Super Tuesday open thread

@ Anonymous

So. Worst case and a second Trump term happens- how would the post-Trump recovery happen?

If Trump wins in 2020, there won’t be a recovery. Not in 2024, not ever.

We can already see the cracks beginning to spread. Covid-19 is something competent governance could deal with in their sleep. Even the Obama administration, hobbled as it was by Republican treachery, could have easily dealt with it on US soil and been a big help in organizing global efforts to prevent a pandemic. This administration, on the other hand, has actively made things worse.

Let’s look at US as a ship, and the current/coming challenges as icebergs. Right now, the ship’s captain is hate tweeting from head about how icebergs are a liberal hoax invented to besmirch his spotless command record. The first officer would really like to order the ship to turn away from the icebergs, but there might be woman on the bridge, and he can’t find Mother to chaperone him. The rest of the bridge crew has never been to sea before, and hasn’t even figured out what the big funny wheel with all the pegs on it does yet. The one semi-competent sailor among them is busy loading brown children into a lifeboat that he’s drilled full of holes. The rest of the ship’s crew (being the senate and, until 2018, the house) has been busy shaking down the poor passengers and loading the wealthy ones into lifeboats. They seem to be unaware that there’s no one coming to rescue any of us.

When icebergs like plagues, famines, and natural disasters rise up before us we’re going to plow right into them. Now, the USA is a big, powerful ship, so we can handle a couple of hits before we really start to take on water, but there aren’t just a couple of icebergs in our path. There are hundreds, born of climate change and general human neglect of pressing problems, and we’re heading straight into them. Covid-19 is one. The likely economic disruptions from it are another. The famines in South and Central America that have been driving refugees to our borders are yet another. The fires in Australia and Brazil, the rise of fascism around the globe, the guarantee of future terror attacks; the list goes on forever, and we just keep plowing straight into them.

The absolute hash we’ve made of handling the current pandemic and its economic consequences is we in the US noticing that our toes are wet. A fair number of people have actually already drowned, but the stewards have been putting on a good front, so most of the passengers haven’t noticed that bit. But now everyone’s feet are wet, and that’s a little hard to ignore.

We’re not doomed yet. A competent captain with a decent crew can still set us on a survivable course, but if we keep going on like this for 4 more years? We’re sunk. Now, I’m not saying that the country will be at the bottom of the sea in 2024, but the damage we’ll sustain from ignoring massive, system problems like climate change until at least 2024 will not be survivable. We might even plug along for a few more decades, but we’ll sink in the end. Oh, did I forget to mention that our ship has thousands of nuclear weapons, and an extremely antagonistic attitude to everyone who isn’t our enthusiastic supporter? Yeah. We’ll find someone else to blame when we sink, and we’ll take the rest of the world with us. That’s just who the USS USA is.

Now, who would make a good captain to lead us through these dire straits?

Captain Warren knows the seas. Not only has she sailed them, she’s memorized every chart, map, and projection. She knows how to pick a competent crew, and keeps a cool head under pressure. She could tell you the mass of a glacier with a glance at its tip, how best to steer around them, and how to most efficiently pump the water out of the ship. She’ll court martial the worst scoundrels of the old command and toss them in the brig where they belong. Captain Warren could set us right.

Captain Sanders is a crusty old salt. He knows the seas like the back of his hand and, even if he doesn’t set as much stock in charts, he need only glance at the stars above to guide the ship. He may be a bit old-fashioned, but he’ll lash himself to the wheel to steer us around the glaciers and bellow orders to the bucket brigade until we’re dry and sailing smooth. If nothing else, he seems to have knack for inspiring volunteers. Captain Sanders could pull us through.

Captain Biden knows ships. He’s been on ships like this for umpteen million voyages and, dammit, it’s a about time he took command. Oh, things seem a little rough now, but we’re probably through the worst of the ice by now, right? And the crew just needs a little talking to from their old buddy Joe so that they’ll straighten up and do right.

Captain Joe (as he insists on being called) does, if nothing else, understand that it’s best not to hit glaciers, and that it’s not ideal to have people complain of wet feet. He’ll probably keep us from sinking any further, but people will still have wet feet, and his buddy-buddy routine with the worst elements of the crew won’t make him popular with the passengers. Expect a mutiny in four years, and for the mutineers to put an even worse bunch of cutthroats in charge than the current batch.

Captain Bloomberg is an expert in boats. After all, he’s bought enough of them, and to own a thing is to be an expert in a thing. In fact, he’s going to go right up to the bridge with his checkbook and buy this boat too! He’ll set this whole thing right, you’ll see. (“Captain” Bloomberg was tossed overboard before he could reach the bridge.)

Like so many others, I am VERY disappointed.

I may be missing something, but according to the Guardian, so far only 963 of 3979 delegates have been awarded to the respective candidates. So isn’t it all still to play for?

@Moggie : as a foreigner, Warren look like a watered-down Bernie, and her various missteps are better documented than the one of Bernie Sanders.

She is also not terribly charismatic, unlike Bernie Sanders once again.

@Moggie
I could be way off about this, but as a Massachusetts resident (and I voted for Warren) I think it comes down to a few things:
1. Sexism. Warren is a woman, and many people won’t vote for her either because they don’t like the idea of a woman as president or because they think other people won’t (which is still sexist).
2. Bernie strips away a lot of votes that would have gone to Warren. He ran in 2016 and has more name recognition and a wider pre-existing support base left over.
3. All the smears from dirtbag leftists probably have an effect.

I dont think it is surprising that bernie sanders is popular in Texas, in 2016 many of his supporters were people supporting a Democrat for the first time. After all, after 2008 recession areas which were industrial areas and support Republicans got a lot of suffering so a far left candidate who supports striking and fairness will make progress for working class voters, if those voters dont blame obama and then say that is the fault of all democrats and not george bush bailing out banks and the banking system. I remember watching something about teacher strikes and rednecks in west Virginia and how the activity of the strikes and also making collectives in other places to survive recession made more people very far left, too far left for hillary. And though they probably didnt read Marx or understand communist theory, they lived in a time which made them more left through suffering. This is probably why they didnt think critically that Bernie isnt really very far left at all. But this is probably also why after he dropped out they didnt want to vote for hillary because she was too close to centre for them. But I cant explain why people who supported bernie voted for trump after. Except maybe some of them wanted to believe what he said about making industry again and making jobs, even though that was always a lie.

@Diego Duarte
The great irony is that in America, many of that generation were a part of the 1960s counterculture and environmentalist movement. They have nonetheless decided that the environment is less important than the profit margin.

@Vucodlak
As tempting as it may be, assuming absolute catastrophe won’t help anyone actually pick up the pieces in the end. We need some kind of contingency plan just in case history repeats itself.

And it wouldn’t be the first time a civil war happened in the US, if it came to that.

Re: climate change apathy, the US is a capitalist hellscape that no one wants to challenge. First of all, lot of Americans, after being victims of a decades-long Koch-funded propaganda campaign, literally just refuse to believe it’s real. Others, usually libertarians types, delude themselves into thinking that some technocrat will drop down from the sky and generously innovate away impending catastrophe. Even liberals are no better in practice, because they aren’t willing to advocate for the necessary change, because in order to do that you have to be willing to combat capitalism and the moneyed interests killing us all. Any political movement willing to do this is written off as giving impossible promises, so they fall back on the same ineffectual bureaucratic policies that haven’t worked and won’t work.

Also, I feel like it’s hard for human beings in general to conceptualize the scope of this crisis, given that the full brunt of it isn’t upon us yet and it’s totally unprecedented. Americans and Westerners especially are insulated by our wealth from the worst effects.

Also, I feel like it’s hard for human beings in general to conceptualize the scope of this crisis, given that the full brunt of it isn’t upon us yet and it’s totally unprecedented. Americans and Westerners especially are insulated by our wealth from the worst effects.

Exactly, on both counts. As a species, we’re short-sighted and struggle to see the long-term past a few weeks (let alone on the scale of decades), and not having to deal with the worst of it makes it seem even less real.

Capitalism certainly makes it all even worse, but in a way, we were practically doomed to do something like this eventually. It’s the price of being intelligent yet never developing the ability to think ahead. Makes you wonder if our “superior human intellect” was really worth it, doesn’t it?

Former DNC Chair tells current RNC Chair to stay out of Dem primaries in no uncertain terms.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donna-brazile-tells-rnc-chairwoman-ronna-mcdaniel-to-go-to-hell-on-fox-news

@Nagalfar
Bah, with luck that may hurt him rather than help him. An endorsement from a blatant plutocrat with hardly any followers is not what I would call beneficial.

@Anonymous
The real issue is this means that Bloomberg will pour tons of his own money into Biden’s campaign. That will help Biden.