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Donald Trump's 2nd term

Buttigieg would seem the most likely, they can't realistically replace him with another person in their 70s (Warren) 80s (Sanders, also won't get the centrist vote) and the rest aren't even close. Harris is deeply unpopular.

A lot of US lefties who've been warning Biden won't cut it must be very annoyed rn.

You could say that. I got banned from several threads on here for bringing it up.

Buttigieg as a lot of powerful backers and appeals to a specific constituency, but he wouldn't stand a chance against Trump. It's Newsom or no-one.
 
She'd been campaigning for almost a year at that point and had taken part in five debates - as a US senator from the country's most populous state, I think she had a higher profile than candidates including Buttigieg, who was mayor of South Bend, Indiana at the time
Fair enough. tbh that's why she probably needed to be given a few months as president - to demonstrate something or other about herself. Probably too late for that now.
 
Don't necessarily see the problem with replacing him with another older person. It's not his age that's the problem per se. It's the fact that, to put it politely, he's not as sharp as he used to be.
The Dems have been banging a drum that Biden isn't incapable the entire way through the election cycle, only to be tripped up at the first major debate. They can't realistically put another elderly type in and expect to avoid the same accusations, this time with the additional problem that rebuttals are easily dismissed as "more lies".
 
You could say that. I got banned from several threads on here for bringing it up.

Buttigieg as a lot of powerful backers and appeals to a specific constituency, but he wouldn't stand a chance against Trump. It's Newsom or no-one.
You didn't get banned for bringing up that Biden wasn't capable. I said the same thing. You got banned for zooming off into lala conspiracy land.
 
I think it was both of them tbf.

Seriously though, there were loads of people on here insisting that Biden was perfectly fine. People hate Trump so much that it clouds their judgments.
I don't think the hatred towards Trump particularly pushed people to be confident in Biden – Urban isn't ride or die for the Democrats, on the whole. Mostly people have seen him as the only available option given the balance of forces.

Personally I think, and thought at the time, he was a mistake to keep on and they should have been bolder in putting someone else up, not because of his age/capability but because his administration underperformed. Fact is he's up against a very marmite candidate with endless weaknesses to attack but a vigorous (rhetorical) platform for action, and the Democrats' standard model imperialism/neoliberalism was thin gruel. Same problem in fact that every centrist government has been having. A younger more go-getting face should have been an obvious strategy to offset that problem.
 
I don't think the hatred towards Trump particularly pushed people to be confident in Biden – Urban isn't ride or die for the Democrats, on the whole. Mostly people have seen him as the only available option given the balance of forces.

Personally I think, and thought at the time, he was a mistake to keep on and they should have been bolder in putting someone else up, not because of his age/capability but because his administration underperformed. Fact is he's up against a very marmite candidate with endless weaknesses to attack but a vigorous (rhetorical) platform for action, and the Democrats' standard model imperialism/neoliberalism was thin gruel. Same problem in fact that every centrist government has been having. A younger more go-getting face should have been an obvious strategy to offset that problem.

Well the real problem is that the establishment of both parties agree on everything substantial, because they are sponsored by the same interests. Hence their horror when someone like Trump appears. It's not so much that they fear any of his policies, but they know he isn't under their control, and they can't handle that kind of threat.
 
Well the real problem is that the establishment of both parties agree on everything substantial, because they are sponsored by the same interests. Hence their horror when someone like Trump appears. It's not so much that they fear any of his policies, but they know he isn't under their control, and they can't handle that kind of threat.
Amazingly enough I actually (mostly) agree with the first part of that. The second part less so, especially "they" - they who? The US has innumerable factions which benefit more or less from Trump as premier. As far as I can see he's often quite easy to manipulate as long as you flatter him – foreign leaders notably did so throughout his last premiership. His biggest problem will be the same as Biden's - he's getting on a bit and clearly not in great health no matter what his pet doctors say.
 
Well the real problem is that the establishment of both parties agree on everything substantial, because they are sponsored by the same interests. Hence their horror when someone like Trump appears. It's not so much that they fear any of his policies, but they know he isn't under their control, and they can't handle that kind of threat.
Trump enacted a bunch of very conventionally 'conservative' policies when he was in office. Stacked the courts, cut taxes for the rich, blew up all kinds of environmental legislation. Big powerful groups in the US were surely delighted by all of this.
 
Amazingly enough I actually (mostly) agree with the first part of that. The second part less so, especially "they" - they who? The US has innumerable factions which benefit more or less from Trump as premier. As far as I can see he's often quite easy to manipulate as long as you flatter him – foreign leaders notably did so throughout his last premiership. His biggest problem will be the same as Biden's - he's getting on a bit and clearly not in great health no matter what his pet doctors say.

Trump isn't one of their selected instruments for the implementation of the post 9/11 neo-con foreign policy agenda: US ‘plans to attack seven Muslim states’

Now, could he be persuaded to follow that agenda? I reckon so, and I think Sheldon Adelson took the right approach to Trump (bribery, flattery), which succeeded in getting the embassy moved and Sulemani killed. But for some reason (probably panic and stupidity combined with a visceral dislike of macho white guys), 95% of the US establishment has not bothered trying to persuade him, but instead to brush him aside like an inconvenient insect. Hasn't worked. And now they may have buggered up the other option--Trump won't be hiring Bolton or Pompeo next time around.
 
Trump isn't one of their selected instruments for the implementation of the post 9/11 neo-con foreign policy agenda: US ‘plans to attack seven Muslim states’

Now, could he be persuaded to follow that agenda? I reckon so, and I think Sheldon Adelson took the right approach to Trump (bribery, flattery), which succeeded in getting the embassy moved and Sulemani killed. But for some reason (probably panic and stupidity combined with a visceral dislike of macho white guys), 95% of the US establishment has not bothered trying to persuade him, but instead to brush him aside like an inconvenient insect. Hasn't worked. And now they may have buggered up the other option--Trump won't be hiring Bolton or Pompeo next time around.
The neo-con wing of the Republicans was fucked well before Trump came along, in fact arguably his ascent and the failure of Jeb Bush can be linked directly as fallout from the faction's inextricable connection to the twin disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan. The remaining rump has been extraordinarily ineffective and is basically irrelevant having lost control of the main levers of the GOP. If they're the They I think you're focusing on the wrong people.
 
The neo-con wing of the Republicans was fucked well before Trump came along, in fact arguably his ascent and the failure of Jeb Bush can be linked directly as fallout from the faction's inextricable connection to the twin disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan. The remaining rump has been extraordinarily ineffective and is basically irrelevant having lost control of the main levers of the GOP. If they're the They I think you're focusing on the wrong people.

The neo-cons are still very powerful in both parties. They (specifically Nuland and Kagan) are the architects of the wars in Ukraine and Syria, and their main problem with Trump is his lack of enthusiasm for either of these.
 
That there's an Israel Lobby is not in question.... That it explains the nature of all US foreign policy is beyond delusional
But it does explain the wars against Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia, as well as the coming wars against Lebanon and Iran. Just as Wesley Clarke, John Mearsheimer and numerous others have said.

Everyone knows this to be true. Until recently, most people have refrained from saying it (in public, they say it in private alright), because they know that people will pretend to think they are anti-semitic. But I reckon the days when that con worked are behind us.
 
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But it does explain the wars against Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia, as well as the coming wars against Lebanon and Iran. Just as Wesley Clarke, John Mearsheimer and numerous others have said.

Go in then - how did the Israel lobby cause wars against Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia?

I'm not even sure what war against Sudan you even mean - the US bombed a pharmaceutical factory there that it believed was linked to Al-Qaeda back in 1998, nearly 30 years ago. I'm not sure if they've done anything militarily in Sudan since then.
 
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