So?

The point isn’t whether it works or not - the point is why it comes to be in the first place - why and how people reach a point at which they embrace it.

And that’s when they come to see that their government is failing them - most often, when it’s serving its own interests and the interests of a wealthy few rather than the interests of the people at large.

And here’s a tip - you can’t combat it by deriding the people who embrace it. If anything, that just makes them double down on it, since, to them, that’s just further evidence that you’re an elitist piece of shit who doesn’t care about them or their needs, so they’re going to turn to these other people over here who (say they) do.

Again, there’s one and only one way to counter populism - governmental reform. The problem is that people see that the government isn’t doing enough to seeve their needs. The solution is for the government to do more to serve their needs.

Populism is a reactionary movement. It doesn’t just spring up out of nowhere - it comes to be specifically if and when there’s a relatively common perception among the people that the government no longer serves their interests.

The solution then is simple and straightforward, at least in principle - all it takes is for the government to institute the necessary reforms to win back the trust and support of the people.

The problem comes because all too many politicians don’t have the necessary empathy, integrity and/or determination to actually do that.

So they have nobody to blame but themselves.

I dunno… in a way, that’s representation in its purest form - angry, stupid Republicans have one of their own in office.

The internet has essentially come full circle.

In the early days, search engines were of dubious quality at best, and the only way to find really good sites was to just poke around and keep your eyes open and hope to stumble across them.

And it’s really pretty much exactly the same today. Search engines are of dubious quality at best, since virtually all of the sites to which they might point us have been warped by money-grubbing corporate owners and/or buried under a flood of morons, assholes and bots, but once again, there are great sites and communities to be found if you just poke around and keep your eyes open.

It’s almost as if the old internet has been recreated in little gaps and out-of-the-way corners of the new one.

Really, it’s an evolution of the concerns I had in the 2020 elections, which have kind of proven out to be completely true: that despite some clear domestic policy successes, he’s more or less out of touch with the fact that he’s playing with an absurdly outdated rule book, and does not seem to understand that the rules have fundamentally changed.

He and the DNC and the Democrat establishment as a whole.

The voters made it clear in 2020 that they didn’t really want him all that much, and arguably the only reason he got the nomination is because the Democrat establishment transparently engineered it by getting all the candidates other than Sanders to all drop out and endorse Biden essentially simultaneously. That gave the establishment the opportunity to push through Biden’s nomination in spite of his glaring weakness as a candidate. They could’ve had a populist to rival Trump, and one that’s notably sane rather than a delusional narcissist and compulsive liar with the emotional maturity of a spoiled five-year-old, but instead they doggedly stuck to the same playbook that in the past brought us such drab losers as Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry, and brought us another drab loser who only barely managed to not lose.

And now here we are, four years down the line, with a drab loser incumbent up against the greatest threat American democracy has ever faced.

The rules clearly changed in 2016. The RNC and the Republican establishment changed to accomodate them (or at least to provide a colorable appearance of doing so). The DNC and the Democrat establishment did not. And now we’re reaping what they sowed.

I would say that the fact that the DNC hasn’t changed is pretty obviously the main problem.

With the exceptions of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, they’ve been offering up nothing but weak, uninspiring establishment hack candidates for decades now. And 2016 was the year when the base finally said that enough was enough, and they wanted an inspiring candidate who actually shared their values and not just another establishment hack who happened to have a (D) after their name.

And instead of changing to accomodate the clearly expressed preference of the electorate, the DNC dug in their heels and forced the establishment hack on us anyway.

Then after that so deservedly blew up in their faces, they went ahead and did it again in 2020. And they only managed to get away with it that time because Trump had just spent the last four years proving that he’s not just a ridiculous buffoon in clown makeup, but a grotesquely power-hungry buffoon in clown makeup who’s ready and willing to destroy the US because daddy never loved him.

And I’d say that the last four years, and the fact that Trump is back and a bigger threat than ever, pretty clearly illustrates that in spite of the fact that he managed to win, the establishment hack still wasn’t the right choice.

But as far as I can see, the DNC and the Democrat establishment still hasn’t changed. They’re still determined to go with an uninspiring establishment hack and count on some combination of resignation, desperation and guilt to compel enough people to vote for him to hopefully eke out a win.

The entire reason that Trump got support in the first place is that he gave a previously disillusioned and frustrated base what they wanted. The GOP was all set to nominate their own establishment hack - Jeb Bush - but when they saw the way the wind was blowing, they (eventually) got out of the way and let the people pick Trump instead. And it worked, entirely predictably.

There’s a much larger base on the left, including the vast majority of young voters, who are currently disillusioned and frustrated, and the DNC and the Democrat establishment, specifically because they haven’t and apparently won’t change, are missing out on the opportunity they would provide. And this is NOT a time to be missing out on opportunities. This is NOT a time for business as usual. It’s a time to inspire people.

And none of that carefully manicured astroturf makes the slightest bit of difference.

The Democrat rank and file have been clearly telling the DNC and the rest of the establishment for eight years now that we want a real leftist - somebody who actually represents our values who we can and will rally behind rather than just another establishment hack who’s sort of maybe somewhere to the leftish side of the extremely narrow establishment hack spectrum.

And for the same eight years, the DNC and the rest of the establishment has been alternately ignoring us and telling us that we’re too stupid to understand what’s best for us (just as you’re doing now).

They fucking cost us the election already in 2016, and damned near did again in 2020. And now they’re set to try to do it in 2024.

This election is unlike any other in US history. With overt fascists riding Trump’s coattails, already with a roadmap to destroying democracy and instituting their dictatorship, this isn’t just a choice between potential presidents, but a choice between destroying or saving the US.

So it really doesn’t matter in the slightest what sort of policy achievements a Democrat candidate might or might not have. The ONLY thing that matters is whether or not the candidate will inspire enough voters to win.

That’s it - this time around, winning literally is everything. NOTHING else matters.

And all the DNC and the Democrat establishment has to do to effectively guarantee a win is get the fuck out of the way and let the people choose the candidate they want - the candidate that they’re going to rally behind. That’s what the voters have wanted for eight years now, and it’s long past time for the power brokers and their mouthpieces to back the fuck off and let them.

Now that said, I don’t think the situation is as dire as all that. Trump and his fascist cohorts are such an obvious threat that I think that come November, if the DNC and the rest of the Democrat establishment have gone ahead and decided to gamble the fate of the country on clinging to a weak establishment candidate in spite of eight years of clearly communicated disillusionment from the base, just being “not-Trump” will be enough to likely win anyway, as it was in 2020.

But it’s not a sure thing. A candidate that the people chose and the people rallied behind would be a sure thing, while an establishment hack is just someone who might manage to eke out a win because enough people will hold their noses and vote for them anyway, solely on the “strength” of them being not-Trump.

Obviously because he’s a weak candidate (and has been from the very beginning) in what might well be the highest stakes presidential race in US history.

The debate didn’t suddenly create some notion of his weakness as a candidate - long before the debate, his prospects were already shaky at best, and the Dem establishment had already had to resort to basically trying to guilt trip people into voting for him.

All the debate did as far as any of that goes is drive home the point that people have been trying to make from the beginning - that he is and always has been a weak and uninspiring candidate at best.

And I’d say that rather obviously, if anyone’s repeating the mistakes of 2016, it’s the Dem establishment.

And on a bit of a side note - in response to the author’s smugly self-congratulatory view that the voters are mindless automatons who just blindly do as the media tells them, I would just like to offer up a hearty, “fuck you.”

Ah - yeah. I should’ve seen this coming.

It’s a standard tactic for Trump, as it is for petulant and unimaginative children around the world - basically an official version of “Nuh uh! You are!”

So… the candidate who has repeatedly publicly stated that if elected he fully intends to be a dictator claims to have nothing to do with a roadmap to dictatorship written by his ex-staffers…

Riiight.

This is another of the things that astonishes me about Trump - not only is he a grotesque buffoon in clown makeup and a ludicrous combover who notoriously smells like ass and a staggeringly delusional lunatic who clearly lives in some sort of fantasy world - he’s a transparent, egregious and laughably poor compulsive liar. He can barely complete a sentence without lying (well - he can barely complete a sentence at all, but you know what I mean).

I swear that if he was magically transferred directly into a movie script, the character would be rejected as too over-the-top to be believable. And yet here we are…

Hasn’t r/canada notoriously been a mod-dictatorship shithole for years now?

I never spent any notable time there, but I remember seeing meta-conflicts there spill out onto the front page on a pretty regular basis.

It doesn’t matter how many times I see Boebert in the news - she still seems to me to be a particularly gross and nasty tweaked-out cam girl who’s inexplicably been allowed to pretend to be a politician.

We’re not getting worse moving to a different hack that can form thoughts on the fly.

Though I don’t like it a bit, that’s my position too, but with one glaring exception.

The thing that keeps haunting me is that I really think there’s a good chance that they’ll go back to Hillary, who’s basically everything that’s wrong with the current Democrats turned up to 11 - a plainly corrupt, transparently power-hungry and entirely self-serving opportunist who gives paid speeches on Wall Street, idolizes Kissinger and has all the charisma of a damp rag. As far as I can see, her only real qualifications for the office are that she wants it so desperately and she’s so willing to sell herself to anyone who will contribute to getting her there. And she’s the one possibility that I would say is far and away the least likely to win. But she brings in the corporate money, and that’s obviously the DNC’s main priority.

If it’s pretty much anybody else, that’s fine by me.

It’s psychopathic fuckwads all the way down.

I would love a real second primary with an array of candidates not all of whom were preselected by the billionaires. And a large inclusive debate or two. Is that what you are suggesting?

Yes.

Sorry - I thought “throw open” was a commonly understood phrase.

It means to open something suddenly and completely - no incremental stages and no limitations - just immediately from closed to fully and completely open.

Whoever ends up being the candidate will get literally billions of dollars in earned media by simply “becoming” the candidate. The whole drama of it suddenly engages what is currently a completely disengaged voting populace.

This is the most important bit IMO.

At this point, I don’t even think of dumping Biden as just a satisfactory fallback position, but as a winning strategy, and specifically for this reason.

It’s not as if Biden suddenly became a weak candidate the night of the debate - he’s been a weak candidate all along. As I just said earlier, the only thing that changed with the debate is that more people came to that conclusion.

And all it would take to motivate the base - to get Democrats enthused in a way that they haven’t been since 2008 - is to throw open the nomination. That would bring the race a sense of excitement and hope that hasn’t just been missing since the debate, but all along.

Any Democrats who can stand up and show leadership right now stand a very good chance of becoming the most powerful person in the world. Trump is a deeply unpopular candidate. It won’t take much to expose his weakness for what it is, we just currently happen to have the weakest possible candidate. Swap the candidate, adopt the positions of the base, and whoever ends up being the nominee can coast into office.

I think this is rather obviously true. Many on the left have been pushing for a different, and presumably better, candidate from the beginning, so in a way, all that’s changed since the debate is that many more have joined them. So really, all the Dems have to do is provide the people with that candidate, and it’ll be a runaway.

BUT…

I’m starting to worry that the DNC is going to fuck it up yet again, and specifically because, just as was the case in 2016 and 2020, they’re not only going to not adopt the positions of the base, but are going to instead manipulate the process in order to shove another establishment hack down our throats. And quite likely not even just any establishment hack, but the one that’s already proven to be even less popular than Biden - Hillary Clinton.

This is a moment for the DNC to get out of the way and let the people come together and choose the candidate they want. That’s the exact thing that will motivate the base, and in turn guarantee Trump’s defeat.

I’m just afraid that the DNC won’t be able to do that - that in their all-consuming self-centeredness and greed, they’re going to fuck it up for all of us, yet again.

Just another example of the right saying the quiet part out loud.

Make no mistake about it - these aren’t just idle threats or emotive rhetoric. These people genuinely want you dead.

Exactly.

Entirely on brand, it’s the classic abusive asshole position - “just do as I say - I don’t want to have to hurt you, but I will.”

And Netanyahu rejects it out of hand in 3… 2… 1…