US Presidential Election 2020

[BenDhyan]

More adverse news for Joe, Hunter Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski holds a press conference...

[stickdog99]

I certainly have to agree with Jack and express surprise that people would consider Biden/Harris to be a greater evil. The roles of the Democrats and Republicans, as I see it, are very different: Republicans' job is to steamroll ahead with an overtly awful agenda while the Democrats put up a false front of resistance. What does sometimes happen is that Democrats end up recycling ideas, like NAFTA or the ACA, that were originated by Republicans (George Bush Sr. and Heritage Foundation+Mitt Romney, respectively). But the Democrats aren't on the front lines of those policies, it's just that they allow the political discourse to get pushed so far to the right that formerly Republican ideas become seen as "progressive" or even resistance to the current GOP. Nor are Democrats as quick to employ the overtly authoritarian tactics that Jack highlights, like the Trump Administration sending covert federal agents to crush protesters, or the incredibly brazen election manipulation (not to say that Democrats don't cheat, but there is a very well-organized nationwide election fraud network in this country and it's certainly not the Democrats who are being helped by it). More common among the Dems is the Kamala Harris type, content to sit by as a manager of these repressive institutional structures with no intention of reforming them.

Honestly, I did used to feel this way back in 2016, even thinking that Clinton was the greater evil because the "left" would sit by as she implemented an regressive agenda whereas at least there might be some real resistance to Trump doing so. But Democrats don't have as much latitude as Republicans to do that because they still have to at least put up the appearance of being progressive. Indeed, as I've argued here on RI before, it is likely that the DNC at a high level is perfectly okay with all the antidemocratic techniques that benefit the GOP, because the less control they have over the government, the more cover they have for none of the progressive policies for which they purportedly stand actually getting passed. Plus I was hopelessly mistaken about what Democratic "resistance" to Trump would actually constitute: it has just formed part of the continual dialectic to push the country to the right, by making Trump out to be some kind of "soft on our enemies" peacenik when his actual record is nothing of the sort. The strategies highlighted in the article Jack shared have been sorely lacking due to the the "trust the plan"-type rhetoric that Russiagate and now the hopes of a SDNY prosecution have inspired.

The first step for me changing my perspective after 2016 was seeing how Trump was installed into power by the cryptocracy-controlled election rigging infrastructure. That ultimately made it clear that he, not Clinton as I first expected, was the deep state pick. If the "evil" system that we are discussing has the ability to manipulate election outcomes on a national scale and they shift it to a particular candidate who likely would not have won without their intervention, I think we can safely say that candidate is the greater evil.

OK, I agree with all of that.

But in 2020, the cryptocracy-controlled election rigging infrastructure's candidate is pretty clearly Joe Biden.

And God help us if we need the first real American Revolution to install a "leader" whose only redeeming quality is that he is not Trump.

[stickdog99]

Sadly, I am not 100% sure who would be worse only because the authoritarian austerity screws might be more easily screwed even tighter under a Biden/Harris reign.

That is very much to be doubted.

Both will attempt similarly harsh austerity regimes, one with unrelenting intent to provoke and crush resistance in the most theatrical and openly brutal way.

Both promise elements that can be called fascist or have a fascistoid or white supremacist provenance; one also has the self-proclaimed leader of the fascists cadre at its head.

We probably won't agree on which is more liable to start new wars, and both are liable to try it,

You could ask, under which regime would you prefer to fight against the injustices that will be perpetrated? We may differ. There's no doubt in my mind.

In New York I don't get even the token participation of voting where it matters, so what's the point of even discussing this any more as if it's a choice? Most of us will be spectators to an undemocratic process. We may have the choice, which I do not think anyone welcomes, to take to the streets if even that process is violated in an attempted coup d'etat.

I hope Biden wins. I hope Trump leaves office peacefully. And I hope that you are 100% correct on your analysis of the lesser of the true evils.

But Biden and Harris have run their campaign on one and only one relevant promise, that of not being Trump. And Wall Street, the Chamber of Commerce, Silicon Valley, the billionaire class, and all media elites have hopped aboard that train even though Trump has given them all more than they ever dared to ask for. I hope to God that this is because they realize that Trump has gone overboard, but I have the sinking suspicion that this is because they know Biden and his newly minted authoritarian and "science" worshiping Democratic establishment would be the better vehicle to ram the Great Reset down our collective throats.

[DrEvil]

^^I'm halfway convinced the Great Reset is really just a poison pill meant to make people believe that any kind of sweeping reform is worse than business as usual.

[JackRiddler]

I hope Biden wins. I hope Trump leaves office peacefully. And I hope that you are 100% correct on your analysis of the lesser of the true evils.

But Biden and Harris have run their campaign on one and only one relevant promise, that of not being Trump. And Wall Street, the Chamber of Commerce, Silicon Valley, the billionaire class, and all media elites have hopped aboard that train even though Trump has given them all more than they ever dared to ask for. I hope to God that this is because they realize that Trump has gone overboard, but I have the sinking suspicion that this is because they know Biden and his newly minted authoritarian and "science" worshiping Democratic establishment would be the better vehicle to ram the Great Reset down our collective throats.

Something like that, except the "Great Reset" or whatever one wants to call it has happened already. Indeed, Trump has given more than they could have dared asked for, and at the same time created instability and now threatens open fascism (if you actually listen to his daily rants, which are consistent). Like the last two Democratic admins did, the aim of the new committee will be to stabilize and consolidate, to legalize and institutionalize the audacious extralegal achievements of the Republican predecessor, while playing progressive on TV. This will meet with much more resistance from the left and the bottom now than under Obama. Will that be enough to change any of it? On its own, almost certainly not. In the greater context of intractable crisis, elite fracture, and decay of the U.S. global position, what the fuck do we know?

.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

I've no confidence the changing of the guard is set to occur in 2021, however.
We may have another 4 years of Trump-mania lined up for us. The 'tea leaves' are suggesting as much.

[Marionumber1]

OK, I agree with all of that.

But in 2020, the cryptocracy-controlled election rigging infrastructure's candidate is pretty clearly Joe Biden.

And God help us if we need the first real American Revolution to install a "leader" whose only redeeming quality is that he is not Trump.

I guess the only thing that can be said with certainty is that we'll see in a couple weeks whether or not that's the case. You may be right, but I thought it was just as clear back in 2016 that these forces had lined up behind Hillary Clinton, and fully expected the election to be shifted in her favor. For the past 20 years, the game in that regard hasn't deviated much from the blunt strategy of favoring the Republican (Bush over Kerry, McCain over Obama, Romney over Obama, Trump over Clinton) despite the strategic advantages that might be incurred by having a patently false progressive candidate to effect a "reset" after several years of heavy-handed kleptocracy. But there have also been some notable "blue shifts" (as opposed to the more common "red shifts") in recent years, like the favoring of Alabama business establishment pick Doug Jones over Roy Moore. It is fair not to expect the same strategy to be employed forever without any change.

And truth be told, there could very well be a dual strategy of which direct election rigging forms only a part: propagandizing the public for a Biden landslide while keeping the votes suppressed and the machines rigged so that any such landslide doesn't manifest as that much of a sound defeat for the GOP. This may have even been the play in 2006 and 2008, where the pro-GOP rigging suppressed a Democratic landslide and thus limited the amount of apparent anti-Bush backlash, while media manipulation such as the breaking of the Mark Foley scandal and the creation of the mystical Obama aura fueled those landslides on the other side. It actually seems very plausible that partisans on both sides -- the largely pro-GOP election manipulation team, and the largely "liberal" influencers in the conventional establishment media -- are being played off against each other in certain ways to engineer a desired outcome for the real power holders.

[stickdog99]

OK, but who among our elites is supporting Trump?

All I can hope for right now is that the "cooler heads" among our "esteemed" billionaire class prevail.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatin ... ire-donors

[JackRiddler]

OK, but who among our elites is supporting Trump?

All I can hope for right now is that the "cooler heads" among our "esteemed" billionaire class prevail.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatin ... ire-donors

So by whatever count this is measured, Biden now has 131 billionaires (Sean Parker still is? Right, not Napster, Facebook) and Trump's "only" got 99. Ha, what a damn joke.

99 billionaires is a lot! Coverage that makes it sound like Trump's "losing the battle for billionaires" maintains his image of populist cred.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

What a charade. 131 vs 99 billionaires.

So we are faced with a choice between overt jingoistic fascism vs semi-covert technocratic fascism, do I have that right?

Which is the one we prefer, again? Which one will benefit the majority? Oh, right. Neither.

But one will reportedly allow for pyrrhic victories, or otherwise, the theatrics of a front-facing 'victory' while business as usual continues behind the curtain.

Of course, in addition to the standard national election cycle shenanigans, this year we've observed another full court press towards more overt systemic rape of the plebes, a process that has been ongoing since the onset of this modern empire but was given an initial fast-track adjustment in 2001.

Any arsonists in this club? Now'd be a good time to light it all up and build anew from the ashes.

[Marionumber1]

OK, but who among our elites is supporting Trump?

All I can hope for right now is that the "cooler heads" among our "esteemed" billionaire class prevail.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatin ... ire-donors

Aside from the aforementioned farce of Biden having overwhelmingly greater support from billionaires than Trump does, it's also important to note that it's not just about individuals but also the networks they build to hold onto power. A similar story came out in 2016 painting Clinton as leading Trump substantially in billionaire support (and it was, similarly, really just a 17 to 12 ratio, though the total amount given to Trump was much lower), and the "respectable" part of the mainstream press appeared just as in the tank for Clinton as they now appear for Biden, so we could have rhetorically asked who among our elites was supporting Trump in 2016. Yet the actual outcome in 2016 was opposite to what all of that would have suggested.

The pronounced right-wing infrastructure made up of groups like the Council for National Policy (CNP) and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) certainly constitute an important part of the elite. And they are not just individuals donating money, but organized groups set up to bring together wealthy elites, make policy, and build loyalists within state and national government. It is the undoubtedly-elite players inhabiting these groups, like hedge fund multimillionaire Robert Mercer in 2016, who propelled Trump into office using this network. His administration, rather fittingly, did end up with a pronounced cabinet of loyalists to this network set on implementing a very corporate-friendly agenda. And operative members of this well-financed network (e.g. Rothschild banker Wilbur Ross, Ohio election rigger Ken Blackwell, political dirty trickster Steve Bannon who has already made his triumphant reappearance in the current Hunter Biden scandal, Bannon's spiritual predecessor Karl Rove who is likely to apply the same "magic" he along with Blackwell did for Bush in 2004...) are just as committed to getting Trump in office now as it was then.

Not to say that there aren't networks like this on the "liberal" side, though they don't appear to have reached the level of organization that the right has, nor do they appear to have the same level of control over the US election infrastructure. But even if we take elite individuals' political convictions at face value (which I somewhat doubt, since most would likely be content with either), there is undoubtedly an influential part of the elite backing Trump.

[Elvis]

in 2020, the cryptocracy-controlled election rigging infrastructure's candidate is pretty clearly Joe Biden.

I'd say Biden is just insurance, a cover bet to assure no single-payer healthcare or other profit-threatening changes. Just as Biden is "not Trump" for average voters, Biden was, for the billionaire class, "not Sanders." Biden can't come close to Trump's tax cuts and deregulation—which were, as Jack says, "more than they could have dared asked for." In their calculation, probably worth the risk of letting a nutcase run the executive branch.

[Belligerent Savant]

^^^
That's a hot take that resonates. We shall all find out soon enough.

[stickdog99]

OK, but who among our elites is supporting Trump?

All I can hope for right now is that the "cooler heads" among our "esteemed" billionaire class prevail.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatin ... ire-donors

Aside from the aforementioned farce of Biden having overwhelmingly greater support from billionaires than Trump does, it's also important to note that it's not just about individuals but also the networks they build to hold onto power. A similar story came out in 2016 painting Clinton as leading Trump substantially in billionaire support (and it was, similarly, really just a 17 to 12 ratio, though the total amount given to Trump was much lower), and the "respectable" part of the mainstream press appeared just as in the tank for Clinton as they now appear for Biden, so we could have rhetorically asked who among our elites was supporting Trump in 2016. Yet the actual outcome in 2016 was opposite to what all of that would have suggested.

The pronounced right-wing infrastructure made up of groups like the Council for National Policy (CNP) and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) certainly constitute an important part of the elite. And they are not just individuals donating money, but organized groups set up to bring together wealthy elites, make policy, and build loyalists within state and national government. It is the undoubtedly-elite players inhabiting these groups, like hedge fund multimillionaire Robert Mercer in 2016, who propelled Trump into office using this network. His administration, rather fittingly, did end up with a pronounced cabinet of loyalists to this network set on implementing a very corporate-friendly agenda. And operative members of this well-financed network (e.g. Rothschild banker Wilbur Ross, Ohio election rigger Ken Blackwell, political dirty trickster Steve Bannon who has already made his triumphant reappearance in the current Hunter Biden scandal, Bannon's spiritual predecessor Karl Rove who is likely to apply the same "magic" he along with Blackwell did for Bush in 2004...) are just as committed to getting Trump in office now as it was then.

Not to say that there aren't networks like this on the "liberal" side, though they don't appear to have reached the level of organization that the right has, nor do they appear to have the same level of control over the US election infrastructure. But even if we take elite individuals' political convictions at face value (which I somewhat doubt, since most would likely be content with either), there is undoubtedly an influential part of the elite backing Trump.

Great post. Thanks.

[Grizzly]

This could just as well, go under the Russian thread.
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/jjw6i6/we_are_nsa_whistleblowers_kirk_wiebe_bill_binney/


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