Seven days and counting

Written By: - Date published: 2:06 pm, October 28th, 2024 - 16 comments
Categories: Donald Trump, elections, us politics - Tags:

In just over a week the United States will decide on who its next President is.

I don’t understand why but according to current polling the race to the Presidency is really, really close.

On one side we have an old white guy who has been convicted of fraud and found liabile for sexual assault and is facing a raft of other charges. He has been President before, oversaw a horrendously bad Covid response and made such a hash of his teunre that senior members of his administration and party have come out and urged the country not to support him.

When he lost he staged an attempted coup, urged his supporters to rally on the day the result was to be confirmed to attack the House of Representatives and did his absolute best to disrupt the smooth transition of power to the new administration. And he did not even show up to the inauguration of the new President.

He was caught trying to solicit the finding of enough extra votes in Georgia to overturn the State result, conducted numerous legal attempts to overturn local results, all of which failed, backed moves to create alternate groups of electors to confuse and potentially hijack the final count, pressurised the Vice President to not do what he is constitutionally bound to do, hung him out to dry in front of Trump’s mob when the VP refused to budge, and some Trump supporters came up with a proposal to use the military to seize ballots and voting machines in an effort to prove fraud.

His behavour was akin to a spolit 6 year old who has been denied the use of something and then throws a tantrum. His parents clearly did not educate him on the importance of being a good loser.

On the other hand we have a black Woman who in her previous life was a very good lawyer. She has served various roles including the Vice Presidency with dedication and skill.

In my view she is not progressive enough. Although she is good on women’s issues and she understands climate change, she has been very poor in dealing with the geoncide happening in Palestine and economically she is too luke warm for my liking. But she is infinately better than her opponent.

I get the feeling that one of the reasons that Trump wants to win is so that he can pardon himself and relieve himself of the burden of the multiple charges that he is facing.

And he and his supporters will clearly do anything to win. Enough of them have drank the kool-aid about election fraud to have signed up to groups of poll watchers ready to cause havoc in elections in swing states to prevent non existing voter fraud from happening. Stand by as baseless challenges of voters in progressive areas cause havoc.

And the hints of facism in Trump’s campaign are strong. From the demonising of immigrants to the plans to get even after election day to the excessively absurd rhetoric that he employs Trump has shown that truth has no influence on what he says. Branding Harris as a communist fascist within two words of each other should be reason to doubt his intellectual understanding.

If you need evidence backing this claim how about this artice published in MSNBC arguing that Trump is running a classic fascist campaign. From the article:

“Kamala has imported an army of illegal aliens and gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the Third World,” Trump falsely claimed. “I’m announcing today that upon taking office, we will have an Operation Aurora at the federal level to expedite the removal of these savage gangs. And I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.”

The speech, delivered in Aurora, Colorado, caused the Republican Mayor to endorse Kamla Harris.

And the signs of Trump’s rapid mental decay are strong. Strange ramblings and disjoint sentences should cause his family to step in and make sure he has the care he needs.

Things are that bad that his extsranged niece Mary Trump suggested that one of his performances showed evidence of steep cognitive decline.

It should be one of those occasions for his faily to decide that maybe they should be taking his car keys off him. But instead they and part of the United States want to give him the keys to the White House.

And his backers are an awful, awful group of people. How about Washington Post and Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos who apparently instructed the post that it should not declare who it supports for this election because clearly it would not have supported Trump. Or LA Times owner and billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong who did the same?

Or Tesla and X owner Elon Musk whose offer of a million dollar a day lottery seems really like vote buying? For a guy whose empire was built on state credits for carbon reduction he sure does pick strange people to support.

What is it with these guys? Do then think they deserve even more privilege?

I must admit that I am nervous of this election. Now more than ever the world needs a United States that is at least responsibly run and forms credible positions on issues. A Trump victory will throw the country and the world into turmoil.

To every voter in the United States please do the right thing. The rest of the world is depending on it.

16 comments on “Seven days and counting ”

  1. SPC 1
    28 October 2024 at 3:01 pm

    With the scion of the Drumpf family of Bavaria in charge of the GOP, faUSCIAism is certainly the issue of the day. Germany saw off the Austrian Bavarian in the 1920's, but not the 1930's reprise.

    In an age, where the techies now see democracy as a threat to their freedom to make monopoly profits without government regulation. That was always a risk when the USA used security oversight of the worldwide tech monopolies to secure their imperial MIC power with another form of control.

    We should not forget the role of Cambridge Analytica in enabling the 2016 result.

    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/06/cambridge-analytica-how-turn-clicks-into-votes-christopher-wylie

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html

    https://archive.li/Vc1ea#selection-4767.5-4767.17

    We know that Trump won the swing states narrowly in 2016 and Biden did the same in 2020 (despite solid Clinton and Biden leads). The polls this time at least show all the 7 swing states are close (Florida no longer a swing state).

    That this is the case seems to be confirmed by the Trafalgar and Rasmussen polls showing a narrow GOP lead, as they did on 2020.

    Reply
  2. mikesh 2
    28 October 2024 at 3:07 pm

    I get the impression that Harris is something of a political chameleon: I think she changes her political colours to suit the mood of the times. However I think she started out as a progressive, so it may well be that that is what she is at heart.

    Reply
  3. Sanctuary 3
    28 October 2024 at 3:17 pm

    What is the appeal of Trump? Well , let me draw a few threads together. We own a rental flat, which has been let out to people with mental health issues. On Friday night, the power was disconnected due to non payment. We spent most of Saturday morning ringing and ringing and ringing – hold, push this button, push that button – to get the power back on. It was difficult, because it was the Saturday of a long weekend. Eventually we got there. But who cuts off someone's electricity supply on the eve of a long weekend? It is just corporate sadism.

    Today at the beach where we are spending the weekend I took the dog for his walk. I went past a bit of a shack where someone permanently lives. Fluttering proudly on a flagpole in the frontyard was a Trump 2024 flag, the newest thing by miles in the property. I thought "why on earth would you be son invested in Trump?"

    I guess when people like that shack owner get their power cut off on the Friday afternoon of a long weekend, they fucking hate the middle class managers who let that happen. The inflicted casual sadism of making people ring ring ring desperately trying to get the electricity back on a Saturday. Those people think Trump will take revenge on their behalf against the rotten local authorities and the rotten power companies and the whole management class. They are consumed with the hatred and violence of the embittered drunkard hurling bottles at the police.

    What the left should be doing is coming up ways to turn that drunken hate into a sober rage against the sadism of a neoliberal carapace that engulfs our societies.

    Reply
    • Drowsy M. Kram 3.1
      28 October 2024 at 7:16 pm

      What the left should be doing is coming up ways to turn that drunken hate into a sober rage against the sadism of a neoliberal carapace that engulfs our societies.

      yes Well put & a great albeit tricky strategy – might be a bit bold for some Labour MPs.

      The Cruelty Is the Point [3 Oct 2018]
      President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear.

      These are policies that are deliberately designed to administer pain, to add to the total amount of pain in American society.
      …
      That’s how sadopopulism works: the government makes you hurt, and then you want somebody else to hurt more.
      …
      And then that moves you away slowly from democracy.

      https://stimpunks.org/glossary/sadopopulism/

      Reply
    • mickysavage 3.2
      28 October 2024 at 7:24 pm

      Spot on. The Parliamentary Labour Party needs to think more about where ordinary people are at and less about celebrating PHDs.

      Reply
      • Drowsy M. Kram 3.2.1
        28 October 2024 at 9:26 pm

        The Parliamentary Labour Party needs to think… less about celebrating PHDs.

        Trump 'University' couldn't grant degrees. Not sure what "less about celebrating PHDs" refers to, but imho our 6th Labour govt erred when it declined to implement the recommendations of the Tax Working Group, chaired by Michael Cullen (PhD).

        Chaired by former Finance Minister Hon Sir Michael Cullen, it will provide recommendations to Government that would improve the fairness, balance and structure of the tax system over the next 10 years.
        https://taxworkinggroup.govt.nz/what-is-the-tax-working-group.html

        I believe it would be a great shame if a PhD degree came to be viewed as any more of a political millstone in Aotearoa NZ, where anti-intellectual populism has a very firm foothold. It's pleasing to me that our CoC govt included three (new) MPs with PhDs (Parmar,, Campbell, Cheung), in addition to a couple of medical doctors.

        ‘I wanted everybody to feel uncomfortable’: An interview with Eleanor Catton [5 Jan 2024]
        Mailer’s dismissal brings to mind the tonal qualities of the kind of flack Catton endured from mostly men in right-wing media and politics after she publicly criticised the Key government’s anti-intellectualism.

        Tracey McLellan (PhD)
        My focus was to better understand different dementia disorders and what happens after childhood brain injury. I also worked as an organiser for the New Zealand Nurses Organisation supporting our nurses working in primary health and across the health sector.

        Deborah Russell (PhD)
        Her thesis considered how we can change our government systems to make them more responsive to diverse communities. Deborah has lectured at universities in New Zealand and Australia in philosophy, ethics, management and taxation. She is the co-author of a book about New Zealand’s tax system, “Tax and Fairness”.

        Ayesha Verrall (PhD)
        She attended medical school at the University of Otago and worked as a junior doctor at Wellington hospital. Ayesha completed her specialist training in Singapore and researched tuberculosis in Indonesia.

        Ducan Webb (LLD)
        A former Professor of Law, he stood for Parliament in the wake of the Christchurch earthquakes, after acting as lawyer for affected homeowners.

        Megan Woods (PhD)
        Megan worked as a Business Manager at Plant & Food Research. She holds a PhD in New Zealand history from the University of Canterbury.

        Reply
  4. Mike the Lefty 4
    28 October 2024 at 3:43 pm

    Trump is positively the best example of someone who engages mouth long before he engages brain.

    I wonder if he has ever been tested for Tourette's Syndrome?

    Reply
  5. Dennis Frank 5
    28 October 2024 at 5:13 pm

    I don’t understand why but according to current polling the race to the Presidency is really, really close.

    I'd put it down to the gfc cleaning out the US middle class. Talk of the american dream has been noticeably muted ever since.

    Yeah I know it's because they didn't read the fine print on their contracts. The designers traded on that: treated all them consumers as suckers. The suckers, naturally, are still refusing to admit they suck 16 years later, but they remain seriously pissed off.

    And they're old enough to recall when they could rely on the left to provide a positive alternative to the right. Kamala hasn't marketed herself to them on that basis, right? Probably couldn't even be bothered commiserating with them. So no real difference between left & right is evident to a large swathe of potential voters.

    Reply
  6. Kay 6
    28 October 2024 at 5:22 pm

    I'm seeing little commentary anywhere about the importance of voting Democrat in all the other elections- it's not just the presidential election. In reality, a Harris presidency won't mean a thing unless Congress and the Senate are Democrat majority. Not to mention their judges (the most crazy system ever), and even local school boards.

    If America wants a fighting chance to save itself, the people have to understand this (how come I do??) and vote accordingly.

    Reply
  7. Darien Fenton 7
    28 October 2024 at 5:55 pm

    US is not NZ. It is a strange country. Its political voting system is weird. Of course Kamala is not perfect. But you forgot to say she is good on union issues, as was Biden, which is why the large unions and the AFLCIO have endorsed her. The Israel issue has been around for decades and no President has gone there, especially during an election. There is huge funding in behind it from AIPAC and others. It's hard for you and me to understand why sitting at the bottom of the world, but I try to study history. It's not the first time we have seen genocide in the Middle East. Palestine has been an issue ever since the British decided to create a Jewish State right in the midst of their lands after WW2 after the Holocaust. Wars in Gaza go right back, including in WW1 – remember Lawrence of Arabia? I have a pic of my grandfather in law on a camel fighting with NZ troops in Gaza. Meanwhile, I weep for my extended family, who have just escaped Lebanon and are here safely in NZ. My niece's grave is on the border and goodness knows what that looks like. I shed tears every day, but I shed more tears at the thought that Elon Musk and a the racist oligarchs in America might win.

    Reply
    • Anne 7.1
      28 October 2024 at 6:39 pm

      Thank you Darien. I've learnt more from your comment than anything I've seen on the piss poor TV news outlets. Has anyone else noticed that One News is all about Trump's campaign. Trump this, Trump that… videos of Trump rallies with the occasional mention of the name Kamala Harris tacked on to the end. It is appalling, but of course Trump is great clickbait whereas Harris is predictable and sane.

      I cross my fingers and pray my late father's prediction back in the 1970s that:

      "the next Hitler will come out of America" is not being played out in front of us.

      Reply
    • mickysavage 7.2
      28 October 2024 at 7:33 pm

      Agreed Darien and if I was an American elctor I would happily vote Kamala.

      But I wish the US Government had a humanitarian position on Palestine.

      And I also wish UK Labour had a humanitarian position on Palestine.

      Reply
  8. BevanJS 8
    28 October 2024 at 6:17 pm

    Do you really believe media outlets should be in the business of endorsing politicians? …. and the LA times might have made it's decision for even more altruistic reasons.

    Reply

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