Tag: Voting

Trump’s coup attempt: dangerous for the US and the rest of the world

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Trump’s coup attempt: dangerous for the US and the rest of the world

All kinds of Chickens come home to Roost

Ironically, there are big problems with US elections, but they favor Republicans and have been tolerated by Democrats in order to ensure that the only real electoral threat to Democrats comes from the right. In 2000 and again in 2016, the Republican candidate won the presidency despite losing the popular vote. From 2008- 2010, despite controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats did nothing to reform an electoral system skewed in favor of Republicans. While Democrats did resort to the Russiagate conspiracy theory to try to discredit and even overturn Trump’s 2016 victory, there was no visible interest in abolishing the “winner take all” voting system that led directly to that victory. Getting rid of that system would not only make it harder for Republicans to win elections, it would increase electoral pressure on Democrats from the left. Without such pressure – with “nowhere else to go” [as US historian Thomas Frank stresses] to punish Democrats electorally for failing to deliver for anyone but the rich – voters either stay home or get taken in by people like Trump. In short, a voting system rigged to ensure that Democrats can ignore pressure from the left has saddled the country with menacing right wing insurrectionists.

Additionally, US politicians constantly get involved supporting coup attempts abroad (often successful ones). In 2019, to take a very recent example of one Trump supported, bogus claims of electoral fraud incited right wing riots (aided and abetted by the police) which finally led the military to “suggest” that the democratically elected president, Evo Morales, resign. The coup led to the installation of a dictatorship which was in power for almost a year before overwhelming popular revulsion led to the restoration of democracy in October. The coup could never have succeeded without Bolivian and international media cynically spreading the fraud claims. Should we be surprised that Trump and his handlers thought a coup like that might be worth a shot at home?

Legal experts quickly push back on Texas AG’s attempt to overturn election

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Legal experts quickly push back on Texas AG’s attempt to overturn election

Under federal law, election disputes are supposed to be resolved by six days before the Electoral College meets, a deadline known as safe harbor, which is today. The electors officially cast their ballots for president on Monday.

Related:

With case pending in state court, Wisconsin is only state to miss election safe-harbor deadline

Paxton, who is under a federal bribery investigation, alleges Wisconsin “exploited” the coronavirus pandemic to ignore election rules, which affected the outcome of the Nov. 3 election.

“Think of the irony. We have a Texas Attorney General who is being investigated by the FBI for various improprieties … and he teams up with President Trump to try to take away the votes of the people of Wisconsin,” Gov. Tony Evers told reporters on Tuesday. “It’s irony but it’s not funny irony. It’s extraordinarily sad.”

Social Democrats are Fooling Themselves: We Can’t Vote our way out of Neoliberalism

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Social Democrats are Fooling Themselves: We Can’t Vote our way out of Neoliberalism

The social democrats may argue that the people’s interests have been represented under capitalism in the past through the New Deal, but this argument is based in multiple layers of deception. Firstly, the interests of the proletariat and the poor will never truly be represented under a capitalist state; the New Deal (which didn’t even advance the wellbeing of those outside of the favored white settler population) was easily undone the moment the capitalist class decided that neoliberalism was necessary. Scandinavia’s descent into neoliberal austerity in recent decades is another example of how under capitalism the capitalists, not the people, have the final say. Secondly, social democracy within an imperialist country still means a perpetuation of imperialist violence and exploitation against colonialism’s victims; even the Scandanavia model, which is idealized by social democrats, has been built upon the profiting off of Western imperialism. And thirdly, capitalism’s crises have made it so that it’s no longer viable to establish social democracy.

Emma Goldman and Lesser Evilism

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Allowing choice conceals the fact that “democratic” government, just as all others, serves only its economic elite. People have to be convinced this is not so, that they are sovereign, that by voting they control the policies of their nation. Thus, the intense effort nations invest in sacralizing the vote, and the plea that we do our civic duty. We are all enjoined to act in this barefaced, shopworn charade.

Emma Goldman and Lesser Evilism

Trump campaign’s message to poll watchers doesn’t always align with Trump’s rhetoric

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Is Bannon advising the campaign?!

In a Pennsylvania training video, the instructor tells poll watchers specifically not to challenge every ballot, like Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon recently suggested. The source said the campaign doesn’t envision slowing things down, but instead its goal is “to make sure election officials follow up.”

Trump campaign’s message to poll watchers doesn’t always align with Trump’s rhetoric