From NOEBIE.net
Suspicion, fear, 15,000 troops in place, checkpoints, road closures, hastily constructed walls in the capitol. This is what inevitably results from a political economy based on greed, desperately bolstered by ignorance.
I did not want to believe that it would come to this, at least in my lifetime. I still do not want to believe it.
I don’t have a lot to say yet on the technical or political aspects of this year’s Presidential Election. I think that we will learn a lot once data on Hispanic voters can be parsed.
Like many, I am relieved that we will have someone in power who is more competent, better mannered, less buffoonish, and less overtly racist and sexist.
If someone is expecting a Biden Administration to be anything more than that, though, I am afraid that they may be disappointed.
Open Secrets reports that Biden is near to raising $1 Billion in the most expensive election in history.
The 2020 election is more than twice as expensive as the runner up, the 2016 election. In fact, this year’s election will see more spending than the previous two presidential election cycles combined. The massive numbers are headlined by unprecedented spending in the presidential contest, which is expected to see $6.6 billion in total spending alone. That’s up from around $2.4 billion in the 2016 race. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will be the first candidate in history to raise $1 billion from donors. His campaign brought in a record-breaking $938 million through Oct. 14, riding Democrats’ enthusiasm to defeat Trump. President Donald Trump raised $596 million, which would be a strong fundraising effort if not for Biden’s immense haul.
Source: 2020 election to cost $14 billion, blowing away spending records • OpenSecrets
Here is the current situation. We have an administration in power that is unprecedented, at least in my lifetime, in its ineptitude, corruption, destructiveness, callousness and hypocrisy. It has proved itself unwilling to conduct its affairs according to the most base standards of decency. It has, by every conceivable measure, made things worse for all of us. Not only has it made things measurably worse, it has created a political climate which will make it inestimably more difficult to begin making them even slightly better, regardless of the outcome of the 2020 elections. It continues to pose serious dangers to the lives, health and well-being of everyone in our society, and across the globe, and especially the most oppressed and vulnerable among us. It is shocking and unconscionable that such an abomination could rise to power in “the greatest democracy” on the Earth.
On the other side of the political aisle, we have a party which is so desperate to stave off any fundamental change that they have nominated a doddering, glib, gaffe-ridden career politician, notorious as a puppet of the insurance industry, with a sordid history which includes multiple, credible complaints of sexual assault.
It appears, two weeks out from the Presidential Election of 2020, that the Biden/Harris ticket may prevail, although many of us have the uncomfortable sense that we may have seen this movie before.
The frantic exhortations about this being “the most important election in history” might have some validity, except for the fact that the Democrats offer nothing as an alternative to Trump other than a return to everything that got us into this mess to begin with. For many decades now, up until this very moment, they have paid lip service to everyday working people, while attending to the whims of their corporate lords and masters. They have ignored each and every one of the most urgent problems that we face, from murderous cops to the public health crisis to looming economic disaster to a climate emergency that poses the prospects of near-term extinction for our species (along with much of the rest of life on this planet).
So, it is fine, I suppose, for people to encourage us to vote for this garbage as a temporary respite from outright fascism. But it is dishonest, and sickening, for them to ask us to place any other hope in a Biden Presidency, or in the party that he leads.
I have spent most of my life as a political activist. I volunteered on my first campaign as a teenager, when a friend of our family ran for State’s Attorney in the county where I grew up. I was a “Yellow Dog Democrat” for more than 30 years, always voting a straight punch in the general election. I’ve marched, and I’ve donated, and I’ve phone banked, and I’ve walked precincts and I’ve organized. I’ve drank the Kool Aid, and I’ve served it up. I’ve been a jubilant winner on election night, and a dejected loser.
We have come to the point where there’s not enough Kool Aid on the planet to make any of this palatable, and there can be no jubilee in sight.
So, where might we find any glimmer of hope in all of this madness?
For me, any path forward falls outside of the realm of electoral politics. Although I cannot find it in my heart to discourage a vote for Biden from my friends who live in states which will be legitimately contested, I absolutely refuse to place any faith in him or his party to lead us into the light, either in the weeks to come, or in the imaginable future.
We have to find the way ourselves, and we have to start by looking in the right direction. That direction is not right, nor left, nor forward, nor upward nor onward.
It is inward.
There was a brief moment after the election in 2008 where I was worried that G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney would refuse to leave office. When the fears proved unfounded, I chalked it up to paranoia.
This year, I just don’t know. It’s hard to say whether it is sad, or fortunate, that we have come to the point where we have so little confidence in the health and veracity of our public institutions. I suppose that it may be both.
In any case, if folks’ fears about this are realized this time around, the notion of a nationwide general strike to keep the current occupant of the White House compliant is appealing.
Unions Are Beginning to Talk About Staving Off a Possible Coup – Labor Notes Reports: “Therefore, be it finally resolved that the Rochester Labor Council, AFL-CIO calls on the National AFL-CIO, all of its affiliate unions, and all other labor organizations in the United States of America to prepare for and enact a general strike of all working people, if necessary, to ensure a Constitutionally mandated peaceful transition of power as a result of the 2020 Presidential Elections.”
Read More: https://www.labornotes.org/2020/10/unions-are-beginning-talk-about-staving-possible-coup