US Politics

Tbf there isn't really any proper opposition yet, the last election makes me confident that everyone will hold their nose over here and vote for anyone but Le Pen if needs be. But Macron is doing his best to make things easier for her.

The parliamentary election this year was really hard fought, no?

You've basically got 3 blocks, left, right and Macronist. The macronists didn't do well.

The left and right blocs both have established charismatic leaders with big personal franchises : Melenchon and Le Pen, while Macron is ineligible and his successor, philippe or whoever, will be less well known.

I don't know who will win between left and right but the only bet I would put on now would be against the macronists winning.

NYT is Pravda? FT is Pravda? WSJ (Murdoch owned) is Pravda? That's ridiculous. Propagandizing on the opinion side is one thing, wholesale manufacturing of alternate reality on the news side is something completely different.

Do you think that Facebook disseminating news without any fact checking or recourse, with algorithms designed to enrage people is a better place? Is Joe Rogan (14.5m listeners) hosting JD Vance without a scintilla of fact checking or pushback on any of his view / positions an improvement?

I don't see it - Unless social media is held to the same standards as traditional media it will continue to eat trad media's face, engaging in only what is most profitable and advantageous to its owners. That's why I think the alliance of big tech and an autocratically minded administration is so corrosive.

Just a lucky coincidence, the tech bros are absolutely on the side of the Average Joes

I said that I have serious concerns with where we are heading, power of big tech, etc, so don't disagree with you about that.

The biggest problem with legacy media is not making stuff up but opinion being passed off as fact, which we now can see happens all the time. We (or I, certainly) didn't know it used to happen until we got alternative sources. Now it's clear we were led to believe all sorts of things that were simply not true. We were propagandised.

Regulation of legacy media is very weak. They headed off Leveson 2.

EDIT - I take that back. I don't think the 'XXX is pravda' framing is helpful but I think we have seen legacy media making up loads of stuff. The recent one was the North Korean division in Ukraine. But there has been loads of other fabricated stuff on Ukraine, Gaza, Syria, etc, etc that has turned out to be propoganda.

The reporting on the Corbyn period was scandalously bad - although that was more dishonest framing than making stuff up, because it is harder to get away with that in the UK. Although there certainly were attempts to make things up. One that springs to mind was when the Tory advisor was supposed to have been attacked by a mob of Labour supporters, but they had to drop the story when someone had the video showing it didn't happen.

Most memorable thing for me is that he [Biden] took 2 year to nominate someone as chair for the deadlocked FCC. Not get someone elected (which would be hard because of the split house), but to even nominate someone.

At best it was inept, but it makes it easy to see why people think the Dems aren't interested in anything more than sustaining the status quo

Not sure they're all that interested in sustaining the status quo, even - more like inhabiting some fluffy dreamworld where Mitch McConnell hadn't used any and all wispy shreds of patriotism and/or sanity and/or decency in the Republicans to wipe his arse years ago. Zero answer to all the gutter tactics this whole century. Just stood there stupidly blinking as the madness took hold and the whole judiciary, not just the SC, was stacked with ravening partisan hacks on one end, and at the other, all that locally-determined machinery of democracy was comprehensively attacked and even further gerrymandered.

The Dems have been just standing there dazed and confused while all this Machiavellian manoeuvering happened around them, with their hands jammed in their pants and their eyes fixed on nothing but the now-outdated timetable for the gravy train.

Bernie in the lead-up to 2016 was their final wake-up call, and rather than listen to the message, well, you know the rest. It's the same story all over - the ossified political class has become so damn comfortable in their 'soft' corruption, they've forgotten to keep maintaining the superficial plausibility of the alleged social contract so it's become obvious that they're not representatives but aristocracy. An aristocracy so decadent they can't understand how out of touch they are, even when a grassroots insurgency defied the odds to have enough momentum to make it all the way up the hill to shake them by the lapels.

Who is macron's successor?

Yep...

Just to clarify: this isn’t just the first time since WW2 that all incumbent parties in developed countries lost vote share.

It’s the first time since this data was first recorded in 1905. Essentially the first time in the history of democracy (universal suffrage began in 1894).

https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1854559598574784631?t=HWmVtMegtLpuznKN03OMTA&s=19

I don't know if this is a false memory. I'm sure Biden said in the 2020 campaign that he would be a one term President. But then got into power and thought, I quite like this, so am going to hang on.

Harris, not being Trump not good enough this time?

I've just done a quick search as I remembered similar. It looks like he hinted at it in a speech, and told advisors that he'd only serve one term, but then pulled back from it.

https://www.axios.com/2024/07/03/biden-campaign-democrats-pledge-one-term

The big picture: Biden never made an explicit public promise to serve
just one term — though Politico reported that he had privately told
advisers that he wouldn't run again. Between the lines: Biden's
campaign comments likely signaled that he was only running because of
who his opponent was, Anthony Fowler, a professor at the University of
Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, told Axios.

"You could argue he's trying to kind of have it both ways. He's trying
to kind of tell people, 'Don't worry, I'm only running for one term,'
without ever actually explicitly promising that," Fowler said.

Of course, the biden people story is that he pulled back because he didn't believe that KH could win after getting a look.

Cool. But what about all the other Democrat candidates?

I know it might be easy to say I'm saying this with the benefit of hindsight. But he was down in popularity pretty much the whole time.

Inflation has hit poorer people hard and even the most optimistic person wouldn't expect his economic policy to trickle down to peoples lived experience before the election. On that last point even if you disagree you could see that people in the US didn't believe that the economic situation was improving.

I guess the counter is that Biden was the one who beat him. He was the cross party legacy white dude with a strong track record.

The Dems would rather have a shit candidate who was under control than risk an open primary process leading to an off message candidate, eg Kennedy.

Keeping control in the hands of the leadership is more important to them than winning.

This goes for most political parties these days, doesn't it? Internal issues tops actual power and influence over society.

I think the Dems are significantly worse than most - or better depending on your view.

For example I don't believe that a left Trump equivalent could win the Dem nomination. We saw that Bernie - who is a pretty mainstream social democrat - couldn't win his party's nomination while Trump - who is significantly more extreme - did. A US political activist once told me that the Dems were significantly less democratic than the Republicans.

The Dems haven't had an open primary since 2008.

America has been undone by the gulf between rich and poor. Trump won't fix this. He doesn't care and wouldn't know where to start. What happens when the people left behind lose patience with him? What's the next stage?

I think it is the collapse of an empire. From here it continues to get worse, at an accelerating speed. What exactly that looks like I don't know, but I agree that it won't be pretty.

The US has had a good innings but the end is in sight!

They need caring capitalism, Nordic style. But how can they move in that direction when half the country is living in squalor with shit education, no healthcare and a terrible diet? Do they even vote?

Yes the election was hard fought and for the 2nd round most people thought the best that could happen was to stop Le Pen's fascist from gaining an absolute majority. So the fact that the left coalition got the most seats in the end was a big (and very welcome surprise).

Macron is an utter cunt, his whole strategy is to show that voting left and right ends in an ungovernable country thereby making the only option to vote centrist. It is a fucking awful strategy and him equating the far left as equally dangerous to the fucking fascists is a disgrace.

Mélenchon is a self serving oaf, who cares more about taking credit for things than actually making life better for people, his utter unwillingness to work with any one doesn't do anyone any favours.

Politics at the national level is a mess here but I have faith that they'll never let Le Pen in. (if it does happen I'll have to come back to blighty, you've got 3 years to clean the shit out of the rivers.)

I really don't care about the system or their people... As long as Trump is determined to make the American dollar rise in value who gives a shit if they all die stupid with heart attacks.. Make us dollars great again!

The Dems haven't had an open primary since 2008.

What? They ran a full primary in both 2016 and 2020.

What? They ran a full primary in both 2016 and 2020.

It is widely believed that they were rigged, to ensure that an on message candidate, ie not Sanders, won the nomination.

eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Committee_email_leak

Aha, conspiracy theories. Right.

Some people find it convenient and comforting to dismiss things that don't fit with their world view in that way.

I happen to believe that the primaries in 2016 and 2020 were skewed by the DNC to avoid a Sanders victory. But let's say for argument's sake that they weren't. Why then did they decide not to hold a primary this year when they had two challenging candidates demanding one?

Don't say it was because they had a sitting president, because the immediate precedent was 1980 when they did have a primary.

He probably did think he was best placed to win as the type of people who win elections think like that.