘right wing authoritarianism’ is accepting that ‘Islamic terrorism’ is a thing. I rather prefer not to use the tags in both the instances. My view is these tags are a convenient way to exercise evil rather than the reason.
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vijay
January 8, 2021
Serves America well for voting this guy in. Even this time 75 million have voted for him. Dont look at Trump, look at those who voted for him and still stand by him
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Rahul
January 8, 2021
“If, or when, Trump loses he will be thrown under the bus if not immediately then eventually.” – (Quoting from myself on this board). Tom Cotton will rise as a guy who coddled Trump but threw him under the bus when he lost (of course, he will spin it as this was the tipping point blah blah blah) . McConell also already quit supporting him , along with his wife. Its so ridiculous but understandable in a perverse way that these lifetime grifters have now had enough.
These guys are far more intelligent than Trump and they will continue to mold and use right wing hysteria to their own ends.
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Madan
January 9, 2021
Rahul: The way the Republicans caved in exposed their craven selfishness. The day they were attacked by Trump’s hooligans in their Chamber, their stance changed overnight. That’s what it took, huh. I don’t buy that they were distressed or shocked by the events for they should not have been and there is no excuse for burying your head that much in the sand. They want those gun toting crazies shooting school or college kids (or black people if said crazies are donning cop uniform), not attacking THEM. Among incumbent Republicans, only Mitt Romney has come out of this with his reputation wholly intact. And Justin Amash saved his by leaving the party; the late John McCain by saving ACA as his last act in Senate. The fact that a Mormon conservative like Romney is too RINO for the current Republican Party says more about them than it does about him.
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Aman Basha
January 9, 2021
@Madan: They didn’t change their stance at all, even as the blood of a police officer, who was bludgeoned to death by the ‘fine’ citizens, was being cleaned off the Capitol floor, 140 Republicans in the House and 9 Senators still voted to overturn an election result. Lindsey Graham, even after being attacked as a pedophile by QAnon in an airport, goes on Fox to plead against impeachment.
Even Biden, who was running on a message for unity and bipartisanship, straight up compared them to Nazis. The Democratic establishment is rightfully taking the Squad’s hardline approach to Republicans. If Republicans acquit him again, the Dems can use their new majority to bar him from running for office again.
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Anu Warrier
January 9, 2021
Nothing (yet) from Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris regarding accountability through impeachment/25th (still a “radical” idea) or even arrests/investigation.
It is not so easy to impeach with 6 business days left before the Terrorist-in-chief leaves office. It will be voted on in the house, but the Senate has prior matters to discuss before the inauguration, and according to the law governing the Senate procedure, ‘no other business may be discussed’. For them to vote on impeachment, they will need a unanimous vote. Do you think you will get that in a Senate in which Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are members? I’m not holding my breath. McConnell has already circulated a memo which details the timeline.
Besides, if you haven’t noticed, the Dems have much more to worry about, with threats of a civil war hanging over our heads before or on Inauguration Day.
If the insurrectionists who broached the Capitol had arms and ammunition, we would have had the entire Congress wiped out. This is the monster that Trump created and the GOP nurtured. The only reason that the rats are leaving what they see as a sinking ship is because their arses were in danger. Until then, when these goons threatened to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, or when they made death and rape threats against Raffspenberger and other election officials, both D and R, no one said a word.
I watched the hypocrisy of the law enforcement that dealt with peaceful protestors who marched for George Flloyd be pepper sprayed, tear gassed, shot at with rubber bullets and beaten; arrested and charged for crimes. And I watched the same law enforcement taking selfies with the insurrectionists, and moving barricades so they could overrun the Capitol. I am watching, as three days later, there have only been 13 arrests and three charges before court.
I’m sick of the whataboutism, I’m sick of the ‘both sides’ argument, and I’m tired of always being the side that has to reach out for ‘bipartisanship’ and ‘unity’. I watched White Privilege on display three days ago. I watched and heard as they called for public hangings for the Dems and RINOs, firing squads and public executions. And I watched as they waved the Confederate Flag being waved inside the Capitol building, in a disgraceful insult to the hundreds and thousands of men and women who died fighting for the US flag.
‘American Patriots’ Ivanka T called them. ‘You’re like that Patriots at Valley Forge’ said Ted Cruz. ‘We love you’ said the wanna-be dictator.
I have no compunction in saying that the GOP is a bunch of snivelling cowards and that anyone who supports Trump is a racist, bigot and a traitor to the country.
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Madan
January 9, 2021
“Even Biden, who was running on a message for unity and bipartisanship, straight up compared them to Nazis.” – It does seem like with his razor-thin Senate majority, Biden is spoiling for a fight. Because the way the party is now does not make it amenable to working together. Since Mitch has backed off a little ever since he learnt to be suitably horrified by Trump’s voter fraud theories, maybe Biden will reach out to him to get a little less hardline. He can also build bridges with Romney, Murkowski, Collins, Sasse and boost his majority; will be useful for when good ol’ Manchin decides to let him down again. Whatever, Biden must utilize this division of opinion in the GOP to rebuild a moderate bipartisan wing, the kind that held firm from the 50s to the 90s. It used to be that the moderate majority reined in the excesses of the fringes on both sides but that’s not happening. At the same time, some boldness on the economic front will be required. Business as usual is not gonna work. They need to think creatively. Put caps on college fees but make student debt forbearance tougher. Likewise, maybe instead of single payer healthcare, think about ways to break the stranglehold of private insurance over healthcare in the US.
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Anu Warrier
January 9, 2021
And if anyone wants to compare what happened on the 6th to the BLM protest, here are the differences – in what happened, and how the protestors were treated.
DC mob attack, 1/6/21:
▪️
Broke into Capitol
▪️
Offices vandalized
▪️
National Guard: about 340
▪️
Arrests that day: 82
DC anti-racism protest, 6/1/20:
▪️
1 block away from White House
▪️
No attempt to breach building
▪️
National Guard: about 5,000
▪️
Arrests that day: 289
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Madan
January 10, 2021
“It is not so easy to impeach with 6 business days left before the Terrorist-in-chief leaves office. It will be voted on in the house, but the Senate has prior matters to discuss before the inauguration, and according to the law governing the Senate procedure, ‘no other business may be discussed’.” – Besides I guess Prasanna has forgotten that the Dems did impeach Trump once. And the GOP refused to even hear witnesses in the Senate Trial. They didn’t want to entertain the not insignificant chance that the witnesses would damage Trump’s case. For Mitch, it was as simple as he has the Senate votes so why even entertain the procedure. This is the kind of party that GOP is. So there can be no both siderism between Dems and GOP. Yes, Dems are bad in some ways but it’s not even close to the party that enabled this insurrection.
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Aman Basha
January 10, 2021
As far as reports suggest, the House might reconvene and vote on articles on Impeachment by Monday itself and that’s set to pass seamlessly into the Senate. Now, although McConnell’s note is a bit of a problem, it also means that he’s playing cards close to his chest. He hasn’t really come out against impeachment like others, and he clearly doesn’t have as much control on his caucus as he used to.
The smart strategy here is to let the Senate whenever it wants to, before or on 19th, but convince a good number of Republicans who are ambivalent to be absent (2/3rd vote is easy with this). Trump wanted to travel on Air Force One on 19th and convicting him on the same day would be the ultimate insult.
By this, it allows for a seamless transition into a Biden presidency.
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Rocky
January 24, 2024
Great comment by Great Bong on Vivek:
Right after Vivek Ramaswamy bowed out of the Presidential race after the Iowa Caucus, Babylon Bee, a Conservative knock-off of the Onion, came up with a “humor” piece in which Vivek Ramaswamy is shown working in a chain convenience store, having appointed there by Trump. This is an old racist trope popularized by the Simpsons in the 90s through the character of Apu, an Indian who speaks in a sing-song accent and is overtly submissive, with his signature line “Thank you, come again.”
This is the problem of being Vivek. Unlike other Indian-origin politicians in the US, Vivek has not hidden or disavowed his origins, and that makes him the target on both sides. For the predominantly white, Christian conservative base of the Republican party, the color of his skin and his religion disqualify him for office. For the “genteel centrist liberal” of the NYTimes reading type, his “I know more than you” super-rich geek aggro, belie their expectation of what a minority should be like–more Apu from the Simpsons or Sundar Pichai or Satya Nadella, who stay in their lanes, and do not try to influence the body politic. For the progressives, drunk on the “woke” Kool-Aid, which divides the world into aggressor groups and victim groups and applies different standards to the two, Vivek belongs to the former. Since it’s never fascist to be fascist to be a fascist, well, you know what follows.
In a way, this is a squeeze on both sides, experienced by many Hindu-Indians in the US. Large swathes of the US are overtly racist, including but not limited to the usage of slurs and micro and macro-aggressions. Another section, the ones with the savior complex, feel threatened by the success of Indians. They lash out by undermining their achievements: “So what you are sending missions to Mars, your people defecate in the open.” To yet another section, their model minority status is proof positive of their complicity in systemic power structures, maybe in the US but definitely in their home country.
And this is why the Vivek insurrection was so important. He might not have gotten there, and maybe he never will, but he has inspired others like him to step into the ring without denying who they are.
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Rocky
January 24, 2024
Link-
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