#voting third party is not a viable election strategy in a two-party system

[gacorley]

There’s some common threads I see in the anti-voting posts going around, and I feel like I need to discuss some of them. Let’s start with the biggest one:

Voting to punish evil. I see lots of variations of this. Biden is supporting Israel, therefore we can’t vote for him. Is there any viable candidate who would stop the genocide? I don’t think the anti voting crowd actually cares. They are appealing to moral feelings rather than political strategy, because strategically, you have to realize that voting is not going to change foreign policy, and that change has to be pushed by other means. It’ll probably be something in the long haul.

Democrats should run someone else. First of all, this is a shit strategy. You don’t primary your president in the second term unless your party is falling apart. This may come from people from countries where replacing the head of government is easier, but the POTUS is the de facto party head. Also, going to the lack of thought to the goal — do you know someone willing to primary Biden and able to win who would do the things you want?

Biden hasn’t done anything anyway. This is just a way to bat away pro arguments. There’s plenty of lists of progress on lots of things. Student loans, insulin price caps, regulations, anti-trust.

Putting the entire Palestinian genocide on Biden. I’m not saying there’s not culpability there, but understand that the entire US government is in support of Israel, on both sides. It was a miracle we got a handful of Senators to call for investigations. We should cut off aid, absolutely. Who’s running to do that? And keep in mind that Israel chose to engage. US officials would have liked a more limited response, not out of care for Palestinians, but because they know from experience that it will come back to bite Israel in the form of newly radicalized Hamas recruits.

Liberals just have no hope for change. This is a new one. Just some idea that people are stuck in a rut and that’s the reason the two party system exists. The two party system is a mathematical consequence of the way we vote. There is reason to hope for change. The change, though, whatever means you choose, will take decades. Keep working at it. The hope is not that this election will fundamentally change things. The hope is that many small political actions over the years will push things forward.

Funnily enough, I haven’t seen a whole lot of third party promotion, just lots of this rhetoric aiming to punish. When voting, ask yourself:

Is this problem I have with this candidate something that the other candidate would be better on?

Are there other political actions I can take that will help?

What things can change with a different President or Congress, and what needs to be pursued by other means?

Withholding your vote as a punishment isn’t really going to help. Biden doesn’t know who you are or why you are not voting for him, and there is no one with a chance of winning that will do everything you want. But you have other means. Protest, organize, donate, build up alternatives, advocate for a different system.

Vote to give yourself space and get a little bit. Do other things to keep things moving.

[glareraw]

Accelerationists are pathetic

Accelerationism is a range of revolutionary and reactionary ideas in left-wing and right-wing ideologies that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change, infrastructure sabotage and other processes of social change to destabilize existing systems and create radical social transformations, otherwise referred to as "acceleration". “Accelerationism.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Aug. 2024. Link

Let's be so fucking for real.

We are in a hopeful political landscape right now. Trump looks more and more like he will lose, and Kamala Harris alongside her VP pick Tim Walz are winning over the hearts of Americans, and increasingly beating Trump in the polls as he rambles on about how Kamala changed her race or something. And we are learning how to parse the alarmist claims of news media, and deny them ad revenue from scaring us.

But there is a thorn in side of the Democratic Party. A small group of very loud accelerationists who claim to be leftist online act like Kamala is the antichrist. Their two main claims are that she imprisoned over 1,500 people for smoking weed during her time as a prosecutor, and they still act like she fully supports the genocide in Palestine, despite the first claim being a lie told by Tulsi Gabbard in the 2020 presidential race, and the second claim a case of "I pretend I do not see it" in terms of the truth.* (see footnote) They seem to forget that a Trump presidency would be FAR worse for Palestinians.

But let's be real. The originators of this argument are cishet white people who live in major cities of coastal blue states and whose parents pay their rent. They have a feeling of emptiness in their life because they have everything given to them, so they argue with LGBTQ+ people and POC online instead of making an actual difference in the real world. They sit behind their screens and convince unsuspecting netizens of their delusions that we could have a viable 3rd party candidate come out of nowhere in less than 3 months, and completely ignore the fact that a candidate with their ideology would absolutely tank in an election. They don't care that the American people are not ready for the nation they want to make.

One of the talking main strategies these accelerationists are trying is to get people to abstain from voting --if they don't get their third party candidate. Their goal is to get less votes for Kamala to make Donald Trump win so the world will go to shit and they can remake society from the ashes how THEY want.

They think that their lives are sheltered from the blatant danger of the republican platform, to hell with the women and LGBTQ+ and POC of the red states! They are totally fine with sacrificing the safety of women and minorities in service of their unrealistic headcanon. They simply do not, or refuse to understand the severity of the situation we find ourselves in. If Trump wins 2024, there's a pretty strong chance there won't be an election --at least a real one-- in 2028 or ever again.

And if they think they will actually be able to start a revolution against the federal government? If they can get past the SWAT team arrests at their peaceful protests and CIA assassinations of their movement's leaders, they will have the honor of battle with the most powerful and overfunded military on Earth. Good luck with that! But these people would be lucky to even have leadership to begin with, because none of them actually have a viable plan or real knowledge of how to make their maladaptive daydreams real and govern their dream society.

If you read all of this and look at the facts and still believe Kamala Harris is a horrible person and you don't WANT to vote for her, then fine. I don't feel the need to argue with you further. But you NEED to vote. Change will have to be made gradually, it can't happen all at once this time. As I said, the country isn't ready for that. But if enough leftists don't vote, and Trump actually wins, it will set us back decades, if not a century or more. The government will not collapse, it will just become stronger under fascist rule. They will not get the chance to make the change they want.

I don't think the ideology of accelerationism poses a huge threat in this election. The overwhelming amount of support for the Harris Walz campaign, combined with the long-expected downward spiral of Donald Trump makes it more and more likely that we will see Kamala in the White House. And the media fear mongering about insubordination from the electorates --and Kamala's defeat in the Trump-appointed federal courts after the election-- is largely overblown. They forget how we won in 2020. AFTER Trump was ousted.

But as I said, overall, I don't think accelerationists will be successful in causing a Trump victory. They just really piss me off.

*She supports a ceasefire and the two-state solution, but can't make that happen just yet as she is just the VP but that's a whole can of worms and a conversation for another time. Just know I personally support a ceasefire and understand that what is happening in Palestine IS a genocide.

[tulipq]

Not Voting as a Strategy

Now that we're well past election season, it's time to understand how elections actually work. Why does Trump give so much of a shit about sueing over polls? https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2024/12/24/experts-donald-trump-fraud-suit-against-des-moines-register-unlikely-to-succeed-iowa-poll/77103450007/

Because polling guides the expenditure of electoral resources.

The opposing election machines don't have eyes or imagination on their own. They just spew lies and assume postures. Imagine voguing speaker systems with myths on the track. How do they know which lines to play and what postures to take?

There are many inputs into the machines, but the two vital ones are fuel and reward. The fueling process is where "Nothing will fundamentally change" comes in. Slave owners of various sorts are most presidents until it becomes illegal. Rapists tend to be electable, because it signals to the richest men in the world a solidarity with violating the weak. So the money flows to the wicked.

But just being rich isn't enough. The power needs to be spent efficiently because this is a competitive event. The battleground states need to be measured. This is where you come in. Yes, you are visible to the machines through the proding polls.

NEVER TELL A POLLSTER THE TRUTH. They are just slaves to the power machines, acting as informants. Tell them you never vote, and when you do it's third party. They might say "if you had to pick a viable candidate" and you should say "I'd rather die than elect another genocidal rapist".

Remember to aim clearly. Gouge out the enemy's eyes so they can't.

They will tell you that voting for the genocide lover who says nice things is a freedom. I thi it would be a better use of USA branded freedom to shoot dead the world's most famous terrorists.

But if you vote, the game is up. They can mathematically deduce your soul (Obama Trump Biden) (McCain Obama Trump) (Obama Clinton Trump) (any three non colinear points define a plane) by looking at the results from your polling location and estimating your vote via statistics.

Either way, the enemy can decide if spending time and money manipulating you is worth it. If it's not worth it, then they will beg you for time and money to manipulate others with. Do you think this chain gang is freedom?

[maxknightley]

Could you please elaborate on Hawkins campaign not being about winning? I don't really understand it.

Most of this is laid out on the campaign website (https://howiehawkins.us/why-im-running/), but I’ll snip the most important bits:

The Draft Howie team has worked hard to get this campaign ready to go. Together we have conceived of a campaign with two fundamental goals:

To build the Green Party as an activist and viable opposition to the two-capitalist-party system of corporate rule.

And to put our ecosocialist program for real political and economic democracy, civil liberties, social justice, ecological sustainability, and peace on to the public agenda.

Our campaign will employ experienced organizers to help Green Party locals get better organized and support down-ticket Green candidates.

Our campaign will be helping our local Green parties and candidates to expand the party base among the working class, youth, and people of color.

also, as he described in an interview with the Guardian:

Some third-party presidential candidates insist they have a chance of winning the presidency, despite all odds. Hawkins, however, is refreshingly honest when asked about his realistic aim.

“What would really be a big victory would be if we got 5% of the vote,” Hawkins said.

“That qualifies us for a public campaign financing grant for the general election in 2024 for president. If we got to 5% there’d be about $20m at least waiting for our presidential ticket in 2024, which would be a jump up. So 5% is benchmark.”

So this isn’t really a campaign concerned with winning the election so much as putting the party in a position to make gains, possibly win municipal and state elections (which can be a huge deal), and - in an ideal world - demonstrate to the Democrats that their current strategy is self-destructive.

There are people who’ve criticized the Green Party, and I’m not here to debate that, really? I just know that, as someone in a safe state who thinks both of the major candidates would be ruinous to the U.S. and its citizens’ lives, this seems like a better use for my vote than anything else. at the very least, maybe it’ll break the two-party stranglehold on a city or two - lord knows Chicago would benefit from that.

[dollopheadedmerlin]

Are you voting this year? I'm leaning towards Jo Jorgensen because Biden is so bad. What do you think of her? I keep getting told "just vote for Biden to get trump out, I know he's bad but he not Trump" but I just can't vote for him. All my friends sound like they have Stockholm syndrome for the dems and it's freaking me out. They think I'm throwing my vote away, but idk. Biden is just as bad as trump imo

Oh goodness, I don't know why you're asking me this since I rarely talk about politics on my blog but Yes. I am voting this year. It's the first election year I have been old enough to vote in. I could understand being weirded out by people who actually LIKE Biden, but MOST people who have been pushing for Biden don't actually like him. He's not their first choice. But voting third party is essentially obsolete this year (as it has been in past years). There is no chance that a third party candidate will win in this election, so I would advise against doing so. Biden is also not "just as bad as Trump". He most certainly is less extreme and will be less dangerous in office. Will he be on our side? Will he be a good president? Probably not! But we have a choice between two evils and Biden is one we know we can probably survive. Think of it like two snake bites. You ARE going to get bitten by one of two snakes. IF you try to chose a different animal or a different snake, one of these two will bite you anyway. But if you CHOOSE from the two available options, you can opt to get bitten by a NON -venomous snake. Otherwise, you leave it up to chance and may be bitten by a venomous one. Trump is the venomous snake. He is going to hurt more and hurt longer. And he very well could kill you. Biden is the non-venomous snake. He is still going to bite you and it is still going to suck and hurt, but it is fa less likely to kill you. It's also worth saying that a person's personal moral compass has no place in this election. It sucks voting for someone like Biden, it does. But this is about strategy, not morals. It's unfortunate but we're not in a place to fight to change the system right now. Biden is awful, his VP is bad too, but Trump is in a position where he could do a lot more damage that will (already) take years to undo. Hopefully one day, voting third party won't be so obsolete, but it unfortunately does little to nothing in current times. I think if you can understand that the person you are voting for is a bad choice but that the decisions to vote for him is a good one, then you're not sacrificing your morals or beliefs. You have to play their game and it's not a fair fight. In this case, the game is rigged and you only have unfavorable options, but if you can see HOW it's rigged (third party candidates not being viable to win) then you can at least play to your advantage for a more favorable (but still unsatisfactory) outcome.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

So, Bernie’s no longer running for President -- but he’s still running for Delegates to take with him to the Democratic National Convention. So, IF you’ve still got a Democratic Primary coming up, THEN VOTE FOR BERNIE. AND GET ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO VOTE FOR BERNIE.

Bernie needs to have as many delegates at the Convention as possible, so they can be annoying and push for a Democratic Platform we all actually need, regardless of how squeamish that makes Joe feel in his wee tum-tum.

After that, Vote Blue, No Matter Who! Here’s why:

Here’s what I wrote as a reply to “But we NEED a Revolution! Not ‘Reform’!”

My long term HOPE --and what I would like the Progressive strategy to be, over the next several elections cycles, is to so thoroughly defeat the Republican Party that they cease to be a viable option. Then the Democrat party will be the right of center option, and there will then be room for a truly Leftist party to take over the political space that the Dems are currently squatting in.

Now, let me expand on that:

America is a two-party system. Full-stop. Third parties have been trying to get viable traction ever since the Constitution was ratified 231 years ago. They’ve always failed. That wasn’t part of any deliberate plan by Our Founders, but just the natural consequence of requiring a 2/3 majority to get any bill a guaranteed pass into law.

Right now, those two parties are the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. All through my childhood and adolescence, the Democrats were the party of Labor and Civil Rights. That changed when Ronald Reagan won a second term as president in 1984, and the Democratic Party moved to the center to try and “win back” the “Republican Democrats.”

And then, the Republican party moved further to the Right, to distinguish themselves from the Democrats -- Sliding so far to the Right, they’re falling over the fascist cliff. And the Democrat establishment is trotting along behind them -- still chasing (that rightward-shifting) “Center.”

We need a truly progressive, viable, party for the Left. But our country is a two-party system.

And the Republican Party lost all credibility when Mitch McConnell refused to even let Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland meet with Republican Senators, to get confirmed to the Court, so we got two new ultra-Conservative judges to set the meanings of our laws for another generation or two. Not to mention the rigging of the Impeachment trial this summer.

The Republican Party has Got To Go.

And you know, as well as I do, that our political rhetoric machines, on cable news, the Internet, Talk Radio, and newspapers (what’s left of them) are all built on Charismatic Personalities and Figureheads.

Come November 3rd, this year, we have to defeat the Republicans, in every race where they are running, by such a large margin that there is no doubt in any Pundit’s mind that the Republicans have landed themselves on the wrong side of history.

Make the Fox News hosts shake in their shoes.

And that means defeating Trump by as large a margin as possible. And that means Voting Democrat, and not dividing our votes among a whole bunch of “third parties.”

First, though: if you still have a primary coming up, make sure to give Bernie More Delegates. More Delegates. More Delegates. Because the National Convention is another place of Political Rhetoric is on display.

[gogators603-blog]

US, China, and the Millennial President

Can the US and China Get Along, and How Long Will Bukele Last?

Press Release 02/08/2019

Gainesville, Fl, Feb 2nd 2019 (Brookings Institute)

 As if deja vu, there has been another young leader taking power in South America and the US-China relations are worsening. In a lengthy piece on US-China relations, Brookings Institute writer Ryan Hass writes that; “It is possible…that although China seeks to avoid great power confrontation now, U.S. and Chinese interests will become more incompatible over time.” (Hass, source). Outside of Asia and the Americas, Charles T. Call writes of a new president that has been elected through the power of social media and leather jackets (in all seriousness). Nayib Bukele, an anti-establishment millennial, won El Salvador’s presidential election on Sunday with a sound 53% of the votes (Call, source). Can he stop the corruption in El Salvador? Or will he simply make empty promises as his country falls into chaos.

 Candidates campaigning against corruption have been a continent-wide trend in South and Central America over the past month with Guiado becoming the interim president of Venezuela, followed by Bukele in El Salvador. Following the success of his nuanced election strategy, Bukele did not make an inspiring victory speech. Instead he went to social media to motivate the people treating the speech as an annoying formality. Call says his campaign “relied almost entirely on social media and his informal, millennial style (he appeared in blue jeans and a leather jacket for his victory speech)” (Call, source). Like many other young anti-establishment candidates in Latin Countries, Bukele vows to end corruption in his country. This “struck a nerve” in El Salvador as three former presidents have been indicted with corruption charges, one serving time in jail.

 Populist candidates are becoming increasingly more popular (pun intended) in Latin-American Countries as a response to traditional two-party systems. The younger generations view these systems as corrupt and not willing to challenge the status quo, driving them to third parties. The real question here being: will these new leaders make a viable change? Outside of South and Central America, China and the US continue to battle over security, trade, and global growth. Despite differences in ideals and issues within Asia, Hass says that; “some forms of cooperation with China (and the US) may coexist comfortably alongside a more competitive approach.” After all, competition is capitalism’s ‘bread and butter’.

Founded in 1916, the Brookings Institute conducts research and reports on economic issues, policy changes, development, and the global economy.

Devin Downs

gogators603

[dominateeye]

I'm not going to knock people for not voting. If you think the system is repugnant and you want nothing to do with it, that's perfectly fine. But I want people to know what their options are, and the potential effects of their choices. If you care about other people, you're obviously going to want to oppose the Republicans. But your choices from that point aren't just "vote Democrat" or "don't vote", and voting doesn't mean you can't do more locally effective things as well.

A lot of people vote for the Democrats, despite not really liking them, because they're afraid of the Republicans. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, especially when it's the only opposition you can support on that ballot, but it's really not the effective deterrent most people believe it is. The strategy of the Democratic establishment is to appease Republican voters in order to try and draw them over to their box on the ballot. Voting for them validates this strategy, and it means that their policies slip further and further to the right-wing. Voting for the people you don't really like to stop the people you're afraid of means they become one and the same down the line.

A lot of people don't vote because they don't want to endorse the electoral system. That's a fair sentiment, but the question is, who does it reach? Sure, there are plenty of researchers monitoring how many people vote every year, but those researchers aren't measuring that number in order to see how broken our political system is. They're working for the parties and the government, and they're collecting that data with the goal of figuring out how to advertise voting in order to magically make everyone vote in the next election (and to make people who already vote vote for them). The people running the system don't care why you don't vote, they just want a metric they can use to terrify people with.

But there are alternatives. Parties like the Greens, various socialist parties, and the Communists present genuine left-wing alternatives to the Democrats. Look into your alternatives. Give their platforms a chance, and compare them with the Democratic platform. Compare the things these parties stand up, protest, organize for and what their leaders say with what the Democrats say and do. If you end up thinking "these people look genuine, and their policies would be great if they could get elected," then here's something else to think about: why don't they win elections? Each time the Democrats gain power, they pass legislation to make it more difficult and more expensive for alternative parties to make it onto the ballot, and that limits the reach of the smaller parties' messages. I'm sure the Republicans do the same thing. This legislation is the reason alternative parties have difficulty winning elections, not anything that these alternative parties do or say, as the Democrats love to claim. Millions of people want a viable, honest alternative to the two corporate parties. Well, honest alternatives are here, and they can be viable if we help them.

And consider this: who runs the electoral system so many people are fed up with? The Democrats and Republicans. They are the system. Voting for an alternative party still lets you oppose the system, by opposing the key players of it, as well as possibly changing it if the party you vote for does win. Better still, the party you vote for will know you're opposing the system, because if you didn't, you wouldn't be voting for them. Voting third party is more impactful than not voting.

And if you have the means to, consider how long voting will actually take you. Maybe an hour? Of your entire life? Once every six months or so if you're really active? You can fill all the rest of that time with the things you might already help accomplish: community food distribution, volunteer night classes, homework clubs for children and teenagers, legal advice if you can provide it. Even things like firearms training so that communities can protect themselves from reactionary violence. Voting doesn't have to stand in the way of these things, and some parties would give you resources and assistance to make keeping them going easier.

There are valid reasons not to vote, and voting out of fear is sometimes necessary. But these are not the best ways to change the system or keep people safe. Damage control and working around the problem can only do so much. At some point, you have to start fixing things. To fix our system (or start knocking it down and building a better one), we need third parties winning. And they won't win without our support.

[alagaisia]

These all sound like great policies, and while many of the pages here are pretty light on actual strategy, they’re definitely worth a read as informative perspectives on current issues and possible solutions.

However, the fact that this person has never held any political or elected office should be a huge red flag, as is the fact that their degrees are in business and finance rather than politics, law, or government of any kind. They obviously have great values and good intentions. And the work that they’ve done and are doing in housing is important, and would be great experience that would absolutely compel me to vote for a brand-new politician at a state level.

There’s also the fact that this is the first I’ve heard of this candidate, and I basically live in the left-wing tumblr bubble. A quick search shows no articles from any major national news publication on Jasmine Sherman’s candidacy or campaign goals. Your moderate democrat grandparents getting their politics news from CNN are not hearing about a fringe third party candidate who has barely broken through to the demographic who agrees with all of their values. Like it or not, campaigns are successful when they have good advertising. Being on the ballot is great, but if that’s the first place a voter sees your name, it doesn’t count for anything. Regardless of the viability of third-party candidates in the US, there have been plenty in the past with the name recognition to influence (though never favorably) elections, or at least the conversation around them- Ralph Nader, Jill Stein, even Gary “what’s Aleppo” Johnson. Jasmine Sherman, so far, is not one of them.

I would love to someday see a viable multi-party political system in the US, but that’s not what we have right now. And voting in a two-party presidential election for an unknown candidate with no political experience, no matter how idealistic they are, is not the way to get there. Elect third-party candidates to local and state offices. Build a coalition with enough support to get candidates elected to Congress. Get experienced politicians from established parties with a strong base of support from voters, and THEN you can build a well-funded third-party presidential campaign that might have a real shot. But somebody has to put in the work first. The political landscape has to change, and that change starts in local and state elections.

just a general question: are u voting for jasmine sherman? i think they’re the third party candidate who’s most likely to win, just based on the fact that they’re on the ballot in 48 states

Sherman honestly looks like my perfect president, like all of their policies align with what I think is best like:

Abolishment of Police and Education on Firearms

Agriculture Policy and Support of Landback (WIP)

Anti-Indoctrination Policy and Support of Gentle Parenting

Decriminalizing Drug Use/Possession and Decriminalizing Sex Work

Guaranteed Housing and Universal Basic Income

And so many other more or lesser known policies that could genuinely save a lot of lives. Oh, and they also advocate for a free Palestine, Sudan, and Congo.

I am really not sure how they will do and I don't fully expect them to be president, BUT if the vast Americans that would benefit from at least one of Sherman/Bluebear's policies at least knew about them and advocated for their politics no matter who wins the race, I think we might have a chance at making a more equal and safe country.

Take the time to read about them.

[newstfionline]

Saturday, September 18, 2021

Americans have little trust in online security: AP-NORC poll (AP) Most Americans don’t believe their personal information is secure online and aren’t satisfied with the federal government’s efforts to protect it, according to a poll. The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MeriTalk shows that 64% of Americans say their social media activity is not very or not at all secure. About as many have the same security doubts about online information revealing their physical location. Half of Americans believe their private text conversations lack security. And they’re not just concerned. They want something done about it. Nearly three-quarters of Americans say they support establishing national standards for how companies can collect, process and share personal data. But after years of stalled efforts toward stricter data privacy laws that could hold big companies accountable for all the personal data they collect and share, the poll also indicates that Americans don’t have much trust in the government to fix it.

COVID-19 surge forces health care rationing in parts of West (AP) In another ominous sign about the spread of the delta variant, Idaho public health leaders on Thursday expanded health care rationing statewide and individual hospital systems in Alaska and Montana have enacted similar crisis standards amid a spike in the number of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization. The decisions marked an escalation of the pandemic in several Western states.

Security fencing, barriers go back up at Capitol (The Hill) Security fencing and barriers began going back up around the Capitol late Wednesday ahead of a rally planned for Saturday in support of the Jan. 6 rioters. Authorities are going on high alert for the “Justice for J6” rally, which is meant to protest the criminal charges those who stormed the Capitol while Congress was certifying the results of the presidential election are facing. Around 600 people are currently charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection. Roughly 700 people are expected to attend the pro-Trump rally, an official at the Department of Homeland Security said earlier this week. The agency also expects that a number of demonstrators connected to the groups that stormed the Capitol will return for Saturday’s event.

Del Rio migrant buildup (Washington Post) Thousands of Haitian migrants who have crossed the Rio Grande in recent days are sleeping outdoors under a border bridge in South Texas, creating a humanitarian emergency and a logistical challenge U.S. agents describe as unprecedented. Authorities in Del Rio say more than 10,000 migrants have arrived at the impromptu camp, and they are expecting more in the coming days. The migrants arriving to Del Rio appear to be part of a larger wave of Haitians heading northward, many of whom arrived in Brazil and other South American nations after the 2010 earthquake. They are on the move again, embarking on a grueling, dangerous journey to the United States.

Havoc in Haiti (Foreign Policy) Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry fired the country’s top prosecutor and its justice minister on Monday, ordering the terminations just before the prosecutor filed to summon Henry for questioning about the July assassination of former President Jovenel Moïse. The prosecutor had attempted to bar Henry from leaving the country. A key suspect in the killing, Joseph Felix Badio, called Henry two times a few hours after the crime, according to a police investigation. The prosecutor claimed this was grounds for further probing.

Dictionary drama (Foreign Policy) Former Colombian Information and Communications Technology Minister Karen Abudinen resigned last week after a scandal over the misuse of funds meant for rural schools. Soon after, she had a public spat with an unlikely adversary: the Real Academia Española (RAE), the linguistic organization behind the preeminent Spanish-language dictionary. In response to a Twitter user’s query, the RAE Twitter account had stated that the verb “to Abudinen,” or abudinear, had recently been used on social media to mean “to steal.” After Abudinen objected and demanded a retraction, RAE said that documentation of the slang term does not mean it has been added to the dictionary.

Italy to Impose Strict Covid-19 Health Pass for All Workers (WSJ) Italy is making Covid-19 health passes mandatory for all workers in the private and public sectors, in one of the toughest vaccine-promoting measures adopted by any major Western country. Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government passed a decree Thursday requiring workers, including those who are self-employed, to have a digital certificate known as a green pass. This shows a person has been fully vaccinated, has recently recovered from Covid-19 or has freshly tested negative for the virus. The step reflects the government’s belief that Italy’s fragile economy can’t afford another winter of resurgent coronavirus contagion that forces a return to lockdowns.

Russia votes in parliament election without main opposition (AP) After a few weeks of desultory campaigning but months of relentless official moves to shut down significant opposition, Russia began three days of voting early Friday in a parliamentary election that is unlikely to change the country’s political complexion. There’s no expectation that United Russia, the party devoted to President Vladimir Putin, will lose its dominance of the State Duma, the elected lower house of parliament. The main questions to be answered are whether the party will retain its current two-thirds majority that allows it to amend the constitution; whether anemic turnout will dull the party’s prestige; and whether imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Smart Voting initiative proves to be a viable strategy against it. “There is very little intrigue in these elections … and in fact they will not leave a special trace in political history,” Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told The Associated Press.

Pentagon reverses itself, calls deadly Kabul strike an error (AP) The Pentagon retreated from its defense of a drone strike that killed multiple civilians in Afghanistan last month, announcing Friday that a review revealed that only civilians were killed in the attack, not an Islamic State extremist as first believed. “The strike was a tragic mistake,” Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told a Pentagon news conference. McKenzie apologized for the error and said the United States is considering making reparation payments to the family of the victims. He said the decision to strike a white Toyota Corolla sedan, after having tracked it for about eight hours, was made in an “earnest belief”—based on a standard of “reasonable certainty”—that it posed an imminent threat to American forces at Kabul airport. The car was believed to have been carrying explosives in its trunk, he said. For days after the Aug. 29 strike, Pentagon officials asserted that it had been conducted correctly, despite 10 civilians being killed, including seven children. News organizations later raised doubts about that version of events, reporting that the driver of the targeted vehicle was a longtime employee at an American humanitarian organization and citing an absence of evidence to support the Pentagon’s assertion that the vehicle contained explosives.

A Chinese property giant is a $300 billion time bomb for Beijing (Quartz) For decades, the Chinese developer Evergrande Group was an embodiment of the success of the rapidly growing Chinese economy. Increasing disposable personal income fueled a growing passion for purchasing property which in turned propelled the rise of Evergrande, as well as its billionaire founder Xu Jiayin. But ever since the Chinese government tightened rules on property companies’ borrowings last year as demand for real estate appeared to weaken, developers like Evergrande have been under greater pressure to repay the piles of debt they took on to fund their expansion across sectors. Evergrande is a bellwether for the sector, given its gigantic footprint across the country of more than 1,000 projects. But given that it owes over $300 billion, analysts expect the company to enter restructuring, and for investors in the company’s dollar-denominated debt to take a 70% haircut. The company’s share price has fallen roughly 80% this year as investors lose confidence.

France recalls ambassadors to US, Australia over sub deal (AP) France said late Friday it was immediately recalling its ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia after Australia scrapped a big French conventional submarine purchase in favor of nuclear subs built with U.S. technology. It was the first time ever France has recalled its ambassador to the U.S., according to the French foreign ministry. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a written statement that the French decision, on request from President Emmanuel Macron, “is justified by the exceptional seriousness of the announcements” made by Australia and the United States. He said Wednesday’s announcement of Australia’s submarine deal with the U.S. is “unacceptable behavior between allies and partners.” France will lose a nearly $100 billion deal to build diesel submarines for Australia under the terms of the US initiative.

China accuses new U.S.-Australian submarine deal of stoking arms race, threatening regional peace (Washington Post) China on Thursday slammed a decision by the United States and Britain to share sensitive nuclear submarine technology with Australia, a move seen as a direct challenge to Beijing and its growing military ambitions. After President Biden’s announcement on Wednesday of a new defense alliance, to be known as AUKUS, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian described the agreement as “extremely irresponsible” while Chinese state media warned Australia that it was now an “adversary” of China and should “prepare for the worst.” At a regular news briefing in Beijing, Zhao said the alliance “seriously undermined regional peace and stability, aggravated the arms race and hurt international nonproliferation efforts.” He accused the United States and Britain of “double standards” and using nuclear exports as a “tool in their geopolitical games,” as he admonished them to “abandon their outdated Cold War mentality”—a common refrain from ministry spokespeople. While Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison did not mention China in their remarks on Wednesday, the pact is widely seen as a response to China’s expanding economic power, military reach and diplomatic influence. China is believed to have six nuclear attack submarines, with plans to increase the fleet in the next decade.

At 101, she’s still hauling lobsters with no plans to stop (AP) When Virginia Oliver started trapping lobster off Maine’s rocky coast, World War II was more than a decade in the future, the electronic traffic signal was a recent invention and few women were harvesting lobsters. Nearly a century later, at age 101, she’s still doing it. The oldest lobster fisher in the state and possibly the oldest one in the world, Oliver still faithfully tends to her traps off Rockland, Maine, with her 78-year-old son Max. Oliver started trapping lobsters at age 8, and these days she catches them using a boat that once belonged to her late husband and bears her own name, the “Virginia.” She said she has no intention to stop. “I’ve done it all my life, so I might as well keep doing it,” Oliver said. “I like doing it, I like being along the water,” she said. “And so I’m going to keep on doing it just as long as I can.”

[ramrodd]

How is it that Trumpists blind themselves to his inadequacies and fearful shortcomings?

A response to Tracy Fong, retired lifer: if it is a rational choice, it is criminal in nature. Otherwise, it is impossible to adequately insult Trumpists voters.

COMMENTARY:

Once upon a time, I wanted to grow up to be a lifer like my dad, so you should not construe that nomeclature as an insult. I began a deliberate preparation for a 30 year career with the Green Berets in 1962 after listening to Douglas MacArthur’s valedictory at West Point live on the old Monitor network that became PBS. I got to Vietnam in 1970, just after the 4th Infantry Division had withdrawn from Cambodia and Nationa Guard troops had gunned down 4 white protestors in Ohio and cops killed 2 black protestors at Jackson State.

As an ROTC cadet, I had lived through 4 years of the pissing contest between the left-wing, anti-war draft dodgers of the SDS and the right wing pro-war draft-dodgers associated with William F. Buckley’s YAF and my only reaction was that I was suprised that it took so long for white boys and girls began to get gunned down by the National Guard. White troops and local cops had been gunning down black folks in places like Watts and Detroit and DC since 1963, just like in Minneapolis, today, but white folks don’t like gunning down white folks and what happened at Kent State was an accident waiting to happen and Jackson State was business as ususal.

As an Army brat, I generally avoided civilians growing up. In Germany, it was actively discouraged. My dad was Comptroller for USAUER in Heidelberg just at the time of the Hungarian Revolution and we lived with suitcases packed for a 1 hour evacuation order if the ball went up and Soviet tanks began their advance along the Austrian autobahn. This whole cultural warfare crap from the 60s is school yard shit these people have been squabbling over on campus since before The Great Gatsby was published. And in Hampton VA, as a white person you were either a genteel or rabid white supremacist or you were a white nigger lover. Not counting the black community, of course. So, I just stayed away from civilians in Germany for command purposes and in Hampton and at IU out of moral distaste.

I was locked and loaded for fun, travel and adventure when I got to Vietnam, Plan A running just as planned and there was a brisk little battle taking place at Camp Eagle just south of the DMZ, so it looked like I’d get a chance to play soldier in the big leagues. And then I encountered a senior officer my dad’s age and rank who had the same crypto-Nazi cognitive organization as Mike Pompeo and Tom Cotton and I was scared out of a military career in the blink of an eye. It it helps to take any sting there may accrue from being categorized as a “lifer”, I wimped out of a military career.

I didn’t have a Plan B, but it was important to separate from active service as quickly as possible to avoid staining my dad’s service with whatever disaster awaited me in Army politics, moving forward. I had been radicalized in that same blink of an eye and I knew as surely as Doan’s Little Liver Pills I was destined for some spectacular act of insubordination that would make Billy Mitchell’s demonstration of the efficacy of aviation against battleships seem completely rational. Which, of course, it was.

The short version is that what I have been doing since then has become Plan B. My dad invented Tradoc and was the project officer at DSCPER/CONARC for the reorganization of the Army from the geographical organization of CONARC to the functional structures of FORCECOM-Tradoc-MATCOM. Dad used the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars as the model for Tradoc as a military think tank to complete the core technologies of the Clausewitz Paradox anticipated by George Marshall’s 1942 reforms.

He began raising me to matriculate at the US Army Command and General Staff College around 1980 during a Thanksgiving family road trip to Valley Forge. My understanding of mass production, the Springfield Armory, Baron von Stuebin and contingency planning originate from that trip. My concept of scale was altered forever when dad described the planning that went into the 82nd Airborne’s presence at Los Angeles during the Watt’s riots included the soft-ball equipment for recreation during the “wait” part of “Hurry up and Wait” phase of all military operations.

In 1965, my dad told me, casually, while we were working on my motorcycle, that the military mission in Vietnam was a battle of attrition against the Soviet economy by proxy. He didn’t tell me, but I’ve come to understand that Westmoreland was selected to run MAC-V to produce body counts in order to taunt the Soviets to match the moral sacrifice of their godless commie cocksucker comrades in lockstep towards their common Marxist future with the material support for the battle the Soviets couldn’t afford to sustain. The object of the exercise was to bleed the Soviet economy white, which happened. As a consequence of this strategy, the Soviet Union is no more.

That is not the common wisdom of the Oliver Stone version of Vietnam that you share with Hillary Clinton. My version of Vietnam is that the military performed with perfect subordination to its civilian masters in Vietnam and continues to do so as you read this post. The military is not the problem. There are problems in the military that reflect cultural distortions being generated by Newt Gingrich’s political strategy, but the military doesn’t need my help in fixing their issues. Army Family Team Building is just one example of Tradoc correcting something that got fucked up in the Army community because of the reforms based on the Harvard Business model that Robert MacNamara imposed on the Pentagon, generally. Army Family Team Building has been an ESSENTIAL force multiplier since 1994 to keep the Army Strong strong during the extended disaster of the Iraq invasion and the cosmic operational incompetence of the neo-con political operatives responsible for the management of the occupation and whatever “Democracy building” may have been envisioned.

The paradox is that Operation Iraqi Freedom was a war crime, but the guilty parties begin and end with the political agenda associated with the crypto-Nazi cognitive organization of the Conservative coalition that has dominated the GOP since 1981 with the Reagan personality culture and endorsed the treason Donald John Trump* committed to get elected as a rational element of the lie, cheat and steal “Art of the Deal” crime family business model currently guiding national policy by voting as a block to “aquit”.

I voted for Nixon before I went to Vietnam and I voted for him when I got back. As a direct result of Nixon-Brezhnev Detente, I became involved in a US-Soviet venture capital enterprise organized to make me as filthy rich as Elon Musk. In 1975, that was Plan B. Nixon’s design for airline de-regulation envisioned a rational commerical passenger through-put system as a strategic system to sustain an organic response to a global state of general warfare, the so-called two oceans strategy. One of the characteristics of this through-put system was scheduled service to small communities, which required a continuum of operational equipment from DC-3’s to 747s based on potential demand.

The venture capital project I became involved in 1975 proposed to manufacture the Soviet YaK-40 airframe in Youngstown Ohio, hang a bunch of America gizmos and value addeds to it (including Union labor) and deliver it to American communter operators at about a third of the price of a comparable American design. The R&D on this was worth about $1 billion and we got it for $100 million. FedEx had reserved the first 30 aircraft for its fleet to supplement the Falcon 20 jets they were flying. We were consultants to the FedEx public offering in 1977 and I provided the FAA Forecast Branch the language they needed to rationalize the certification of FedEx as a FAR 25 operator Fred Smith needed so he could fly 737s and take his company to the NYSE.

All that is to say that I began dealing with the Soviets in 1975 on a purely capitalist basis and developed a relationship with their Foreign Trade Offices, AeroExport and Licensentorg, that has provided me with a continuing insight into the Russian political arena generally more nuanced than the common wisdom of, say, Condeleezza Rice and Susan Rice or Stephen Cohen, for example.

In order to do business with the Soviets, you dealt with their Foreign Trade Offices and their contracting proceeded from letters of understanding. I was the assistant to a guy who had installed the first IBM turn-key data center just outside of Moscow in 1973 or so and was something of a genius in that sort of project managment. The Soviets needed to dot every i and cross every t before they concluded a contract and Dale knew exactly how to do that and to deliver on time and budget on that basis. I was not a negotiator at any point but we proceeded towards the ultimate prize based on a common understanding of what needed to be negotiated and what we could do on our side to work around their limitations.

I left the project when we diverged on the way forward in regards to financial structures and union participation, but the project was perfectly viable without me because of the Soviet content. At the time. Bill Lear was building the Canadair at about 5 times the drive-away price and for an executive market. I just didn’t want to take the risk my boss proposed. And then, Afghanistan gummed up the works.

The point is, there was a process for dealing with the Kremlin that Donald John Trump was never willing to adopt. His whole method of contracting was to get a general agreement to move forward on a project and then suck as much front end cash out of his partners as he could for his personal use with the expectation to going back in and demanding more financing for the actual development project.

In 1986, when he turned to Moscow as a potential source of financing, I told my relations in the FTO’s that his business model was just short of a pure flim-flam, but he could actually develop flashy real estate that could serve the Soviet glasnos and peristroika transition from Soviet Marxism to something resembling the Free Enterprise Marxism of Vietnam, presently. It is useful to understand the impact on the morale of NYC that Trump Tower had, which was the intent of the Carter administration when they backed The Equitable with the the guarantees they needed to finance the project. I was looking for capital at the same time Donald John Trump* was looking to finance Trump Tower and the FedEx IPO had sucked all the liquidity out of the markets and it was the time of Stagflation Ford and Carter had inherited from the end of the Vietnam war.

As I understand it, that was about the time you started your career in the All Volunteer Army.

Trump Tower was financed by the Nixon-Moynihan-Carter Affirmative Action agenda and it had a marvelous effect on the Big Apple. The effects of the boost in the sense of community and public pride paid off big time on 911 and after. It’s been paying off in this pandemic. So, I was fully aware of the qualities Donald John Trump could have brought to Gorbachev, and the Kremlin, if he could have found the self-discipline to do business the way the Kremlin did business.

Donald John Trump* has never done a deal with the Kremlim, which is why the Mueller Report accurately reported that there was no collusion between President Putin and Donald John Trump in regards to any Russian intervention in the 2016 election. In fact, I had pointed this out to various parties connected with the Mueller investigation, generally, and in regards to General Michael Flynn and Michael Cohen. Michael Flynn’s sin was the same as John McCain’s with the Keating 5; they both misunderstood the qualities of “Honor” embraced by the business community are not the same as the “Duty, Honor, Country” imperatives of republican service. This difference in the the civilian and military understanding of “Honor’ provides the dramatic tension of “Othello”. You reflect a similar misapprehension common to lifers everywhere of these qualities of “Honor” in Donald John Trump* in regards.

After Gorbachev pulled the plug on the Soviet Union and Yeltsin began to implement his misguided “desocialization” reforms, the Kremlin no longer controlled the franchise on business in Russia as the Oligarchs looted the commonwealth in the name of what GOP Conservatives like to call “Privatization” and took over public assets as private property. A direct consequence of this “Privatization” was the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant, which was a joint venture of the Trump Organization and the Moscow Oligarchs associated with the business activities of Paul Manafort and whomever Rudy Guiliani has been flogging for dirt on Hunter Biden.

Putin had nothing to do with the staging of the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant, as the Mueller Report reflects. That was Part A of the Mueller Report. Part B is all about Donald John Trump*s involvement with his partners in the 2013 Moscow Miss Universe Pageant going forward, stuff he cannot be indicted on as POTUS.

Giving Donald John Trump* the full benefit of the doubt, he was tricked into committing treason to get elected by his Moscow partners in the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant by a classic KGB recruitment ploy of moral compromise when they hacked the DNC and gave him the analytics from Hillary’s campaign which he needed to game the Electoral College. The issue isn’t whether he needed them or not: the issue is, he accepted them and bragged about it immediately after the election.

And every Republican but Mitt Romney voted to endorse his treason by acquittal.

One of the ways I can tell when a lifer is main-lining the Kool Aid of the All Volunteer mythology that the reason why Vietnam got so fucked up was because of the dope smoking, long-haired, hippy-freak draftees and Vietnam vets when he gently, yet kindly, suggests that I have a lot of baggage and/or I’m off my meds.

As a retired officer, you are on the wrong side of history. As a serving officer, your loyalty was to the Constitution and subordinate to the civilian leadership, but that status has changed. Donald John Trump* and his clown show are fucking up by the numbers on virtually everything they touch and, in terms of COVID-19, lack the imagination to stand up the national test, trace and treat program South Korea implemented at the first indication of the problem: if he had had the wit to just do that, the chances are the death toll, nationally, from COVID-19 would have been less than 1000 and America would be well on its way to opening the NFL season pretty much as usual by Labor Day. Everything these people touch, these Conservatives. turns to shit.

Let me expand this Conservative crises just a bit. In 1970, Nixon and Daniel Patrick Moynihan collaborated on a legislative package designed to transform the Military Industrial Complex to the Aerospace-Entrepreneurial Matrix at the core of the Green New Deal. This package is known popularly as “Affirmative Action” and, in connection with Nixon’s diplomatic aspirations, was intended to create the infrastructure necessary to sustain the economic trajectory required to support a moon colony for the next 100 years. If either Carter or GHW Bush had been re-elected, we would have had a NASA-Soyuz base on the moon by 2001, just like the movie.

The only thing standing in the way of that objective is Reaganomics and the Conservative coalition that has dominated the GOP since 1981 and is determined to blow up Affirmative Action and replace it with the Free Market Fascism of Cuba before Castro and to run America like Las Vegas but without the moral compass and progressive vision of Bugsy Siegel.

You need to understand that your circumstances are being buffered by your pension and your access to health and dental care generally more or less identical to POTUS and unavailable to most Americans. Your self-righteous proposal to tear up the “bipartisan relief check” originates from the same moral vacuum that informs your misappreshension that the campaign promises Donald John Trump* claims to have fulfilled had any but the most venal purposes behind them and that there is anything he has proposed worth supporting but has anything but the most casual relatiohship with reality. What may seem resonable, if not rational, with a guaranteed pension and medical benefits ain’t nearly so apparent without them.

[sirfrogsworth]

That is just about the worst interpretation of what I said I could possibly imagine. Most of all accusing me of being loyal to the Democrats.

Roe was overturned because Trump was able to nominate 3 justices to the Supreme Court. How exactly was Biden supposed to undo that? What lever of power could he use to Ctrl+Z Brett Kavanaugh?

It is not claimed that third parties have no chance of winning the presidency. It's just a reality. We have a two party system. Third parties can rarely get on the ballot. If they do, they get single digit percentages of the votes. If a viable third party with my values had a chance of winning, I would absolutely vote for them. But who would that be right now? What is your current alternative? How would I convince 80 million other people to vote for them?

I'm all for principles, but I also have to live in reality and sometimes pragmatism is needed.

You accuse me of not proposing any solutions, but I don't see a single solution in what you wrote.

I do not see a way to elect a third party candidate until the two party system is dismantled.

I am not shrugging and saying there is nothing else. You are free to check out this post where I detail a progressive strategy to begin the process of destroying the two party system.

The gist is that the presidency is currently a lost cause. We vote for the candidate that will do the least harm. But we absolutely need to start talking about state legislatures. We need to promote and fund and drum up support for progressive candidates to represent us in state level positions. Those elections are small enough that we actually have a chance of electing good people. And we use that as a jumping off point to get majorities.

If you want me to vote for a third party, give me details. Tell me how it would be possible. Change requires an actual plan with steps and realistic goals. If you have that solution, then you should be shouting it from the rooftops instead of accusing me of blind loyalty to fucking Democrats.

@neolesbian

Okay, but you cannot end the statement there.

Then what?

I promise I am not looking to be contentious. I'd prefer not to fight and have a discussion. I am genuinely curious where you go from there. I just don't understand your point of view.

I'll tell you my thought process and you are free to tell me yours.

So you don't vote for Biden. Do you not vote at all? Do you have a viable alternative candidate? Or do you plan to do a protest vote for someone with no chance of winning?

Also, what if you or someone who feels the same as you lives in an area where not voting for Biden is essentially a spoiler vote for Trump? Do you still support not voting for Biden?

What do you think the consequences of that could be?

Every single far right politician is enthusiastically calling for blood. All of them want to fund the Israeli government and IDF, probably to a greater extent.

So I feel you get the same result, but you also get far right judges with lifetime appointments. Perhaps even another on the Supreme Court. A border wall. An increase of concentration camps near the border. Federal bans on gender affirming care. Bathroom laws. Anti-drag laws. Anti-choice will probably get codified. Any public health emergency will not be taken seriously and the elderly and disabled will die needlessly. Public schools will continue to get worse. Books will continue to be banned. Don't say gay laws. Don't say trans laws. School prayer. More tax cuts for the rich. The wage gap increases. Cost of living increases. Cost of healthcare increases. Voting restrictions. Voter ID laws. Gerrymandering. They could poison our elections to the point no progressive candidate would ever have a chance for not just the presidency, but also US Congress.

Put simply, if you are truly trying to help Palestine, how do you feel not voting for Biden accomplishes that?

[vioncentral-blog]

Prospects of Japan's PM Abe Amending Constitution After Landslide Election Win

https://www.vionafrica.cf/prospects-of-japans-pm-abe-amending-constitution-after-landslide-election-win/

Prospects of Japan's PM Abe Amending Constitution After Landslide Election Win

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Tommy Yang — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is well positioned to introduce revisions to Japan’s pacifist constitution, specifically targeting article 9 that requires the nation to renounce war as a sovereign right, after his ruling coalition scored a sweeping victory in the latest election, experts told Sputnik.

READ MORE: Japanese PM Abe's Ruling Coalition Winning Majority of Seats in Snap Election

Japan’s ruling coalition, comprising Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Komeito party, secured an over two-thirds majority, winning 310 out of 465 seats, in the lower House of Representatives of the nation’s parliament, known as the Diet, according to official election results released on Sunday.

Longstanding Dream

The widely expected easy victory could finally allow Abe to push forward amendments to the Japanese constitution, which has been the goal of the LDP since it was founded in 1955, political experts told Sputnik.

"The new Diet is even more dominated by conservative forces as NHK reports that 371 of 465 Diet members from various parties favor constitutional revision. Abe’s longstanding dream is within grasp because he commands a 2/3 majority in both houses of the Diet, the minimum to pass revisions," Jeff Kingston, the director of Asian Studies at Temple University’s campus in Japan, told Sputnik.

Abe’s LDP released four specific points of its proposed revisions to Japan’s constitution in early October as part of the party’s election pledges. These points include the question of adding a specific mention of the status of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), as well as a contentious plan to allow suspension of parts of the constitution during a state of emergency.

Kingston believes Abe could still face some hurdles when it comes to specific points on how to revise the Japanese constitution.

"Getting them [Diet members] to agree on what to revise and how to do so may be difficult, but certainly is doable. His [Abe’s] proposal to legitimize the status of the SDF is not an issue with the public, but it remains to be seen exactly how the LDP will proceed. Abe is promising to work with other parties to build a consensus, but even if he doesn't, he will face some resistance from coalition partner Komeito," he said.

The LDP’s proposal to give the prime minister more power during a state of national emergency could be viewed as a threat to democracy, Kingston suggested.

"More controversial is his desire for the power to declare a national emergency that would allow the prime minister to suspend the Diet and rule by cabinet decree. That will encounter more resistance than clarifying the status of the SDF because it represents a potential threat to democracy," he said.

Nevertheless, the Tokyo-based expert argued that Abe has enough tricks in his political arsenal to push forward the constitutional revision.

"Although public opinion now is not in favor of revision, if he pushes revisions through the Diet and holds a national referendum there will be a massive PR campaign to persuade the public to back the proposals and with a little help from Pyongyang and Beijing the chances are fairly good Abe can prevail," Kingston said.

Closer Alliance With the US

Facing growing threats from North Korea’s nuclear arms program, Abe could seek to build a stronger alliance with the United States, after his easy victory in the election, Kingston noted.

"While Abe and fellow conservatives are obsessed with constitutional revision and beefing up security ties with the United States, this agenda doesn’t resonate with a public still waiting for Abenomics [Abe’s promised economic reform] to trickle down. In early November US President Donald Trump will visit Japan. Abe has curried favor with Trump to bolster security ties, but most Japanese worry where this ‘bromance’ may lead. Trump represents all the risks of a closer alliance that keep Japanese awake at night and is the least popular president in memory. Even before his recent saber-rattling rhetoric over the Korean peninsula, Trump's foreign policy had the backing of only 24% of Japanese versus 79% for his predecessor Barack Obama," he said.

Japan’s overall policy toward North Korea is unlikely to change after the election, as Abe could take advantage of his win to boost military spending and closer ties with the United States, political experts suggested.

READ MORE: Japan Threatens Sanctions, North Korea Threatens Nuclear Annihilation

"I suppose Japan's policy toward North Korea will not change so much, because almost all parties (except the Japanese Communist Party) argue that more pressure should be put on North Korea rather than trying to dialogue with it. Abe will probably seek to increase military spending, such as introducing Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and tighten the alliance with the United States," Yu Uchiyama, a professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences under the University of Tokyo, who specializes in modern Japanese politics, told Sputnik.

Weak Public Support

Abe’s overwhelming triumph in the election came as a result of weak opposition, as opposed to strong support from the general public in Japan, experts suggested.

"The biggest factor that contributed to the LDP's victory is the fragmentation of the opposition camp. Votes cast against the LDP were dispersed among opposition parties, and the LDP just took advantage of this situation. In other words, I don't think that the voters positively chose Abe. Instead, it is a kind of negative choice in that Abe was chosen because there were no other viable options," Professor Uchiyama from the University of Tokyo said.

Professor Kingston from the Temple University expressed similar views on the election results.

"Abe wins big because the electoral system is rigged in favor of it. Rural voters count more than urban votes where the liberals are stronger. Exit polls show that 51 percent of public doesn’t trust Abe and 49 percent oppose his hardline no dialogue approach to North Korea," he said.

Failed Strategy of Opposition Parties

Hours before Abe’s decision to call for a snap election in Japan was made public on September 28, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike announced her decision to establish a new opposition party, the Party of Hope, to challenge Abe’s LDP in the election. The inconsistency in Koike’s short-lived campaign led to her party’s disappointing finish in the election, Professor Uchiyama from the University of Tokyo pointed out.

READ MORE: Japanese Emperor Dissolves Lower House of Parliament Ahead of Snap Vote

"I think the main reason Koike lost is her inconsistency. While she called her party a ‘generous’ one, she said she would ‘exclude’ liberal (I mean, center-left) politicians from her party. Her platform included lots of policies that seemingly appealed to voters, but the policies were inconsistent with each other," he said.

Uchiyama gave an example that while Koike promised to introduce universal basic income, which would need a huge budget, she also said she would freeze the consumption tax raise scheduled for October 2019.

The Japanese scholar argued that Abe’s strategy of calling for a snap election only worked because of missteps of Koike.

"At the early stage of the campaign, support for the Hope Party was so broad that Abe seemed to be prepared to lose. As the campaign went on, the Hope Party began to lose support mainly because of Koike's inappropriate remarks. Finally, Koike lost not only to Abe but also to [Yukio] Edano, the leader of the newly formed Constitutional Democratic Party. Abe won not because his strategy simply worked, but because there were, so to say, double flip-flops," he said.

The expert concluded that it is possible that members of other opposition parties will gather together around Edano and challenge Abe in the future.

[biggaybunny]

The democrats are finally willing to bold-facedly admit what the situation is, what their strategy is. The 2016 election gave them the sign. It’s the inevitable conclusion of the two-party system. They don’t need to try. They don’t need to promise anything. They just need to be less insane and less extreme than the Republican party, and we’ll do all their work for them. They’re holding us hostage. Vote for us, or the crazies will get control. Vote for us because you don’t have a choice. And they’re right. How much work was put in, by grassroots and informal campaigns, to convince people, yes, we know, Hillary isn’t great, but have you seen the other guys? We gave them the slogan. Don’t vote third party. Don’t abstain. We have to keep the Republicans out. Do you think 2020 is going to be different? Or 2024?

The system is rigged. You can’t win within the confines of the rules. The only viable course of action is to break the system entirely.

[socialistperpective]

The Democrats are fighting a civil war

Since the fall of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election we now see the Democrats fighting a civil war. The battle is over the direction of the party now that the brand of neoliberalism has failed. And whether Democratic politicians should court corporate donors instead of listening to the progressive base.

Identity politics is no longer working. Class has become an issue taking the forefront. A prime example was the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the poster child of neoliberalism who served the banks and major corporations while taking money from them. The only difference between her and Republicans is hiding behind identity politics and offering incremental reforms to the public. She provided us all with evidence that this strategy no longer works. American people no longer wish to choose between the lesser of two evils but vote for candidates who represent the policies they want implemented. It just so happens that progressive policies like Medicare for All, ending the wars, rebuilding infrastructure, work programs and a strong social safety net are the most popular. Bernie Sanders’ brand of socialism is mainstream. Sanders would have easily beaten Donald Trump but instead the Democratic National Committee (DNC) decided to rig the primary against him and fed us Hillary Clinton. Clinton was trusted to go along with neoliberalism and corporate interests while Bernie, a true progressive, was anti-establishment and would have put them in second place to the will of the people.

Rather than seeing the progressive-wing take control the neoliberal establishment is holding on to the power cemented under Clinton and Obama. Progressive Congressmen like Tulsi Gabbard are attacked when deciding not to toe the party line. And Bernie Sanders, though an independent, is given a backseat and mocked on cable news for refusing to take money from Wall Street. This helps spread the concept corruption is supposed to be the norm and principles are to give way to money. That’s why the political system has become an oligarchy and the Democrats are just as culpable in this change as the Republicans. The DNC voted to continue taking corporate money after their stunning loss to Donald Trump and elected Tom Perez, a neoliberal who supported bringing about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that would have spelled disaster for American workers and a boon for multinational corporations, as their chair. Again, choosing to humiliate progressives, they created an imaginary position for Keith Ellison, a Bernie Sanders supporter in the primary, as deputy chair. That election and the decision to keep taking corporate money shows the direction the Democrats wish to remain on.

This has caused detractors who are sick of corruption, neoliberalism, and the sell-out of Democratic principles to please Wall Street and Silicon Valley, to attempt saving the party by going back to its roots as fighters for the working class, something that came to prominence under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One grassroots organization is Justice Democrats, making chosen candidates pledge to refuse corporate and lobbyist money. The group already has candidates to primary against establishment Democrats who won’t go along with a progressive agenda. An example is someone taking on Democratic Senator Joe Manchin in West Virginia, a politician beholden to the coal industry and other corporate interests. Manchin is the perfect example of a Democrat who decides to go along Republican lines while wearing a blue suit. The movement is reminiscent of the Tea Party, which managed to take over the Republican Party after their loss in 2008. The Tea Party revitalized the Republicans and pushed through conservative ideas. The House Freedom caucus, though funded largely by the Koch brothers, is a prime example of how this movement managed to rise and influence government policies. The organization Justice Democrats hopes to do the same for their party, but is running into opposition from key establishment figures like Debbie Wasserman Shultz, Tom Perez and now Hillary Clinton. Clinton decided to form a Super PAC, Onward Together, to co-opt the resistance movement against Donald Trump. She hopes to channel any progressive anger back under the neoliberal-wing of the Democratic Party. Though her defeat to Donald Trump shattered Hillary’s public image, she still has backers in the Democratic establishment and may make a run again in the 2020 presidential election.

Though the Democrats need to rebuild after their dramatic losses under Obama, with the Republicans holding most power, both houses of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court, there are forces in the party who wish to maintain the status quo. The progressives must rise to overturn the neoliberal catastrophe and return the party to its working class, liberal roots or it will be placed into the dustbin of history.

Where I stand: In the 2016 Democratic primary, I voted for Bernie Sanders. I was among millions of voters who had their decisions erased by the DNC and the system of superdelegates. Seeing that the party would chose Hillary Clinton as the nominee caused me to cast my vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who represented my opinions on dealing with climate change and moving the country in a socialist direction for the people. It was not a protest vote but rather one done out of conscience. I may be blamed by people who say voting third party was a vote for Trump, but 9 percent of Democrats voted for him and Stein did not take enough votes from Clinton to cause her to lose the election. I and many others are vindicated knowing Bernie Sanders would have won by a wide margin. The Democrats did themselves in by running a corrupt neoliberal candidate who was beholden to corporations and special interests, not the people. Voters saw through her and she lost. Again.

The progressive, or Bernie-wing, of the Democratic Party chooses grassroots activism to take it back from Wall Street to represent working people. Neoliberals like Hillary Clinton want to keep the status quo and have the power to fight for the will of big money donors. Seeing how this civil war will end determines whether the Democrats remain viable in the future or fall to Grassroots, activist parties on the Left like the Greens.

I decided to go ahead and become a member of the Green Party. I am too disgusted by the Democrats and would rather support a party who already doesn’t take corporate and special interest money and agrees that socialism and environmentalism are the way to go, not just for humanity but the future of our planet.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Have you heard the one about two Republicans and 5,000 Democrats who walk into a primary election? It’s not much of a joke to Democrats. In at least three U.S. House primaries in California on Tuesday, Democrats are in real danger of not advancing a candidate to the November general at all, thanks to the Golden State’s unusual “jungle primary” rules. That’s inspired panic among liberals and frantic — often counterintuitive — efforts to game the system. But there’s a greater chance than people realize that the jungle primary system will burn Republicans as well. In fact, if the GOP is locked out of the two biggest races on the ballot this year — for U.S. Senate and governor — the jungle primary could hurt them a lot more than it does Democrats.

Jungle primaries can be confusing even to locals, so let’s start with a refresher. In California,1 all candidates regardless of party run on the same ballot in the June primary. The top two vote-getters (again, regardless of party) advance to a head-to-head election in November. When this system went into effect in 2012, moderates were supposed to benefit because candidates would have to appeal to the whole electorate rather than just their partisan base. But three elections later, Californians disagree on whether it has succeeded.

What it has done is occasionally let two candidates of the same party slip through to the general election, which critics say deprives voters of a true choice in November.2 Let’s say you have a district that’s perfectly split — 50-50 — between Democratic and Republican voters, but 10 Democratic candidates run for the seat compared with only two Republicans. The two Republicans might get 25 percent of the vote apiece, while the Democrats each receive 5 percent. That would advance the two Republicans to the general election, locking up that district for the GOP.

That’s exactly what Democrats fear will happen in California’s 39th, 48th and 49th congressional districts — and perhaps in the 10th and 50th districts as well. Those districts’ swing status attracted a large number of credible challengers in what has been a great recruiting year for Democrats, but that high Democratic enthusiasm could backfire as a result of the jungle primary.

Crowded fields in California

Primary races by the total number of candidates on the ballot

Candidates running Race Incumbent party Open seat Dems Reps Other/ No Party Total Senate D 10 11 11 32 Governor D ✓ 12 5 10 27 District 39 R ✓ 6 7 4 17 48 R 8 6 2 16 49 R ✓ 4 8 4 16 10 R 6 2 0 8 1 R 4 2 1 7 12 D 4 1 2 7 50 R 3 3 1 7 52 D 1 6 0 7 4 R 4 2 0 6 22 R 3 1 2 6 23 R 4 1 1 6 36 D 1 5 0 6 45 R 4 1 1 6 51 D 1 3 2 6 53 D 1 4 1 6 7 D 1 2 2 5 8 R 3 2 0 5 17 D 3 1 1 5 25 R 4 1 0 5 29 D 2 1 2 5 43 D 1 3 1 5 5 D 1 0 3 4 11 D 2 1 1 4 26 D 2 2 0 4 30 D 3 1 0 4 42 R 2 1 1 4 44 D 2 2 0 4 46 D 1 1 2 4 2 D 2 1 0 3 3 D 2 1 0 3 9 D 1 1 1 3 15 D 1 1 1 3 18 D 1 1 1 3 20 D 2 0 1 3 24 D 1 2 0 3 28 D 2 1 0 3 31 D 2 1 0 3 33 D 2 1 0 3 34 D 1 0 2 3 35 D 2 1 0 3 47 D 1 2 0 3 6 D 2 0 0 2 14 D 1 1 0 2 16 D 1 1 0 2 21 R 1 1 0 2 27 D 2 0 0 2 37 D 1 1 0 2 38 D 1 1 0 2 40 D 1 0 1 2 41 D 1 1 0 2 13 D 1 0 0 1 19 D 1 0 0 1 32 D 1 0 0 1

Show more rows

Source: California secretary of state

The most clear and present danger for Team Blue seems to be in the 48th District. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a magnet for controversy, from his friendliness and contacts with Russia to his belief that homeowners should be able to refuse to sell their houses to gay people. It’s made him a Democratic target in this light red seat (R+4 going by FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean),3 and even some fellow Republicans are fed up. Former Rohrabacher protégé Scott Baugh is running against his old mentor, providing a viable alternative to buttoned-down Orange County Republicans who may disapprove of the Trumpish incumbent.4 That’s motivated national Democrats to campaign hard against Baugh to secure a top-two finish for one of their eight candidates on the ballot. In an effort to improve that terrible math, three of those Democrats have withdrawn from consideration, and the party is handing out pamphlets reminding voters not to pick their names.

Two major Democratic candidates remain: Stem-cell researcher Hans Keirstead won the California Democratic Party’s endorsement, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has sided with entrepreneur Harley Rouda. The DCCC’s move was intended to consolidate support around Rouda, but it may have only formalized the party’s schism. Why the preference? The DCCC no doubt appreciates Rouda’s ability to self-fund and was reportedly scared off by unsubstantiated allegations of Keirstead sleeping with female graduate students and punching one of his female students in the face. The two candidates share a solidly progressive platform, but Rouda may also hold more crossover appeal as a Hillary Clinton-supporting former Republican (like many voters in the district).

But in California’s two open House seats, both parties are at risk of a top-two lockout. In the 39th District (D+3), no fewer than four Democrats and three Republicans have realistic shots at a place on the November ballot. Former state Assemblywoman Young Kim, whom outgoing Rep. Ed Royce has endorsed, is considered the GOP front-runner, but that may be an overly hasty assumption. Two internal polls of the race put Kim in a virtual tie with fellow Republicans Bob Huff, a former state Senate minority leader, and Orange County Supervisor Shawn Nelson.

In turn, just a few points away sit the race’s two independently wealthy Democrats, who have far outspent the rest of the field. Gil Cisneros, a Navy veteran who won a $266 million lottery jackpot in 2010, has lent his campaign $3.5 million, while insurance executive Andy Thorburn has invested “only” $2.8 million. Worried that their high-dollar war of words was just pushing both of them down in the polls, Democratic leadership brokered a cease-fire between them last month. The DCCC initially campaigned here only to drag down Huff and Nelson (apparently ceding one runoff slot to Kim) but has lately started airing ads supporting Cisneros — despite a Democratic legislative candidate’s accusations that he made inappropriate sexual advances toward her. Finally, two other Democrats, Emily’s List-backed pediatrician Mai Khanh Tran and former Obama administration appointee Sam Jammal, could also be factors in the race. The bottom line is that any of the top seven candidates — and therefore any combination of parties — could finish in the top two.

And in California’s 49th District (D+1), national Republicans have been at least as active in trying to manipulate the field as national Democrats have been. The American Future Fund has spent more than $1 million propping up state Board of Equalization member Diane Harkey and Assemblyman Rocky Chávez and fending off a third GOP candidate, San Diego County Supervisor Kristin Gaspar. Meanwhile, the DCCC has spent $1.7 million against Chávez (who is the most moderate Republican and probably the most electable) without picking sides among the Democratic contestants. The strategies seem like they’ve been effective: According to a SurveyUSA poll taken at the end of May, Harkey led the race with 24 percent, followed by Democrats Doug Applegate and Sara Jacobs with 11 percent, Democrat Mike Levin with 10 percent and Chávez (who actually led in SurveyUSA’s previous poll of the race) with 8 percent.

But polls of U.S. House races and primaries are notoriously error-prone, and there’s been plenty of upheaval among the Democrats. Applegate, a retired Marine colonel, was Democrats’ November candidate for this seat in 2016 but has been dogged by 14-year-old allegations that he stalked and threatened his ex-wife, although she has defended and endorsed him in 2018. Meanwhile, Jacobs, whose grandfather is the billionaire co-founder of Qualcomm, has benefited from Emily’s List’s largest-ever independent-expenditure campaign ($2.3 million), but the 29-year-old has been dinged for exaggerating her work experience. And the race’s leading fundraiser is a fourth Democrat, real estate investor Paul Kerr.

In two final districts with vulnerable GOP incumbents, it’s also possible (but less likely) that either party will be shut out of the top two. In the heavily Latino 10th District (D+1), Rep. Jeff Denham has cultivated a moderate reputation, especially on immigration. His lone Republican challenger, Ted Howze, hopes to rally the district’s hard-core conservatives with cries of “amnesty.” Among Democrats, venture capitalist Josh Harder has raised a strong $1.5 million, beekeeper Michael Eggman has plenty of name recognition from his failed 2014 and 2016 campaigns, and former Riverbank Mayor Virginia Madueño enjoys the support of Emily’s List.

Finally, the R+19 50th District wouldn’t be competitive under normal circumstances, but Rep. Duncan Hunter is under FBI investigation for personal use of campaign funds. Democrats Ammar Campa-Najjar and Josh Butner have gone nuclear on each other, potentially paving the way for Republicans Bill Wells or Shamus Sayed to finish second to Hunter. Wells is mayor of El Cajon, a city of more than 100,000 people on the district’s western edge, but businessman Sayed has raised five times as much money. In mid-May, a SurveyUSA poll found all the non-Hunter candidates within the margin of error of one another.

But here’s the thing: If Democrats (or Republicans) miss out on the general election in any of those races, the most either party could lose is one House seat.5 That’s bad, of course, but the damage would be limited. Not so, however, if a party is locked out of the general election in a high-profile statewide race. Unfortunately for conservatives, it’s Republicans who are likely to miss out in November on California’s U.S. Senate race and possibly also the gubernatorial election. And that could have bigger consequences than just one race.

As FiveThirtyEight’s Clare Malone writes, California’s general election for the U.S. Senate is likely to come down to two Democrats representing two different visions for the party: more moderate Sen. Dianne Feinstein and progressive upstart Kevin de León, the former state Senate president. Even worse, Republicans could also be shut out of California’s other major statewide race this year: governor. Everyone else is basically just trying to make the runoff with Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has raised the incredible sum of $36 million. Not to be outdone, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has raised $34 million and also gotten a $20 million assist from a pro-charter-schools outside group. State Treasurer John Chiang has raised “only” $14 million and hopes to win over Democrats turned off by Newsom’s and Villaraigosa’s past scandals.

Meanwhile, President Trump has urged Republicans via tweet to consolidate behind businessman John Cox instead of state Assemblyman Travis Allen. Newsom has also subtly tried to lift Cox in an effort to face a Republican in the fall. The trend in polling (which, weirdly for this primary season, has been ample) suggests these developments may have made a difference, but Cox — and the GOP — could easily still lose that second runoff spot.

Latest polls of the California governor’s race

Democrats Republicans Dates Pollster Newsom Villaraigosa Chiang Cox Allen May 29-30 Competitive Edge 31% 13% 4% 23% 10% May 22-28 UC Berkeley 33 13 7 20 12 May 21-24 Emerson College 24 12 10 16 11 May 12-24 YouGov 33 9 8 17 10 May 21 SurveyUSA 33 8 10 17 12 May 11-20 PPIC 25 15 9 19 11 Apr. 18-May 18 USC Dornsife/LAT 21 11 6 10 5 Average 29 12 8 17 10

Both California’s senatorial and gubernatorial races were always going to be safely Democratic in this D+26 state, so it may seem like no big deal if Republicans fail to advance in them. It’s even happened before: Democrats Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez were the top two vote-getters in the 2016 Senate primary before facing off in the general election. But this year, without a presidential race on the ballot, the races for Senate and governor matter more than just for their own sake. As the two races headlining California’s 2018 ballot, they have the power to drive turnout across this state of 40 million — and all 53 of its congressional races.

A Republican shutout at the top of the ticket could depress conservative turnout statewide, perhaps nudging districts where the Republican is currently favored, like the 4th and 21st, more toward the toss-up column. That could damage the party’s chances in a dozen swing districts, not just in one, like a shutout in an individual House race would. In 2014, poor turnout in “orphan states” — those without competitive races for governor or Senate — cost Democrats House seats that they didn’t even know were in danger. The biggest consequence of the jungle primary could be that California becomes 2018’s version of an orphan state — for Republicans.