Sympathy for the Devils...

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According to the capitalist propaganda radio show, Marketplace, upwards to possibly 11 billion dollars will be spent on this election. I guess they would know...

Democrat Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and first-time candidate seeking to oust Republican Sen. Martha McSally in Arizona, raised more than $38.7 million in the July-to-September fundraising quarter, his campaign announced Thursday. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat trying to knock off first-term Republican Sen. Steve Daines, took in nearly $27 million, which his campaign said topped state records.

And in Kentucky, home to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, filings from his Democratic rival, Amy McGrath, show she has collected more than $36.8 million in her bid to topple the Senate's top Republican.

<snip>

But so far, no Democratic challenger has come close to the staggering $57 million that South Carolina Democrat Jaime Harrison announced collecting in the last three months.
His haul is more than twice the $28 million raised by his opponent, three-term Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who finds himself a target of Democratic ire and dollars, as one of President Donald Trump's staunchest defenders in the Senate. But Harrison has spent heavily and entered the final full month of the campaign with just shy of $8 million in available cash in his campaign account, filings show.

<snip>

And in perhaps the biggest sign of Democratic enthusiasm, ActBlue, the fundraising platform for Democratic candidates and causes, announced Thursday that it had processed a whopping $1.5 billion in donations between July 1 and Sept. 30.
That swamps the $623.5 million that the relatively new Republican online platform WinRed said it had collected during the same period.

<snip>

Across the 10 most expensive US Senate races this cycle, Democrats are outspending Republicans by about $670 million to $547 million, a CNN tally of Kantar/CMAG data shows.

<snip>

Biden and affiliated Democratic Party committees this week announced a $383 million haul in September alone, his second month in a row of record-breaking hauls.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/10/15/politics/ ... index.html

Ain't 'democracy' grand? And let's not forget the 100M the plutocrat Bloomberg has pledged for Florida alone. And these pencil-necked geeks got the gaul to whinney about 'foreigners' corrupting our sacred democracy....Against this kind of dough they'd never get a word in edge-wise. Biden is getting millions from Big Oil, just hedging their bets, ya know. Thank god the Dems are the 'party of the people', eh?

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The Useful Tool: Kamala “Heartbeat Away” Harris
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor 15 Oct 2020



The Useful Tool: Kamala “Heartbeat Away” Harris
If Biden wins, Kamala Harris will be put forward as a kind of “co-president,” as a palliative for the lack of substantive relief from the forces that are plaguing Black lives.

“Harris can be trusted to please Power while advancing her personal ambitions.”

If the Democrats prevail in November, Kamala Harris will likely become the highest profile vice president of the post-Vietnam era – but only partly due to Joe Biden’s obvious infirmities. The new regime can count on a brief period of sheer giddiness as their base finally exhales after four years of overt racist rule, but it will be a short honeymoon. Although Donald Trump’s Covid-19 fiascos surely added some tens of thousands to the U.S. death toll, the pandemic would have plunged the world economy into depression (except for China ) and killed in excess of 150,000 disproportionately Black Americans, no matter which of the corporate parties was in the White House – and the people know it. The same super-majorities that supported Medicare for All before the pandemic hit (and who told exit pollsters so , even as they voted for Biden in the pivotal primaries), are now acutely aware that the United States has no healthcare system worthy of the name. Having endured two economic catastrophes in just twelve years, the great bulk of Americans have also come to understand that the corporate consolidation, hi-tech profiteering and general employment insecurity that has so catastrophically accelerated during the Covid depression, is built into the system. They want desperately to call a halt to the 40 year-long Race to the Bottom.

“The United States has no healthcare system worthy of the name.”

The corporate Democrats are no less committed than Republicans to endless austerity and war – the only future the ruling Lords of Capital can envision and, therefore, the common commitment of both halves of the corporate electoral duopoly. Since both parties are wedded to the Race to the Bottom and U.S. imperialism, the major cleavage that separates these political partners in crime, is race – or, in corporate language, “diversity” among the faces in high places. The duopoly electoral configuration requires that the Democrats absorb and smother all popular movements that might threaten the corporate militarist, austerity agenda, while retaining the loyalties of their multi-racial base by posturing as the bastion against Republican racism and reaction. That’s why Hillary Clinton’s campaign instructed its operatives and friendly media to encourage Donald Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination in 2016, as revealed by Wikileaks . Clinton thought Trump’s overt racism made him the easiest Republican to beat. That turned out to be a bad call, but it’s the only formula that allows corporate Democrats to pretend to champion their multi-racial constituency while doing nothing of substance to halt the steady deterioration of working people’s living standards. If Trump is gone in January, then the Democrats must find ways to accentuate the “great victory” that has been won on the racial front, since Biden has promised the donor class that “nothing will fundamentally change ” for them under his presidency.

Nothing will change for the vast majority of Black and brown people, either -- which is why Kamala Harris will be put forward as a kind of “co-president” with Biden, as a simulation of Black Power. This is not to say that Harris will wield the influence VP Dick Cheney was said to enjoy under George W. Bush (some believed Cheney was the actual policy formulator in that administration), but hers will be a much higher public profile than Barack Obama permitted his number two, Joe Biden. Harris can be trusted to please Power while advancing her personal ambitions, as she has since her inaugural electoral run as a law and order, police union-endorsed candidate for San Francisco prosecutor. Harris will gladly play the role of Biden’s Black alter ego and as physical evidence that African Americans are getting their reward for turning out in huge numbers for the Democrats. She’d better be convincing, because her presence, along with Black appointees to the cabinet, is all that Black America will get from Biden’s “nothing fundamental will change” administration – unless the power of the street intervenes.

“Hers will be a much higher public profile than Barack Obama permitted his number two, Joe Biden.”

With a race-baiting president and a Covid-driven economic depression as a backdrop, the George Floyd protests put more than 20 million people in motion under Black Lives Matter banners. Although the movement came into existence under a Black president, causing Barack Obama considerable embarrassment, BLM has since become recipient of many millions of corporate philanthropic dollars that are largely administered by movement notables who have chosen to become Democratic Party players and operatives. If the movement fails to separate from these corporate party collaborators, it will join the “controlled opposition” and cease to be a transformational force. That would be an epoch-shaking tragedy, but not without precedent. Devouring social movements is the Party’s specialty. In place of people’s politics, the Democrats present a simulacrum of popular power that poses no threat to the Lords of Capital and their dictatorship. Kamala Harris’ opportunistic career has taken her to center stage of U.S. corporate political theater where, if the polls are right, she will soon share a starring role in the long running production, Saving Racial Capitalism from Its Deserved Demise, the late stage version. We may soon be seeing more of her than even her fans and AKA sisters can stomach.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/usefu ... way-harris

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Voters yesterday lined up before dawn to cast some of the first votes in Miami. The lines at polling stations in Philadelphia have been out the door since September. And last week, the numbers on the first day of early voting in Raleigh were crushing those from four years ago.

While analyses of early voting numbers suggest Democrats are far and away banking more safe ballots in these key swing states, another reality cannot be ignored: all three were red on Election Night in 2016, despite Democrats’ apparent advantages that year in polling, rolls and organizing. Now Republicans have narrowed those advantages by ramping up voter-registration efforts in these and other states over the last four years. They still haven’t erased Democrats’ upperhand, but they’ve been chipping away at it, giving the party a reason to think Trump could eek out another slim win in the critical states of Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

<snip>

There’s been a shift toward new Republicans on voter rolls elsewhere in the country, too. In Pennsylvania, Republicans have been making inroads in adding new voters at a faster clip than Democrats. As a result, Democrats’ advantage shrunk from 10.4 percentage points in 2016 — when Clinton lost by 0.7 percentage points — to 7.8 percentage points today. Still, that advantage is half of what Obama ran with in 2008, when Democrats had a 14.2-percentage-point leg up over Republicans and squeaked by with a 10.4-percentage-point win. Since 2008, Republicans have had a net addition of 100,000 votes to their rolls more than Democrats.

And in North Carolina, Republicans remain bullish on keeping the state in the red column come Nov. 3. Trump carried the state by 3.6 percentage points in 2016, despite Democrats’ 9.3-percentage-point advantage. Since then, Republicans have successfully added more than 113,000 new GOP voters to the rolls.

https://time.com/5901862/republicans-vo ... ng-states/

Lemme see, from previous posts it appears that the self-identified 'popular' party has gotten the bear's share of plutocratic largess. From this post it appears that the party of reaction has taken the lead in registering new voters, necessarily largely working class. Kinda counter-intuitive, huh? This has not much to do with the Republican Party and everything to do with the Democratic Party. The Dems , by snuffing out the faintest embers of even a suggestion of something that sounds like socialism by their manipulative crushing of the Sanders candidacy endeared themselves to the moneybags, who then only needed Trump's mismanagement of the capitalist economy and imperialism overseas to switch teams.

A centerpiece of the Sanders strategy was to push new registrations and GOTV, to recruit new folks to the party who hadn't thought they had a dog in the fight. Dangerous stuff, that, could lead to democracy or something. Ya gotta think that Dem Central was never gonna let that happen, and when it looked like it could they pulled the plug on the whole shebang 'before things got out of hand'. It would have worked but would have run off all that sweet money like a scalded cat. For Sanders to have even suggesting such a tactic makes me wonder if he is that deeply complicit or that he's a senile fool. Proly both.

It's not that they're just bad. It's not that they're just phonies. It's that they're bad phonies.

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Biden responded to Trump during Saturday's event in Bucks County, Pennsylvania: "Let me be clear also: I'm not banning fracking in Pennsylvania or anywhere else.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/10/24/politics/ ... index.html

'and btw all you Bernie Bros and dumb ass environmentalists can suck on it.You'll vote for me because I'm the Lesser Of two Evils, bwahaha.'

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The Billionaires’ Duopoly Wins on Tuesday
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor 29 Oct 2020


The Billionaires’ Duopoly Wins on Tuesday

Allegiance to the Democratic half of the duopoly – whether active or passive – is still allegiance to corporate rule, not a strategy for transformative change.

“The Republicans busy themselves emboldening racists, while the Democrats crush the left.”

For the second presidential election cycle in a row, the corporate Democrats face their ideal opponent -- a racist so brazen and personally repulsive that Blacks and progressives abandon their own historic agendas to make common cause with mass incarcerators, war mongers and job-destroying oligarchs. The formula failed to keep the White House “blue” in 2016, due primarily to the corporate Democrats’ refusal to prevent or punish the Republicans’ massive -- and totally successful -- suppression of Black votes (See Greg Palast .) Although Hillary Clinton was personally humiliated by Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory, her “big tent” strategy succeeded in pulling most of the ruling oligarchy, corporate media, and National Security State firmly into the Democratic camp. This year, by hook and crook, and with Trump as the terrifying Strawman-in-Chief, the corporate Democrats were once again enabled to crush Bernie Sanders, a challenger whose positions on core issues matched those of 70 to 85 percent of the Party’s base.

From the Lords of Capitals’ standpoint, Clinton’s “big tent” strategy has been a huge success. The only potential threats to Big Capital’s continued control of the national agenda emanates, not from Trump -- who gifted the ruling class with its wish-list of tax breaks, Supreme Court justices and capital deregulation without effective resistance from corporate Democrats -- but from the blue party’s electoral base, which has been totally eviscerated as a “resistance” to anything but Trump, and from the Black-led street movement, whose most high profile personalities became Democratic Party players during the Trump years. Even the 20 million-plus George Floyd protests of last June can be viewed largely as an anti-Trump phenomena that will not likely be replicated under a Democratic regime – despite the fact that most highly publicized police murders of Blacks (like this week’s 10-bullet shooting of a mentally-challenged man in Philadelphia) occur in Democrat-led cities.

Organized labor pretends the Democrats are a labor party, although it’s run by men like Bezos and Bloomberg, while a big chunk of their white members feel free to vote their race.

“Even the 20 million-plus George Floyd protests of last June can be viewed largely as an anti-Trump phenomena.”

The phony U.S. Left – judged by where they stand, not how they talk – swears they will “confront” a Joe Biden/Kamala Harris regime once the Orange Menace is swept into the dustbin. Bernie Sanders, the national health care advocate who slinked back into the corporate bosom of the Party at the very moment when Covid-19 was proving beyond doubt that the United State has no national health structure, vows to move “forward with an agenda that speaks to the needs of the working people of our country” when Trump is safely gone from the White House. But $50 billionaire Michael Bloomberg, acting on behalf of his fellow super-oligarchs, is now the Financier-in-Chief of the Democrats and, with Nancy Pelosi’s able assistance, will ensure that the Party remains a cemetery for progressive movements.

After November 3, the Green Party will cease to be an alternative in more states, thanks mainly to Democratic machines that have made it impossible for Greens to remain on the ballot. The cutting edge of the dictatorship of capital is Democratic. The Republicans busy themselves emboldening racists, while the Democrats crush the left. The young activists of the Movement for a Peoples Party , most of them former Bernie Sanders enthusiasts, can expect the same treatment if they attempt to escape the duopoly’s shackles.

The Democrats have always been equal partners in U.S. imperial wars, but under the Clinton-Biden “big tent” are now indisputably the more aggressive warmongers, chomping at the bit to contain and punish the Russians and Chinese and all nations that hesitate to join in the global offensive begun by Barack Obama in 2011, with his attack on Libya, and then Syria, and then the coup in Ukraine and the “pivot” against China.

“The Democrats are now indisputably the more aggressive warmongers.”

With Democrats leading the charge, domestic opposition to U.S. imperialism is now equated with treason. Only weeks after the 2016 election, oligarch Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post put Black Agenda Report and twelve other left publications on a blacklist of “dupes” of Russia. The old McCarthyism has become Clintonism, Obamaism, Pelosism, and now Bidenism. (See “Fascism with a Democratic Party Face,” BAR, November 30, 2016,)

The political weakness of the Black street movement is most evident in the behavior of the Congressional Black Caucus, which has voted overwhelmingly to continue the militarization of local police (2014) and to make cops a “protected class,” assaults against whom are now a “hate crime” (2018). The Black Lives Matter movement has not altered the anti-Black, pro-police, pro-mass Black incarceration political behavior of the men and women that represent Black America in Congress, because BLM has failed to target Black Democratic politicians, even when they act en mass against Black interests. Black lives are apparently less important than Black faces in high Democratic places, who need only wear kente cloth on occasion to ward off the young Black legions. The spear is blunted.

Allegiance to the Democratic half of the duopoly – whether active or passive – is still allegiance to corporate rule, not a strategy for transformative change. Both Malcolm X and MLK rejected such a stance.

“BLM has failed to target Black Democratic politicians, even when they act en mass against Black interests.”

A great sigh of relief will be heard across the land if Trump is ousted in November (or December or January, whenever the dust settles). The Democrats will treat an electoral victory as an endorsement of their policy of never-ending war and austerity (Race to the Bottom), and proof that Joe the Incarcerator and his Black prosecutor sidekick have been vindicated in their life-long predation against Black and poor people.

Since the first year of Obama’s presidency, the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations has marched on the White House to signal its permanent opposition to the rule of rich white men, no matter the complexion of the family in the White House, and eternal commitment to the principle of self-determination of all peoples, including Black people in the United States. In terms of relationships of power, there will be no change of regime as of result of the vote on November 3, and therefore no reason not to mount a “Black People’s March on the White House ” on November 7.

Power to the People! Dismantle the Duopoly!

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .

https://www.blackagendareport.com/billi ... ns-tuesday

The Green Party is not the Left, but that's OK

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You would think with a quarter million dead that this would have been a slam dunk for the Dems. That is until one remembers that the Democratic Party is the worst political party in history. Apparently the 'normalcy' that they would return to ain't all it was cracked up to be, at least as far as potential Democratic voters were concerned. After all, the so-called 'normalcy' of pre-pandemic Amerika is what Trump promised too. Fine for the middle class who miss lunch at Appleby's, tailgating at the Clemson game or crowding on to a plane for a week of debauch in Cabo. For the rest of us, with so many just scraping by, that ain't no big motivator.

It ain't over, but the massive repudiation of Trump that was hoped for is a fart in the wind. Trump's premature declaration of victory could be bluff, maybe a trial balloon, gamesmanship. Don't think he'll be allowed to abort the vote count. If Biden squeaks thru he will be conditioned by the Republican controlled Senate, which will give him plenty of opportunity to repudiate or compromise away what little of substance he promised on the campaign trail.(Was there any?). And like any Dem there will be plenty of ratification of his predecessors actions by default.

Trump's disregard for the health of his followers aside, it is clear that the Republican GOTV effort was successful, if that was enough remains to be seen. The Dems made little effort to GOTV, citing Covid as their reason. Convenient, that. Don't think that made much of a difference, the Dems have made it clear that their strategy was to fish in the Rs pond, 'independents', suburbs, yada yada. Anything but bringing great numbers of the unwashed into the game. Which is what that fraud Sanders proposed to do, and which would have worked with his 'sorta something kinda like socialist programs but not really' platform. Of course he wouldn't do 90% of that, but slippery slopes are to be avoided and socialism must be reinforced as a vile epithet.

The Dems had 'all the money' but ain't got much to show for it. Jamie Harris spent 47M, out raising Graham 2:1 in the final quarter, but still got stomped.This has got to concern the ruling class as campaign money is their primary leverage for controlling politics. Or it would, if there were a Left. When there is a Left, and when the money don't do it's magic, that's when we'll see fascism come to the fore, all of the premature hand wringing notwithstanding.

But who needs fascism when ya got the Democratic Party as a bulwark against progress?

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Like I was sayin'...

The total cost of the 2020 election will exceed an unprecedented $14 billion, making it the most expensive election in history and twice as expensive as the previous presidential
election cycle.

<snip>

According to the Federal Elections Commission, Biden raised nearly $ 1 billion directly from individuals (excluding other contributions, such as those from interest groups and entrepreneurs). The president, for his part, managed to add just over 600 million dollars.

Spending by deep-pocketed national groups also is driving the total cost of election higher. In October alone, outside spending by super Political Action Groups (PAC) and
other big-money groups totaled nearly $1.2 billion. These groups are spending far more to boost Biden than help Trump, further aiding the Democrats' cash-flush campaign.

Driven by their supporters’ strong opposition to Trump, Democrats are continuing the fundraising prowess that helped them dominate the money race in the 2018 election cycle. Their money machine is more powerful than ever in 2020.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/The ... -0012.html

Which is the worst capitalist party?

You know the answer....

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Corporate Democrats Want to Run Against Trump-like Republicans Forever
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor 05 Nov 2020


Corporate Democrats Want to Run Against Trump-like Republicans Forever

Whoever wins the Electoral College, race-based politics will continue to allow the corporate rulers to ignore public demands for relief from the Race to the Bottom and endless war.

“The Democrats wanted to run on race as much as Trump did.”

Publishing deadlines refuse to adjust to the speed of vote counting, but some truths were evident even as the presidential race was still in play. In his second national contest Donald Trump has maintained -- and among some demographic subsections increased -- his hold on a majority of white voters. The 2020 election thus confirms the tentative verdict of 2016: that majorities of whites will vote their race – side with the White Man’s Party -- when the electoral contest is waged mainly on racial terms. The Electoral College system, which was baked into the U.S. Constitution to protect the interests of slave states , continues to give white “race” voters an oversized punch in national contests. Trump bet that he could replicate his 2016 Electoral College win over Hillary Clinton even if he still trailed by nearly three million in the popular vote, as he did the first time. Win or lose, Trump’s racial calculation was well-grounded and rational – as proven by the tightness of the 2020 race.

The Democrats, on the other hand, were clearly shocked out of their minds when Trump’s race strategy prevailed in 2016. White corporate elites had convinced themselves that the “deplorables” of their race were a diminishing breed who would be trounced in a toe-to-toe national slugfest. The Democrats welcomed Trump’s flagrant, “red meat” racist challenge to the Republican establishment, whose dog whistles on race suddenly seemed weak to Amerikkaner ears by comparison. As Wikileaks revealed, Hillary Clinton’s operatives encouraged Democrat-friendly media to boost Trump’s candidacy, believing he was a straw man that she could easily knock down. As a result, the White Man’s Champion got an estimated $5 billion in free airtime – and ultimately won the Electoral College, setting off a civil war within the ruling class that has raged for four years, and will likely not end if Trump is evicted from the White House this time around.

“Trump’s racial calculation was well-grounded and rational.”

The Democrats wanted to run on race as much as Trump did, because only a race-based campaign allows them to avoid any commitment to bread and butter issues – universal free healthcare, job and income security, free public higher education – that threaten the bi-partisan austerity regime (the Race to the Bottom). Bernie Sanders, not Donald Trump, was seen as the near-existential threat to corporate governance. Therefore, the Democrats and their corporate media partners twice ruthlessly eliminated Sanders from the equation so that they could run against Trump on race, and virtually nothing else – even though, the second time around, the Democrats knew that the outcome would be a cliffhanger. If, when the dust clears, the Democrats have won the presidency, they have only “saved” the public from a Frankenstein of their own, meticulous making. And, they will need Trump, or someone like Trump, again if they are to continue defending the austerity policies that are immiserating majorities of the American people. Race-based campaigns serve both corporate parties.

It is remarkable that Trump’s white voter base remained essentially irreducible through four years of relentless assault by most of the ruling class and their media. Trump was actually correct in comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln in the sense that no other president has been so relentlessly vilified by such powerful sectors. Beyond denunciation of his race-bating -- which Trump welcomed, because it is the main source of his political potency among the white masses – he was daily accused of acting on behalf of a foreign power, a first for any American president. Yet his “deplorables” did not budge, even as the Covid economy melted around them.

“Bernie Sanders, not Donald Trump, was seen as the near-existential threat to corporate governance.”

What the Democrats dare not risk, is a contest in which U.S. voters are given the choice of saving their families from destitution and disease or voting their race. The duopoly is designed to preclude such choices. It is a trap, a great two-sided filter that allows the corporate ruling class to shut every political outlet for advocates of people’s programs, environmental sanity, peace and real racial justice.

Trump’s white base is intact and will remain the core of the Republican (White Man’s) Party, with or without Trump at the helm – which is fine for the oligarchs of both parties. Only a race-based duopoly can contain public demands for relief from the Race to the Bottom and endless war.

The election data show that Trump’s supporters now include surprisingly large numbers of non-Cuban Hispanics, an indication that the politically white (supremacist) base has new sources to tap and will not be shrinking any time soon. Given such data, the rulers will feel confident in serving up race-based duopoly electoral showdowns every four years, in hopes of putting off a reckoning on economic justice, saving the planet, and peace, forever. It is already quite clear that, in such situations, Black voters will demand nothing but protection from the white hordes, and will create no problems for their corporate “friends.”

Of course, none of this is written in stone. There is another politics: a people’s politics of the street – the only kind that can defeat corporate power. Black people are good at this kind of politics, once they become disentangled from the Black Misleadership Class – who are right now claiming to have “won” a great victory for the Black masses.

With more substance-less victories like this, Black America is doomed to irrelevance and impotence. A growing cohort of young Black folks understand this and will refuse to go along with the corporate script.

Dump the duopoly. Make a new, people’s politics from the street up.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/corpo ... ns-forever

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The false hope of a Biden presidency


Joe Biden Receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama in 2017

Nowhere is the power of capital, the power of a handful of billionaires over the whole of society, so crude and as openly corrupt as in America. Once capital exists, it dominates the whole of society, and no democratic republic, no form of franchise can alter the essence of the matter.

Vladimir Lenin, 1919

The truth of the matter is … you all know … We can disagree in the margins but …nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change.

Joe Biden reassuring wealthy donors on the prospect of his victory, 2019

Confirmation of Joe Biden’s election victory and his looming inauguration as the next President of the United States has elicited a joyful response from large swathes of the press and across social media. Yet for those people who are aware of Biden’s politics and record, beyond the spurious ‘nice guy’ image projected by the media, and therefore understand what the implications of his victory are likely to be, witnessing the mainstream reaction to it has been a profoundly alienating experience. This feeling of isolation has been exacerbated by the fact that legitimate criticism of Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, has frequently been met with personal invective, as though it is an attack on the very being of those who are currently celebrating their win.

As Devyn Springer has explained, ‘the gutting of political education and virality of capitalist miseducation means that people offering valid criticism, analysis, and reproval are likened to “hating” and “not letting people enjoy things” in the stunted Amerikan [sic] political imaginary.’ Lamentably, the absence of critical thinking and political imagination in the US is also a feature of political discourse in the UK. Contrary to the idea that feeling no joy regarding the prospect of a Biden-Harris administration is driven by a mean-spirited desire to spoil the happiness of others, it is in fact a sentiment that springs ultimately from love and solidarity – a crucial distinction that Steven Salaita recently expressed with characteristic eloquence. The inability to feel any joy at Biden winning, even if simultaneously relieved to see Trump lose, is borne out of compassion for all the past (and future) victims of both Biden’s personal actions, and of the neo-liberal and imperialist politics that he so perfectly embodies.

It should be plainly stated that by any meaningful and honest measure, Biden is a monster who has caused an incalculable amount of suffering over his many decades as a senior official of the US empire. Given the length of Biden’s career, a comprehensive rap sheet requires a book-length study, but his ‘highlights’ include his central role in drafting a number of deeply racist pieces of legislation (including the infamous 1994 Crime Bill) that both exacerbated and consolidated the mass incarceration of Black Americans, and legislation that went on to be passed largely unchanged as the Patriot Act of 2001 that gutted civil liberties in the US; his prominent role in lobbying the Senate and the American public for the war on Iraq as Chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee; and his ‘unconditional, career-long commitment to Israel’ that has seen him develop close friendships with a number of fellow war criminals including Benjamin Netanyahu and the late Ariel Sharon, at whose funeral he delivered a eulogy. In short, Biden is a racist authoritarian at home and an enthusiastic and unapologetic imperialist abroad. On environmental issues, in spite of the hopes that liberals are already investing in him, Biden is little better. During the campaign he repeatedly announced that he will not ban fracking and his adviser on energy issues, who served as Energy Secretary under Obama, is a notorious lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry. It is alarming to note too that Ezekiel Emanuel, a member of Biden’s recently announced Coronavirus taskforce, has argued that life is not worth living beyond the age of 75.

In addition to the long list of sexual assault allegations he has faced, something that is rarely publicised or discussed outside of pro-Trump media, is the deeply disturbing fact that even when the cameras are rolling, Biden appears to be incapable of not smelling, kissing, groping and otherwise acting wildly inappropriately with women and girls with whom he comes into contact. Such is the incredible power of the media to continually re-invent and sanitise public reputations, that virtually all of this lamentable record is simply cast aside and intentionally obscured. Instead, Biden is regularly portrayed in a highly favourable light as a ‘decent, empathic man’ who supposedly stands in stark contrast to Trump. The truth, as articulated plainly in a recent interview by Evo Morales – the former President of Bolivia deposed in a US coup in November 2019 – there is really little difference between the two men and the parties they represent, except for that Trump’s racism and fascism is more explicit. All this does not even address the other elephant in the room: namely that Biden is evidently undergoing some form of cognitive decline, which, on multiple occasions throughout the campaign period, has left him unable to form coherent sentences and repeatedly slurred basic words and phrases.

It is telling, if not surprising, that many of those who have thus far publicly celebrated the election results with the most glee are those liberals who in their own words, cannot wait to stop caring about politics again. It was Trump’s overt racism, crude style and unpredictable theatrics on Twitter and elsewhere – the cause of such embarrassment to them and the US liberal establishment as a whole – that they opposed, not the actual content and results of his policies, so many of which were in fact a direct continuation of policies inherited from the Obama-Biden Administration, including the caging of migrant children and the much-derided ‘Muslim ban’. In fact, Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, one of his most criticised decisions internationally, was only legally possible as a result of earlier legislation that Biden himself voted for and was later supported by Obama. It is evident that for many of those who formed the so-called ‘resistance’ to Trump, their opposition to his presidency was not driven by the harm that it inflicted, but rather by the damage it caused to America’s reputation globally and the subsequent embarrassment and discomfort they felt.

A widespread concern among elements of the US establishment, especially early on in Trump’s Presidency, was that he would make good on some of the anti-war rhetoric he had occasionally deployed during his campaign and not be sufficiently imperialist in outlook. It is for this reason that Trump received perhaps the most unanimously positive coverage in the media on the day on which he authorised air strikes on Syria. No such fears exist with Biden, who, as though such reassurance was required, has repeatedly gone out of his way during the campaign to demonstrate his hawkish credentials on a host of foreign policy issues including his stance on China, Syria and Iran. Accordingly, The Guardian has already called on Biden to ‘reassert America’s role as the global problem-solver’ because under Trump ‘the “indispensable nation” disappeared when it was needed most.’ A sentiment that is a perfect illustration of John Pilger’s maxim that ‘the task of liberal realists is to ensure that western imperialism is interpreted as crisis management, rather than the cause of the crisis and its escalation.’

In essence, liberals are fawning over Biden solely by virtue of him not being as obscenely and openly racist as Trump. To do so in spite of his disastrous record and in the absence of him running on any meaningful policy platform or alternative vision brings to mind C. Wright Mills’ scathing assessment of liberalism from his work The Marxists (1962), which is relevant enough to quote at length:

As a set of theories – or better, of assumptions about man, society, history – liberalism today is at a dead end. The optative mood has so thoroughly taken over that liberals often appear out of touch with the going realities. That is one reason it is so difficult to sort out distinctively liberal theories as such. Often failing to recognize facts that cry out to be recognized, liberalism is irrelevant to much that is happening in much of the world. Liberal ways of looking at these facts too often become mannerisms by which liberals avoid considering the structural conditions of social life and the need to change them. In fact, liberals have no convincing view of the structure of society as a whole – other than the now vague notion of it as some kind of a big balance. They have no firm sense of the history of our times and of their nation’s.

Under Trump’s leadership, most notably at the height of the vicious repression of the Black Lives Matters protests in May and June of this year, the superficial mask of American liberalism dropped entirely, exposing the ugly fascism at its core. Biden’s win is undoubtedly the start of a concerted effort to lift that mask back up, restore America’s image and get back to the business of imperialism disguised as ‘global problem-solving’. Trump’s overt racism will be replaced with the more refined, tacit variety at which the Democratic Party excels, and his candid admissions regarding the true motivations behind US military action substituted with statesman-like messaging about humanitarian intervention and the international community’s ‘responsibility to protect’. That Biden’s Vice-President will be Kamala Harris, a half Black, half South Asian-origin woman – regardless of the fact her politics are as reactionary as his – will also be used to project an ostensibly progressive image of the incoming administration. All those who are committed to opposing all forms of racism and imperialism, of the refined variety or otherwise, must resist these dishonest attempts to portray a Biden win as anything more than an administrative reshuffle within the bi-partisan management of a genocidal empire that, whoever is President, represents a grave danger to its own people and the future of everyone else on this planet.

Louis Allday is a writer based in London.

https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/the ... presidency

[blindpig]

Kamala Harris responds submissively to American corporate interests (Photo: Jandos Rothstein)

PROMOTER OF THE PRISON INDUSTRY
KAMALA HARRIS, THE PROGRESSIVE DISGUISE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
12 Nov 2020 , 9:02 am .

The controversial presidential elections in the United States continue their course in the hands of the Supreme Court , at the request of Donald Trump. The irregularities of that age-old election process are in the eye of the hurricane: this Monday, Attorney General William Barr authorized federal prosecutors across the country to open investigations into voting irregularities. However, the mass media folded en masse to announce Joe Biden as the winner of these elections.

In parallel, the media in unison, paused with the promotion of Biden and focused on the attractive messages towards Kamala Harris, covering her long record. Such promotion was not difficult, since under the well-known American style of them being the precursors of the stigmata, they have taken advantage of electoral nature from the fact that Harris becomes the first female vice president in that nation , daughter of immigrants and woman afro.

Pushing phrases with a pioneering tone will always be impactful in campaigns and Democrats know how to use those tactics very well.

However, Harris's shadowy career while he was California attorney general is not a trend, much less show the tangle of interests that surround this official.

KAMALA'S MEDICAL RECORD

Kamala Harris has sold her image as one of the fiercest fighters for justice, promoting or promoting herself as the "progressive prosecutor". Of course, this is a facade.

On different occasions he was urged to adopt criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and later as a California attorney general; Harris opposed them, and kept the judicial policies retrograde. Specifically while serving as the San Francisco District Attorney , there were multiple instances of tampering with evidence, false testimony, and suppression of crucial information.

In this segment, we present some key data from her professional history that completely distances her from the image they show of Harris, namely:

As a San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011, Harris was criticized in 2010 for withholding information about a police lab technician who stole drugs and was indifferent to demands that she explain her "failings."
Harris also defended state legislation under which parents whose children were habitually absent from elementary school could be prosecuted. This directly disproportionately affected low-income people, especially African-American families.
Harris harassed people who beg on the streets.
In 2015 , he opposed a bill that required his office to investigate shootings involving police officers , also refusing to support state regulations governing the use of body cameras on these officers.
When an Orange County federal judge ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 2014, Harris appealed .
A very notorious case was that of George Gage , an electrician with no criminal record who was accused in 1999 of allegedly abusing his stepdaughter. The judge later found that prosecutors, under Harris' command, illegally withheld the potentially exculpatory evidence .
Likewise, the case of Kevin Cooper , sentenced to death whose trial was infected by racism and corruption. Advanced DNA evidence was sought to prove his innocence, but Harris objected.
With the goal of reducing the population of California's overcrowded prisons, Harris argued that some nonviolent offenders must remain incarcerated or the prison system would lose a source of cheap labor.
Harris's great persecution drive to tamper with evidence and keep people in prison, especially those classified as non-violent, including innocent people, while they wait for the lengthy appeals processes that she customarily engaged in, are key maneuvers to engage in slave labor thus maintaining the business she represents.

Indeed, Harris is an advocate of mass incarceration to benefit the economic interests of the Wall Street financial circle.

ELECTORAL CAREER

Kamala Harris is remembered as one of the primary candidates for the Democratic Party. In January 2019 , the then California senator announced her candidacy to try to face Trump in the 2020 presidential elections, but at the end of 2019 she reported that she was withdrawing from that pre-contest due to "problems" to finance her campaign.

His ambitions were still at stake, because he could run for the vice presidency. Apparently, it is known that he was involved in the political marketing that they had been cooking for some time: an Afro woman similar to Michelle Obama; This was the perfect springboard, in front of a boring candidate like Biden, and it would also manage, somehow, to capitalize on what was developed with the Black Lives Matter movement, to add to Trump's counter-campaign.


Kamala Harris was catapulted to the US vice presidency because it benefits the corporate agenda of the Democratic PartyDrew Angerer / Getty Images

Not least, it is the party's corporate arm, made up of mogul George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and other Wall Street financial contributors, that ends up defining the candidates. These American politicians generally make concessions to interest groups to finance their campaigns, the case of Harris being exceptional, since he did not barter or exchange to get support, since he provided everything on a silver platter to the great financial powers.

Harris's relevance is predominant within the groups of economic donors of large technology, pharmaceutical and private insurance companies, that was demonstrated when large billionaires and Wall Street executives, that is, the well-known and crucial elites of Big Finance and Big Tech, celebrated Biden's decision to choose Kamala in their presidential race.

He regressed in his co-patronage to Bernie Sanders' 2017 private health insurance dissolution bill: Medicare for All . For last year, Harris introduced an extreme private health plan .
Biden-Harris has raised five times more than Trump in donations from the securities and investment industry, totaling a sum of $ 51.1 million . For example, Goldman Sachs contributed more than $ 150,000 to the campaign.
JPMorgan Chase posted a "contribution" of $ 379,000, Morgan Stanley $ 257,000, and Wells Fargo has invested $ 267,000.
Cooper Teboe , one of the top Democratic fundraisers in Silicon Valley, said about a third of the top West Coast donors would support Harris; showed satisfaction with that decision.
The COO of Facebook , Sheryl Sandberg, posted a photo on Instagram Harris, encouraging his selection as a "great moment for women and black girls around the world."
Withdrawing from the Democratic primaries due to the alleged lack of collection draws attention, because it is clear that Harris maintains links with the financial elites. This type of maneuvering is common in these spaces to obtain candidacies, because the factions with the most influence are bidding.

Those who pull the strings within the Democratic Party could not yet spend the pioneer cartridge of the first African woman, because Harris maintained a very weak candidacy within the party, in the first instance. A poll on the RealClearPolitics website showed Harris hovering around 3% of the voting preference in December 2019.

Harris's record in tow and the lack of popular support were not predominant factors at the time of raising her on the stage of "high" politics, it was the Democratic mega-taxpayers who made her nomination. The forms do not matter anymore, in fact, the mass media already promote the narrative about the possibility of separating Biden for health reasons, or even death.

The interests that bind Harris add to his yearning for the presidency. In the background of power, she would ensure the dominance of the corporate elite within the Democratic Party and, consequently, in the White House.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/ka ... -democrata

Google Translator

These machine translators have a hard time with gendered pronouns the rules of the originating language. In this, it's as bad for Russian as for Spanish.

'progressive prosecutor'.....whadda joke, and those who swallow it reveal their petty booj propensities. A person who builds their professional career upon putting poor people in jail is simply a more odious kind of cop[.