Embrace the spoiler

 

Kshama Sawant from "Revolutionary Workers" and "Workers Strike Back" defends the strategy to deliberately spoil the elections for the Democrats.

Probably not a popular message right now...   

The Democrats deserve to lose 1000 times over

Reap the whirlwind

 

This must be the strangest aspect of the recent US presidential election campaign. Trump managed to convince at least a portion of the Muslim/Arab community in the battleground state of Michigan to vote for him as "the peace candidate". 

Note also that Richard Grenell played a prominent role in the Muslim/Arab outreach. I suppose they "forgot" to mention that Grenell is, ahem, gay...

I suppose it´s within the realm of the possible that Trump, whose son-in-law Jared Kushner was instrumental in negotiating the Abraham accords, will tell Israel to cool it, so the accords (the real purpose of which is to encircle Iran) will survive. However, "possible" and "probable" aren´t the same thing. 

Besides, Biden and Harris also support the Abraham accords and are more likely to tell Israel to wind down its military actions in Gaza and Lebanon. Or engineer Netanyahu´s ouster in favor of a more "moderate" leader. So it still makes no sense from a "pro-Palestinian" perspective to vote for Trump. 

Is the US the only nation in the world were the Jews support the "anti-Israeli" candidates, while the Muslims vote for the "pro-Israeli" one? Amerikwa is crazier than I imagined!

Trump´s pro-Israel cabinet picks upset pro-Trump Muslims

Election miscellany

 

- Yeah, I know the feeling,
I took to the hills years ago!

Some articles on the recent US elections in no particular order of importance. They are from the pro-Trump site Breitbart News, but could be of some general interest. 

Democrats retreat from transgender extremism 

Trump won Arab majority city of Dearborn "thanks to" Jill Stein

Democratic Party strategist attacks Woke:"We´re not the party of common sense"

French crypto gambler betted 30 million dollars on Trump victory

For the record

 

Jill Stein got more votes in some Arab/Muslim-dominated precincts in Michigan than Kamala Harris. From the X account of Kshama Sawant, the leader of the Trotskyist "Revolutionary Workers". 

Trump won the state of Michigan very narrowly.  

East Dearborn precinct tally

A hypothesis

 

An interesting hypothesis, apparently from a CNN commentator. Pro-Trump Breitbart News has decided to highlight his claim that Trump may win the popular vote, but read the fine print! Here is the key paragraph: 

>>>He concluded, “On the flip side of that, a potentially good sign for Democrats is: Why is Donald Trump doing so well in the popular vote polls? You can dig down into the state-level polling, and you can see that Donald Trump is doing particularly well in California, Florida, New York and Texas. Of course, none of these states are really on the board at this point. 

>>>So Donald Trump may end up gaining in the national popular vote polls, but actually, he’s wasting votes, which could, in fact, lead to a case where Kamala Harris could sneak by in the electoral college by sweeping those Great Lake battleground states, which at this point, are way too close to call, John.”

Riots, anyone?

However...

It just struck me that there is one Great Lake battleground state which Harris may end up losing: Michigan. This due to Jill Stein, Cornel West and - arguably - Kshama Sawant and her Trotskyist outfit Revolutionary Workers. Indeed, Sawant is explicitly campaigning to punish the Democrats for their "pro-Israeli" policy by making Harris lose Michigan to Trump! (Sawant´s group has endorsed Stein.) 

So here is a scenario: Trump wins the popular vote, Harris *almost* wins in the electoral college...but for Michigan, which goes to Trump due to potential Dem voters abstaining or supporting Stein instead. The political fall out would be *epic*. Sure hope Stein and Sawant have good security! The rift between the libs and the rad-libs will take *generations* to heal. 

Oh, and then there´s always the possibility of a Russian, Chinese or Deep State hack of the grid on election day, Trump being shot the day before, Trump being shot the day *after*, you know, that kind of thing.

I admit that I don´t feel particularly safe anymore. Not even relatively speaking.   

Donald Trump may win the popular vote...but lose anyway

Förbannelsen

 

Att arab-amerikaner och/eller muslimer i Michigan tänker rösta på Donald Trump måste vara det mest anmärkningsvärda fenomenet i den redan ytterst märkliga amerikanska valkampanjen. Jag gissar att det rör sig om medvetet trotsig proteströstning mot Harris och Biden-administrationen. En mer "rationell" protest är att lägga sin röst på Jill Stein, Green Partys kandidat som kampanjar särskilt hårt just i Michigan för att straffa Kamala Harris. 

Eller också har världen blivit galen. På fullt allvar. Amerikas judar röstar alltså demokratiskt, medan araberna röstar på Trump?! 

Lägg förresten märke till det förtäckta hotet i slutet av artikeln. 

I USA röstar araber på Donald Trump

Trump era or third period?

 

Socialist Alternative critiques a breakaway faction, Revolutionary Workers (led by Kshama Sawant). Note that the two groups really agree on voting for Jill Stein, but the latter group is more brazen and "third period" about it. I can´t say I care much, but if Trotskyist bickering is your thing, well, welcome to the party!  

The case for voting Jill Stein in the Trump era

Why Kamala Harris is losing

 

The title of this post is click bait, but it seems a large portion of the American left are willing to spoil their votes and risk a Trump victory in order to protest the Democratic Party´s perceived support for the Israeli war in Gaza. 

In other words: they see this war as the main axis of politics, both globally and domestically, more important than even stopping Trump (who they still dub a fascist or proto-fascist). 

Let´s be honest: it´s an adaptation to certain mercurial middle class layers at US college campuses...   

DSA Statement on the 2024 elections: Drop out Biden!

Statement on the end of Biden´s presidential campaign

No Harris! No Trump! End the Genocidal War!

Kshama Sawant tweet

Jill Stein election poster

Feel the bern, imperialista!

Sometimes I wonder if the extreme left just may have a point…

Just days before Bernie Sanders (unsurprisingly) endorsed Hillary Clinton, the small and super-red Spartacist League wrote on its website, under the headline “Fake Socialists Pimp for Imperialist Sanders” that “Sanders attracted support from college and other petty-bourgeois youth, as well as a layer of workers, by inveighing against Wall Street and promoting reforms. At the same time, he is a stalwart champion of bloody U.S. imperialism—from his support to the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force that launched the war on Afghanistan to his Senate vote endorsing the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza in 2014. Like Trump, Sanders also pushes chauvinist protectionism, which serves to set workers in the U.S. against their class brothers and sisters abroad.”

The Spartacist League then references a previous article on the subject published in their paper Workers Vanguard, titled “Bernie Sanders: Imperialist Running Dog”. The Spartacists continue: “To put it plainly: the pseudo-socialist groups that support Sanders have done their best, within the limits of their forces, to reinforce the ties that bind the working class politically to its class enemies. As revolutionary Marxists, we offer no political support on principle to any party of the bosses—not only the major parties of the U.S. ruling class, the Republicans and Democrats, but also small-time capitalist parties such as the Greens.”

That's right, the Green Party is no alternative either. Apparently, several pro-Sanders leftist groups have switched their allegiances to Jill Stein, the presumptive nominee of the Greens.

The stalwart Spartacist League is of another opinion: “Although it may sound more radical than Sanders’s, the Green Party’s platform is nothing but bourgeois liberalism, devoted to a utopian-reactionary fantasy of small-scale capitalism hostile to economic growth. For those disgruntled liberals who won’t hold their noses and vote for Clinton, the Greens provide a way station on the road back into the Democratic Party, typical of `progressive' bourgeois third parties in the U.S.”

But don't you worry, there *is* a solution to the current Sanders-Clinton mess, and it aint the BLM (also attacked in the article). No, the solution is “a multiracial, internationalist, proletarian party capable of leading the working class, at the head of all the oppressed, in the struggle for a victorious socialist revolution. On an international scale, working-class rule would lay the material basis for a global society without classes, in which material plenty has made poverty a thing of the past, imperialist wars are no longer possible and race and ethnicity have ceased to have any social significance. Such a party will be forged over the political corpses of those who pervert `socialism' into a tool to defend the current outlived social order.”

Amen! I admit that I laughed out loud when I read this. Come on, what decade is it? “Petty bourgeois”, “running dog of imperialism”, “fake socialists”, “utopian-reactionary fantasy”… HA HA HA! Sounds like something your local unfriendly Maoistic outfit might have written in a grand mimeographed bulletin circa 1975. The only solution, apparently, is “victorious socialist revolution…on an international scale”. Maybe Geezus (or whoever these guys are secretly worshipping…Gerry Healy? General Jaruzelski? Nina Hartley?) will come back, too, and establish his kingdom on Lower Manhattan.

Or they might just vote for Donald Trump. I mean, we're talking about the Spartacist League here, remember? They don't defend Muslim fundamentalists against “imperialist attack”, secretly support Israel and oppose open borders, so what's keeping them from joining the sealed Trump train?

Did I say that the extreme left sometimes makes sense? Get real, I was only joking…

Red meat for the crazies

A review of "Sanders Supporters for Trump: Why Bernie Sanders Supporters Should Vote for Donald Trump for President" 

This is a very short pitch in favor of voting Donald Trump by a disgruntled supporter of Bernie Sanders. Mike Davis argues that Trump is better on foreign policy and the economy than Hillary Clinton, but avoids discussing Trump's opposition to immigration (the main plank of his campaign). Davis claims that Trump's more extreme proposals, such as banning all Muslims from entering the United States, aren't to be taken seriously. It's just “red meat for the crazies”. He doesn't say whether the wall against Mexico is just red meat. In fact, he doesn't mention it at all!

According to the author, Trump is really a Democrat who runs as a Republican for opportunist reasons. If millions of Democrats vote for him, the Democratic Party will be forced to change its politics in order to win these voters back. This won't happen if everyone votes for Hillary, whose “leftist” turn is a hoax forced upon her by the success of the Sanders campaign. Clinton is a “corporate Republican masquerading as a corporate Democrat”. Davis argues that the Libertarian and Green candidates are spoilers which will split the Trump vote, thereby handing Hillary Clinton the victory. (This makes little sense. Logically, Jill Stein will split the *Democratic* vote, while Gary Johnson will split the Republican ditto.)

I don't think this short Kindle article makes a convincing case. In all fairness, it was written before The Donald picked a more established conservative as his “veep”, thereby (perhaps) blunting his populist edges. However, my main problem with Mike is that he never explains to homeless Sandersistas why they should support an anti-immigration candidate, which seems to be the most obvious dividing line between the two camps. Therefore, I will only give this tract two stars.