Conor here: Appreciate that Solomon reserves much of his criticism for most Democrats who aren’t all that opposed to much of what Trump is doing, but I fail to understand the faith in Bernie and AOC:
Well well well. Would you look at that. https://t.co/euAIfrcHv0 pic.twitter.com/teCxXHeaMR
— Toomin
(@ramthebladeship) April 28, 2025
By Norman Solomon, co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include War Made Easy, Made Love, Got War, and most recently War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine (The New Press). Originally published at TomDispatch.
America desperately needs a united front to restrain the wrecking ball of the Trump regime. While outraged opposition has been visible and vocal, it remains a far cry from developing a capacity to protect what’s left of democracy in the United States.
With the administration in its fourth month, the magnitude of the damage underway is virtually impossible for any individual to fully grasp. But none of us need a complete picture to understand that the federal government is now in the clutches of massively cruel and antidemocratic forces that have no intention of letting go.
Donald Trump’s second presidential term has already given vast power to the most virulent aspects of the nation’s far-right political culture. Its flagrant goals include serving oligarchy, dismantling civil liberties, and wielding government as a weapon against academic freedom, civil rights, economic security, environmental protection, public health, workers’ rights, and so much more.
The nonstop Trumpist assaults mean that ongoing noncooperation and active resistance will be essential. This is no time for what Martin Luther King, Jr., called “the paralysis of analysis.” Yet the past hugely matters. Repetition compulsions within the Democratic Party, including among self-described liberals and progressives, unwittingly smoothed the path for Trump’s return to power. Many of the same patterns, with undue deference to party leaders and their narrow perspectives, are now hampering the potential to create real leverage against MAGA madness.
“Fiscal Conservatism and Social Liberalism”
Today, more than three decades after the “New Democrats” triumphed when Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, an observation by Washington Post economics reporter Hobart Rowen days after that victory is still worth pondering: “Fiscal conservatism and social liberalism proved to be an effective campaign formula.” While campaigning with a call for moderate public investment, Clinton offered enough assurances to business elites to gain much of their support. Once elected, he quickly filled his economic team with corporate lawyers, business-friendly politicians, lobbyists, and fixers on loan from Wall Street boardrooms.
That Democratic formula proved to be a winning one — for Republicans. Two years after Clinton became president, the GOP gained control of both the House and Senate. Republicans maintained a House majority for the next 12 years and a Senate majority for 10 of them.
A similar pattern set in after the next Democrat moved into the White House. Taking office in January 2009 amid the Great Recession, Barack Obama continued with predecessor George W. Bush’s “practice of bailing out the bankers while ignoring the anguish their toxic mortgage packages caused the rest of us,” as journalist Robert Scheer pointed out. By the time Obama was most of the way through his presidency, journalist David Dayen wrote, he had enabled “the dispossession of at least 5.2 million U.S. homeowner families, the explosion of inequality, and the largest ruination of middle-class wealth in nearly a century.”
Two years into Obama’s presidency, his party lost the House and didn’t regain it for eight years. When he won reelection in 2012, Republicans captured the Senate and kept control of it throughout his second term.
During Obama’s eight years as president, the Democrats also lost upward of 900 seats in state legislatures. Along the way, they lost control of 30 legislative chambers, while the Republican share of seats went from 44% to 56%. So GOP state legislators were well-positioned to gerrymander electoral districts to their liking after the 2020 census, making it possible for Republicans to just barely (but powerfully) gain and then retain their stranglehold on the House of Representatives after the 2022 and 2024 elections.
Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024 ran for president while sticking to updated versions of “fiscal conservatism, social liberalism,” festooning their campaigns with the usual trappings of ultra-mild populist rhetoric. Much of the media establishment approved, as they checked the standard Democratic boxes. But opting to avoid genuine progressive populism on the campaign trail meant enabling Trump to pose as a better choice for the economic interests of the working class.
Mutual Abandonment
The party’s orientation prevents its presidential nominees from making a credible pitch to be champions of working people. “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted immediately after the 2024 election. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.”
But there’s little evidence that the party leadership wants significant change, beyond putting themselves back in power. Midway through April, the homepage of the Democratic Party seemed like a snapshot of an institution still disconnected from the angst and anger of the electorate. A pop-up that instantly obscured all else on the screen featured a drawing of a snarling Donald Trump next to the headline: “We’re SUING Trump over two illegal executive orders.” Underneath, the featured message proclaimed: “We’re rolling up our sleeves and organizing for a brighter, more equal future. Together, we will elect Democrats up and down the ballot.” A schedule of town halls in dozens of regions was nice enough, but a true sense of urgency, let alone emergency, was notably lacking.
Overall, the party seems stuck in the mud of the past, still largely mired in the Joe Biden era and wary of opening the door too wide for the more progressive grassroots base that provides millions of small donations and volunteers to get out the vote (as long as they’re genuinely inspired to do so). President Biden’s unspeakably tragic refusal to forego running for reelection until far too late was enabled by top-to-bottom party dynamics and a follow-the-leader conformity that are still all too real.
On no issue has the party leadership been more tone-deaf — with more disastrous electoral and policy results — than the war in Gaza. The refusal of all but a few members of Congress to push President Biden to stop massively arming the Israeli military for its slaughter there caused a steep erosion of support from the usual Democratic voters, as polling at the time and afterward indicated. The party’s moral collapse on Gaza helped to crater Kamala Harris’s vote totals among alienated voters reluctant to cast their ballots for what they saw as a war party, a perception especially acute among young people and notable among African Americans.
The Fact of Oligarchy
Pandering to potential big donors is apt to seem like just another day in elected office. A story about California Governor Gavin Newsom, often touted as a major Democratic contender for president in 2028, is in the category of “you can’t make this stuff up.” As reported by Politico this spring, he “is making sure California’s business elite can call him, maybe. Roughly 100 leaders of state-headquartered companies have received a curious package in recent months: a prepaid, inexpensive cell phone… programmed with Newsom’s digits and accompanied by notes from the governor himself. ‘If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away,’ read one note to a prominent tech firm CEO, printed on an official letterhead, along with a hand-scrawled addendum urging the executive to reach out… It was Newsom’s idea, a representative said, and has already yielded some ‘valuable interactions.’”
If, however, you’re waiting for Newsom to send prepaid cell phones to activists working for social justice, telling them, “If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away,” count on waiting forever.
The dominance of super-wealthy party patrons that Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been railing against at “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies has been coalescing for a long time. “In the American republic,” wrote Walter Karp for Harper’s magazine shortly before his death in 1989, “the fact of oligarchy is the most dreaded knowledge of all, and our news keeps that knowledge from us.” Now, in the age of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, the iron heel of mega-capital is at work swiftly crushing democratic structures, while top Democrats race to stay within shouting distance of the oligarchs.
A paradoxical challenge for the left is that it must take part in building a united front that includes anti-Trump corporatists and militarists, even while fighting against corporatism and militarism. What’s needed is not capitulation or ultra-leftism, but instead a dialectical approach that recognizes the twin imperatives of defeating an increasingly fascistic Republican Party while working to gain enough power to implement truly progressive agendas.
For those agendas, electoral campaigns and their candidates should be subsets of social movements, not the other way around. Still, here’s one crystal-clear lesson of history: it’s crucial who sits in the Oval Office and controls Congress. Now more than ever.
Fascism Would Stop Us All
A horrible reality of this moment: a fascist takeover of the government is within reach — and, if completed, any possibility of fulfilling a progressive agenda would go out the Overton window. The words of the young Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, murdered in 1969 by the Chicago police (colluding with the FBI), ring profoundly true today: “Nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.”
But much of the 2025 Democratic Party leadership seems willing to once again pursue the tried-and-failed strategy of banking on Trump to undo himself. Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, the party leaders in the House and Senate, have distinctly tilted in that direction, as if heeding strategist James Carville’s declaration that Democrats should not try to impede Trump’s rampage against the structures of democracy.
“With no clear leader to voice our opposition and no control in any branch of government, it’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead,” Carville wrote in late February. “Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.” (Evidently impressed with his political acumen, the editors of the New York Times published the op-ed piece with that advice only four months after printing an op-ed he wrote in late October under this headline: “Three Reasons I’m Certain Kamala Harris Will Win.”)
As for the Democratic National Committee, it probably had nowhere to go but up in the wake of the chairmanship of Jaime Harrison, who for four years dutifully did President Biden’s bidding. Now, with no Democratic president, the new DNC chair, Ken Martin, has significant power to guide the direction of the party.
In early April, I informed Martin that my colleagues and I at RootsAction were planning a petition drive for the full DNC to hold an emergency meeting. “The value of such a meeting seems clear for many reasons,” I wrote, “including the polled low regard for the Democratic Party and the need to substantively dispel the wide perception that the party is failing to adequately respond to the current extraordinary perils.” Martin replied with a cordial text affirming that the schedule for the 448-member DNC to convene remains the same as usual — twice a year — with the next meeting set for August.
The petition, launched in mid-April (co-sponsored by RootsAction and Progressive Democrats of America), urged the DNC to “convene an emergency meeting of all its members — fully open to the public — as soon as possible… Business as usual must give way to truly bold action that mobilizes against the autocracy that Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their cronies are further entrenching every day. The predatory, extreme, and dictatorial actions of the Trump administration call for an all-out commensurate response, which so far has been terribly lacking from the Democratic Party.”
No matter what, at this truly pivotal time, we must never give up.
As Stanley Kunitz wrote during the height of the Vietnam War:
In a murderous time
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.
While reasons for pessimism escalate, I often think of how on target my RootsAction colleague India Walton was in a meeting when she said, “The only hope is in the struggle.”
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IMO, we’ve reached the point where only sustained violence will change government policy at the national level. Even number cruchers like Wolf Richter at Wolf Street are in hostile denial at even bringing up income distribution and break into glorious praise of wealth controllers in service to the ruling elites: when someone posting a comment that rising inequality posed a threat to the middle class and recent robust retail sales figures, he responded with a retort “no they spent too” because car sales. Sure, they spent too – by going further into debt unlike the wealthy. Ignoring the issue raised which was not total income and spending but it’s distribution. He was aided by libertarians openly hostile ANY questions on income distribution. And his comments that the spending decisions and FEELINGS of the rich are much more important than others.
Wolf is strictly a numbers guy, so he can make charts with squiggly lines.
It seems to work for his worldview-
Income is a canard, it’s wealth that has totally tipped the scales and something the lower class cannot compete with. And no one will do anything about it.
Richter has provided good empirical data analysis through multiple upturns and downturns in the economy. I believe it is a good practice to separate data and analysis from political views, as I think many do who follow NC regularly.
What if the data is as suspect as the politicians?
Why read a finance oriented site?
All those numbers mean nothing to me in the scheme of things and Wolf fixates on drunken sailors, yet never really talks about the hoi polloi, who I assume are just numbers to him.
I would add…WS is strickly numbers up, greater = good. Numbers down, less = bad. Doesn’t matter if 100% of all up, greater income goes to 1 person and you’re stupit if you ask it it did. Then comes the ridiculing libertarian backup coures to devour you.
Why would Hannibal Lecture read cooking books?
Is this good empirical data devoid of value judgements? Yah, economy moving people spending having fun. THIS is what you get when you ignore falling living standards because wealth gains by the rich average out higher per person. In other words using numbers and charts without MORALITY.
The time for sustained violence was 2003. Antifa is NOT one of us. Srsly, has anyone here ever met someone who credibly claimed to be active in Antifa? Anyone? True there may be a transgender assassination cult operating out there somewhere but trust me when I say their list has all the wrong names on it. CEOs are replaceable, office holders not so much. (Try to remember the last time you got mad enough at one of your Senators to want to replace them. Who were you going to replace them with? The genuine opposition fo fascism is faceless, and not in a good “I am Spartacus!” kind of way.)
Trump has a populist conservative base and that takes away all the serious insurresurrectionists from any revolution. Violence now would result in police kettling the opposition and then turning the “brown shirts” loose on them so all media coverage shows civilians vs civilians and not cops on citizens. I have a foot in both worlds and would never bet on the Left to win a physical confrontation with the Right. Gym muscles do not hold up well against construction worker fists.
So where does the violence come from? My guess would be Antifa and Proud Boys surrogates. Someone has to hire all those about to be fired FBI agents. The only real solution would be to have a real opposition party. Timbers, if you want to lead the anti-DNC mob at the next DNC convention I’ll be there shoulder to shoulder with you. The DNC is my enemy, Trump is just what happens when both parties are wholly owned by not we the people.
[I am still banned by Twitter, btw, X seems to still be in the hands of the censors. Almost as if the Democrats are, in many ways, still in charge of most of the media.]
Schumpeter …
IMO the mainstream opposition don’t even know the rules of the game being played.
Trump’s out here playing Calvinball while they are still working on their Bridge etiquette.
beating the dust that used to be the bones of the horse that got loose.
demparty is way, way past moribund.its a corpse.
ground up grassroots is the only way.
and i fear the engineered mindf&ck and division are too far along.
dragons are required, at this point….and thats gonna take a clarity that can only come through widespread hardship.
“Ground up grassroots…”
Excellent!
Best…H
Amen. Change isn’t going to come from the dems and looking for it there is a waste and part of the problem.
Don’t forget that the GOP, while nominally in a better position, is effectively a ruined party as well.
Like one of those eels that sinks its fangs into the host and sucks out the guts, Trump has done a take-down of the elephants, leaving only sniveling sycophants like the “swamp stooge” Mike Johnson in his wake.
We’re gonna need bigger, badder dragons. With lots of fire to destroy everything.
Trump wasn’t elected – he was “selected” – by Wall Street and the Central Bankers. This is a controlled demolition of the US middle class and the dollar. The “right” and the “left” are the same. Wake up ppl.
Was K. Harris “selected”?
Yes, obviously K. Harris was selected. As Lambert used to say, the role of the Democratic Party is to be the Washington Generals, barnstorming losers to the Republicans’ Harlem Globetrotters. She wasn’t Sanders.
Chris – why would they do that though? I’ve thought the same as you, but logically it doesn’t make sense to destroy a large consumer base. I realize that India and South Africa are growing and investment opportunities are endless, but why not invest here? Plenty of opportunities regarding our decaying infrastructure. Is it because we are too divided, uneducated, or something else? What is making the US a bad investment now, much less deliberations to destroy it? Is it just they want to suck all the remaining money out of the middleclass and then find a whole new crop to grow? Is it because they know the only way to halt climate change and keep finite resources for themselves may be depopulation, and that is the ultimate goal here?
Jackpot design engineering? Why else pretend covid is not a pandemic anymore, for example?
And now I think, why else put JFK Jr in charge of HHS, if not to stand down and abolish every possible instrument of public-level disease surveillance in order to foster the emergence of plagues?
I wish posts like this would address the actual practical problems of coordination and information in the current age. Specifically, 1) social media is a non-starter for organizing or coordinating any large scale movement opposed to the oligarchs. It is owned by oligarchs and infested with spooks and bad-actors. This has been obvious for at least a decade yet you virtually never see it mentioned in post like this. “Dialectics” aren’t going to help when there is no platform. You can’t print pamphlets and hand out fliers in 2025. The people are online and online is actively hostile to anti-establishmentariansm outside of the neutered
2) Bad actors – intentional and unintentional are everywhere and immediately infest and dominate the discourse in any real world institution or physical space where genuine strategic coordination might occur. Even when active sabotage isn’t occurring, the pushiest and most entitled people rarely fail to dominate discourse, seize procedural power and control of limited resources, demand performances of right-thinking, and discourage the majority.
3) Confusing sanctioned online conversations and media (social and otherwise) with the actual sentiments of regular people. The Luigi incident showed that huge numbers of people are furious and prepared to undertake radical solutions. They know perfectly well who the enemy is and that fear and power are the only languages they understand. I would argue that a significant plurality of USAians know that the Republicans are evil and that Democrats are evil tempered by carefully cultivated cowardice. A whole generation hoped with Obama, rallied for Bernie, and were kicked and mocked for it, resulting in widespread disengagement, depression, and simmering rage.
People of most political persuasions have come to realize that corporate lackeys, condescending academics, and the billionaire narcissists they serve are the problem, and I guarantee 10s of millions would jump at any realistic opportunity to do anything that didn’t feel like another Charlie Brown football kick, or even just hang out together in a place that’s “safe” from saboteurs, spooks, and the people who invented safe spaces.
Your (2) reminds me of a story I heard on NPR before I stopped listening. An activist with and anti-prison organization was lamenting that a young, white guys joined the group. Every time the group tried to discuss substantive business, the white kid turn language police and insist that the group use the proper woke terms. The activist telling the story eventually told the kid that their group was about helping imprisoned people not changing the language.
After the experience I have had with wokie language police professionally, I just assume at this point that they are all bad actors out to derail substantive work with their constant virtue signalling harangues.
In a lot of activist groups, one of the signs someone is an undercover fed is when they spend more time trying to get everyone caught up in pointless minutiae instead of actually doing something productive.
Some of them may be secret agent establishment underminers. But I bet a lot of them are self-validating moral superiority stuff-strutting virtue-boasters. The look-at-me Left. The Boozhie Left.
The Lefteoisie.
Also, how do you have a “united front” when so many wannabe-leaders all demand to be recognized as the One True Messiah? Perhaps normal people who want to get something achieved should settle for a Coalition of Convenience. And differently oriented groups should simply do their different things and see which are successful. Let Darwin sort them out. And the failing groups can bleed members to the succeeding groups.
And meanwhile people can offer ideas here and elsewhere which “could work” if enough millions of people adopted their own version of those suggestions in their daily lives. And people reading those ideas would be free to act on them or not, and spread them around or not, as they wish.
One thing seems clear to me . . . . that waiting for the “Democrats” to “flip the House” is waiting too long. By election time 2026 there will be nothing left to save and nothing left to vote about at the National Level. That’s why I think that if Trump is still in office by 2026, the Triple Nazi Revolutionaries will be satisfied that their Revolution has gone too far for anyone to do anything against it and they can afford to let the election happen as a trap for fools and a comforting diversion.
People focusing on “Impeachment and Removal” will have to think of a way to make lift so horrible for so many people in so many Republican states that the people of those states are driven to torture and terrify their Republican officeholders into agreeing that Trump needs to be deleted soonest and on a near-unanimous bipartisan basis.
updated samizdat, with john galt features, anonymous, a la the federalist papers…left at random on greasy spoon tables…language and arguments carefully crafted to target audience(ie: the rhetoric i used to talk abt bernie and new new dealism at the feedstore is different than what i would use on the campus of texas tech)
one would need an old lithograph printer or something to get around the watermark, etc embedded in printers since forever.
hoard parts and ink and such via third party comrades, just like in the old days.
its a steep hill, that right there.
and we are far outgunned, in every sense of the word.
but…and this is something that occurred to me when i was on LATOC, long ago, and we were stirring up a buncha shite: how many lurkers, who never comment, are reading our exchange, right now?
thats a sobering thought.
the site numbers at LATOC at its most influential and threatening point were huge.
orders of magnitude more than those of us who actively engaged, and damn the torpedoes.
Perhaps there are also digital means of distributing samizdata? Millions of samizdata-catapulters owning their millions of desktop computers and able to download things onto disks or flash drives or memory sticks or whatever? Small and light enough to be carried by carrier pigeon and various human smugglers from computer-owner to computer-owner to computer-owner?
Perhaps microfiche makers and microfilm makers sending microfiches and microfilms around to people with the tech to read them? And computers to scan them into and desktop printers to print them back out onto?
The Khomeini Revolution was inspired by millions of little cassette tapes sent into Iran.
Just thoughts . . .
yeah, that too,lol.
but i dont know how to do any of all that.
i know how to run and maintain a lithographic press.
at least sorta,lol.
dude wanted it hauled off.
i kept it for years.
then i had it hauled off from way out here.
it weighed like 900# and was on great big casters, but was still a bi%%h to move around.
Every method should be tried. Who knows what might work where and how?
Socially ostracizing the Russiagaters would go a long ways towards fixing our problems. The neoliberals shamed party regulars into following their myriad jihads and it worked because constant shaming works. Just as constantly shaming “friends” who embraced neoliberalism may help bring some of them back into the light.
We all know what it’s like when elites shame the masses. Now it’s time for the elites (and their supporters) to experience the flip side of that coin. It’s time to shun those who cling to Russiagate, TDS, and men in women’s sports. (Shun is the mass plural of ‘to shame’ in my political dictionary.)
It is owned by oligarchs and infested with spooks and bad-actors.
fake friends in zuckworld and that story in links re ai persuasion
hence all these scantily clad hotties trying to rope me into various “coins” on X.
took me almost 9 months to get my ducks in a row sufficiently to get my youngest on fafsa…almost all of the bs was because i couldnt prove my identity to their satisfaction.
and i’m like…y’all are the goddam fedgov,lol.
you know who i am.
just about every sitting congresscritter, senate and house, fed and texas, heard from me during bush2 and obamatimes…repeatedly…such that i was told by a travel agent that i was on a no fly list.
(Tam set up a fafsa account for me b4 she died, and never told me about it, via her school email, by the time, defunct..plus, unbeknownst to me, my drivers lic had been expired for like 2 years,lol(i never hafta remove it from my wallet, bc everyone knows me)…luddite/hillpeople problems)
The Democrats are the very thing preventing a united front.
Case in point, Chuck Schumer brags about writing a sternly worded letter with tough questions over the Trump administration going after Harvard. Harvard itself is complaining that it is standing up for pluralism and academic freedom, and yet FIRE shows it is the absolute worst for free speech. Funny how Harvard suppresses academic freedom and demands conformity (not pluralism) from its faculty and students, and then whines about Trump. Give me a break. To the contrary, to the extent that Trump is demanding that Harvard drop mandatory DEI based in Kendi/DiAngelo dogma I am in favor of his actions.
Why exactly should I “unite” with the resistance when they have nothing on offer except protecting their own rice bowls from being smashed? As for Bernie and AOC, how come they only come out to complain about the oligarchs when the Dems are out of power, but knuckle under when the Dems are in power? “Resistance” my backside.
Christopher, you nailed it! Bernie and AOC are not the answer and never were. They are part of the problem. Frankly, the attacks on Harvard are in no way meaningful to the average person. This is the place people like Obama care about, not me.
I refuse to give up hope, and the only hope that I see lies in the reformation of the Democratic Party. It’s not impossible that the MAGA element will wake up to the fact that populism is the chosen technique for their exploitation, but I think that unlikely. Someone pointed out that their identities have been fused with Trump’s.
I see hope in AOC and Bernie, and I also see reason to support early Biden policies. Maybe they should have spoken out earlier if they could see Biden’s descent imbecility, but that seems to been pretty well hidden, at least from the general public. In my opinion, AOC should not aim directly for the White House in 2028, but in to replace POS Schumer. She would be a stronger candidate in 2028 as an incumbent Sen., and it would demonstrate strength to her detractors.
I don’t know who could replace Jeffries, nor do I know that he is irredeemable like Schumer. I think he is an AIPAC puppet, and that does not bode well.
I supported Sanders in 2016 and 2020 with primary votes, campaign donations, and advocacy (in person and on social media). At this point, I have to admit that Glen Ford was right all along and I was wrong: Sanders is a sheepdog
I agree. The Ds and Rs are there to misinform, distract and divide the public, while their bribe-masters asset-strip and pillage the place.
As Jimmy Carter said: “the US is an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery”. This was of course, hardly covered in the mass media.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jimmy-carter-u-s-is-an-oligarchy-with-unlimited-political-bribery-63262/
The Ds and Rs have a monopoly on electoral politics. Solomon, Hartmann, Sanders and AOC et al. are the ‘sheepdogs” for the DNC. They talk a good game, then bait and switch everyone during the so-called elections. We are told to “hold our nose” and vote for the D brand of genocide and institutional corruption. The “lesser evil” and all that BS. But evil is evil.
The same for the Rs. They want to believe that the Orange Idiot is a savior, but he’s Judas.
“The Rs stab you in the chest, then the Ds stab you in the back”
There is no meaningful choice, no functioning democracy, and the rule of law does not apply to the oligarchy or their henchmen. The US is an oligarchy, it should be glaringly obvious by now, but many turn a blind eye and pretend we can just “vote” one more time and
This article from 2015 explains how the game works.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/bernie-and-aoc-sheepdog-democrats
If the Trump regime can conquer and occupy Harvard today because ‘reasons’, it can conquer and occupy Purdue University or Texas A&M or any other University tomorrow because ‘reasons’.
When Churchill-Roosevelt allied with Stalin upon the German invasion of USSR, they didn’t do it out of love for Stalin or Soviet Communism.
The most disturbing part of the situation is that most Americans are obviously, based on observed behavior, OK with the Trump era. Left out of the article is reference to the fact that, in the recent presidential primaries, all republicans voted for Trump and almost all democrats voted for Biden – when Biden was obviously capable of being no more than a propped up front for an unknown cabal. The current Trump administration could have been prevented if democrats had simply not voted for Biden. They didn’t have to vote for anyone else, just don’t vote for Biden. Even that was too much trouble for them. Also left out of the article, and most other discussions of the development of this crisis, is a reference to the influence of the corporate strategy of the hostile takeover. Instead of the playbook of autocracy, perhaps the playbook of buying, disassembling, and selling off companies is more/as applicable.
Carolina concerned, could you provide a link for this please:
Carolina concerned, yes people actually voting for an obvious dementia patient was unbelievable to me. Allowing the democrats to make a complete mockery of the entire election and democracy itself. Who was in charge in the Biden administration? It certainly wasn’t Biden. And Harris, the woman could not even answer simple questions. So voting for this as if it was okay, only allows these clowns to continue their game. I didn’t vote for either
Of them.
Both parties are evil.
USians keep voting en masse for members of evil parties.
And here we are.
I’m wondering if the Democrats may be in the position of the dog that caught the car in about two years time. Consider. From what I can see, their strategy appears to be say and do nothing that might get them in trouble with their donors but just hunker down. Sure, send out Bernie and AOC but that does not matter as in three year time they will absolutely endorse Gavin Newsom as the 2028 Democrat Presidential nominee. Just keep those appeals for donations going for everything that Trump is doing. And as it stands, Trump & Co. are destroying their own support among people that voted them in so the Democrats don’t have to do anything but wag their fingers and lodge a lawsuit every now and then. But what happens if in the Midterms the Republicans lose control of both the House and the Senate with the Democrats now in charge. They caught the car. With two more years until the elections, they will be expected to do something about Trump. Oppose him. Vote down his laws and show their voters that they are capable of decisive actions. I, for one, will not be holding my breath.
Sounds about right.
But is there a single legacy medium pointing out this dishonesty/tactics by the Dems at least once in a while?
To quote Lavrov, you need two to tango. But in our media world it´s a one-man-band.
And nobody finds that narrative odd or inaccurate or simply false.
I expect a very aggressive effort to “prevent voter fraud” Rep version) or “vote suppression” (Dem version) aided by ICE actions as well as prosecutions.
text preview by Lee Fang:
Speaker Johnson Plans Vote to Curb Congressional Oversight of Trump, Musk
Congress will vote on new rules to shut down its own investigative powers of the executive branch.
https://www.leefang.com/p/speaker-johnson-plans-vote-to-curb
To paraphrase Einstein: you cannot vote your way out of a mess by voting for the same politicians who got you into the mess in the first place.
It was Democrats who paved the way over decades for Trump and his ilk with their feckless obeisance to their billionaire donors, woke culture wars, soft glove fascism, and enabling behavior.
Bad news folks: we’re not voting our way out of this mess, ever.
Agreed. Because people are conditioned into identifying with oligarchs, celebrities and politricksters (what I call Collective Stockholm Syndrome, or Medieval Peasant Syndrome) I say “don’t take it personal, the corruption is institutionalized”
Even now, so many still cling to the desperate hope that we can “vote” just one more time and fix the mess and ignore the flagrant institutional corruption. The Mini-True MassMediaMonopolies and the two political parties are the PR departments of the oligarchy. This works very well to divide and distract and I don’t see any reason to expect any different.
Like all declining great powers and empires, the US is rotting from within. We don’t need no foreigners to destroy ourselves. Notice the Orange Idiot blames all of our ills on “illegals” and “foreigners”. This is textbook stuff.
“Roll over and play dead”? They’ve been doing that since dubya stole 2000.
I’m amazed how many pundits, commentators, etc still seem to think the dems are any different than the reps. As soon as the majority realize what this game is, the better. Way beyond the ‘good cop/bad cop’ it’s now more like ‘bad cop/psycho cop’. You can count the ‘good’ politicians on one hand and one of them is a rep (Massie). When Bernie and AOC start demanding general strikes all across the US, maybe things might change.
National strikes along with nationally targeted economic boycotts. Aim at the companies owned by the oligarchs one company at a time. They pay lobbyists/ fixers so we withhold the means for them to pay the fixer along with hurting bottom line of the oliscum businesses.
Kind of like not feeding sugar to a cancer patient.. we know who the cancers are. Time to starve them.
Thomas Massie appears to be one of the very few politicians who exhibit actual personal integrity, and for that, even though I disagree with many of his positions, I respect him.
The rest, shall we say, not so much.
to the Rev Kev. There is a lot of truth in what you say. But it continues to be true that Trump is not the problem, he is a symptom. The Trump era has demonstrated blatantly that we are going to have to deconstruct the Supreme Court and rebuild and rebuild the institution, greatly disinflate the monarchical powers of the presidency, deconstruct and rebuild the congress which will require addressing the rotten and corrupt campaign financing system, deal with term limits and gerrymandering, and many more fundamental problems. The American political system is in the process of failing. Focusing on Trump is counterproductive, as is focusing on dems vs reps. Our political system and constitution have proven to be incompatible with the 21st century. The issues are bigger than Trump or the current political parties.
And who will do this?
A Democratic victory in Virginia’s elections this fall will energize the folks showing up at town halls to organize themselves in new groupings that demand left solutions.
Another thing we’ll have to do, is move the capital from jerusalem back to washington dc. Then, we’ll have to make sure that an anti-zionist can walk down the streets in Brooklyn, without having to rely on the goodwill and bravery of a lone cop, without being threatened by a group of jews hellbent on violence. There. I said it.
What kind of Jews was this group of Jews? Any old random happened-to-be-there Jews? Or a particular flavor/sect/party/etc. of Jews? The answer might be worth knowing for analytical and counter-measure purposes.
I remember there being a “cadre” of JDLs in my high school. Followers of the Ultra Zionist Meir Kahane. Being obviously English, I had a few close calls with that bunch. Evidently they viewed all Brits as Crypto Nazis because of the Balfour Declaration mess. One particular female Zionista would “thank” me for something in class, like pass the papers. or what did teacher just say, etc. with the catchphrase “Gratzie Natzie.” The male JDLs were a quite violent lot. Lots of threat displays and pro-Zionist propaganda.
As Uncle Gerry once said, you can tell that someone is going to be trouble for you when they punch you.
Lastly, lest I come across as a full fledged subscriber to “Der Sturmer,” this aggressive behaviour seems to be hard wired into Terran humans. All it needs is for some “caretakers” to steer the young in some particular direction and the behaviour soon becomes self-sustaining.
Lesson: Nature can be eclipsed by nurture.
Stay safe. Be a living example to the young around you.
Truths need to be spoken. You are not coming across as a “der Sturmer” type.
Don’t forget the IDF thugs beating up protesting students Gaza last year in the West Coast.
The orthodox assholes in Brooklyn have been throwing rocks at cars on Fridays for years along with blocking off public streets before their sabbath begins going back into the early 90’s.
No mention of 1992 Ross Perot. Clinton won with a minority of popular votes.
One of the many great historical ‘what ifs’ ….. what if HW Bush wasn’t such an out-out-touch patrician (albeit war hero) turd monkey and should a semblance of humanity and empathy for regular folks in 1991 and 92?
If HW Bush would have won, then Forcey FreeTrade would have remained seen as a Republican project and enough DemMajority House Members would have continued voting against it to prevent it for a while.
Perhaps Clinton would have been driven back into the sewer from which he oozed forth.
Folks in Arkansas aver that Ol Bill oozed out of the White Water Superfund Site.
See, (if you dare): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewater_controversy
You USA people go on about the 2nd amendment……..are you pussies or will you actually use it? Because otherwise rest of the world is looking forward to something that will make Black Mirror look really tame.
We really want good TV
The USA people you are thinking of don’t read blogs like this. The USA people who read blogs like this mainly go on about Gun Control.
Most of the readers of Naked Capitalism know that both parties are dead. Where should we bury the bodies because it’s getting awfully smelly.
This is an echo of an old Eagles song I won’t name. The title suggests. . .
What You Gonna Do With Those Blues?
Got some big idea that I’m progessive
Piece of paper tells me that I’m smart
Looking for a party that I believe
Politicians talking from the heart
All those jerk-off in the DNC
Making money but not policy
While the people get screwed
Oh no! Uncle Bernie, AOC is gonna save you.
Successful politicians are all puppets
Masters of War they pull the strings
Betting on trillion dollar budgets
And the wealth that terrorism brings
Politicians full of avarice
Say they’re fighting to get us justice
While they’re kissing their shoes
Oh no! Uncle Bernie, J B Pritzker’s gonna save you.
Genocide in Gaza’s not a problem
You can’t worry if you never see
Starving children and the Kashmir mayhem
Kitties playing on YouTube’s the key
Prompter reader on MSNBC
Says the world needs to be free
War with China is queued
Oh no! Uncle Bernie, Gavin Newsom’s gonna save you.
The Republican Party is very alive and very vigorous. It is now a Maganazi Christofascist Party and its rulers and voters are effectively getting what they set out to get.
I don’t see any rotting corpsetude from the Republican Party.
One answer: The American Dream.
We have a whole generation of American political elites in both wings of the uniparty whose legacy to America is decline. They entered the political fray when America was at it’s unipolar moment, and since then, it’s been nothing but downhill. They are long past their sell by date yet the majority of the biggest “movers and shakers” such as McConnell and Pelosi refuse to retire instead apparently choosing to remain in office well into their late seventies and early eighties. Some who still wield considerable power such as Obama effectively rule from the back room. They are extremely effective at concentrating wealth and political power in the hands of a few, and have worked hard to ensure that extreme wealth is now equivalent to political power. If you have the money, you can buy what you want from our government. Unfortunately, they have also worked hard to ensure that all the younger generations who will succeed them must follow in their footsteps.
I don’t include Trump in this group, he saw what was happening, how non responsive our government has become, and took advantage of it. There are many who believe he represents a chance to get out of this neoliberal dead end yet behind him stand those billionaires created by our neoliberal system. They will not undo a system that they control even as they realize it has been the cause of America’s decline. They now watch as a much of the world moves past the American empire and struggle to find some trick to stay on top.
But the funny thing is, you can use almost the same argument as above for why Obama was elected, and Trump 1.0 was elected, and Biden was elected. It’s not like the American people don’t realize the predicament we’re in and try to use our system of governance to vote our way out of it. We’ve been trying.