2020 USA presidential election

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Michael Moriarity

In this context, when I said "left" I meant "anti-capitalist" or at least "doubtful about capitalism". By that definition, Greenwald is nowhere near left as far as I know.

I don't challenge any of your statements about Glenn's excellent work over the years. I followed him since his first month blogging, then at Salon and so on. I think the reason he attracted a lot of left readers like me back in the aughts was because he was willing and able to condemn the injustices of the Bush administration in a way that the mainstream media, and most of the early left blogosphere could or would not. I have, however, become less enthusiastic about much of his work since 2016.

melovesproles

I have, however, become less enthusiastic about much of his work since 2016.

Fair enough. I think he is still doing a lot of good work. I hope he continues to do it and not become obsessed with grudges against those he has fallen out with. I thought Parene in the video you linked did a good job of explaining what is happening. It really does sound a lot like what happened with Hitchens.

josh

NDPP wrote:

Megyn Kelly's emotional and wide-ranging interview with Tara Reade

https://youtu.be/4dBdfUudsIk

 

'Biden's campaign paid $2.2 m to make problems like me go away' - Tara Reade

https://youtu.be/tQPScuZxZFw

"Tara Reade talks about 'silencing and smearing rotation' after coming forward following her experience with Joe Biden...'My point is sexual assault and sexual harassment are non-partisan. What I see the DNC doing is not just elevating a predator but enabling them and using #MeToo, as a mantle to cover. It's like a wolf in sheep's clothing. With the Republicans you know what you get. With the Democrats they're hiding behind womens movements and they're not sincere."

 

Bombshell Developments: Court Docs Corroborate Tara Reade Claims

https://youtu.be/GFuvHzzh1i4

"She calls on Biden to drop out."

Sorry NDPP, even the Republicans dropped that one.  As you dredge up 5 month old news in your desperate attempt to defeat Biden.

NDPP

I make no 'desperate attempt to defeat Biden', but wish to point out that under the actually existing US duopoly scam liberals so love to pretend is democracy, the contest is between two  criminally corrupt elite vampires, not Trump as Hitler vs a kindly 'Democratic' uncle. Joe Biden is every bit as much of an imperialist monster and threat to world peace as Donald Trump.

NDPP

Greenwald's Intercept Resignation Exposes the Rot in All News Media

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/greenwald-intercept-resignation

"...People will cite all sorts of reasons for The Intercept running cover for intelligence agencies and powerful politicians, including its Omidyar funding and the possiblity of government infiltration. But I think the primary source of the decay of The Intercept is much more basic: having large, well-funded news media outlets simply is not conducive to good reporting...

When you take all these factors together and throw them together into a large media outlet full of journalists, our primitive impulses to conform with the pack kick in and the consensus worldview has a much easier time overtaking critical thought even further than it already has.

All this to say, decentralization is going to have to be the way forward for good critical journalism. There are so few reporters who haven't been digested by the conformity conveyor belt, and if you stick them with the groupthink herd they're going to be squeezed until they either fall in line or leave. Stop trying to throw the few alive ones in with the zombies and let them go out on their own or in small groups; they'll be much harder to influence and they can do a lot more damage to the lie factory..."

NorthReport
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NDPP

What Would A Democratic Party Really Change?

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/10/what-would-a-democratic-party-real...

"Pepe Escobar is as pessimistic about a Harris (Biden) administration as I am. The incoming foreign policy team would be the return of the blob that waged seven wars during the Obama/Biden administration...Domestic policies under a Democratic president will likewise see no substantial difference. As Krystal Ball remarked, 'my prediction for the Biden era is that very little actually happens,' says Ball. 'Democrats are very good at feigning impotence. We saw this in the SCOTUS hearings as well. They're very good at coming up with reasons why, 'oh those mean Republicans, like we want to do better healthcare and we want left wages, but oh gosh, Mitch McConnell, he's so wiley, we can't get it done.'

'Change' was an Obama marketing slogan to sell his Republican light policies. A real change never came. The Harris (Biden) administration must be seen in similar light. I therefore agree with the sentiment with which Escobar closes his piece:

In a nutshell, Biden-Harris would mean The Return of the Blob with a vengeance. Biden-Harris would be Obama-Biden 3.0. Remember those seven wars. Remember the surges. Remember the kill lists. Remember Libya. Remember Syria. Remember 'soft-coup' Brazil. Remember Maidan. You have all been warned."

NorthReport
Cody87

NDPP wrote:

Joe Biden is every bit as much of an imperialist monster and threat to world peace as Donald Trump.

The real threat is the media and much of the anti-war left going back to sleep, like what happened under Obama.

Joe might actually be held to task, until he resigns or is forced out, but there is no chance President Harris will be held accountable even to the degree that Trump has.

Michael Moriarity

Cody87 wrote:

NDPP wrote:

Joe Biden is every bit as much of an imperialist monster and threat to world peace as Donald Trump.

The real threat is the media and much of the anti-war left going back to sleep, like what happened under Obama.

Joe might actually be held to task, until he resigns or is forced out, but there is no chance President Harris will be held accountable even to the degree that Trump has.

Good point, Cody, but I think the left wing of the Dem party is much stronger post Bernie than it was when Obama won and dismantled his organization (or merged it into the DNC). Today, we have The Squad plus Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Kara Eastman, and quite a few more. Plus, the urgency of climate change is not going away. I am mildly optimistic about the chances of progressive movements in the U.S. under Biden/Harris.

NorthReport

Is Trump closing the gap?

NDPP

Left Forum: Beyond the Election: What Comes Next?

https://youtu.be/xqevNJ3nAL0

With Cornel West, Laura Flanders, Chris Hedges and Richard Wolff, organized by Left Forum and Democracy at Work.

'All the 'revolutions' perfect the machine instead of smashing it." - Marx

"I don't think that Joe Biden has any real ideological, moral or intellectual core. He has shifted with the winds. He's abjectly served corporate power his entire time in public office. They used to call him 'Senator Credit Card'. He's an architect of the endless wars, a cheerleader for the endless wars in the Middle East. He passed the Omnibus Crime bill that exploded the prison population. He has called throughout his political career for cuts in social security. He was a friend of segregationists.

He was anointed by the corporate and oligarchic elites who can live with Trump but prefer someone who has more decorum and is less of an embarrassment to the empire. But that means that the very engine of corporate capitalism, which has already destroyed most democratic institutions and turned the economy into a mafia state will accelerate. And that gets back to Marx. Because when you marry a rotten system with a corrupt ruling class you raise the possibility of a very seismic and dangerous political movement. So I have not voted for a Democrat and will not do so. I voted for the Green Party and that's what I've done since before 2000.

I think what we will see if Biden wins - and again I don't think in any way that's foreordained - but if Biden wins, we've already created such a media gulf and bifurcated the country into antagonistic tribes that no longer have the capacity to communicate, or have a common narrative...I think the country is unravelling. I think Biden is a disastrous choice. I think that violence, with or without Trump is going to be ratcheted up..."  - Hedges -

NDPP

Biden Family Corruption Bombshell

https://youtu.be/sHTop3Ul5LA

"Dan Ball interview with investigative journalist Matt Tyrmand."

 

Election 2020: Pie's Prediction

https://youtu.be/IdnHfYbr1cQ

"Pie is dismayed at yet another awful national debate on both sides and predicts the result."

bekayne

NDPP wrote:

Biden Family Corruption Bombshell

https://youtu.be/sHTop3Ul5LA

"Dan Ball interview with investigative journalist Matt Tyrmand."

OAN, really.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/bannon-protege-loses-case-against-...

NDPP

Sorry but neither the NYT nor Washington Post nor CBC makes any mention of it beyond 'Russian disinformation'. How curious people like bekayne tolerate all manner of establishment media spouting all sorts of errant, awful nonense yet never make a peep.

NorthReport
Michael Moriarity

Sorry, I couldn't find it in the lying mainstream media, so I had to use the only source that was covering the story. Oops, this is actually the source.

NorthReport

Once has to ask what one's purpose really is in supporting Trump and everything he represents

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/01/democracy-fascism-global-t...

NDPP

Glenn Greenwald RESIGNS from the Intercept Over Censorship (and vid)

https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1322965012139413514

"Jimmy Dore and I discuss Glenn Greenwald's resignation from The Intercept and the sad fact that an 'adversarial' website is edited by a Russiagater. A stark illustration of how Russiagate has degraded US media."

 

NorthReport

Biden staff call 911 after bus swarmed by Trump supporters on Texas highway

 

Austin American-Statesman

AUSTIN, Texas – A caravan of vehicles displaying Trump campaign flags and signs swarmed a Biden campaign bus between San Antonio and Austin on Friday afternoon, leading the Democrats on board to call 911 and cancel the Austin close of their “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” tour.

According to the Biden campaign, the vehicles surrounded the bus, trying to slow it down in the middle of the highway or run it off the road. Biden staff notified 911 and local law enforcement, and, they reported, local law enforcement helped the bus to reach its Austin destination.

The FBI is investigating the allegations, the Wall Street Journal and Texas Tribunehave reported.

Neither Former Vice President Joe Biden nor California Sen. Kamala Harris were on the bus, CNN reports.

 

 

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/31/trump-...

NorthReport

Dr. Scott Atlas, White House Coronavirus Task Force adviser, apologizes for interview with Russian propaganda network

 

New York (CNN Business)Dr. Scott Atlas, an adviser on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, apologized after appearing in an interview with Russian state broadcaster RT, just days before Election Day.

In his apology, Atlas claimed he was unaware RT was a registered foreign agent.

RT  is owned by Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti and subsidiary RT America is registered with the US Justice Department as an agent of the Russian government. The Kremlin uses RT to spread English-language propaganda to American audiences, and was part of Russia's election meddling in 2016, according to a 2017 report from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Twitter labeled a video from the Russian-state controlled broadcaster RT as election misinformation on Thursday. YouTube videos posted by RT carry the disclaimer: "RT is funded in whole or in part by the Russian government."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/01/media/scott-atlas-russian-media/index.html

jerrym

It's official what you already strongly suspected: Trump plans to declare premature victory on election night. 

President Trump has told confidants he'll declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he's "ahead," according to three sources familiar with his private comments.

  • That's even if the Electoral College outcome still hinges on large numbers of uncounted votes in key states like Pennsylvania.

Behind the scenes: Trump has privately talked through this scenario in some detail in the last few weeks, describing plans to walk up to a podium on election night and declare he has won.

  • For this to happen, his allies expect he would need to either win or have commanding leads in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Iowa, Arizona and Georgia.

Why it matters: Trump's team is preparing to falsely claim that mail-in ballots counted after Nov. 3 — a legitimate count expected to favor Democrats — are evidence of election fraud.

Details: Many prognosticators say that on election night, Trump will likely appear ahead in Pennsylvania — though the state's final outcome could change substantially as mail-in ballots are counted over the following days. 

  • Trump's team is preparing to claim baselessly that if that process changes the outcome in Pennsylvania from the picture on election night, then Democrats would have "stolen" the election.
  • Trump's advisers have been laying the groundwork for this strategy for weeks, but this is the first account of Trump explicitly discussing his election night intentions.

What they're saying: Asked for comment, the Trump campaign's communications director Tim Murtaugh said, "This is nothing but people trying to create doubt about a Trump victory. When he wins, he's going to say so."

  • Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller predicted that Trump "will be re-elected handily and no amount of post-election Democratic thievery will be able to change the results."

Reality check: Mail-in ballots counted after Election Day as set forth in state-by-state rules are as legitimate as in-person votes recorded on Nov. 3.

  • Many states won't be done counting mail ballots by Tuesday night.
  • In Pennsylvania, state law prevents election officials from counting mail-in ballots before Election Day.
  • Night-of counts may be deceptive. It could be days, if not weeks, before we know who won Pennsylvania. If it's a close race, this could also be true for other states, given the record numbers of Americans who voted by mail this year.
  • Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said on NBC's "Meet the Press" today that there could be 10x as many mail ballots this year than in 2016, "so, yes, it will take longer" to count.
  • "I expect that the overwhelming majority of ballots in Pennsylvania, that's mail-in and absentee ballots, as well as in-person ballots, will be counted within a matter of days," Boockvar said.

What we're watching: Miller, on ABC's "This Week," predicted 290+ electoral votes for Trump on election night, and he claimed Democrats are "just going to try to steal it back after the election."

  • He described any prospective challenges by Democrats as "hijinks or lawsuits or whatever kind of nonsense."

Between the lines: Trump advisers are more optimistic about winning than they were three weeks ago, based on my conversations with multiple senior campaign officials over the past week, including two officials with direct knowledge of sensitive internal data.

  • They said analyses of early-vote totals in battleground states indicate he's doing substantially worse in Iowa and Georgia compared with this point in 2016, but better than expected in Texas, Nevada, North Carolina, Arizona and Wisconsin.
  • Just a few weeks ago, senior Trump advisers were bearish about Wisconsin and had reduced TV advertising there to an insignificant figure. A senior campaign official told me, then, that the state didn't figure in his paths to 270 electoral votes. 
  • But that appears to have changed. In recent days, senior Trump advisers have privately expressed growing optimism about Wisconsin, based on their analysis of early vote data. (https://www.axios.com/trump-claim-election-victory-ballots-97eb12b9-5e35...)
NorthReport

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Nate Silver

 

@NateSilver538

Tired of people framing "Trump will declare victory prematurely" as a media story. Most likely—in part because the White House has telegraphed it so much in advance—the media will be fairly well-prepared. Instead, it's a story about Trump seeking to undermine faith in democracy.

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1322987094093037575

NorthReport

 

Nate Silver

 

@NateSilver538

This is basically what you get if you only use high-quality polls instead of (as 538 does) using all polls but weighting high quality polls more heavily. About 1 point better for Biden on average.

Quote Tweet

Ryan Struyk

@ryanstruyk

· 1h

Latest CNN poll averages in battlegrounds:

AZ: Biden +5

FL: Biden +2 GA:

Biden +3

IA: Trump +2

MI: Biden +9

NC: Biden +4

OH: Tie

PA: Biden +6

TX: Trump +2

WI: Biden +10

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1322982800895725568

NorthReport

Trump's neice

Giuliani's daughter

John McCain's family

If you can't even garner the support of your own family members, etc., what does that say about what you are really like when no one is looking?

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/10/rudy-giulianis-daughter-on-voti...

NorthReport

President Trump's behaviour is seriously making me question whether I ever want to again visit the USA.

U.S. defies basic standards of democratic elections

 

Please chip in to support more articles like this. Support rabble.ca for as little as $5 per month!

 

Karl Nerenberg

October 30, 2020

ANALYSIS

US POLITICS

 Erik (HASH) Hersman/Flickr

The current U.S. election, which reaches its apogee on Tuesday, November 3, transfixes Canadians like no other before it.

We have our own huge challenges here, not the least of which is the surging pandemic, which continues to wreak its most grievous harm on those least able to defend themselves, and the many unresolved issues with Indigenous rights.

But the spectacle south of the border is so frightful most of us have trouble turning our eyes away.

One aspect of the chaotic U.S. electoral process that is entirely foreign to Canadians is the sight of long lines at voting places. We have seen news accounts and television images of people waiting up to 10 hours to vote in the advance polls.

This Canadian reporter has been voting since 1966, in scores of federal, provincial and municipal elections, in two provinces and one territory, and cannot remember ever waiting even as long as half an hour. Perhaps there are readers who have had different experiences.

Long lines and hours of waiting seem to be a perennial fact of life for many Americans. But they are only one symptom of a system so deeply flawed, in so many respects, that it is hard to even describe the U.S. as a democracy.

Canada has its own dodgy history

Now, to be fair, here in Canada we are hardly a perfect model of electoral democracy.

When some, but not all, Canadian women were first granted the right to vote, during the First World War, it was only a sub-group: nurses serving in the military and relatives of soldiers. It took decades before all women got the right to vote, federally and in all provinces. In the case of Quebec, that only happened in 1940.

Most Indigenous people were denied the right to vote until the early 1960s, and it was not until the early 2000s that incarcerated Canadians got the right to vote under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and only after long court battles. 

Even the universal right to vote prior to election day, or the right to get oneself onto the voters' list on election day only came in recent times, in the years following the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982.

And progress in defending and enhancing the right to vote has not been consistent in Canada. At least one recent government openly sought to make it difficult to vote. That was the government of Conservative Stephen Harper, with its notorious and oxymoronically named Fair Elections Act.

Harper's minister of democratic reform, Pierre Poilievre, who now portrays himself as a champion of integrity and ethics in government, shepherded that piece of legislation through Parliament. In the process, he openly attacked the integrity of the non-partisan chief electoral officer, while putting barriers in the way of the young, the poor, the disabled and Indigenous people.

The Justin Trudeau Liberals have rolled back most of Poilievre's law's most odious provisions.

And so, we continue to have a widely respected, properly financed, entirely non-political institution to manage the entire electoral process, federally: Elections Canada. The provinces have similar electoral bodies, completely separate from partisan politics.

The story in the U.S. is completely different.

In the U.S. each state government runs all elections within its own borders, largely as it sees fit, and that includes elections to federal offices. There is no neutral, non-partisan "Elections U.S.A," on the model of our Elections Canada, or the similar bodies that exist in many other countries, such as Germany and the U.K.

Effectively, there are 51 elections going on now in the U.S., one for each state and the capital district, Washington, D.C.

In Canada, as in many other federal democracies, we hold separate elections for federal, provincial and local elections. In the U.S., when they go to the polls, voters have to fill out long ballots that can include state legislators and other state and local offices, in addition to members of the federal house of representatives, senators and the president.

Different rules for different states

The web site fivethirtyeight.com, which analyzes and aggregates polls and provides other election-related information, published an article on how to vote in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Have a look. You will see that no two states have the same rules.

Some have generous early voting provisions; some have none at all. Some states mail absentee ballots to all voters; some do so to only some of the voters; and some mail out none at all. And the rules for voting by mail vary widely, with some states allowing anyone to do so and some only giving mail-in ballots to voters with valid reasons (and the pandemic is not one of them).

 The states even get to control who gets to vote. Take the case of incarcerated people.

A small number of states (two plus the District of Columbia) follow the Canadian model and allow people serving jail time to vote even while they are incarcerated. Sixteen others only deprive prisoners of the right to vote while they are behind bars, but restore it once they have served their time.

In 21 others, released prisoners can be deprived of their right for a certain amount of time following their release, while in 11 states people who serve time for certain crimes are deprived of the right to vote for life.

A referendum in Florida restored the voting rights of so-called felons following their release from prison. Then the Republican state government turned around and imposed new conditions on those citizens, effectively blocking most from voting: it deemed that before they could vote people who had spent time in prison had to pay all outstanding fees and fines.

To make matters worse, the state admits that it does not know, in a great many cases, exactly what that figure is.

Florida is one of the key battleground states in the current election.

Voters must get themselves registered; foxes run the electoral henhouse

On a more mundane level, almost all well-established electoral democracies assure that people eligible to vote get onto the voters' list.

We Canadians do not have to truck down to a local government office and register to vote. Elections Canada takes care of that for us. Parallel provincial agencies take care of the lists for the provinces and municipalities.

And if, on the day of a federal election, we are, for some reason, not on the list, Elections Canada bends over backward to make sure we can vote, making it easy to get on the list, even on the day of the election.

The de facto principle in the U.S. seems to be that it is a privilege rather than a right to vote.

U.S. citizens must take personal initiative to register with local or state offices, sometimes in person. It can be a time-consuming experience, and acts as a barrier to voting for the poor, the young and minority populations. And many states impose stringent time constraints on the registration process. In some, if you are not registered as much as a month before the election you're out of luck.

The U.S. is also an outlier in the way it puts the foxes in charge of the electoral henhouse. The entire election process is not run by non-partisan, disinterested, neutral officials. It is run by partisan political office holders and officials, who have a keen interest in the outcome.

Elected state officials even have the exclusive power to draw the boundaries of all electoral districts, state and federal, and, in many states, they have flagrantly abused their power. Gerrymandering, the creative drawing of district boundaries to favour one party has become a way of life in the U.S.

Until not too long ago, local officials in the former slave states would use their power to effectively deprive Black citizens of the right to vote. They imposed taxes or fees on African-Americans who sought to vote, or subjected them to so-called "literacy tests," which many would inevitably fail.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to get rid of these abuses, and it succeeded in doing so, over time. In 2013 the Supreme Court gutted that act. The right-wing majority, led by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, claimed the act unfairly targeted Southern states. At the time, Scalia's colleague Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, famously, the changes were "like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet."

These days, U.S. politicians (mostly Republicans) resort to a wide variety of voter suppression tactics, some of which started to creep north to Canada during Harper's rule. Penney Kome has reported on all this, and the resistance to it, in the pages of rabble.

Popular democracy is not the aim

Fundamentally, those who wrote the U.S. Constitution more than two centuries ago did not conceive of the process for choosing president as an exercise in popular democracy.

They designed the system so that the state governments, rather than the citizens, decided who should be the chief executive of the federal government.

That's why they created an electoral college, with representatives from each state, which, legally, determines who shall be president. Each state gets a number of electors equal to its total number of representatives in the two bodies of congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate.

House membership is roughly proportional to population. California, the most populous state with about 40 million people, gets 52 house members. Small states, such as Wyoming, with fewer that 600,000 people, get only one. But every state, regardless of population, has two senators, which means every state gets a minimum of three electors.

As an aside, it is worth noting that back in the 18th century, when the founders designed the system, the slave states wanted credit, in calculating their allotment of house representatives, for their slave population, which was as high as 40 per cent in some states.

The constitution thus determined that a Black slave counts as three fifths of a human being, when determining state populations. Slaves did not get three fifths of a vote each, however.

When the results are tallied in the current U.S. election all of the states, save two, will assign all of their electors to the candidate who wins that largest number of votes. The two exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, which assign some of their electors on the basis of the vote in each house district.

It does not help Joe Biden to win huge margins of victory, which he is sure to do, in California or New York state or Illinois. He also will have to win other states, where the election will be much closer. And, as in our first-past-the-post system, winning the popular vote does not guarantee winning the election in the U.S.

Prior to the era of universal suffrage, it was not entirely unusual for candidates to win the presidency without winning the popular vote. That was the case, in the nineteenth century, for John Quincy Adams or Rutherford Hayes, for instance.

In the 20th century, however, the winner of the popular vote always won the election. Then, starting in 2000, that changed.

George W. Bush defeated Al Gore despite losing the popular vote, albeit by a small margin. Four years ago, however, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost two per cent, or nearly three million votes. Donald Trump still won the election, mostly by winning narrow victories in a number of states. Notable among those were three states that border the great lakes: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

In fact, the Republican candidate has only won the popular vote in one presidential election, since 1992, the election of 2004. For Republicans, the goal has become to win by gaming the system rather than appealing a broad segment of the population.

As we watch the election results, we should be mindful of a potential repeat of 2000 or 2016, where the Republicans thread the needle and win the electoral votes in just enough states to carry the electoral college, while losing the overall vote count.

Despite the opinion polls, it remains a scary possibility.

Editor's note, October 30, 2020: A previous version of this story misnamed John Quincy Adams and Rutherford Hayes. They are John Quincy Adams and Rutherford Hayes, not "John Quincy" and "Adams Rutherford Hayes." The story has been corrected.

Karl Nerenberg has been a journalist and filmmaker for more than 25 years. He is rabble's politics reporter.

Image: Erik (HASH) Hersman/Flickr

FURTHER READING

Why the U.S. electoral college is anti-democratic

"The founding fathers were really not inclined to have real popular choice of the people who would run our government," said the late historian Howard Zinn.

U.S. advocates push back against voter suppression ahead of election

Current polls suggest Democratic candidate Joe Biden is on course to win the 2020 election. But polls only matter if Americans can actually vote.

The infection election: from pallbearers to poll watchers

Donald Trump's pandemic response has cast a pall of death and economic calamity over the United States.

ELECTORAL COLLEGE

2020 U.S. ELECTION

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https://rabble.ca/news/2020/10/us-defies-basic-standards-democratic-elec...

NorthReport
NorthReport

Polly Pollster is tracking Electoral College votes and says the gap has widened in Biden's favour in the last week. Polly by the way forecast the 2019 Canadian election and was within 2 seats of a perfect prediction

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A general strike if Trump loses but does not accept the results

My concern is Trump loses the popular vote by 10,000,000 or even more, but still wins the Electoral College

https://www.salon.com/2020/11/01/labor-leaders-propose-a-general-strike-...

NorthReport
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As his re-election chances narrow, Trump seeks to undermine vote

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-11-01/trump-biden-final-sund...

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NDPP

[quote=NorthReport]

Dr. Scott Atlas, White House Coronavirus Task Force adviser, apologizes for interview with Russian propaganda network

 

New York (CNN Business)Dr. Scott Atlas, an adviser on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, apologized after appearing in an interview with Russian state broadcaster RT, just days before Election Day.

In his apology, Atlas claimed he was unaware RT was a registered foreign agent.

RT  is owned by Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti and subsidiary RT America is registered with the US Justice Department as an agent of the Russian government. The Kremlin uses RT to spread English-language propaganda to American audiences, and was part of Russia's election meddling in 2016, according to a 2017 report from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Twitter labeled a video from the Russian-state controlled broadcaster RT as election misinformation on Thursday. YouTube videos posted by RT carry the disclaimer: "RT is funded in whole or in part by the Russian government."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/01/media/scott-atlas-russian-media/index.html

[quote=NDPP]

Do you have any idea how many international interviews the US government spokesman on COVID-19 gives to various news agencies, and networks? Why wouldn't/shouldn't he give one to RT?

"Surprised it took this long for the US center-right opposition to merge COVID panic with Russia hysteria."

https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1322995654835294214

NDPP

Sleepy Joe Gaffe Machine

https://youtu.be/Slm5bvO-_5I

NorthReport
NDPP

CN Live! S2E21: 'A Terrible Choice' (and vid)

https://twitter.com/consortiumnews/status/1323052968615145472

"Chris Hedges, Rick Wolff, Jill Stein and Mike Gravel."

Mobo2000

RE: post 963 (Hi Cody, nice to see you):

"NDPP wrote:

 

Joe Biden is every bit as much of an imperialist monster and threat to world peace as Donald Trump.

The real threat is the media and much of the anti-war left going back to sleep, like what happened under Obama.

Joe might actually be held to task, until he resigns or is forced out, but there is no chance President Harris will be held accountable even to the degree that Trump has."

I believe a Joe Biden presidency will be better for Americans, but I think this put the case a little too lightly.   Biden is likely to be far worse than Trump on US foreign policy and issues of war.    Trump was a bad salesman for war and his widely veering stances and statements on foreign policy issues hamstrung the US empire during his presidency.   It got to a point that even mainstream US "left media" like CNN put pressure on Trump to be more hawkish -- ie. Trump bombing Syria was, to Van Jones, his most presidential moment.

Trump's clumsiness made America less effective on the world stage, and that's a good thing.   Biden returning us to normalacy, to the 7 wars in 8 years pace that Obama set, is a frightening possibility.   

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/11/02/biden-a-war-cabinet/

Michèle Flournoy for Secretary of Defence

Michele Flournoy was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 2009 to  2012 in the Obama administration under Secretaries Robert Gates and Leon Panetta.

Flournoy, in writing the Quadrennial Defense Review during her time as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy under President Clinton, has paved the way for the U.S.’s endless and costly wars which prevent us from investing in life saving and necessary programmes like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. It has effectively granted the US permission to no longer be bound by the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of military force. It declared that, “when the interests at stake are vital, …we should do whatever it takes to defend them, including, when necessary, the unilateral use of military power."  ...

"If a return to “normalcy” means having the same old politicians that are responsible for endless wars, that work for the corporate elite, that lack the courage to implement real structural change required for major issues such as healthcare and the environment, then a call for “normalcy” is nothing more than a call to return to the same deprived conditions that led to our current crisis. Such a return with amplified conditions and circumstances, could set the stage for the return of an administration with dangers that could possibly even exceed those posed by the current one in terms of launching new wars."

NorthReport

The voting prior to November 3 will probably lean in favour of Biden, and the reason for Trump's comments.

We Have Never Had Final Results on Election Day

President Trump has been trying to pre-emptively delegitimize ballots counted after Nov. 3. But states have always counted past election night.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/us/politics/trump-ballot-counting-ele...

NorthReport

I don't follow USA politics that closely, so what will you be looking for on Tueday nite to tell you who is doing best as the returns come in. I have heard that Ohio has been a bellweather state in the past, and the polling there does show a close race.

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