US Politics / Biden thread

The betting markets proved a reliable indicator.

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last time the batshit were not ready, they had no plan

this time will be different

Presenting this just for discussion - not my words but the words of a British academic Matt Goodwin .

"This is what happens when you ignore what millions of ordinary people have been saying for much of the last decade.

This is what happens when instead of addressing their concerns you jam even more mass immigration, broken borders, social disorder, woke policies, gender madness, soft-on-crime policies, high taxes, regulation, and cultural chaos down their throats.

This is what happens when instead of treating your fellow citizens with respect you choose to berate them, once again, like you did in 2016, as “Nazis”, “fascists”, “MAGA extremists”, “insurrectionists”, “garbage”, and more.

This is what happens when the only people who refuse to acknowledge that most voters do not want to live in a world with open borders, mass migration, soft-on-crime policies, high taxes, restrictions on free speech, forever wars, and the sexualisation of our children happen to be the very people who control our institutions.

This is what happens when you allow our public, taxpayer-funded institutions, from universities to schools, to be hijacked and taken over by radical ideologues who use their power to impose a stifling, unscientific, and deeply divisive woke agenda on everybody else, including our families and children.

This is what happens when you use the legacy media, and the creative and cultural industries, to try and radically reframe the national story, telling ordinary people who love their nation that they should be ashamed and embarrassed of the very things that make them a people –their shared sense of history, identity, culture, and ways of life.

This is what happens when you ignore how the White, Hispanic, Latino, and African American working-class have been completely clobbered on two sides at the same time—by a rampant hyper-globalisation that saw global firms offshore jobs to exploit cheap migrant labour overseas, and by a radicalising elite class that simultaneously ushered into Western economies masses of cheap migrant labour through illegal and legal migration to satisfy their own sense of moral righteousness.

This is what happens, Democrats, when you endlessly persecute and prosecute a former president, stage a coup against an incumbent president, replace that president with somebody who has no public mandate, talk openly about changing the rules that govern the Supreme Court, use your friends in big tech to suppress free speech, call anybody and everybody who dares voice a different opinion a “Nazi” and then wail endlessly about ‘threats to democracy’.

This is what happens when instead of recognising that the true source of power, legitimacy, and authority lies with the people you transfer these things away from the people below to unelected courts, judges, companies, supranational bodies, and the “expert” class, almost all of whom are utterly disconnected from ordinary people.

This is what happens when you treat normal people who are asking entirely legitimate questions about what is happening to their country, their home, like idiots, dismissing their questions as “misinformation” and “disinformation” while hiding information from them and using biased experts to endorse “officially approved narratives”.

This is what happens when instead of tolerating opinions, beliefs, and views you do not like you make no secret of the fact that you want to censor, restrict or shut down platforms that do give voice to the Forgotten Majority.

This is what happens, British conservatives, when instead of leaning into the political realignment that is still unfolding across the Western world you turn away from it, treating millions of working-class, non-graduate, and culturally conservative voters from the small towns and rural areas with complete and utter contempt.

And, ultimately, this is what happens when instead of learning from the lessons of 2016, from Trump 1, and the continuing rise of national populism across the West, you instead choose to double down on your side and say to hell with everybody else."

"Academic".

He's a rabble rouser with no commitment to truth.

He makes stuff up, then when those lies are dismissed as lies, says that you aren't responding to legitimate concerns, as if he hasn't stoked them being concerns.

I don’t know what the answer is to people like that.

after which they caught him and got the strait jacket back on before he tried to fuck anyone in their eye sockets

A few people have been quoting the old phrase 'It's the economy, stupid'. Certainly seems to have been a factor for the electorate. I think that a few on here were predicting a Harris win more because they really wanted on rather than on any objective basis.

There's always a certain amount of wish fulfilment. Talking of which, it's somewhat ironic that they have elected Trump because of high inflation. Trump's approach to international trade and public spending suggests America will see a lot more inflation,

Well here's hoping that Labour will be a one term only job as Trump definitely will be. It is also heartening that some of the same people who 'called it' for Harris on here are also predicting doom for the Badenoch's Tories 😊

Problem is though that a lot of the quote above is true. If you perpetually demonise those who disagree with you it comes back and bites you on the a*se come voting time. Case in point being the EU ref, where all those dismissed as "swivel-eyed loons" for years for not buying into the "EU is an unallayed good" view in the Guardian etc. got their revenge, even if it was a pyrrhic victory.

"Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

I'm not supporting every element of detail in said quote, just the concept of being aggressively progressive not always ending well.

no

calling a fuckwit a fuckwit is always valid

And yet, the "progressives" have not done well at elections recently on the whole, despite being absolutely certain of being on the right side of the argument. That's really unlucky if the quote is all fact-free nonsense.

It's not right wing politics per se that is problematic, rather it is populism. I suspect Badenoch will turn out to be populist, as will whoever succeeds her.

Whether Trump will in fact be populist depends who is pulling the strings. Economically probably not. Everything else? Probably.

Will there be bad adverse consequences for much of the rest of the world because of populist foreign policy?

Yes, because we all live closer to the parts of it that Americans don't give a shit about.

the populists will always go further right

it unfortunately doesn't correct until a lot of people suffer

And it's that attitude that leads to Donald Trump winning - because the people with concerns that don't fit your world view are dismissed as less intelligent or bigoted or usually both. People seem very narrow minded in that they wont even try and consider alternative viewpoints.