@edgarblythe,
I’d personally wouldn’t like to see him run. That could change, however. I definitely don’t want Trump.nthat goes without saying. He’ll destroy the country and the Repug party! He’s so special!
Romney won’t run, so he says convincingly. He’s busy being a Utah senator.
Hmmm? Then who/ whom? DeSantis? Ahahaha!
@edgarblythe,
AOC has refused to endorse him instead focussing on the mid terms.
She said if he has a vision she can get behind she will, which implies he doesn't have much of a vision at the current time.
I remember when he ran it was all about one term place sitting for the next candidate.
There were concerns about his age in 2020.
@edgarblythe,
First off, America is not a democracy.
It's a constitutional republic. We vote for leaders indirectly through electors. Not theough mob rule. The closer we come to a straight up majority, the more crooked the election (that said, Hawaii and Alaska practically never get to vote because the tally usually adds up to the winning amount well before that). A straight up democratic event is closest to a lynch mob. I don't think even France has a democracy. There are some parts of government that get elected democratically. But overall, we have a republic. The concern of the founders was that people with good ideas would get shouted down by a bunch of uneducated thugs. So while American government is on the surface elitist, it works for the most part. Always? No, because some systems have been proposed that very much uphold the tyranny of the masses.
But democracy in America is falling? Pffft, Canada can't even say that when they are struggling with Trudeau and his COVID tyranny. Canada is a dictatorship. It might be fair to say that the Democratic party is collapsing. But here's the thing. The Democratic party was replaced in about the 70s or 80s with radical and socialist elements, a little at a time. If you want the party to survive at all, anf not go the way of the Whigs, it needs to get back to its roots.
The Austerity Push Is A Repeat Of History
BY DAVID SIROTA – 15 JUN 2022 –
If you want to understand one of the many real dangers of Republicans winning the midterms, then just go back a dozen years to see what happened to the politics of Social Security when the Democratic White House last lost Congress to the Republicans.
Then remember that the Democratic president this time around isn’t some newbie just starting to toy with the idea of cutting benefits. The Oval Office occupant is a career politician who has spent much of his adult life pushing Social Security and Medicare cuts using the same “entitlement reform” language that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) began floating this week during a televised debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-Vt.).
NEW PODCAST: The Fed Hates You (Also, How To Build A Third Party)
On this week’s Lever Time, David explores how the Federal Reserve is approaching inflation all wrong, exposes the big problem with the January 6 hearings, and interviews Kendra Brooks and David Zuckerman about winning third- party campaigns.
Emboldened by Graham’s comments, Democrats are now using their megaphone to try to scandalize his statements, in which he first blamed the federal debt on social safety net programs, and then declared that “entitlement reform is a must.”
“Republicans Are Coming for Medicare and Social Security,” blared the Democratic National Committee, which warned that “it’s clear Republicans are laying the groundwork to gut Medicare and Social Security — further raising the stakes of this November’s elections.”
“Senate Republicans are explaining in their own words why their candidates should not be elected,” said a press release from Senate Democrats’ campaign arm. “Their toxic agenda would put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block, ripping away seniors’ hard earned benefits — and it will lead their campaigns to defeat in November.”
President Joe Biden chimed in, tweeting: “How well are you going to sleep at night knowing that every five years Ted Cruz and other Congressional Republicans pushing ultra-MAGA policies are going to vote on whether you’ll have Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?”
The optimist might see this instant pushback as proof that after decades of fetishizing bipartisanship and neoliberal dalliances with social safety net cuts, Democrats have learned their lesson and are finally backing off proposals to cut the two most popular programs their party ever created.
A more jaded realist might see Democrats’ defense of safety net programs a bit differently: as a short-term political tactic, but one that signifies no real change in what a Democratic White House would actually do right after a midterm blowout.
The Last Time Around
Let’s remember: A dozen years before Graham was roasted for his recent comments, President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden held a ceremony at the White House to announce a commission to try to slash Social Security and Medicare.
The creation of the so-called “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform” by executive order followed the majority of Senate Democrats voting to create the panel, which was headed by investment banker and former Clinton administration official Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.).
Days after Obama lamented Democrats’ 2010 electoral “shellacking,” his commission released a plan to slash Social Security benefits and raise the program’s eligibility age. Economist Paul Krugman noted at the time that the commission also suggested using newly gained revenue to finance “sharp reductions in both the top marginal tax rate and in the corporate tax rate.”
The plan ultimately did not receive the 14 commission votes it needed to move forward, and a few years later in 2012, the House voted down a version of the proposal. That didn’t stop the Obama-Biden administration’s push: Right after winning reelection — and after cementing much of the Bush tax cuts —— they tried to limit cost-of-living increases for Social Security, to the applause of Republican lawmakers.
Only after a sustained campaign led by Sanders did the Democratic establishment finally back off.
A Repeat Of History, Or A Break From The Past?
Now here we are in an eerily similar political moment. The Tea Party has become the MAGA movement. Republicans seem on the verge of taking over Congress. And the vice president who participated in the Bowles-Simpson push is now the president channeling Obama’s obsession with bipartisanship.
Like Obama, Biden campaigned on a promise to protect Medicare and Social Security. But as The Lever has reported, Biden is already affirming big Medicare premium increases and accelerating the privatization of that health care program. Biden also has not pushed to fulfill his promise to expand Social Security, even though there is new Democratic legislation that would do so.
And now with Graham’s comments, Republicans are banking on him becoming the old Joe Biden on Social Security if they win in November.
It’s not an insane political bet. After all, Biden for decades proposed cuts and freezes to Social Security, and publicly boasted about it. Indeed, Biden spent most of his career depicting himself as an allegedly rare and courageous Democrat who was willing to push off his party’s base and tout austerity.
When confronted about that during the 2020 campaign, Biden engaged in the kind of pathological, in-your-face lying pioneered by Donald Trump, and his lies were predictably amplified by corporate media outlets.
Perhaps Biden’s lying signaled a change of heart, evincing shame for what he’d previously done — or at least recognition that his past behavior is now politically unacceptable.
Maybe he and his fellow Democrats have discarded the outdated Clinton- and Obama-era view that political “toughness” means helping billionaire-funded Washington front groups champion austerity and slash programs that help tens of millions of people.
And it’s possible all of that could mean Biden and his party’s sudden criticism of Republicans’ “entitlement reform” push will hold even after the midterm election — and they won’t create yet another commission to try to cut the social safety net.
But let’s not ignore the history on this one, even if social media, cable TV news, and our attention-deficit world have shortened our memory. We’ve been here before, and we know how it usually goes: A Democratic president loses a midterm election and then is pressured by party strategists and corporate media to dunk on the left and brandish his bipartisan bona fides — and that’s when the triangulation and the austerity comes.
If we forget what happened, things could easily play out the same way, only this time with austerians citing inflation as the new reason to slash benefits.
Clearly, that’s what many in Washington are hoping for. And this time around, they could succeed not just in floating Social Security cuts. They could actually enact them.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/free-school-lunches-for-all-set-to-end-creating-perfect-storm-amid-high-inflation/ar-AAYBBtG?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=5123efae50e440babe138d79b158e22c
A federal waiver that made school breakfasts and lunches free to students regardless of their family’s income is set to expire June 30, eliminating a benefit that has helped millions of schoolchildren at a time when they need it more than ever, anti-hunger advocates say.
The free school meals program began in March 2020 when Congress authorized the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue dozens of child nutrition waivers, including ones that expanded summer food programs, to provide a lifeline during the pandemic.
If the waivers end this month as scheduled, experts foresee a crisis as families, already facing soaring prices at supermarkets, gas stations and elsewhere, lose access to meals that their children have counted on for the last two years.
Nina Turner
@ninaturner
·
1h
If we don’t demand more from our elected officials, we’ll never get more from our elected officials.
Raising interest rates to drive down wages and make it so people can't spend money? No comment.
@edgarblythe,
Fed’s Inflation Battle to Strip Workers of Rare Bargaining Power
Tight pandemic labor markets made employers offer better deals
But cure for soaring prices may mean higher unemployment too
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-19/fed-s-inflation-battle-to-strip-workers-of-rare-bargaining-power
One poll is useless but the seeds of revolt are in fertile soil.
Nearly 60 per cent of US voters would back independent candidate over Biden or Trump, poll finds
Mr Trump holds a slight edge over Mr Biden in a hypothetical 2024 rematch
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/biden-trump-harris-2024-poll-b2065871.html
I heard Jimmy Dore and that crazy former wrestler ( blocking on his name) might make a go at it, and I PROMISE I will vote for ANY third party candidate. I don’t care if it hairlips the world.
@Lash,
The correct answer, which no one has given, is that Dore is not really a progressive, but rather a self-interested grifter who has discovered that there is money in pretending to be a progressive while spending most of your time tearing down actual progressives and acting as if Republicans, who stand for everything he claims to oppose, don’t exist. He is simply following in the tradition of Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and other grifters who at one time pretended to be lefties and then leveraged their lefty credentials to build a following of conservatives who just want to hear how awful the left is and don’t want to hear any criticism of the right. Hence why he spends as little time talking about Republicans as possible, and when he does it’s to do something like favorably compare Trump with Bernie or to sacrifice Mitt Romney to the MAGA dorks that make up most of his audience now. Like the aforementioned Pool and Rubin, Dore is dumb and lazy in addition to being a grifter, but as his audience is also largely dumb and lazy, they aren’t troubled when he peddles conspiracy theories, gets facts wrong, accepts info from dubious sources at face value, or draws erroneous conclusions as long as he tells them what they want to hear. It’s a formula that has allowed Dore to become very wealthy, just as it did for Pool and Rubin, all of whom now live in ridiculously expensive compounds / mansions.
-Adam Risch
@neptuneblue,
If you've followed Lash at all you'd see that's exactly what she does.
Until very recently she was a dyed in the wool republican voting twice for Dubya, even after his illegal invasion of Iraq.
It was only when Mrs Clinton was running fir the Democratic nomination that she discovered Mr Sanders.
Despite her claims to the contrary all her criticisms are levelled at those left of centre who aren't quite as left wing as she thinks they should be.
No criticism of right wingers at all.
@izzythepush,
I don't get the need to handicap America for stupid reasons. Jimmy Dore is one of those stupid reasons.
When I consider voting 3rd party, which I have been doing mostly since Bill Clinton's tenure, I look for a Nina Turner or Bernie Sanders supporter. Not finding one, I turn to a Mark Charles, as I did last time. A candidate has to be willing to push for universal health care, taxing the rich, cutting down the military's power and global reach, expanding Social Security, reorganizing police, etc. Who can fit my description closest deserves my vote. The major parties don't do any of these things.
@neptuneblue,
I’ve heard that opinion. It’s just bankrolled by someone who’s been paid to support the current poisonous duopoly.
I’ll vote third party if I have to vote for a cat.
@izzythepush,
izzythepush wrote:
If you've followed Lash at all you'd see that's exactly what she does.
Until very recently she was a dyed in the wool republican voting twice for Dubya, even after his illegal invasion of Iraq.
It was only when Mrs Clinton was running fir the Democratic nomination that she discovered Mr Sanders.
Despite her claims to the contrary all her criticisms are levelled at those left of centre who aren't quite as left wing as she thinks they should be.
No criticism of right wingers at all.
All of this is a lie, but I don’t care what you believe.
@neptuneblue,
I’m not a Dore fan, but if he’s on a third party ticket and no one else better is—he’ll get my vote.
