Category: Electoral Politics

Having lost the election, what is Trump’s future? At the top of his agenda is arranging a pardon for himself, for crimes of which he has not been convicted. He might try to use the presidential pardon to pardon himself, which would almost surely end up in the Supreme Court.

A satirical headline from the day the presidential election was called, captures the feeling of much of the Left: “Jubilant Reaction to Trump’s Defeat Quickly Soured by News of Biden Win.”

Biden’s victory now requires confronting his advocacy of disastrous education policies during the Obama administration, enacted under Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.

While the electorate was deeply divided and the vote close in several states, still the election represents a rejection of Trump and his policies, a demonstration of confidence in democracy, and a deep desire to overcome the country’s several crises.

This exhaustion of signifiers is one of the characteristics of the political moment Bolivia is living, in which, apparently, everyone wants the same things, but conceives them in opposite ways.

If we, on the left, push to channel our forces and our support into the Biden campaign, we simultaneously end up narrowing the horizons of the future; that is to say, we end up closing the space in which new forms of campaigning and political mobilizations can be created.

The contest between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic Party challenger Joseph Biden has become a referendum on the coronavirus, now in the midst of the greatest upsurge so far.

Let me venture a prediction about next week that also applies to the months and years to follow: At no point will Donald J. Trump order the arrest of an elitist network of cannibalistic pedophile Satanists. Not one!

For every 1,000 sexual assaults on women, 995 of those predators will walk free. So, why is it that this topic has been completely avoided during the election? Why is it that, in the year 2020, women still do not feel safe in the United States?

If there is one proposition that most anti-Stalinist socialists should agree on it is this: capitalism does not need democracy and democracy does not require capitalism. Only socialism does.

Stephen R. Shalom replies again on the question of voting for the lesser evil to defeat Trump.

Continuing the debate on the left and the election, Charlie Post and Ashley Smith respond to Stephen R. Shalom’s criticisms of their article, “The lesser evil trap.”

Voters have turned against Trump because of his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. So the president is now trying to change the debate to law and order and the dangers of socialism.

We have come to this miserable state of affairs in large part because the left has failed to create an alternative to “lesser evils” who, along with the greater evils, have devastated lives and imperiled the planet.

“By kicking Howie and Angela off the ballot in Wisconsin and then publicly celebrating this naked act of self-serving disenfranchisement, the Democrats have made plain their intention to ‘save democracy from Trump’ by killing it themselves first and then dancing on the grave.”

Early reactions to these events suggest that they will contribute to the continued downward spiral of Trump’s campaign, which has been losing support because of his poor handling of the pandemic. But it is too early to say for sure what the effect will be.

Almost any scenario we can imagine might well lead to armed conflicts in American streets between Trump’s supporters and his opponents on a scale much larger and more violent than anything we’ve seen so far.

For the first time in my life, in fifty years of voting in America, I am voting for a Democratic Party presidential candidate and urge others to do so as well.

Stephen R. Shalom criticizes the arguments against lesser-evil voting and makes the case for the Left both to support Biden and build the social movements.

This interview of Ashley Smith was conducted by Joseph Daher for the newspaper of the Swiss socialist party Solidarités, and the French leftwing website, Contretemps. 

Not only is AMLO’s government not socialist, it is not democratic, it is not competent, and it is not socially responsible. AMLO is a populist with a leftist image and rightist policies.