No matter what the political right or corporate media say there is no liberalism or socialist left that is going to reform or replace big corporations or our grossly unequal capitalism. Furthermore straight, white, men, with money will continue to dominate our economy and politics for a long time to come. Whatever is done about the coronavirus, the economic downturn, racial unrest and related protest it will not disrupt or curb the power of that elite. For us liberals and the leftists who really care about mainstream politics rather than some " Marxist revolution " that will never come the situation is bleak and it's been that way for a long time. I don't care what propaganda Fox News, talk radio, or Prager U online spreads for their rightwing base. It doesn't matter how much the Washington Post and New York Times exaggerates and bemoans the influence of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders within the Democratic Party. It's nothing close to what their centrist opponents want everybody to believe. This country has problems and our politics is not up to the task of solving them. Sure some people will read this and say he's acting like Trump won instead of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I can't say it enough we were in trouble long before Trump and this virus. And our politics was too.

As a liberal who believes in individual freedom and the possibilities for government in achieving a better society for all, the political centrism of a Biden Presidency that will not push back against the reigning GOP conservatism is problematic. What is worse however is the kind of liberalism that exists today is not an alternative to either the reactionary right or the barely more palpable centrism offered by Democrats. It's hard to see any connection between contemporary liberalism and the tradition embodied by the New Deal or the Great Society. That liberalism dreamed big and fought hard. Today's liberals are part of the problem with our politics and the economy.

Social liberals won't help because their liberalism stops at supporting abortion, LGBTQ rights, protecting the environment, and combating climate change. Many if not most of them are upper middle class or rich. They don't relate to working people's struggles and they don't see a problem with extreme economic inequality. They don't think corporations are too big or powerful either. They only see the good in globalism and free trade. While they claim to be against racism and sexism they manage or control companies that practice subtle racism against blacks and perpetuate the gender pay gap that harms women.

The economic liberals are worse because they favor deregulated markets and fewer government programs. They fuel inequality by advocating lower corporate and investment taxes. They wrongly believe a less regulated capitalism and less interventionist government will make us all more free and prosperous. Don't count on them to support raising the minimum wage, unions, or single payer health insurance. In fact economic liberals won't support a competitive public health insurance option if the ACA survives and Biden proposes one. They will most certainly fight him on efforts to tax the rich and corporations. And nothing will be done about climate change that threatens big money. Democrats and Republicans are both tied to big money and embrace varying degrees of economic liberalism.

What we need is political liberalism that is devoted to individual freedom and the equal right to it for all. While it emphasizes limited government this liberalism is not about unresponsive government. It supports regulating capitalism for the public good, competition, and to keep capitalists from having too much political power. Liberals do not believe everyone should have the same amount of wealth and income, but political liberalism doesn't want too much wealth and income concentrated among a few people either. Liberals at their best know the material basis for individual freedom rests on widely shared economic prosperity. People need enough wealth and income to be middle class, and the economy has to enable poor people to work their way into that middle class. Moreover political liberalism takes up the struggles of blacks, women, gay, lesbian, and transgendered people enacting reforms and removing barriers to true freedom. It does this along side reforming capitalism rather than forcing us to choose between economic issues and identity politics. If we had a strong political liberalism in this pandemic we could have pressed for a fuller mobilization of government to ensure PPE , test kits, and ventilators. It would have built hospital space, trained contact tracers, and provided public jobs for those out of work. But we don't have this kind of liberalism anymore.

The political right will seek to obstruct Joe Biden and it's propaganda machine will portray him as big government leftist. Like their leader Trump they don't care about people's lives or democratic governance. Biden may want to reach out to them, but Congressional Republicans aren't interested. And they have a solid base of support that won't hold them accountable for opposing a Biden administration. The problem is that Biden and the centrist Democrats are not committed to fighting back; instead Biden will have to move further right to get anything done. This is fine with economic liberals, while social liberals are not organized to push Biden left. Maybe Ocasio Cortez and other so called "progressives" will try to fight back. Count on Bernie Sanders in the Senate along with Elizabeth Warren if she doesn't go to work for Biden. However none of this is a substitute for political liberalism among writers, pundits, intellectuals, and especially elected officials. We will continue to pay a price for the disappearance of that liberalism.

Dutch Wrote:

Yes; the Hitler II won't be out of the picture soon; he still wants his face on the news. The major problem remains with the 45% who still voted for him. I don't know how to solve this problem, other than by "education" which they likely don't want.

I also wonder what FOX News will do to keep this "fata morgano" alive,

Sorry to say everything Trump touches "dies". So I wonder what will happen in the "pause" between now and January 20th

Any idea's or predictions?

1. You can't reach most Trump voters who are motivated by a mix of economic, cultural, and racial issues. For the few that might be persuaded around economic issues it will take a long time to get them to support a center left not socialist Bernie Sanders style political agenda. However the " Republican lite" establishment that runs the Democratic Party doesn't really want a whole lot of working class people who might challenge the pro corporate big money capitalist status quo.

2. Conservative Republicans will hold the Senate and maybe regain the US House in 2022 which will push Joe Biden further right than he already is.

3. Donald Trump will be famous and a little richer with the alt right and his hardest core supporters speaking, making public appearances, merchandising, and maybe ghostwriting a book.

Like I said Biden won and America is still in trouble....

wwjd Wrote:

Schmidt Wrote:

In the Trump bubbles, they actually believe the voter fraud accusations of Trump.

And they do so blindly, not expecting, and not wanting to hear evidence. Over the past 4 years Trump has made so, so, many false statements and accusations that it is difficult to remember even 10% of them, yet his hardcore supporters believe every word that he states, even though he rarely ever backs it up with any more than comments like "Soon, very soon, so soon you won't believe it" to imply there are facts not yet released, but never come. There are no facts, so his supporters just move on assuming its true because he said it. If he said "The Obama faked the killing of Osama Bin Laden" 30-50 million people in the US would instantly believe the statement to be true. Trump feeds off that instant and massive acceptance of everything he says, which just feeds on itself to generate more false statements that his bases wants to hear. It's a bubble of telling people what they want to hear, even if its totally false; its what they want to hear, so he creates a narrative that is over 90% fiction. Why be limited by the truth\facts\honestly\etc, when false statements are limited. Its very very bad a reality show.

Trump is going to struggle after Jan 20th because his tweets are no longer going to be instant headlines within minutes, carried by all the major networks and publications. He may feed the fringe Trump echo chamber of conspiracy theories, but he will not be the constant center of world's attention like a 5yr old on his birthday. Even the GOP will be ignoring him most of the time as he screams and yells as loud has he can to get the spot light back on him. He will try to be the ex-president that remains just as relevant as he is now as president. Most of all, he is going to expect he retain the power and fear he currently has, thinking all he has to do is tweet something, and the world will shake in fear.

It looks like Joe Biden is headed to the White House come January, and I'm glad Trump is gone. But the Republican Right still dominates American politics make no mistake about that. Democrats lost seats in the House of Representatives and did not gain control of the Senate. Moreover the political right controls the Supreme Court, federal judiciary, and most state governments. Even with more people engaged than ever it was a close race. Trump held his working class base and appears to have gained some black and Latino voters. But none of this is a surprise to me. It's not really something I'm upset about.

The problem is that centrism which drives Democratic Party politics is not really a credible opposition to Trump or the larger rightwing. It only delays or makes conservative policies more palpable. That's what people mean by " Republican Lite. " And you can't blame it all on rightwing propaganda or the monied elites who really control both parties. It's the people. The masses who voted for Trump and the keep conservative Republicans in power across America. Just look at the votes and how close this election has been.

Contrary to conservative messaging and the spin offered by pro corporate centrist Democratic pundits in the mass media there is no real left that drives American politics. We are not on the verge of replacing capitalism with socialism. We're not even going to tame this predator capitalism with European style Social Democracy. The Democrats rejection of Bernie Sanders proves that. Furthermore there is no real political liberalism to speak to our longstanding economic and social problems. Not to mention climate change.

Until people start thinking on different level and working for grassroots change that can transform our electoral politics things won't get better. And what's worse most people won't care until it effects them personally. Forget the country, your neighbor, or someone of a different race, class, gender, religion, or national origin. Biden won the election, but America is still in trouble.

that guy in AZ Wrote:

In October, 1980, I was in the audience in a fancy hotel , where the featured speaker was Louis Rukeyser. At the time, he was the genius on Wall Street.

At one point, he told the audience that he was going to tell them the names of the stocks that would double in the next year. As he rattled off the names, many people in the audience wrote them down.

Then he laughed.

He then reminded the audience that nobody, not even him, could predict what the stock market would do in a year's time.

Predicting the winner of the 2020 election is a lot like that.

A while back, the New York Times published an article showing the winner, based on whether states were solid Democrat or Republican, or "leaning" to either party. Based on their analysis, it was impossible for Trump to get more than 220 electoral votes, and it was more likely that Biden would get a landslide in the electoral college.

That crazy guy in Las Vegas, Wayne Allen Root has a different view.

"If Florida is representative of battleground states all over the country, Trump is about to win both the Florida popular vote and an electoral landslide. Democrats are panicking in Florida and all over the country."

" Trafalgar Group, which ran the most accurate state-by-state poll of 2016 by factoring in the "shy Trump voters" (people afraid to tell a stranger on the phone they support Trump), shows Trump taking the lead this week in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Rasmussen shows Trump's approval rating at 52%, five points better than former President Barack Obama's at this same time in 2012 when he was heading for reelection victory. (1)

(MSN paints a different picture. The FiveThirtyEight presidential popularity tracker put Trump's average disapproval rating at 54.3 percent as of Thursday night, and showed his approval rating hovering at just under 43 percent. But when Gallup pollsters surveyed American voters at the same point in October 2012, they found Obama had an approval rating of 50 percent and a disapproval rating of just 45 percent—a 9 point improvement on Trump's position today.

On Friday, Poll Watch came out with its electoral map, which shows a Trump landslide of 312 electoral votes to 226."

( Trump (R) defeated former New York Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) for the presidency on November 8, 2016. Trump received 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227 electoral votes. Clinton won the national popular vote with 48.2% of the vote, while Trump received 46.1% of the vote. If you're good with math, you'll notice that Poll Watch is predicting that Trump will get more electoral college votes than he did in 2016. As my grandpappy used to say, "no f*****g way!")

"Here's what I know. Here's what my gut instinct says:

-- Nothing else matters like the poll question "Are you better off than four years ago?" Fifty-six percent of voters in one survey answered yes! That's the highest in modern history. Reagan scored 44%, and he won a 49-state landslide. Trump scored 56%.

Even more importantly, who exactly are they better off than? Common sense says they're not voting for the guy who made them feel worse (Biden) over the guy who made the feel better (Trump).

-- I know Florida is the key. If Trump wins Florida, he's in the driver's seat. And based on early-voting numbers, Florida appears to be a smashing Trump win.

-- Next in importance comes Pennsylvania. What's been happening in Pennsylvania lately? If you haven't noticed, deep-blue, Democrat-controlled Philadelphia is on fire -- rioting, looting, burning and injured cops. I guarantee the rest of Pennsylvania voters have noticed. This will push Trump over the edge in Pennsylvania. Democrats have clearly destroyed Philadelphia. Why would any sane Pennsylvanian voter want them to do the same thing to the entire country?"

https://townhall.com/columnists/wayneallynroot/2020/11/01/las-vegas-oddsmaker-announces-final-prediction-trump-electoral-landslide-coming-n2579146

(1) Contrary to what Rasmussen says, Trump' approval rating is NOT 52% . According to RealClearPolitics, his approval rating is actually 43.5%, which is a 8 points worse that Joe Biden. The same article also shows how the candidates do in individual states. Although there are some that could go either way, here is the most important statistic. Of the 11 states that Trump won in 2016, 9 of them now favor Joe Biden, and the reversal is the strongest in Michigan. Texas is the ONLY state where Trump is favored to win again. Ohio is virtually tied.

https://www.yahoo.com/elections

Now, let's listen to "the experts", as published in the utterly reliable New York Post (the same paper that just published the Hunter Biden laptop story.)

"Past presidents’ electoral success with similar ratings has been mixed. Gerald Ford, at 45 percent approval in June of 1976 (when Gallup gauged it less frequently), was defeated that November. Barack Obama, whose approval rating remained in the 40s for almost all of his re-election year before ending at 50 percent, went on to victory.

“If you look at the approval trend lines in Obama’s and Trump’s first terms, they are actually very similar,” said Helmut Norpoth, a Stony Brook University political science professor who has studied presidential popularity. “Trump’s has been a little lower, but not by much. Obama didn’t get over 50 percent in 2012 until just before the election.”

" The approval basement-dwellers both lost their re-election bids. George H.W. Bush scored a dismal 34 percent approval in October 1992; Jimmy Carter was at 37 percent in October 1980."

Norpoth’s own predictive model for presidential elections correctly identifies the winner of 25 out of the last 27 contests — including every race involving an incumbent. The forecast, based on primary results and other indicators of party cohesion, has never been thrown off by pre-election polls or news events.

The model foresees a 362-electoral-vote Trump victory.

“I guess this is the election that will really put it to the test,” Norpoth said.

https://nypost.com/article/trump-approval-ratings-compared-to-obama-presidents-throughout-history/

My personal prediction?

Although we would all love to see Trump lose in a landslide in the electoral college, I think the votes will be closer that that, if only because the Republicans are using every chance they can to cheat.

The October surprise in 2016 was Jim Comey's letter to congress 11 days before the election, which literally gave the victory to Trump.

In 2020, the October surprise was the first presidential debate. Nobody in their right mind would vote for Trump if they watched his performance that night.

The answer to the question "are you better off now than you were 4 years ago, the answer is "hell no!"

To date, 230,000 people have lost their lives to COVID-19, in large part to Trump's incompetence.

On top of that, the most recent unemployment figures show that 12.6 million people are still out of work. Although the unemployment rate of 7.9% is better than its peak of 14% in April, it does not paint a complete picture.

The unemployment rate “has a very specific meaning,” said Ernie Tedeschi, a policy economist at Evercore ISI. It only takes into account people who are out of work, available for work, and have actively looked for work in the last four weeks, as well as those on temporary layoff.

“So that doesn’t include everybody who doesn’t have a job,” he said. “If you left your job because your kids’ school is closed and you’re spending your time helping your kids with remote learning and you’re not looking for a job because of that, you would not be counted as unemployed.”

The headline unemployment rate also does not include people who have had their work hours reduced because of COVID-19, or those who have been misclassified or undercounted in the official Bureau of Labor Statistics tally, Shierholz said. If you add them in, it’s more than 30 million people.

https://www.marketplace.org/2020/10/12/how-many-people-are-unemployed-right-now/

Never put your trust in polls....there are probably lots of " shy Trump voters " in Michigan, Wisconsin, and especially Pennsylvania. So it's very possible that Trump could win a close popular vote and the electoral college. BTW...I noticed you didn't have anything on Ohio. Usually the candidate who carries that state wins the election. Make no mistake about it Trump can win this thing. And if he gets the popular vote and the electoral college it will confer on him a certain legitimacy. I don't want that to happen, but I won't be shocked if it does.

Here is where the change starts like these people in the video. The more people do this kind of communicating and organizing across racial lines there's a chance to build a more free country with shared economic prosperity for all not just whites or the wealthiest elites.

Dutch Wrote:

Nice story; very clearly laid out. However do you think this "picture" will change? I doubt it. especially if you see the crowds still flocking to an absolute lunatic they want as leader. In any case I've got the feeling that the situation only will get worse because of a lot of things here. Looking at the "total picture of this country as well its stupid structure of governing then this country is doomed. Sorry but is like Rome "the emperor has no clothes"

Furthermore if the Catholic bitch gets appointed forget an "normal" operating government; the "church" will run it. France had their lessons with that, but here they are running a couple of centuries behind. Even if Biden wins he will still "loose" because the GOP (Trump party) will make life miserable for him especially on his age. The "chaos" will remain and gets only worse; more guns will get sold and more unrest because the "management" here are not "managers" . A lot has to be changed here if this country ever wants to be "governable". I wrote many times about what has to change in our laws as well governing system. Seldom this country wants to copy things from other countries and the one time they did, they copied the stupid British system, which is now creating all the present mess. Canada is laughing at us, because they selected something else which happens to work.

Thanks for your response Dutch... I will be honest there's not much reason to be hopeful. Millions of Americans really do believe in Trump and they won't face reality. But he's not the only problem racism and economic inequality are longstanding issues that have not been adequately addressed. Trump and the virus have made these things worse.

We need ordinary people regardless of race to confront racial and economic inequality at the grassroots level. This means getting more people to vote as well as protest. We need to use social media to address these issues and call out people like Trump and other right wingers who want to divide us. If this happens we can change the politics and the country. Sadly there's no guarantee this will happen. Racism keeps a lot of whites from seeing economic issues, and those whites who know the economy is not benefitting working people don't see a common interest with black or nonwhite working people.