Here’s what I won’t miss about politics:
Trump and now Vance are repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot by making stupid statements. Any idiot would know that saying that Kamala Harris turned black from Asian would not please most voters, including Republicans. I’m not sure whether Harris once emphasized her Asian ancestry and then her black ancestry at a later time, but even calling attention to that is invidious. Like many voters, including black ones, I do not want this election to be about race; I want it to be about issues.
Vance, who was chosen for his hardscrabble background designed to appeal to middle America, has proved to be somewhat of a drag on the ticket. His comment on childless cat ladies was just as bad as Trump’s gaffe, and he topped that by criticizing Simone Biles for pulling out of the last Olympics because of mental health issues. That’s just churlish. None of these statements have anything to do with issues; they are ad hominems.
Harris, on the other hand, accepted her coronation with glee, and I’m appalled that people with much better cred, including Obama and Pelosi, jumped aboard the Harris juggernaut so quickly. I am not enthused about her stand on Israel, on her wokeness (she’s increasingly “progressive”, and will do damage to Titles VI and IX) and her weakness on the border, though she’s keeping a low profile right now. What irks me the most is her claim that she wasn’t going to simply inherit the Democratic nomination, but EARN it. Well, she’s done absolutely nothing to earn it except serve up a few more word salads (I swear, she is incapable of thinking on her feet, and becomes acceptable only when reading from a teleprompter).
This is one election when I’m not enthused about either candidate. I remain a Democrat and a huge critic of Trump, whom I consider mentally ill, but I can’t say that I wouldn’t be holding my nose when voting for Harris. I am appalled at what’s happened to the Democratic Party. Yes, they are dancing with glee around a mediocre candidate, for they want to win, but what happened to the search for quality? Perhaps it was too late to have debates or resolve this in the Democratic Convention, for it’s already been solved. Still . . . .
But the laws of physics have already determined who will win the Presidency, so I suppose I should just relax and let the molecules work it all out.
Amen
Who cares about childless cat ladies? They can get themselves more cats – lots of kitties who need homes.
And, yesterday Kamalot made another word salad soup:
“The importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy” – Harris.
I don’t care about this (that much) either you can be a moron with words and still be a reasonable president. I hope, fingers crossed.
I care about the border, Israel and the many thousands of children whose body parts will be sacrificed to the gods of trans. I care about DEI and race baiting, I care about the environment. I care about the cost of living harming the middle class.
What this means is that for people like me -who are well and truly divorced from both parties- the choice will be “no choice”.
And no, the laws of physics have not determined who has won the presidency.
When Kamala Harris chooses her White male running mate, she should lean into that moment with humor: “He’s my DEI hire.”
That would, indeed, be a fun take, Barry.
+1 😀
+1
The difference is that when her remarks were shown on the news, they managed to edit her remark into a shorter, more sensible form.
And of course, they did not broadcast Biden’s adventures at the end of the event, where he wandered away and climbed up into someone’s aircraft while his minders stood dumbfounded.
When those selected by the democratic party to rule appear on camera, the media do their best to show them in a good light.
They do the opposite for Trump and Vance, carefully scrutinizing each remark and action to see if there is a way to edit it to show them in a negative light.
It bothers me that the MSM has been ideologically captured, as you note above
Agreed. It has been and continues to be a huge loss. They do our country (and the world, for that matter) a grave disservice. Without accurate, unbiased knowledge where the hell are we. We’ve been played.
+1
The press’ relationship with power must always be adversarial. Irrespective of party. FOX’s relationdhip with the GOP and the rest of the MSMs affinity for the DEMS should sicken any American who cares about our nation’s future.
+1 True.
I’m hoping most Americans see through the dishonesty and bizarre shenanigans.
The 4th estate is almost entirely captured by “The Party” (DEMS). Exception is FOX. Also, the (largest by numbers) demographic still listening to legacy media (both left and right) is nearing 70 – apparently. That’s wild.
Alternative media is much more interesting, more honest and not as wedded to drooling over the DEMs. It’s also easier on the brain. Pirate Wires (for example) does some great work, witty, intelligent (sometimes brazen) with a touch of Gonzo.
Alternatively, try listening to Joy Reid (MSNBC) for a couple minutes – your brain will be cooked. 🙂 The woman talks about nothing but race. Gruesome.
I’ll check out your link (Pirate Wires). I keep searching…
https://www.piratewires.com/
Some of the articles (for a limited time) are offered free. Their morning takes (which you get for free) are generally LOL-hilarious.
Surely you’re not saying Faux News isn’t captured?
No, that is surely not what I am saying.
The “4th estate is almost entirely captured by “The Party” (DEMS).” Really? The NYTimes, Washington Post and CNN bashing Biden for months before he dropped out? The endless nonsense about Clinton’s emails back in 2016? The lopsided coverage of Trump by ignoring all the inane things he says, treating him as “normal”, and actually making excuses for the crazy stuff he says? And don’t forget that most radio stations across the US are owned by conservative outlets. I’ll agree that there has been a media “honeymoon” for Harris in the last couple weeks, but I really doubt that will continue. Reality has a liberal bias, mass media certainly doesn’t.
The NYT and WAPO started bashing Biden only after years of hiding his infirmities – a week before the debate they were running reports on clips featuring Biden’s decline referring to them as “cheap fakes”. Then, when it was patently obvious that Biden would lose to Trump -after the debate- the elites in the DEM party and their media buddies -en-masse- instituted a soft coup against POTUS.
CNN, MSNBC, ABC , NYT, WAPO – all have a Democrat-bias and FOX has a Republican-bias, so, yes, the 4th estate is almost entirely captured by progressives/DEMS.
ASIDE: MSNBC has been amplifying an insane lie about Vance, suggesting that he prefers Americans to have white children — this is in the realm of the surreal; he’s married to a brown woman and has BIPOC kids. Does FOX favor Trump and underwrite his pathology and his lies? Of course it does.
As for reality having a liberal bias, that was factual perhaps 10 years ago, not anymore. Women are not men, DEI and the critical theories that have captured our institutions favor gender/skin-color over merit (not reflective of the reality of merit), the USA is not systemically racist (advertised as such by many DENS), it used to be, but not anymore. Also, the cops don’t target people of color in order to murder them, another lie amplified by the DEMS subsequent to the horrific killing of George Floyd. Roland Fryer’s (a brilliant black economist at Harvard) excellent research demonstrate the latter finding clearly. Yes, there is police mishandling (or roughing up) of men of color in non-fatal incidents – and racism may factor in that category (more research is needed), but there is no evidence of racism in the context fatal incidents. You can look up his research. He was vilified and cancelled by Harvard and Claudine Gay for his findings.
“… if you’ll recall, a few weeks ago, when video clips emerged pointing to Biden’s mental decline, the Times went to bat for him, running a news story with the headline, “How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts.” This followed the infamous press conference in which White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called them “cheap fakes….
…But that was back when Biden was assumed to be the Democratic nominee and still needed defending. Now that there is a full-court press to convince Biden to drop out of the race, supported by the Times editorial board, it’s fine to point to such clips as evidence of his decline.” – NR
According to Snopes he boarded the plane to speak to the seven remaining passengers and flight crew. There is no evidence that people were dumbfounded.
Good catch. The video I saw was taken from a different angle. I am still not sure they expected him to go up there, but it was a nice gesture.
Rosemary, were we separated at birth? This is me as well:
“I care about the border, Israel and the many thousands of children whose body parts will be sacrificed to the gods of trans. I care about DEI and race baiting, I care about the environment. I care about the cost of living harming the middle class.”
+1
I believe that all sane people think like that, although the UK border issue is the new one in the Irish sea, and the cost of living harms the working class more here.
+1
+1. We have no political home Danny. At least, I don’t.
Still, I am hopeful about our nation. Alternative media is rising, and the elites have lost a great deal of their power (on both sides).
I wish we had a MORE progressive Democratic candidate with regard to these specific areas: progressive about addressing climate change (savaging fossil fuel companies with gusto while loudly supporting the Green New Deal), progressive about ending the War on Drugs (removing cannabis from the CSA and legalizing cocaine and heroin), progressive about enacting Medicare for All (or some other universal health insurance plan), progressive about enacting a high minimum wage (no less than $20/hr.), and progressive about returning to a high tax rate on par with what the country had in the 1950s (for the so-called “one percent”).
But Kamala Harris will do. I like her. And it made sense for the Democrats to rally around her for one plain reason: money. All the money raised for the Biden/Harris campaign gets immediately transferred to the Harris/[name] campaign. A plan to nominate someone else would have entailed a degree of chaos that reminded people of 1968 Chicago AND it would have necessitated starting a brand-new fundraising campaign. No time for that!
I might like Harris less than you do, Barry, but at this point in the campaign, I will not be trying to reduce her chances of winning by publicly focusing on her deficits, no matter my general agreement with Jerry about an objective approach to assessments of policies. There’s too much at stake. I’ll save any criticisms of her policies after she (hopefully) wins. And even if she wins, there’s still the larger issue of the MAGA fantasy world and its drag on Congress.
Yes, it’s not a good move to focus on her deficits, but I stand by my progressive policies with regard to what I wrote above. And to add to it, this: wipe out ALL medical debt. Well, okay, maybe this should be an issue reserved to the states. Dunno about this.
And one more progressive idea, with regard to cannabis (at least): anyone who was arrested on ANY non-violent drug charge should be released from prison and have their record expunged. Drove a truck across state lines with a ton of cannabis on board? Not a problem. Out of prison you go, and have a nice life!
And enough with this “coronation” talk. It make perfect sense for the Democrats to rally around Harris, as I explained above. Anything else would’ve been a disaster for the Democrats.
And, yes, the MAGA fantasy world will continue on after she wins. *sigh*
Curious about how to wipe out medical debt. Do you mean suspension of payment to medical providers? Or that all current medical debt is now paid by the US government (i.e., exchanged for US government debt owed to others)? If we do this today, what happens to medical debt owed tomorrow and next year?
And as soon as a patient runs up a bill, he has a debt. Cancelling all medical debt would just mean that all medical care is free. Maybe that’s the idea. No, say the activists. We only mean debt that a patient hasn’t been able to clear in, say, six months. OK, so only fools pay their debts on time. The smart ones evade the bill collectors for six months and then they’re home free. Sort of like student loans.
Well, I’m sorry that you think I’m reducing Harris’s chances of winning, but I’m not as I am a Democrat and my state is, too. In fact, it seems to me that now is the time to point out the advantages and disadvantages of both candidates, as I have done. Do you really want me to just shut up and cheer on Harris until the election is over? Sorry, but I won’t do that, and to accuse me of deliberately reducing Harris’s chances is an unfair thing to do. The time to weigh policies or make decisions is before the election not after.
Seriously, pal, do you want me NOT to point out that Harris is likely to be less pro-Israel than was Biden (or that Trump may be) because I may hurt her chances of being elected and implementing those policies. I find that perplexing.
+1
Group think is gruesome.
Assuming that you are addressing me, Jerry, I was saying what I, personally, will be doing, or not doing, for the sake of democracy. The differences between Trump and Harris are abundantly clear to me, and I need no further information to make a well-informed choice. I’m pretty clear about what Harris brings — and doesn’t bring — to the table.
As I clearly wrote, I am in general agreement with your perspective about assessing candidates, and I expect you will continue with that perspective. So, no, I wasn’t telling you what to do. In any case, I was expressing my opinion to Barry, though — of course — you can easily overhear any conversation.
But I will state again, in general, that if there’s a good chance that democracy might lose, I think it’s not a good time now to focus on the deficits of the democratic front-runner. And as I’ve said in previous posts, I think a win for Harris will give people a reasonable chance to address her deficits. If Trump wins, there will ultimately be very few democratic choices of any kind.
I value many of your opinions, most in fact. But I hope you don’t want me — or anyone — to just go along with your opinion on this issue, or to just stay quiet.
I agree with you.
I love this from David Sedaris:
I’m voting for Harris — Sam Harris.
Jerry, I should add that we both are concerned about Israel and Ukraine. But you focus especially on Israel, while my focus is on Ukraine.
My father was Ukrainian, and you are a secular Jew, so the difference in focus is understandable.
But Trump would definitely sell Ukraine — and probably Europe — down the river, while Harris is likely to bend toward leftists who ignorantly support Hamas terrorists.
One is a given my book, while the other has problematic inclinations.
Jerry, I think you need to read Jim Blilie’s quote of Sedaris and consider whether it applies to your post. As that infamous quote goes, “You’re not helping.”
The flight menu analogy is a poor one. Better would be to replace the chicken dish with a platter of vomit having bits of asbestos in it.
Just the opposite; I don’t want readers telling ME to be quiet because it would further Trump’s chances. My brief, as I’ve said, is not to ape the millions of other websites that diss Trump. I probably dislike hm as much or more than they. But how many websites point out the deficits of Democrats? The way to fix the party is not to vote in Kamala Harris and then “correct” her; it’s to have an honest debate about the candidates’ stands on the issues.
Pointing out positions that you disagree with for your chosen candidate is not a good strategy. I presume that you want your candidate to work for your vote, even though you’ve already decided who to vote for. Doesn’t it make more sense to voice your concern with that candidate with the hope that voicing that concern gets that candidate to adjust their platform in a manner that more closely matches your position?
For instance, I see that probably a majority of the democrats on this site don’t agree with genital mutilation of minors, unbridled hatred of Jews, or unvetted immigrants crossing the border. If you don’t voice your opinion, then Harris will assume that all of the current positions of the administration are hunky dory, and furthermore, she will hear other voices asking her to push those policies even more extreme.
Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. Do you want republican voters to keep quiet about Trump’s asinine statements because they don’t want to hurt his chances, or would you prefer that they voice their objections in hopes that by doing so he could become a more unifying rather than dividing force should he become elected?
Incentives matter. Voice your opinion loudly. Or don’t, but if you don’t then don’t be surprised when the party tracks even farther away from where you are today (and if they do, I’m sure you’ll still vote for your own particular team because the other guys are so much more “scary”).
Lots of criticism of Biden in the pro-Israel camp – not considering that he has an international coalition to run (including Saudis, fragile Egypt and Jordan, devolved Lebanon etc) and his “anti-Israel” charges are basically him mouthing “both sides”. It is shit, sure, but enough to hold a coalition together. He’s about the best pro-Israel guy out there.
Harris is MUCH less helpful to Israel, her woke pro-Pal nonsense case in point. She seems to swallow pro-Pal lies whole.
And Trump is so transactional. He has so many psychopathic traits and has thrown everybody who has ever trusted him under the bus. Sure he’s pro-Israel now but what if the next PM or Bibi criticize the chocolate cake at Mar a Largo? Putting money on Trump’s loyalty is a hilarious way to loose money. Take that from a former options trader. hehe
D.A.
NYC
+1
With all due respect to David Sedaris, I’d simply remind the flight attendant that I ordered the kosher meal.
😀
It’s weird to put the focus on fossil-fuel companies. People don’t burn fossil fuels because companies supply them, rather, companies supply them because consumers want to burn them. (The decline in sales of cigarettes in the West is not because companies refuse to supply them, it’s because people are deciding not to smoke.)
It’s fair to put the onus on consumers to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels, and it’s fair to blame governments and society as a whole (rather than particular companies) for not putting sufficient effort into alternatives, but it’s not sense to blame fossil-fuel companies as though they are the source of the problem.
Blaming them is only a distraction from the fact that the populace as a whole is happy to burn fossil fuels as a source of cheap energy and thus of affluent lifestyles, and until that changes governments won’t be incentivised to properly address the issue.
It’s not so much about “blaming” consumers (but you’re comment about the decline in cigarette smoking is spot on). It’s more about getting people enthusiastic about transitioning to green technologies. Sure, we can’t just simply cut off oil and coal. There has to be and will be a transition away from both. But such a transition could perhaps happen faster if a progressive Democratic president would just hammer away on this and underscore the urgency of “keeping it in the ground” (to lightly paraphrase Bill McKibben’s apt phrase).
Here’s something lots of people don’t know: Roughly one hundred square miles of solar panels in the American Southwest would take care of 100% of the country’s electricity needs. But why don’t we talk about this? Why hasn’t anyone run with this and made it part of the national conversation? As long as we elect conservative Democrats, this will never happen. Wow. What a world.
*Elementary arithmetic error.*
See my post below.
I don’t think your math is correct.
From what I have been able to learn, the number is 22,000 square miles.
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us-solar/
Even that is based on a bunch of assumptions, especially energy storage at night and loss-free transmission. Also, part of the new deal is that lots more stuff is expected to get electrified. All those cars and busses and semi trucks, and of course everyone’s heating systems.
Regardless of that, what I would like to see is one small city somewhere to go exclusively with wind and solar. It does not even need to be a place with any heavy industry. I read frequently that those energy sources are cheaper and more efficient than fossil fuels, so this should not be an impossible goal.
Then, once Abilene or wherever sorts out any issues implementing the plan, they can scale up and expand.
Much of the discussion about green renewables seems to neglect both how stuff is made, like steel, glass and plastic, and does not include all the math questions. Like how much copper do we need, and will the child slaves in Congo be able to supply enough rare earth materials? What will an apple cost in February once this is implemented? Will people be willing to pay that much for an apple, and if not, what does that do to agriculture?
The cost of transmitting that electricity (and maintaining the link) from the US SW to, say, Maine or Alaska is highly non-trivial.
I take your point, however, and we installed roof-top solar at around 10MWh/year on our new house. This should meet all our electricity needs.
Barry, may I recommend reading the Biden administration’s actual plan. Google “Net Zero America Project Princeton” In it you’ll find that the equivalent land mass of four states are required for the solar farms.
Ezra Klein of the NYT, like all good progressives, was surprised by that figure when he interviewed Jess Jenkins a primary author of that study.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-jesse-jenkins.html
Jesse Jenkins
Yeah, so if you think about the — I don’t know if you’ve driven by a wind farm, but you’ve got wind turbines that are spaced out quite a bit. And that’s in order to avoid shadowing each other with the wakes of one wind turbine. That means they span a very large area. And so I’m talking about the total area around all of the wind turbines that make up a wind farm or all of the solar arrays that make up a solar farm.
… The most cost effective of our net-zero scenarios spans an area that is equal to Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee put together. And the solar farms are an area the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
Ezra Klein
Holy crap.
Jesse Jenkins
So these are big, big areas.
Ezra Klein
And that’s in the efficient scenario where we make all great decisions and use our land as efficiently as possible to generate electricity?
Jesse Jenkins
Well, that’s in the lowest cost one. It’s not necessarily the most land-efficient scenario. There is a more land-efficient scenario that uses about half that much land area. But in order to unlock that scenario, we have to build a very large amount of new nuclear power plants, or natural gas plants, carbon capture, or advanced geothermal, other more energy-dense or compact technologies that are generally more expensive and less mature today. That could be an option too.
But those technologies face their own siting challenges and their own social license issues.
[Barry Lyons, this next part answers your desire to eliminate fossil fuels.]
And there’s a scenario that actually used double that. If we want to go entirely renewable, we want to completely get rid of fossil fuels in any way and don’t use any carbon capture or continue to emit any CO2 and use negative emissions from fossil fuels, then we actually need double that amount of land area. So there’s a huge, huge scale here, and we get to choose which of those paths we want to go down, but we can’t really avoid the need to build large amounts of infrastructure.
Ezra Klein
I know it’s bad form to shout in audio formats. So there’s a weird tendency sometimes in a podcast when you’re talking about something completely insane, but everybody has a totally normal tone of voice. But I want to say that if you’re listening to that you’re like, oh my god, that sounds completely beyond anything that we have done as a country, functionally, in memory, I think that is correct.
Hmmm, I think there is enough blame to go around to include oil companies. For years, they downplayed the effects of burning fossil fuels — just like tobacco companies did with the dangers of smoking. And yes, the reason smoking is declining in the US is because of decreased consumer demand. But why did consumer demand fall? Perhaps because the government started to hold tobacco companies liable for the increased health costs of smoking? Or because they banned cigarette advertising on TV? Or maybe because they started banning smoking in indoor public areas? Consumer behavior didn’t just “change”. It changed because, thru attacks on the tobacco industry, they learned what the true public costs of smoking were. I don’t see any reason why the same tactics wouldn’t work with big oil.
You can give up air travel and air conditioning and stop driving your car any time, Don. You don’t have to wait for Big Oil to be brought to book. But it’s a collective-action problem. You won’t do any of those things — of course you won’t — unless everyone does, too, and of course they won’t, either. We know this because they haven’t. Knowing that, you won’t agree be the patsy while everyone else parties. And even if the government steps in and abolishes fossil-fuel consumption, Asian countries will still be burning coal and Canada and Saudi will still be pumping oil. They’ll actually have to burn more to make for you the things you can no longer make domestically because Big Oil is now little wet spot….and then ship them to you in diesel-powered cargo ships.
That’s what makes oil different from tobacco. If the tobacco companies go out of business it makes no never mind to me (or to you) because I don’t buy their products. (I will miss the lucrative taxes they and smokers pay, though, which more than covers the healthcare costs of their shorter lives.). Even smokers will be better off if they can be forced to quit. But I and almost everyone else want to buy fossil fuels. We don’t want the companies who supply them driven out of business because they provide the necessity of life that all other necessities depend on: energy.
To equate fossil fuels and tobacco is to make a category error. One is an international collective-action problem, by definition insoluble and made worse by individual effort. The other is a straightforward “Thou shalt not…” problem.
+1. So many forget this.
Oh, Leslie, so right away “I” get chastised when you know nothing about me or my efforts to reduce my fossil fuel consumption. What I glean from your comments is “humans will always love consuming oil so let’s just ignore the problem while the world burns up.” Heaven forbid we try to come up with ways to make Big Oil pay for the damage their product causes. Yes, it is a “collective action problem”, but we’ve tackled one before (remember CFCs and the Montreal Protocol?) Perhaps the human race will continue to party while a live-able climate is destroyed, but I and I suspect a lot of other people would like to figure out some way to avoid it if at all possible.
I’m sad to say that besides giving up air travel and air conditioning you’re going to have to stop wearing that good looking North Face puffer jacket of yours. Did you see the funny PR feud between North Face and Liberty Oilfield?
In 2021, North Face refused to make a co-branded jacket for Innovex, an oil and gas company. As a right-thinking, world-saving, progressive company, North Face didn’t want to be associated with the oil industry.
It took another oil industry company, Liberty Oilfield, to remind North Face employees that without the oil industry, there would be no North Face company. Liberty’s PR campaign went viral with billboards that read: “That North Face puffer looks great on you. And it was made from fossil fuels.” Chris Wright also filmed a short segment thanking the brand for making quality outdoor gear—with the help of the oil and gas industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH0UjtGCgU4
In an interview, Write said, “I don’t want to be overly critical of The North Face,” Wright said. “I think they’re more a symptom of the problem than the cause. The North Face didn’t cause this problem. My single biggest concern is that this is a misunderstanding of energy, which is what makes the world go round. That’s always been the case, and I don’t fault people so much for it. But we have a dangerous combination today of people who are ignorant about energy but also passionate about oil and gas being evil.”
Don, I apologize to you for using “you” in a way that you, reasonably, interpreted as personal chastisement of yourself instead of the colloquial indefinite “you”. In keeping with game theory conventions, let’s replace “you” in my comment with “Alice” and “she/her.” We can imagine a hypothetical Alice deciding she’d like to do something herself about climate change but then runs up against the collective action problem and the futility of making solo sacrifices while Asia stokes the fires to supply her with goods she really doesn’t want to do without. Her husband, Bob, loses his job at the windmill factory which closed because Alice voted to make the electricity the factory needed scarce and expensive, because being transmitted all the way to Boston from that 10,000 sq. mi. solar array in Nevada.
The world’s countries have been failing to meet their own individually determined climate contributions ever since Kyoto so the way to bet is that they will continue doing so. The betting market seems to say there will be winners and losers, the latter being mostly wretched poor countries, but the world is not going to burn up.
Again, I’m sorry for using the second person instead of the impersonal third.
Leslie, apology accepted. Thank you. I’m sorry for taking it personally. And I realize the world will not literally burn up. It was just a figure of speech.
You see, if I was an American citizen, I would vote for Donald Trump because, ineffectual as he is almost certain to be at anything because he has not the mental discipline to follow through with any task that requires sustained attention and hard work, least of all at establishing a theocratic dictatorship, he would at least ensure that none of the things that Barry Lyons wants would come to pass, at least for four years. Under a Kamala Harris presidency I’m not so sure, and even one of them would be a progressive disaster…as well as what she already seems poised to do as detailed by Rosemary above.
Why anyone would want to “savage” the companies that literally keep all America moving is mystifying to me. Do you have a death wish? 100 square miles of solar panels work only when the mid-day sun shines. What do you do the other 18 hours?
Besides, the arithmetic is off. This reference says 100 x 100 miles and then erroneously calls that 100 square miles, plus a square mile for batteries. 100 x 100 is 10,000, not 100. I know, math class is tough. I hope the progressives are better at figuring out the impacts of confiscatory taxation.
https://inovateus.com/how-many-square-miles-of-solar-panels-would-it-take-to-power-the-u-s-its-smaller-than-you-think/
Anyway, this is my last and only direct comment on your election. I think America’s standing in the world would sustain a grievous injury if VP Harris is able to get legislative support for her stated agenda, much less anything more “progressive.” Because the United States is the only country in the world that matters, we foreigners have a stake in the outcome even if we don’t get a vote. Please choose carefully. Trump is a harmless fool. Harris? She worries me.
“confiscatory taxation” Is there any other kind (aside from lottery tickets)?
Even if Trump is a “harmless fool” his appointees to various positions of power will not be.
Harmless, I mean.
SCOTUS is an example of Trump’s administration having real world consequences that last for decades. The suggestion that Trump won’t get anything of his or Republican’s policy implemented belies history and current events.
Leslie: I won’t go all the way and vote for Trump, for (his) psychiatric reasons. I agree he’ll get little done, screw up even less of what we care about.
Harris will, which is horrible.
We tend to notice right wing idiocy more than left wing idiocy. And we don’t seem to understand how things have changed in so many domains in the last decade. Five moral panics, based on nothing, leading to disasters in each area, all an insane woke agenda. I’m a lifelong moderate lefty left adrift by these changes which are based more on magical thinking than sanity. Think the murderous BLM (See Ferguson and Floyd effects), climate apocalypticism, metoo blowback, trans cult.
Agree with you totally on the solar/renewables. On physics alone!
Oh I’ll effin’ vote – my naturalization here is too precious to me to ignore voting but I’ll vote under sufferance for “D”. And in NYC it makes no difference.
(sigh)
D.A.
NYC
People seem to miss the point of this 100 mile x 100 mile solar array. Nobody is seriously suggesting it should be built: it’s an illustration to show the potential of solar energy. The energy incident on the Earth from the Sun exceeds our total needs by several orders of magnitude.
Also, your argument for voting for Tr*mp fails because he has shown he is not completely ineffectual. If nothing else, it means he gets to appoint lots of judges and it turns out that having the judiciary in your pocket is enough to subvert democracy.
You write, “Nobody is seriously suggesting it should be built.” If this was true then the Biden administration’s Net Zero plan is not a serious attempt to slow climate change.
Indeed, my counter argument goes: Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett. (Repeat after me: Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett.)
And I spent the whole 2016 campaign yelling about: SCOTUS! You dimwits: SCOTUS!
There are two points of critical numerical appraisal here.
1) It is not a thought experiment for illustration. If Alice and Bob are going to power the electricity needs of the United States with solar panels, the semi-tropical cloudless desert country in the Southwest that receives high-angle sun most of the year is exactly where they will need to build them to get the most bang for the buck. If they build them anywhere else (to make them closer to large cities in the cloudy low-sun Northeast, say,) they will need more panels.
That’s another drawback of solar. Not just the time shifting — peak supply doesn’t match peak demand and nothing after 4 p.m. till 8 the next morning, — but that the sunny areas are far from where the customers are. The longest transmission line I have any passing knowledge about is the HVDC line from Hydro-Québec’s James Bay dams to Montréal, about 600 miles. Albuquerque to New York City is three times as far.
2) “Several orders of magnitude”
For the solar insolation impinging on the upper atmosphere to get turned into electricity it has to strike a solar panel located on land and then be photoelectrically converted at 17% efficiency. The reference cited by Max Blancke imagined 22,000 square miles. I’m going to bump this up to 31,200 square miles to allow the necessary “electrification of everything” and meet the demands for electricity of arriving immigrants. The Southwest desert is the very best 1% of the surface area of the contiguous United States. If the effective solar insolation of the U.S. was, say 5 (“several”) orders of magnitude greater than demand instead of just two, this would equate to 31.2 square miles of panels being adequate if all the insolation was captured and turned into electricity. Clearly the vast majority of solar photons reaching the earth’s upper atmosphere are lost uselessly (other than for heating the planet and for photosynthesis) and can never be turned into electricity. And this doesn’t even count the energy that goes into the oceans that cover 70% of the planet, again not accessible to us for electricity generation.
It’s an interesting exercise to try to imagine what fraction of the land area would have to be covered in solar panels of Canada, the U.K., northern Europe, Russia, China, and Australia to provide their entire electrical needs. The U.K. or Norway probably the most. The Maghreb/Sahel would probably need the least. But I’m sure it’s more than 0.001% in of all of them.
Big difference between “100 square miles” and “100 miles square”.
Now add in the environmental impact of that and the red tape to build it.
Regarding extreme taxation of fossil fuel companies: we all understand that taxes are not paid by corporations, correct? They are paid by the consumer. It may be an effective way to reduce consumption by pricing the use of fossil fuels much higher, but it isn’t going to hurt the corporations. Corporations are simply an organized way of processing goods using raw materials and intellectual ability. They aren’t inherently good or bad. People may make bad decisions in those corporations, but a corporation per se is only an organization structure.
Note: higher minimum wages also lead to higher prices on goods, especially in commodities that rely on unskilled workers doing a high amount of human-based processing, such as fast food or some manufactured goods. Increasing minimum wage is good for the workers who get the higher wage, bad for the ones who lose their job to the new kiosk system set up in the area formerly used for queuing up to the cash register.
Just a footnote: those 10,000–31,200 square miles of desert Southwest to be PV-panelled consist of the USA’s largest and most intact, functioning native ecosystem. Endemics galore and 1000+-yo plants are common.
I care about politicians who think it is their job and their right to determine how other people live. American politics has become a contest to see who imposes their values on society. We have more government than we need and more than is safe. It has ceased to be accountable.
Well said.
I feel the same as you about Kamala Harris.
But I would rather vote for her than for Trump and Vance, I see Vance as more dangerous than Trump and that says a lot. being a woman with a daughter who is 20 Vance and Trump are a terrible choice.
Israel is important to me and the rise of antisemitism but so is Woman’s rights. This election is so hard for me. This will come down to her running partner.
The laws of physics have certainly determined the outcome of the election, but we have to pretend that we have free will in order to survive. Though I agree with everything Jerry says, I will gladly vote for Harris, not even holding my nose, even if the Dems choose, say, Manchin for VP. No one is worse than Trump; even half the Gop is better than Trump. I voted for Nader when I discovered that Clinton was a closet Republican, but not this time — I will vote for the Harris ticket no matter what, and I will not regret it.
It’s a conundrum. If we don’t have free will, we don’t get to choose to believe whether we have it or not.
Personally, I find that I believe something, do not believe something, or actively disbelieve that something.
In that vein, my wife asks me why, if I do not think they have free will, I am so disgusted by creationists. Because I have no choice.
I don’t have to pretend to have a belief in free will.
The free will debate is not about whether we make choices or not, but I agree it often devolves into that.
I agree, but would change one sentence: “Vance…has proved to be somewhat of a drag on the ticket”–changing “somewhat of a” to “a huge.”
Love Letter to America & World Thought Police
Thomas D. Schuman
Alias /pen name for Yuri Bezmenov
1984
W.I.N. Almanac Panorama
ISBN 978-0-93509013-0
OCLC 19468210
PDF Edited by Daniel Studzinski 2016
ia802207.us.archive.org/3/items/love-letter-america/love-letter-america.pdf
“No matter how many problems you think
the U.S. may have, believe me when I say that they are nothing in comparison to the troubles you will experience if the U.S. continues to agree and sympathize with communist/socialist doctrines.
I have made my choice to be with you, the nation I love. I have risked my life like many others, to tell you of my life and experiences within a Communist state. You have nothing to risk by listening to me and making up your mind as to whether I am a “cold war paranoiac”, as your media calls me, or whether my message makes sense. The choice is yours.”
I don’t think there’s any chance that the Communist Party USA will win the election, seeing as how they don’t even have a candidate on the ballot. Unless you somehow think that the Democrats are communists?
“I understand, I sense that you’re tired. But you have not yet really suffered the terrible trials of the 20th century which have rained down on the old continent… You’re tired, but the Communists who want to destroy your system are not; they’re not tired at all.”
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I’m as anti-communist as you please. But I will not catastrophize about them any time in the near future.
“As of 2023, no Communist Party member has been elected to office in the [US] federal government.” — Wikipedia
When the first openly CPA candidate gets elected to the US House, I’ll maybe begin to think about worrying.
Bravo
👏👏
I agree the campaign should be about issues.
Let’s take the issue of immigration. For years, Democrats have promoted lax border policies on the theory that it will win them “Latinx” votes. What they have discovered is that their theory was wrong; Hispanics by and large want a fair immigration system and a secure border. Don’t you think asking Latinos how they feel about border policy and illegal immigration should be a part of the discussion of the issue of immigration?
I agree that Trump is being an idiot by questioning the identity of a biracial person (“Is chocolate milk milk or chocolate? Which is it? Is a cheeseburger meat or cheese? Which is it?”). You might think Trump’s idiocy is unrelated to policy, but I don’t. He believes some countries are sh*tholes and wants to keep migrants from those countries out. He wants to raise punitive tariffs on foreigners he dislikes. And Trump sells himself as the champion of “forgotten” workers in the Rust Belt – that’s why he wants America to burn more coal. Don’t you think focus groups of biracial people in the Rust Belt might make sense as a part of the discussion over those policies?
I live in a predominantly Mexican American part of town. The neighbors I speak to about current events/politics despise the open borders we had for most of the current administration. We laughed when Biden came out, just before the election, and “fixed” the open borders that for the previous 3 years he’d insisted weren’t broken. I’m surrounded by hard working middle class (lower middle) brown people who resent the influx of illegal border crossers. They are voting Republican. And it’s not because they’re almost exclusively Catholic. They practice their faith in their churches and within their families. They can’t be played by religious pandering from either side. They don’t like abortions and they don’t have abortions. Their politics is bread and butter. They want to live in a clean, orderly, law abiding society, work their jobs and relax with their families.
The laws of physics haven’t determined squat. I really dislike this sense of inevitable fatalism in any direction that our side appears to have embraced. The future is undecided when human decisions are involved (maybe less so at the individual level) especially at the group level because new information can quickly change opinions among groups. If Trump and Vance keep saying racist trash, Harris probably wins. If the stock market tanks in the next 3 months (it’s at all time highs losing almost 4-5% in the past week with record deficit spending, high inflation, greatest consumer credit card/auto loan/school loan debt in US history) and Trump wins. Or some major scandal breaks that sinks one of the campaigns and while it might not flip voters in these polarized times, could dissuade them from showing up to vote. If you think that’s improbable, think again because in just the last month, Trump dodged assassination by one inch and president Biden vacated the presidency 5 months before the election after a bad debate. Physics might determine that the Earth ends in heat death but it doesn’t decide elections.
Sorry, but since you are pronouncing on what you don’t like, I will say that I really dislike the misunderstanding of determinism in your post, a misunderstanding that pervades it. What makes you think that predictability is equivalent to determinism? Have you considered that what you see as “unpredictable” WOULD be predictable if we have perfecct information, which we don’t and never will. Predictability is not the point; whether physics is the only cause of human behaviors is.
And as for saying “the laws of physics haven’t determined squat”, by “squat” do you include what happens when people are competing at billiards. Or are our neurons goverened by a set of laws different from those governing the movement of billiard balls? How are our neurons, which are physical objects, somehow free from the laws of physics?
I recommend you read “Free Will” by Sam Harris or, if you are ambitious, “Determined” by Robert Sapolsky.
Sorry, didn’t mean to come off snarky. I have read Harris’s Free Will and haven’t read Sapolsky but have listened to numerous interviews with him. Yes we live in a determined world and I don’t think we have libertarian free will. I took your concluding paragraph to suggest the election outcome is predetermined but maybe you’re not implying that. Do you mean to say that the future is determined (i.e. the election outcome) or simply that all things are determined so “what will be will be”?
Our neurons are not free from the laws of physics. We could only do what we did. We will do what our brains are instructing in the moment (at very short timescales but over seconds, new stimuli can alter our intent and even change our decisions) which is still deterministic. Thus we don’t “change” our minds in the physics violating sense but our minds may be changed for us by environment and random events which we still have no hand in. I don’t think the future is predetermined and apologies if you aren’t suggesting that it is.
Retired Navy officer Jim Wright wrote a column discussing Republican policy a few days ago. Certainly worth your time to read.
Democracy is messy and there will never be a perfect candidate, but thinking about what the choices are for us I support keeping a Republic verses a Theocracy.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid07h6ewvphMcqHFSfiMNGBpjzGst3KJxoD9KMGjeKXHYaV3nKq42UFrux2yKKYWmVzl&id=100000762374540&mibextid=Nif5oz
Keeping a republic? For years the authoritarian Left has been attacking at least the following:
freedom of speech
rule of law (vs rule by mob)
due process
separation of powers (e.g., they want the Supreme Court and President to legislate)
that the Constitution is a legal document at all (“living document” nonsense)
concept of citizenship (e.g., they have openly tried to let non-citizens vote)
They have already succeeded in undermining these fundamental principles. Harris appears to be one of the most enthusiastic supporters of their efforts.
Long ago, Bishop Berkeley of English fame proved there is no material world. It, being the cosmos, is all in our minds. Dr. Samual Johnson refuted the good Bishop by kicking a rock. Arguing the point can easily lead one from a slippery sloop down into a rabbit hole of the problems of empiricism and idealism, a dispute still not resolved.
But, Johnson had a point. And I view the free will debate in the same way. If you act as if rocks aren’t “real” then you are dead in no time. Going out for six pack and you’re dead the second you step off the curb in front of speeding busload of Trump supporters heading to the border to kill immigrants. A sad death, indeed.
Well, try to live thinking there is no free will. How are you going to live differently? Sit unmoving until you starve to death? My guess is you’ll behave just like you do today. Maybe you’ll mentally judge people less, but you’ll still act as if you judge them. Like will you step in front of that bus full of Trump supporters going to the border to kill people because you know they don’t mean it and can’t help themselves? A sad death, indeed. Or will you judge they are mean enough to kill you too?
I’m voting for Kamala either because my neurons are firing at the end of a long incomprehensible string of prior events, or because Trump is evil. Really, it makes no never-mind.
Sorry but you clearly haven’t read my posts on this subject. That’s not your fault, as you’re probably new. But I’d go back and read, were I you, how I do live differently thinking that there’s no free will, and explaining how and why.
Also, I feel the justice system needs substantial reforming in view of the fact that a criminal could not do other than commit the crime That does NOT mean that we shouldn’t punish criminals.
Of course you feel that when you check a box on the ballot, you could have done otherwise, but the facts of science (read Sapolsky) militate against it. Saying that you feel you have free will, and it makes no difference to you if you don’t, doesn’t mean that other people feel differently, as I do when I said the remark above.
By the way, I’m not dead. All of us FEEL we have free will most of the time, but when I think about it, yes, it changes my attitude towards life, towards other people, and to aspects of society like the judicial system. But feeling like you have free will is not the same as saying you really do have libertarian free will.
That’s the end of this discussion for now; I’d urge those who maintain that determinism doesn’t guide our acts to read Harris’s or Sapolsky’s book. And do NOT say.that because it makes no difference to you, then it makes no difference to PCC(E).
I am quite certain that there is no free will and I live just as I always have, including before I ever thought about the subject.
Where is this “will” and how exactly does it cause changes in your brain that cause changes in your behavior?
I like one of Sam Harris’s simple thought experiments:
Think of any city in the world.
Now think of a different city.
Where was the idea of that city before you were conscious of it? In what way did you “choose” it, when it was unconscious to you before you became aware of it? Say you thought of two cities (for the second part of the process) and decided between them. Where did the ideas for the two cities come from? You have no idea. So in what way could you have “chosen” them?
All of our consciousness arises from processes in our brains, most of (all of?) which we are not conscious of.
And degrees of freedom as to our available choices based on our history and experience. Someone who knows the names of 1,000 cities has more freedom of choice than someone who knows just 100. An interesting question is ‘do you really have access to all 1,000 in the moment when making a decision?’ Probably not, nor do you think about which ones will occur to you, they just do. Thus, even the available menu of choices seems to be highly constrained within each individual and within a short decision making timeframe. Another salient Harris point (that surely didn’t originate with him) is “how could you ever choose what never occurred to you?” Not possible.
And how exactly did it “occur to you”? It was in your neurons somewhere, where you can’t access it. The reasons for it occurring to you are not consciously available to you. So in what way did you “choose” it?
The feeling that you think you are choosing is the feeling our brain gives us when it makes decisions.
When Biden announced his plans to run again I thought, and voiced to several friends and acquaintances, that Biden running again was a disaster and it was as good as handing the presidency back to Trump. Anyone advising him should have told him the same thing.
Now that Biden has bowed out of the election I have developed a conspiracy theory, which is mine (at least I haven’t heard anyone but me voice it):
Biden and everyone around him knew that he could not get re-elected from the start, and he had no intention of actually running. The party high-ups wanted Harris to be the candidate but they also knew that she wouldn’t win a primary battle. So they had Biden announce he was seeking re-election so that he could bow out later and it would essentially force the ticket to have Harris as the Democratic candidate because no-one was going to primary against their incumbent.
Thoughts?
That is a fine conspiracy theory, but I don’t think that Biden could have come up with that himself, and such a huge secret would have to be known by quite a few people who manage operations in his cabinet. It could never stay secret for long.
Why not?
Or maybe Harris thought of it. For this particular conspiracy to work, there only have to be two people involved: Biden and Harris.
More lite relief, perhaps Harris is good at delegating…
It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad, world! The Trump team doesn’t know how to deal with Harris so they resort to business as usual: insults and other stupid stuff. On the other hand, Harris did not “earn” the nomination, she doesn’t seem to be making good noises regarding Israel, she’s too woke, and her intellect doesn’t impress me. On balance I think that she will do less damage than (mentally ill) Trump. One can only hope that, if she wins, she will be have people around her—including the Vice President—who can bring balance to her governance.
I’m not necessarily optimistic, but I have more hope for a Kamala Harris Presidency than for another Trump sh*tshow. It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future. The molecules are just living their molecular lives and determining whether our lives will be joyful or ruined. The calculations (at the molecular level) are too complex for Windows 10, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Have a great time in South Africa!
I have not looked at the comments above (I will). I think the most fixable part of the Democratic nomination was to have a snap primary to let the voters decide who would be the Democratic candidate. The other problems with the current candidate cannot be fixed. But even that issue could not be fixed very well. Is a snap primary even possible within the Democratic Party process? Who would want to step up? A list of popular names is one thing, but those individuals would have to really want to run in great haste. To me, a snap primary feels more democratic. But in practical terms would be a mess, and anyone besides Kamala would have to assemble their own team, get people out to every state, and get millions of $ in donations fast.
I think you’ve managed to talk yourself out of wanting a snap primary!
Do we ever get an ideal candidate? I don’t think so. So either way, we have to cast a vote for one we don’t especially like. So just vote against the one you dislike more. That’s generally a pretty easy choice. I’ve certainly made mine.
The recent experience in the UK of letting the general membership of the party vote on the leader tends to suggest that it is a very bad idea. The Conservative Party membership managed to select the catastrophic Liz Truss and the venal and all round lying cad Boris Johnson. In roughly the same time frame, the Labour Party selected the utterly useless Jeremy Corbyn.
The problem is, I think, that the ordinary party members look for a candidate that appeals to them, not realising that a prospective leader needs more than just their vote ands an actual leader needs a degree of competence. As I understand it, the US system is even more radical than the idea of letting the entire party membership vote for the candidate: just about anybody can register and vote in the primaries. This is not a good system for finding good candidates that can win elections where the electorate is the whole population.
I’ve said this before; but: I would vote for a corpse before I’d vote for Trump. For the reasons Jerry gives in describing him.
I, too, wasn’t enthusiastic for K. Harris. But, once she is formally nominated, I will do what I can to help her get elected.
I think her woke tendencies are much less of a risk than Trump’s amoral and authoritarian ones, and much easier to curb.
Excellent commentary. I too, am not enthused with the options, but both my wife and a dear friend keep challenging me to name another qualified Democrat that the party could put forth presently, and I find it difficult to do so. None of the options they offer as possibilities do I find satisfactory. If I had to choose, I would go with Hakeem Jefferies, but neither of them consider him a viable option. I have even suggested Pete Buttigeg, but they consider his being gay a negative. But other than these two, I cannot think of any others at present.
Whitmer
Shapiro
Breshears
Now imagine sympathising with the Republican Party. They have candidates like Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Herschel Walker, who one cannot vote for in good conscience regardless of their political views. There is no discernible quality control anymore; being a conspiracy theorist is no hindrance; identity politics is welcome.
Just say how you hate the left and you’re welcome!
You can also find good candidates within the republican party. I find Thomas Massie to be a pretty reliable voice of sanity and fiscal responsibility. There are many others. I could also point out democrats who are fools. Regarding quality control, there never has been any. Qualification for office is minimal. Emotion guides action and voters vote for who they either like or against who they hate.
Jerry wrote “I’m not sure whethrtHarris once emphasized her Asian ancestry and then her black ancestry at a later time.”
I don’t know her history in detail either. But it is a matter of record that decades ago she attended Howard University and joined a black sorority. That sounds more black than Indian Hindu. To that extent Harris was embracing the black part of her ancestry. Trump’s idea that her blackness is a new development is absurd.
“This is one election when I’m not enthused about either candidate.” Agreed and you’ve put to rather mildly. Meanwhile, safe travels to and from your destination.
“This is one election when I’m not enthused about either candidate.”
I feel your pain. It’s a not a positive choice to make, it’s a negative choice of ‘who is least worst’. I don’t like Harris, but there’s a chance that she could be persuaded over to other views if she wins. With Trump, he would never listen to anyone else or change.
It’s not just the USA struggling to find candidates we can have faith in. Turnout plummeted in the last UK election.
“The Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank found that just 52% of UK adults cast their ballots on 4 July, which is the lowest since the vote was extended to all adults over 21 in 1928.” [Source https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/12/lowest-turnout-in-uk-general-election-since-universal-suffrage-report-shows%5D
The US electoral system still baffles me. I had 8 candidates on my paper at the General Election. None of the main parties represent me so I was able to vote for an independent.
Your link is broken. This is the correct version
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/12/lowest-turnout-in-uk-general-election-since-universal-suffrage-report-shows
Note the lack of %5D at the end.
From what I’ve read and heard, the low UK turnout was due to disgusted Conservative party voters (typically voting Conservative) sitting on their hands (not voting) in disgust, not due to a great new love for Labour.
And the conclusion from those I’ve followed online is that Labour, though they won a huge margin in the Parliament, actually have a very fragile majority.
But, I’m a USian and have to rely on what I read and hear from the UK.
Thanks for fixing the link.
All parties are despised at greater or lesser levels in the UK. In England many hard right Tories switched to Reform UK, which is actually a private company, rather than a political party, they answer to no one. That damaged the Tories.
In Scotland we are more left wing, so Reform UK didn’t get any seats. There’s a lot of anger at the SNP’s lack of progress on independence, and their concentration on genderwoo including laws that have removed women’s rights, with more in the pipeline. The SNP is deluding itself that it lost so many seats because we were trying to get rid of the Tories, but that’s a lie because there were hardly any Tory MPs in Scotland to get rid of. I even know of left wingers that switched from SNP to Tory because the Tories seemed to be the only ones who would protect women’s rights.
Many people who support independence chose not to vote SNP this time in an effort to try and get them back on track. Their numbers in parliament dropped dramatically, but they don’t seem to care, so they’ll probably lose the Holyrood election too.
I can’t comment on Wales or Ireland as I haven’t studied their results.
What you’ve heard is correct. Labour has a huge majority of seats, but based on a very low turnout. If they don’t take action to fix things, they will be out at the next election. Even a small swing will overturn their majority. It will be interesting to see any by-election results in the next few years.
Thank you for your inside information on the UK election. Very interesting.
You can vote for anyone you want to in the USA. You can write-in a vote for anyone.
The US has a dominant 2-party system, not so different from Conservative (corresponds to the Republicans in the USA) and Labour (corresponds to the Democrats in the USA) in the UK. The US system is just much more firmly in the control of the two big parties.
Minor party candidates run every election. You never hear of them because they never have a chance in our winner-take-all election system. There hasn’t been a successful rise of a new party in the USA since the 1850s with the Republican Party. Which, despite its name, the “Grand Old Party”, is younger than the Democrat Party.
The last time an independent party won any Electoral College votes was in 1924, with Robert LaFollette of the Progressive Party.
I should be more familiar with the US system as the whole world is affected by who you vote in. Do you have any recommendations for an ‘idiot’s guide’ website, so I can learn more?
There is no “Democrat Party”. That term is a subtly pejorative epithet/dogwhistle used by opponents of the Democratic Party, i.e. partisan Republicans.
I was going to blame Rush Limbaugh but apparently it goes way back:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)
I understand that point, though I think it only works as an epithet if you get upset about it. Words lose power when they don’t have an effect.
But is it OK to call members of the Democratic party Democrats?
It’s OK with me.
It’s an epithet if it was intended that way. Effects will vary. For me, it has the same effect as ‘Rethuglican’ or Trump’s 3rd-grade nicknames: it makes me question the maturity and seriousness of the speaker.
I’ve always voted Democrat. I’ve never voted Republican. But Democrat Party seems more correct to me. Especially since members are called, “Democrats”.
But the official title is: Democratic Party.
(I also never listened to Rush Limbaugh, unless accidentally exposed at my parents’ house, so I never heard him talk about the Democrats.)
I am baffled about this idea that Kamala Harris was “coronated”. She was already on the ticket. Biden certainly wasn’t going to choose a different VP to run with. When people voted in the primary, they were all well aware of that fact. If Biden died, she would become President. Isn’t it then logical that if Biden decided not to run, she would be the nominee? Why on earth would Democrats risk a contested convention with the potential of televised arguments on the convention floor, when the current VP is such an obvious choice? If it wasn’t her, we would have had months of “democrats in disarray” headlines on every news channel. I’m just extremely thankful that democrats rallied behind her like they did.
“Coronate” may date back to 1623, but no one has used it since. We who have monarchs know they are “crowned” not “coronated.” It seems to have been re-vivified by American media when Charles was crowned and they were unfamiliar with the term, so they recreated “coronate” from “coronation.” And while I’m hitting the quotation marks, I’ll call its usage an “advancement” rather than an “advance.”
It’s that people feel they didn’t get to choose. (And the party can choose anyone that they like. They use the primary election system as one tool for deciding; but they are not obligated to follow those results.)
I voted in the primary in March (Washington) for Biden because there was no other viable candidate. I actually like Dean Phillips; but he didn’t have a chance; and my primary goal is preventing Trump 47. But the Biden I voted for was clearly a figment of our imaginations, as shown on June 27, 2024. Therefore, people feel cheated out of their vote.
Harris is just one amongst many viable candidates. And you can see from this comment thread, many who typically vote Democrat would prefer a different candidate.
A quick series of town hall meetings before the election was suggested. (More primaries would not be practically doable.)
So, in the end, when the town halls idea was rejected, the default is K. Harris. I just hope this process doesn’t suppress the DEM vote, which is absolutely critical. We must have a big turnout.
More or less anything to prevent Trump 47. So, yes, now I am enthusiastically behind Harris.