US Election 2020

[Tero]

Trump tests negative! Doctors have never seen such a negative negative!

[pErvinalia]

No one knows more about Corona Virus test results than Donald Trump.

[Scot Dutchy]

There is hope yet:

Republicans express fears Donald Trump will lose presidential election

Ted Cruz says he’s afraid of ‘bloodbath of Watergate proportions’ as John Cornyn slams Trump for ‘creating confusion’ over Covid

Ted Cruz fears an election “bloodbath”. His fellow top Republican senator Thom Tillis is talking in terms of a Joe Biden presidency. And even Mitch McConnell, the fiercely loyal Senate majority leader, won’t go near the White House over Donald Trump’s handling of coronavirus protocols.

Individually, they could arguably be seen as off-the-cuff comments from Trump’s allies attempting to rally support for the US president just days ahead of a general election that opinion polls increasingly show him losing.

But collectively, along with pronouncements from several other Republicans appearing to distance themselves from Trump, his administration and its policies, it reflects growing concern inside the Republican party’s top tier that 3 November could be a blowout win for Joe Biden and the Democrats.

“I think it could be a terrible election. I think we could lose the White House and both houses of Congress, that it could be a bloodbath of Watergate proportions,” Cruz, the junior senator for Texas and former vocal critic of Trump, said in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Friday.

“I am worried. It’s volatile, it’s highly volatile,” he added, although he did say he also saw the possibility of Trump re-elected “with a big margin”.

Tillis, one of several Trump associates who contracted Covid-19 apparently at a super-spreader White House event two weeks ago, faces a tough fight for re-election as senator for North Carolina, and raised the prospect of a Trump defeat during a debate against Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham.

“The best check on a Biden presidency is for Republicans to have a majority in the senate,” he said, inadvertently suggesting he thought a Democratic victory next month could be a done deal. “Checks and balances does resonate with North Carolina voters,” he added.

Elsewhere, Republican displeasure at Trump is becoming increasingly evident, especially among candidates locked in tight election races of their own.

[Brian Peacock]

The left is always at a disadvantage in politics because leftism accepts the necessity of opposition, whereas the agenda of the right is always to denude politics of opposition or even to eliminate it on the way to monopolising power.

[pErvinalia]

Marxism might in theory, but in practice, I'm not so sure.

[Brian Peacock]

Marxism might in theory, but in practice, I'm not so sure.

In what way?

[pErvinalia]

Well they locked up and/or killed a bunch of their opponents. And they hated the anarchists and social democrats.

[Brian Peacock]

Well they locked up and/or killed a bunch of their opponents. And they hated the anarchists and social democrats.

Marx's analysis of economies doesn't necessitate Stalinism. Do you not think you're confusing Marxism with Stalinism?

[pErvinalia]

It started before Stalinism. Perhaps Bolshevism?

[Hermit]

It started before Stalinism. Perhaps Bolshevism?

Before Bolshevism, even. "...the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat..." Karl Marx

But yes, Vladimir Lenin ran with it: "The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws."

As did Leon Trotsky: "The road to socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the state…the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of state, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction."

[Svartalf]

I fear that the broken EC system will cause a replay of 2016. frump will lose the popular vote, but the red states will still have enough clout to force his reconduction.

[Tero]

Federal judge rules against Trump and for the state, deciding that the state can handle its ballots:

In his 138-page ruling, the judge — a Trump appointee — also noted that the Trump campaign had offered no hard evidence that voter fraud would actually occur. Instead, Ranjan wrote, the campaign had simply provided a series of "speculative" assumptions: They assume that "potential fraudsters" might try to fill drop boxes with forged ballots, and that the election security measures in place won't work to prevent that fraud.

"All of these assumptions could end up being true and these events could theoretically happen," Ranjan wrote. "But so could many things." Speculation, Ranjan concluded, isn't enough to let the plaintiffs bring their case.

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/10/92267381 ... nnsylvania

[Brian Peacock]

It started before Stalinism. Perhaps Bolshevism?

Before Bolshevism, even. "...the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat..." Karl Marx...

For Marx government implies a form of dictatorship by one group or class over all others. In the context of his times this is a fair analysis I think, and perhaps still holds true today. In this sense 'dictatorship of the proletariat' can be easily transposed into the popular aphorism 'government of the people, by the people, for the people'. Where Marx parted from the sentiments of Lincoln however was that he saw this form of government as a necessary transitory step on the road to Communism, a road that led away from traditional forms of top-down, hierarchical state control towards a more bottom-up, community-based approach to government. His point was that as the vast majority of people were subject to the control of a small group who embodied and wieled the unlimited power of the state on their own behalf and their own interests, overcoming that situation would involve the vast majority embodying and wielding that power in the interest of themselves. To conflate the word 'dictatorship' in the quote with Stalinism without this context is a little misleading because we don't simply associate 'dictatorship' with the authority to determine the social, economic, and political agenda but with totalitarianisms, despotism, oppression, and brutality etc. Of course, Marx suggested that violence would be necessary to bring about this change in social affairs, but only because the bad guys had all the power and all the guns and would never make a free choice to give up their entrenched power and systems of control voluntarily - particularly as that power and control had been acquired, secured, and maintained by violence in the first place. I'd accept that there's a bit of a paradox there btw.

[macdoc]

all the power and all the guns and would never make a free choice to give up their entrenched power and systems of control voluntarily

Perhaps you've not heard of South Africa, India, Korea, and many many others

A nonviolent revolution is a revolution using mostly campaigns with civil resistance, including various forms of nonviolent protest, to bring about the departure of governments seen as entrenched and authoritarian.

According to the socialist Fourth International, Karl Marx acknowledged a theoretical possibility of "peaceful" revolutions,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_revolution

[Tero]

What a confused bunch these autoworkers. Biden won't get them jobs. But neither will Trump. No union auto plants are being built. They are all in the South.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/10/12/opin ... index.html