#democratic opposition victory

[tomorrowusa]

Turkey/Türkiye held local elections over the weekend and the secularist democratic opposition did surprisingly well. It spells bad news for authoritarians – both at home (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan) and potentially across the Black Sea (Vladimir Putin).

The Turkish party led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suffered big losses in local elections held on Sunday. Ekrem Imamoğlu, the incumbent from main opposition party CHP, led the mayoral race in Istanbul by nearly 10 percentage points after more than half the votes had been counted, Reuters reported early on Monday. CHP also retained its mayoral seat in Ankara and gained another 15 seats in cities across the country. Erdoğan conceded defeat for the AK Party, the AFP reported. The opposition's win is a blow to Erdoğan, who has been in power as Turkey's prime minister or president since 2003. Since he is also a close partner of Russian President Vladimir Putin — even though Turkey is a NATO member — the defeat of Erdoğan's party could change the two countries' relationship. If Erdoğan's AK Party had won resoundingly, the victory would be used in Ankara to "justify a close relationship with Russia in the eyes of the Turkish public," Marc Pierieni and Francesco Siccardi, researchers at think tank Carnegie Europe, wrote last week. [ ... ] Erdoğan's administration has been talking to Moscow about setting up a gas hub in Turkey as Europe weans itself off natural-gas imports from Russia.

The Financial Times has more specific figures on the shift in fortunes for the two largest parties. Erdoğan's AK Party is often called the AKP.

Overall the CHP captured 38 per cent of the national vote, while support for the AKP fell to 35 per cent. In the 2019 local election the AKP notched up 44 per cent of the vote, with the CHP well behind at around 30 per cent, according to Anadolu data

As an aside, Turkey has a great sounding national anthem called İstiklal Marşı. It's the only anthem I'm aware of that has the word coy in its lyrics.

#turkey #türkiye #local elections #istanbul #democratic opposition victory #ekrem i̇mamoğlu #chp #cumhuriyet halk partisi #recep tayyip erdoğan #akp #adalet ve kalkınma partisi #vladimir putin #russia #bad news for authoritarians #victory for secularism #i̇stiklal marşı

[taiwantalk]

#democracy means anyone could win an election #all these articles speculating on the threat of 3rd party are just stupid #of course there’s real possibility of trump getting elected. #the problem is always squarely on the voters and supporters #it’s as simply as people of any demographic willing to float the opposition’s propaganda #and clearly we have a very short memory how trump won 2016 with fakenews on Facebook about how Hillary was sick #trump’s path to victory in 2016 was about Bernie sander being sandbagged by democrats #trump’s path to victory in 2016 is being used again on biden #if any of you remember trump in 2016 was bashing hillary on her health and then spread rumors about pizzagate #and spreading falsehood on hillary killing one of her staff #if you don’t remember any of such fake news well america deserves to have trump elected #taiwantalk

[reasonsforhope]

"Georgia Republicans bundled over a dozen measures that targeted the state’s transgender residents into omnibus packages in a desperate attempt to get them passed. In a stunning defeat for the GOP, every single one of them failed.

Legislators gutted bills that had passed through committee and instead stuffed them full of their anti-LGBTQ+ wishlist items.

Bills that would ban transgender students from playing on teams aligned with their gender identity, ban transgender students from bathrooms aligned with their gender identity, opt parents into notification for every book a student checks out of the library, bar sex education before sixth grade, make all sex-ed classes opt-in and expand obscenity laws to make it easier to ban books with LGBTQ+ content all failed.

“MAGA politicians in Georgia tried it all in service to their anti-LGBTQ+ agenda,” said Human Rights Campaign Georgia State Director Bentley Hudgins, “including silencing debate and gutting unrelated, popular bills that had bipartisan support to ram through policies that would have put young LGBTQ+ Georgians in harm’s way. They failed.”

“It’s undeniable that the tides are shifting, both here in Georgia and across the nation,” Georgia Equality executive director Jeff Graham added. “Anti-LGBTQ actors are losing their political power, and more and more Georgians who know and love LGBTQ people are standing up against their baseless fear-mongering.”

In Florida recently, nearly two dozen anti-LGBTQ+ bills were defeated in the wake of Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s (R) presidential campaign implosion, dozens of measures in Virginia were tabled [Note: In the US, "tabled" means "shelved" or "taken out of consideration - the opposite of its meaning in the UK and other places], and Ohio’s governor backed off his attempt to restrict gender-affirming care access for transgender adults and minors. 

Meanwhile, in D.C., Democrats successfully excised 50 anti-LGBTQ+ provisions in the two budget bills passed and signed by President Joe Biden to fund the federal government.

Even Fox News has been forced to acknowledge transgender issues are among the lowest-priority concerns among voters."

-via LGBTQ Nation, April 1, 2024

#united states #us politics #lgbtq #lgbtq issues #lgbtq positivity #transgender #trans issues #trans positivity #transphobia #homophobia #anti trans laws #book bans #gender affirming care #georgia #florida #virginia #ohio #d.c. #republicans #democrats #voting matters #good news #hope

[asexualannoyance]

“[...] Like other movements within political Islam, the movement [Hamas] reflected a complex local reaction to the harsh realities of occupation, and a response to the disorientated paths offered by secular and socialist Palestinian forces in the past. Those with a more engaged analysis of this situation were well prepared for the Hamas triumph in the 2006 elections, unlike the Israeli, American, and European governments. It is ironic that it was the pundits and orientalists, not to mention Israeli politicians and chiefs of intelligence, who were taken by surprise by the election results more than anyone else. What particularly dumbfounded the great experts on Islam in Israel was the democratic nature of the victory. In their collective reading, fanatical Muslims were meant to be neither democratic nor popular. These same experts displayed a similar misunderstanding of the past. Ever since the rise of political Islam in Iran and in the Arab world, the community of experts in Israel had behaved as if the impossible was unfolding in front of their eyes. [...]

In 2009, Avner Cohen, who served in the Gaza Strip around the time Hamas began to gain power in the late 1980s, and was responsible for religious affairs in the occupied territories, told the Wall Street Journal, “the Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.” Cohen explains how Israel helped the charity al-Mujama al-Islamiya (the “Islamic Society”), founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 1979, to become a powerful political movement, out of which the Hamas movement emerged in 1987. Sheikh Yassin, a crippled, semi-blind Islamic cleric, founded Hamas and was its spiritual leader until his assassination in 2004. He was originally approached by Israel with an offer of help and the promise of a license to expand. The Israelis hoped that, through his charity and educational work, this charismatic leader would counterbalance the power of the secular Fatah in the Gaza Strip and beyond. [...]

In 1993, Hamas became the main opposition to the Oslo Accord. While there was still support for Oslo, it saw a drop in its popularity; however, as Israel began to renege on almost all the pledges it had made during the negotiations, support for Hamas once again received a boost. Particularly important was Israel’s settlement policy and its excessive use of force against the civilian population in the territories. [...]

It also captured the hearts and minds of many Muslims (who make up the majority in the occupied territories) due [to] the failure of secular modernity to find solutions to the daily hardships of life under occupation. [...]

The new Israeli methods of oppression introduced during the Second Intifada—particularly the building of the wall, the roadblocks, and the targeted assassinations—further diminished the support for the Palestinian Authority and increased the popularity and prestige of Hamas. It would be fair to conclude, then, that successive Israeli governments did all they could to leave the Palestinians with no option but to trust, and vote for, the one group prepared to resist an occupation described by the renowned American author Michael Chabon as “the most grievous injustice I have seen in my life.” [...]

The obvious failure of the Palestinian groups and individuals who had come to prominence on the promise of negotiations with Israel clearly made it seem as if there were very few alternatives. In this situation the apparent success of the Islamic militant groups in driving the Israelis out of the Gaza Strip offered some hope. However, there is more to it than this. Hamas is now deeply embedded in Palestinian society thanks to its genuine attempts to alleviate the suffering of ordinary people by providing schooling, medicine, and welfare. No less important, Hamas’s position on the 1948 refugees’ right of return, unlike the PA’s stance, was clear and unambiguous. Hamas openly endorsed this right, while the PA sent out ambiguous messages, including a speech by Abu Mazen in which he rescinded his own right to return to his hometown of Safad. [...]”

—Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappé, Chapter 9: “The Gaza Mythologies”, the section titled “Hamas Is a Terrorist Organization”

#palestine #free palestine #gaza #hamas #quotes #this book is very good

[llynwen]

Hey I'd like to ask what's going on in the Polish elections right now because the local (Czech) articles say that PiS is winning by a landslide but everyone on Tumblr is saying that they aren't? I'm just a little confused rn and unsure if I am still supposed to be celebrating or if something has gone wrong.

Hi! so glad you asked!

so basically, PiS is the far right christian anti minority party that won over 50% of the seats in our parliament in the previous election. That means that they basically got to make decisions and push for laws that suited them, and nobody could oppose them, seeing as you need 50%+ votes of all the people in the parliament to get shit approved.

And people got Mad. this elections turnout is currently at 72.85% (!!!).

Yes, PiS is currently winning with about 38% of votes. However, PiS is just one party. And because they've been so hostile to other parties and their policies have been So Outrageously Bad, nobody wants to join into a coalition with them.

The democratic opposition consists of KO (koalicja obywatelska - civic coalition), lewica (the new left) and trzecia droga (the third way). These three parties are similar in their views and all of them oppose PiS. At this time, their results are, respectively, 28%, 14.5% and 8%.

There is one party called konfederacja (the confederation) with like 7%, but they're so far right wing (neo nazis basically) that they don't want to work with PiS either.

What this all means is, yes, PiS is technically going to win with the biggest amount of votes and tickets. However, the democratic opposition will have a higher percentage and amount of tickets from the three parties combined. PiS will not be able to push their bigoted policies. They will no longer rule unopposed. The democratic opposition will have the majority of the seats, and if they manage to work together, they will be able to give us our abortion rights back, to start working on improving the lives of queer polish people, fixing the economy, the education system, the healthcare system.

Tl;dr: PiS is winning the election but the combined amount of votes for the opposition is greater than theirs, with about 198 tickets predicted to go to PiS and 248 to the three combined parties of the democratic opposition.

And yes, you are supposed to be celebrating. This is a huge victory for polish democracy, and gives us all hope for a brighter, better future. The official results are forecasted to be announced tomorrow around noon. But already things are looking great. It's a proud day for Poland.

#poland #ask #HOPE THIS HELPS FEEL FREE TO ASK ABOUT ANYTHUNG ELSE YOURE WONDERING ABOUT

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

I think it can be safely claimed that over the last ~10 years or so the neoconservative worldview and American exceptionalism has claimed one of the largest ideological victories (if not the largest) in the United States since the end of the Cold War. The idea that the United States is a city on a hill with a unique vision of freedom and democracy it has a duty to evangelize to the rest of the world at gunpoint is such political orthodoxy across the entirety of the mainstream US political spectrum it can be taken for granted as being a default part of every elected and appointed official's agenda, even the most self-declared "left" ones.

"Progressivism" isn't measured in how much you oppose the military-industrial complex or USAmerican interventionism anymore, it's quite the opposite in fact. Now how "progressive" you are is measured in how many interventions you support. "How can you call yourself a leftist/socialist/whatever if you don't support Ukraine/Hong Kong/Taiwan/Rojava/etc.?" When US imperialism is weakened by even the smallest amount by the ruling class as part of a shift in tactics, e.g. when Trump pulled some US troops from Syria or Biden finalized the withdrawal from Afghanistan, it's treated as an affront to "democratic values" or "human rights" by the entire mainstream media apparatus. Progressive discourses are now entirely folded into the supposed need for a USAmerican empire, i.e. "we need a Big Strong America to protect LGBTQ rights/women's rights!". Bush and the rest of his early 2000s neocon cronies are now the darlings of respectable liberal and progressive think tanks and media outlets. Piccrew avi "leftists" truly believe deep down that, if the United States isn't "perfect", it's definitely at least the "lesser evil" on the world stage, and are left in a state of sheer panic when told sanctions, weapons, and more US troops and military bases aren't the "answer" to whatever "problem" they just heard about through an Instagram infographic.

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 9 February 1995, the Mexican government cancelled the peace process with Zapatista rebels and invaded their Chiapas strongholds following the demand by an adviser to the US Chase Manhattan Bank that the government take action against them. Indigenous peoples in the area had risen up previous year and collectively taken control of their land and reorganised their economy in an equitable, directly democratic way. A secret Chase memo, which was leaked, stated: "While Chiapas, in our opinion, does not pose a fundamental threat to Mexican political stability, it is perceived to be so by many in the investment community. The government will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and of security policy." The memo went on to say that the governing party should "consider carefully whether or not to allow opposition victories if fairly won at the ballot box." However, despite these efforts the Zapatista autonomous areas continue to this day. Today we are pleased to be able to make available a new collection of allegorical stories by Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos (pictured). The stories infuse left and horizontal politics with an imaginative, literary, or poetic dimension, and include commentaries eliminating their historical, political and literary contexts: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/zapatista-stories-for-dreaming-another-world-subcomandante-marcos https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2205878542930617/?type=3

[mariacallous]

BREAKING NEWS

The Senate passed a bill over full G.O.P. opposition to fight climate change, cut drug costs and raise taxes, in a major win for Democrats.

Sunday, August 7, 2022 3:21 PM ET

The vote was a major victory for President Biden and Democrats, who are battling to maintain their slim House and Senate majorities in November’s midterm congressional elections.

Read the latest

[dasha-aibo]

A big rant about the Russian opposition

Well, you said you wanted it, so here it is.

Be warned: this will be long, rambly and unfocused. But I will try to split it into several parts.

Where it all began. The 90s.

Following the collapse of the USSR, Russian opposition was left in a weird state. Big Soviet-era opposition figures like Yeltsin now held all the power, yet, at the same time, the government was full of ex-Soviet party members. See, ol' Boris didn't want to do a lustration. I don't have his exact motivations, but, if I was put at a gunpoint and forced to guess, it was because Russia, even without all the states that left was a BIGHUGE country and needed people who knew how it all worked. And all of them happened to be party apparatchicks.

Yeltsin also left the KGB eseentially untouched. This is not well-known, but KGB were actually supportive of the fall of the USSR. Now, late-Gorby KGB is not the same as KGB during Stalin or even Khruschev. They were de-fanged and forced under too much supervision. Which they didn't like. So they were allowed to change their name, had some reshuffling and re-emerged as FSB. Ostensibly, just there to fight crime and protect the state, no disappearing people allowed anymore.

This is important to understand as we go forward.

90s were, overall, a time of terrible, terrible poverty and unimaginably, unprecedented freedom in Russia. If you knew what to do and was willing to do it, you could become a millionaire overnight. If you didn't have a particuarly marketable set of skills or was just unwilling to adapt, you'd be on the brink of starvation. And that's me not even touching the organized and disorganized crime which was absolutely rampant.

Then there was the privatization. Essentially, Yegor Gaidar, the prime minister during Yeltsin's first term decided that the best course of action was to take this lumbering 70-yo communist system and crash it head-first into capitalism. It was even called "shock therapy".

Now, in hindisght, we can say that his policies very much saved Russia and lead to economic prosperity later on. But man, shit was HARD for regular people. Especially hordes of state workers.

His most infamous project, however, was the privatization. Essentially, since EVERYTHING in USSR was state-owned and we were moving towards a capitalist system, someone needed to become the owner of all this state property. Privatize it, so to say. Of course, regular people could privatize their cars and apartments, which most everyone did. But the big bucks were in all the factories and natural resource mines. And this was done in the most ass-backwards way possible. People with connections got to bid on very lucrative property in the dead of the night with only one announcement in the local newspaper nobody read. Shit like that.

Everyone disliked that.

This is how Russia became saddled with it's giant oligarchy class.

I promise all of this is relevant.

Another really important thing happened in the 90s: the 1996 election. Yeltsin wanted a second term and he REALLY didn't want commies, his main opposition, to win. So he played dirty. Unlike what many later said, he didn't outright steal the elections. He did, however, do everything in his power as a prez to ensure a victory.

Everyone disliked that. Which is how we got Putin.

But 90s also saw the rise of several important opposition figures. And there really was actual freedom of speech and very little crackdown on opposition and protests. It still happened, don't get me wrong, but it was so minor compared to what's happening today, that it's barely worth mentioning. Anyway, back to opposition figures.

I will note three main one. Boris Nemtsov was the biggest - he was a favorite of Yeltsin's, was even a Deputy Prime Minister at one point and was considered as Yeltsin's heir at the same point. Things didn't work out. But he was the big face of liberals and democrats of the era. A guy who's "against everything bad and for everything good".

Then there was Mikhail Khodorkovsky. An oligarch and a philantropist, he was genuinely interested in the future of Russia and making it a big important country on the world stage through education and commerce.

Lastly, Gennady Kasparov. Yeah, the chess guy who lost to a computer. He wasn't really political in the 90s, but I still consider him part of the "old guard".

Part 2 in a reblog, because this is getting unreadable.

[kp777]

By Robert Reich

Common Dreams

April 11, 2023

I hate to say this, but America no longer has two parties devoted to a democratic system of self-government. We have a Democratic Party, which — notwithstanding a few glaring counter-examples such as what the Democratic National Committee did to Bernie in 2016 — is still largely committed to democracy. And we have a Republican Party, which is careening at high-velocity toward authoritarianism. Okay, fascism.

What occurred in Nashville last week is a frightening reminder of the fragility of American democracy when Republicans obtain supermajorities and no longer need to work with Democratic lawmakers.

The two Tennessee Democrats expelled from the Tennessee House were not accused of criminal wrongdoing or even immoral conduct. Their putative offense was to protest Tennessee’s failure to enact stronger gun controls after a shooting at a Christian school in Nashville left three 9-year-old students and three adults dead.

They were technically in violation of House rules, but the state legislature has never before imposed so severe a penalty for rules violations. In fact, over the past few years, a number of Tennessee legislators have kept their posts even after being charged with serious sexual misconduct. And the two who were expelled last week are Black people, while a third legislator who demonstrated in the same manner but was not expelled is white.

***

We are witnessing the logical culmination of win-at-any-cost Trump Republican politics — scorched-earth tactics used by Republicans to entrench their power, with no justification other than that they can.

Democracy is about means. Under it, citizens don’t have to agree on ends (abortion, health care, guns, or whatever else we disagree about) as long as we agree on democratic means for handling our disagreements.

But for Trump Republicans, the ends justify whatever means they choose —including expelling lawmakers, rigging elections through gerrymandering, refusing to raise the debt ceiling, and denying the outcome of a legitimate presidential election.

My friends, the Republican Party is no longer committed to democracy. It is rapidly becoming the American fascist party.

***

Wisconsin may soon offer an even more chilling example. While liberals celebrated the election on Tuesday of Janet Protasiewicz to the Wisconsin Supreme Court because she’ll tip the court against the state’s extreme gerrymandering (the most extreme in the nation) and its fierce laws against abortion (among the most stringent in America), something else occurred in Wisconsin on election day that may well negate Protasiewicz’s victory. Voters in Wisconsin’s 8th senatorial district decided (by a small margin) to send Republican Dan Knodl to the state Senate.

This gives the Wisconsin Republican Party a supermajority — and with it, the power to remove key state officials, including judges, through impeachment. Several weeks ago, Knodl said he would “certainly consider” impeaching Protasiewicz. Although he was then talking about her role as a county judge, his interest in impeaching her presumably has increased now that she’s able to tip the state’s highest court.

As in Tennessee, this could be done without any necessity for a public justification. Under Republican authoritarianism, power is its own justification. Recall that in 2018, after Wisconsin voters elected a Democratic governor and attorney general, the Republican legislature and the lame duck Republican governor responded by significantly cutting back the power of both offices.

North Carolina is another state where a supermajority of GOP legislators has cut deeply into the power of the executive branch, after Democrats won those posts. The GOP now has veto-proof majorities in both of the state’s legislative chambers, which enable Republicans to enact conservative policies over the opposition of Gov. Roy Cooper, including even more extreme gerrymandered districts. Although North Carolina’s constitution bans mid-decade legislative redistricting absent a court order, Republicans just announced they plan to do it anyway.

Meanwhile, a newly installed Republican supermajority in Florida has given Ron DeSantis unbridled control over the state — granting him total authority of the board governing Disney, the theme park giant he has fought over his anti-LGBTQ+ “don’t say gay” law; permission to fly migrants from anywhere in the U.S. to destinations of his own choosing, for political purposes, and then send the bill to Florida’s taxpayers; and unprecedented prosecutorial power in the form of his newly created, hand-picked office of election “integrity,” pursuing supposed cases of voter fraud.Florida has now effectively silenced even Florida residents from speaking out in opposition to Republican proposals. A new rule prohibits rallies at the state house. Those testifying against Republican bills are often allowed to speak for no more than 30 seconds.

***

Without two parties committed to democratic means to resolve differences in ends, the one remaining (small-d) democratic party is at a disadvantage in seeking ends it deems worthy. The inevitable result: Eventually it, too, sacrifices democratic means to its own ends.

When a political party sacrifices democratic means to its own ends, partisanship turns to enmity, and political divisions morph into hatred. In warfare there are no principles, only wins and losses. One hundred sixty years ago, our system of self-government fell apart because Southern states refused to recognize the inherent equality of Black people. What occurred in Tennessee last week is a throwback to that shameful era. I don’t believe Trump alone is responsible for the birth of modern Republican fascism, but he has legitimized and encouraged the vicious rancor that has led much of the GOP into election-denying authoritarianism.

#republicans #american fascism #fascism #democracy #voter suppression #authoritarianism #gerrymandering #rigging elections

[tomorrowusa]

Don't risk a rerun of the 2000 election.

In the first presidential election of the 21st century many deluded progressives voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.

Their foolishness gave us eight years of George W. Bush who plagued the country with two recessions (including the Great Recession) and two wars (one totally unnecessary and one which could have been avoided if he heeded an intelligence brief 5 weeks before 9/11).

Oh yeah, Dubya also appointed one conservative and one batshit crazy reactionary to the US Supreme Court. Roberts and Alito are still there.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post offers some thoughts.

Why leftists should work their hearts out for Biden in 2024

Ask a Democrat with a long memory what the numbers 97,488 and 537 represent, and their face will twist into a grimace. The first is the number of votes Ralph Nader received in Florida in 2000 as the nominee of the Green Party; the second is the margin by which George W. Bush was eventually certified the winner of the state, handing him the White House. Now, with President Biden gearing up for reelection, talk of a spoiler candidate from the left is again in the air. That’s unfortunate, because here’s the truth: The past 2½ years under Biden have been a triumph for progressivism, even if it’s not in most people’s interest to admit it. This was not what most people expected from Biden, who ran as a relative moderate in the 2020 Democratic primary. His nomination was a victory for pragmatism with its eyes directed toward the center. But today, no one can honestly deny that Biden is the most progressive president since at least Lyndon B. Johnson. His judicial appointments are more diverse than those of any of his predecessors. He has directed more resources to combating climate change than any other president. Notwithstanding the opposition from the Supreme Court, his administration has moved aggressively to forgive and restructure student loans.

Three years ago the economy was in horrible shape because of Trump's mishandling of the pandemic. Now unemployment is steadily below 4%, job creation continues to exceed expectations, and wages are rising as unions gain strength. The post-pandemic, post-Afghan War inflation rate has receded to near normal levels; people in the 1970s would have sold their souls for a 3.2% (and dropping) inflation rate. And many of the effects of "Bidenomics" have yet to kick in.

And in a story that is criminally underappreciated, his administration’s policy reaction to the covid-induced recession of 2020 was revolutionary in precisely the ways any good leftist should favor. It embraced massive government intervention to stave off the worst economic impacts, including handing millions of families monthly checks (by expanding the child tax credit), giving all kids in public schools free meals, boosting unemployment insurance and extending health coverage to millions.

It worked. While inflation rose (as it did worldwide), the economy’s recovery has been blisteringly fast. It took more than six years for employment rates to return to what they were before the Great Recession hit in 2008, but we surpassed January 2020 jobs levels by the spring of 2022 — and have kept adding jobs ever since. To the idealistic leftist, that might feel like both old news and a partial victory at best. What about everything supporters of Bernie Sanders have found so thrilling about the Vermont senator’s vision of the future, from universal health care to free college? It’s true Biden was never going to deliver that, but to be honest, neither would Sanders had he been elected president. And that brings me to the heart of how people on the left ought to think about Biden and his reelection.

Biden has gotten things done. The US economy is doing better than those of almost every other advanced industrialized country.

Our rivals China and Russia are both worse off than they were three years ago. And NATO is not just united, it's growing.

Sadly, we still need to deal with a far right MAGA cult at home who would wreck the country just to get its own way.

Biden may be elderly and unexciting, but that is one of the reasons he won in 2020. Many people just wanted an end to the daily drama of Trump's capricious and incompetent rule by tweet. And a good portion of those people live in places that count greatly in elections – suburbs and exurbs.

Superhero films seem to be slipping in popularity. Hopefully that's a sign that voters are less likely to embrace self-appointed political messiahs to save them from themselves.

Good governance is a steady process – not a collection of magic tricks. Experienced and competent individuals who are not too far removed from the lives of the people they represent are the best people to have in government.

Paul Waldman concludes his column speaking from the heart as a liberal...

I’ve been in and around politics for many years, and even among liberals, I’ve almost always been one of the most liberal people in the room. Yet only since Biden’s election have I realized that I will probably never see a president as liberal as I’d like. It’s not an easy idea to make peace with. But it suggests a different way of thinking about elections — as one necessary step in a long, difficult process. The further you are to the left, the more important Biden’s reelection ought to be to you. It might require emotional (and policy) compromise, but for now, it’s also the most important tool you have to achieve progressive ends.

Exactly. Rightwingers take the long view. It took them 49 years but they eventually got Roe v. Wade overturned. To succeed, we need to look upon politics as an extended marathon rather as one short sprint.

Republicans may currently be bickering, but they will most likely unite behind whichever anti-abortion extremist they nominate.

It's necessary to get the word out now that the only way to defeat climate-denying, abortion-restricting, assault weapon-loving, race-baiting, homophobic Republicans is to vote Democratic.

#paul waldman #liberalism #election 2000 #election 2024 #joe biden #third parties #vote blue no matter who #donald trump #dumpster fire #trumpster fire #fascism vs. democracy #nra republicans #abortion #climate change #lgbtq+ rights #race-baiting #take the political long view #phil hands

[soberscientistlife]

Democratic star Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan racks up another massive progressive victory as she signs a life-saving red flag law to keep guns away from those known to be a risk to themselves and others.

The new legislation — which is overwhelmingly popular despite the NRA's opposition to it — will permit law enforcement, family members, healthcare providers, and acquaintances to officially petition courts to temporarily remove firearms from anyone a judge deems an imminent threat.

"We must act because week after week in America we see grim, familiar headlines," said Whitmer. "The shooters from Oxford and MSU both showed concerning behavior beforehand."

Michigan is now one of over a dozen states with red flag laws. Since zero Republicans in the state legislature backed the bill, it will not go into effect until three months after the legislative session ends.

Once again, we see that Democrats care about stemming the bloodshed caused by guns and Republicans do not. The GOP is perfectly happy to sit back as innocent people are gunned down as long as cash from the NRA and gun manufacturers flows into their coffers.

Source: Occupy Democrats Twitter

[reasonsforhope]

Note: I super don't like the framing of this headline. "Here's why it matters" idk it's almost like there's an entire country's worth of people who get to keep their democracy! Clearly! But there are few good articles on this in English, so we're going with this one anyway.

--

2024 is the biggest global election year in history and the future of democracy is on every ballot. But amid an international backsliding in democratic norms, including in countries with a longer history of democracy like India, Senegal’s election last week was a major win for democracy. It’s also an indication that a new political class is coming of age in Africa, exemplified by Senegal’s new 44-year-old president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye.

The West African nation managed to pull off a free and fair election on March 24 despite significant obstacles, including efforts by former President Macky Sall to delay the elections and imprison or disqualify opposition candidates. Add those challenges to the fact that many neighboring countries in West Africa — most prominently Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, but other nations across the region too — have been repeatedly undermined by military coups since 2020.

Sall had been in power since 2012, serving two terms. He declined to seek a third term following years of speculation that he would do so despite a constitutional two-term limit. But he attempted to extend his term, announcing in February that elections (originally to be held that month) would be pushed off until the end of the year in defiance of the electoral schedule.

Sall’s allies in the National Assembly approved the measure, but only after security forces removed opposition politicians, who vociferously protested the delay. Senegalese society came out in droves to protest Sall’s attempted self-coup, and the Constitutional Council ruled in late February that Sall’s attempt to stay in power could not stand.

That itself was a win for democracy. Still, opposition candidates, including Faye, though legally able to run, remained imprisoned until just days before the election — while others were barred from running at all. The future of Senegal’s democracy seemed uncertain at best.

Cut to Tuesday [April 2, 2024], when Sall stepped down and handed power to Faye, a former tax examiner who won on a campaign of combating corruption, as well as greater sovereignty and economic opportunity for the Senegalese. And it was young voters who carried Faye to victory...

“This election showed the resilience of the democracy in Senegal that resisted the shock of an unexpected postponement,” Adele Ravidà, Senegal country director at the lnternational Foundation for Electoral Systems, told Vox via email. “... after a couple of years of unprecedented episodes of violence [the Senegalese people] turned the page smoothly, allowing a peaceful transfer of power.”

And though Faye’s aims won’t be easy to achieve, his win can tell us not only about how Senegal managed to establish its young democracy, but also about the positive trend of democratic entrenchment and international cooperation in African nations, and the power of young Africans...

Senegal and Democracy in Africa

Since it gained independence from France in 1960, Senegal has never had a coup — military or civilian. Increasingly strong and competitive democracy has been the norm for Senegal, and the country’s civil society went out in great force over the past three years of Sall’s term to enforce those norms.

“I think that it is really the victory of the democratic institutions — the government, but also civil society organization,” Sany said. “They were mobilized, from the unions, teacher unions, workers, NGOs. The civil society in Senegal is one of the most experienced, well-organized democratic institutions on the continent.” Senegalese civil society also pushed back against former President Abdoulaye Wade’s attempt to cling to power back in 2012, and the Senegalese people voted him out...

Faye will still have his work cut out for him accomplishing the goals he campaigned on, including economic prosperity, transparency, food security, increased sovereignty, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. This will be important, especially for Senegal’s young people, who are at the forefront of another major trend.

Young Africans will play an increasingly key role in the coming decades, both on the continent and on the global stage; Africa’s youth population (people aged 15 to 24) will make up approximately 35 percent of the world’s youth population by 2050, and Africa’s population is expected to grow from 1.5 billion to 2.5 billion during that time. In Senegal, people aged 10 to 24 make up 32 percent of the population, according to the UN.

“These young people have connected to the rest of the world,” Sany said. “They see what’s happening. They are interested. They are smart. They are more educated.” And they have high expectations not only for their economic future but also for their civil rights and autonomy.

The reality of government is always different from the promise of campaigning, but Faye’s election is part of a promising trend of democratic entrenchment in Africa, exemplified by successful transitions of power in Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone over the past year. To be sure, those elections were not without challenges, but on the whole, they provide an important counterweight to democratic backsliding.

Senegalese people, especially the younger generation, have high expectations for what democracy can and should deliver for them. It’s up to Faye and his government to follow."

-via Vox, April 4, 2024

#senegal #africa #bassirou diomaye faye #elections #2024 elections #democracy #voting matters #young people #political corruption #coup attempt #good news #hope #international politics #african politics #fair elections #autocracy #macky sall

[defundthepolicedestroythegop]

House GOP seeks billions in cuts to rail, water infrastructure spending

Two years after approving a bipartisan $1.2 trillion law, Republicans are looking to scale back spending that some in their own party previously supported

By Tony Romm and Ian Duncan

Updated July 18, 2023 at 12:12 p.m. EDT|Published July 18, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

It took decades for Congress to deliver on its promise to pour new money into the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and internet connections.

Now, House Republicans are trying to slash some of the same funds.

A series of GOP bills to finance the federal government in 2024 would wipe out billions of dollars meant to repair the nation’s aging infrastructure, potentially undercutting a 2021 law that was one of Washington’s rare recent bipartisan achievements. The proposed cuts could hamstring some of the most urgently needed public-works projects across the country, from improving rail safety to reducing lead contamination at schools.

Some of the cuts would be particularly steep: Amtrak, for example, could lose nearly two-thirds of its annual federal funding next fiscal year if House Republicans prevail. That includes more than $1 billion in cuts targeting the highly trafficked and rapidly aging Northeast Corridor, which runs between Boston and Washington, prompting Amtrak’s chief to sound early alarms about service disruptions.

In recent days, Republicans have defended their approach as a fiscally responsible way to reduce the burgeoning federal debt. They’ve largely tried to extract the savings by slimming down federal agencies’ operating budgets next year, technically leaving intact the extra funding that lawmakers adopted in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

But the effect would be the same: The GOP bills would reduce the federal money available for repairs. The cuts would come at a time when the country is grappling with the real-life consequences of its own infrastructure failures, from train derailments in Ohio and Pennsylvania to the collapse of a key portion of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia last month.

“I guess no one reads newspapers,” said Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, the top Democrat on the appropriations panel that oversees transportation and other key infrastructure programs. “When big infrastructure issues are blowing up in our face, we’re doing the opposite.”

They opposed the infrastructure law. Now, some in the GOP court its cash.

The emerging House battle underscores the massive chasm between Democrats and Republicans over the nation’s fiscal health, only weeks after the two parties brokered what was thought to be a political truce.

In a deal to stave off a potential first-ever federal default, Biden worked out an agreement with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in June to pursue modest voluntary spending caps on federal agencies and programs starting in the 2024 fiscal year. In exchange, Republicans permitted lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling, allowing the United States to resume borrowing money to pay its bills.

Even as Republicans touted that vote as a victory, however, some in the party’s far-right flank signaled they planned to continue the fight. They pledged to force Democrats to accept massive spending cuts through the annual appropriations process that funds the government — or risk a shutdown if lawmakers fail to act by the Sept. 30 deadline.

So far, the standoff has largely simmered behind the scenes. In recent weeks, Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.), the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, has worked methodically to process a dozen funding bills, which McCarthy on Monday said he hopes to start bringing to the chamber floor as soon as next week.

In a sign of the acrimonious debate to come, each of the House appropriations bills features sharp spending cuts that Democrats vehemently oppose — even targeting some federal infrastructure programs that until recently had enjoyed bipartisan support.

Two years after Congress approved $55 billion to improve the nation’s water supply, for example, House Republicans last week proposed to eliminate $1.7 billion from the two primary federal sources for drinking water and wastewater grants to states.

Those programs had received supplemental funding as part of the bipartisan infrastructure act. Rather than undo that law, the GOP bill would dramatically reduce the initiatives’ annual budgets, compared with what they received in the 2023 fiscal year, while underfunding a slew of other federal water infrastructure operations. That includes two programs to help schools and low-income communities reduce lead contamination, which together could receive about $85 million less next year than lawmakers previously had authorized, according to an analysis of data released in January 2022 by the Congressional Research Service.

“I’ll be real honest with you: If you’re looking for a pretty bill, this is not it,” acknowledged Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that produced the proposal, at a hearing last week.

“Cutting funding is never easy and can often be an ugly process. … But with the nation’s debt in excess of $32 trillion and inflation at an unacceptable level, we have to do our jobs to rein in unnecessary federal spending,” he said.

After weeks of haggling, House appropriators are expected to finalize that bill this week. Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, the top Democrat on the panel, described the spending measure in a recent hearing as “one of the most harmful attacks on America’s efforts to tackle climate change.”

Congress approves $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, sending measure to Biden for enactment

The proposed cuts to infrastructure spending come at a time when new federal money has started to flow more rapidly. The White House estimates it has announced about $225 billion in awards under the 2021 law, which has benefited roughly 35,000 projects nationwide, a figure Biden has touted regularly as he tours the country to promote his economic agenda.

For both parties, the $1.2 trillion packagemarked a major achievement after years of false promises and jokes about botched “infrastructure weeks.” It took months of late-night negotiating sessions among a small group of moderate Democrats and Republicans before they could reconcile their competing visions about the size and scope of new federal spending.

Even then, though, lawmakers acknowledged their compromise addressed only a small fraction of the United States’ true needs. In its latest national report card, the American Society of Civil Engineers projected the nation faces a roughly $2.6 trillion, 10-year backlog in projects to repair the country’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and internet connections — a gap about twice the size of the infrastructure law.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” said Emily Feenstra, the chief policy and external affairs officer at ASCE. “We need every cent.”

Some of the greatest needs are in transportation, where House Republicans on Tuesday convened a hearing to finalize a 2024 spending bill that includes $6.6 billion in cuts. The spending reductions predominantly target transit and rail, while curbing Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s work to promote environmental and racial equity.

“This bill is another example of the real progress we’re making to reduce overall spending while funding our highest priorities,” Granger told committee lawmakers.

Amtrak would take one of the heaviest blows, potentially losing $1.5 billion in funding next year if the GOP plan becomes law. In a statement last week, Stephen Gardner, the passenger railroad’s chief executive, said such a cut would force Amtrak to “radically reduce or suspend service on various routes across the nation.”

Republicans would extract another $2 billion from a federal infrastructure program used to fund the construction of new transit lines. That could jeopardize a slew of projects now underway — including the Gateway tunnel system between New York and New Jersey, one of the largest infrastructure endeavors in the nation, which hopes to receive $7 billion to make urgently needed repairs.

The GOP bills also provide no new funding in 2024 for a series of grant programs that Republicans historically have supported. That would equate to a roughly $800 million cut from the initiative known as RAISE, which provides money to cities and states so they can construct bridges over rail lines, create new pedestrian paths and finance street redesigns.

The program is so popular the Transportation Department received $15 billion in requests last year, though the agency could award only 162 projects totaling $2.2 billion in funding in June. Some of those requests came from GOP lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee: 17 panel members wrote the Biden administration in search of funds for dozens of local projects in 2022 and 2023, according to letters backing requests for funds that the department released to The Washington Post last week.

The members include Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), who wrote in support of five RAISE applicants in her state. Her office accused the Biden administration of “playing political games” in releasing the letters and said the congresswoman “will remain focused on bringing investments back to Iowa while reining in overall government spending.”

Biden, for his part, only sought in 2024 to fund the RAISE program at the level adopted under the infrastructure law. But the president did request — and Republicans ultimately denied — $1.2 billion in new money for infrastructure megaprojects. That would have included funds for the long-sought overhaul of the Brent Spence Bridge between Ohio and Kentucky and the Calcasieu River Bridge, which carries Interstate 10 in Louisiana.

In an early hearing last week, the top Republican overseeing transportation spending — Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.) — defended the bill as one that “meets the challenge before us to reduce spending and get our debt under control.”

On Tuesday, he added of the fierce debate to come: “These things tend to start out in one place. They always tend to end up some place else.”

Taken from The Washington Post because this shit is too important to put behind a paywall. Link is in the title.

#infrastructure #republicans #gop #broadband #Amtrak #railway safety #lead pipe #public works #public health #public safety #health & safety #fuck the gop

[plethoraworldatlas]

Muslim American leaders from six battleground states on Saturday vowed to mobilize their communities against President Joe Biden's reelection over his support of Israel's war in Gaza, but they have yet to settle on an alternative 2024 candidate. The states are among a handful that allowed Biden to win the 2020 election. Opposition from their sizeable Muslim and Arab American communities could complicate the president's path to Electoral College victory next year .... It remains to be seen whether Muslim voters would turn against Biden en masse, but small shifts in support could make a difference in states Biden won by narrow margins in 2020. A recent poll showed Biden's support among Arab Americans has plunged from a comfortable majority in 2020 to 17%. That could be decisive in a state like Michigan where Biden won by 2.8 percentage points and Arab Americans account for 5 percent of the vote, according to the Arab American Institute. There are around 25,000 Muslim voters in Wisconsin, a state where Biden won by about 20,000 votes, said Tarek Amin, a doctor representing the state's Muslim community.

Every state, especially major swing states and Big Democrat states, have massive immigrant communities, including Muslim and Arab/Middle Eastern immigrant communities; Biden cannot win if he goes against the explicit desire of over 80% of all democrat voters who want a ceasefire and actions towards peace and de-escalation, and he especially can't win if immigrant voters in this country might have family his supporting of war crimes have gotten killed. It's not just Muslim voters; The US has a history of meddling in other countries and supporting horrible regimes and genocides. Every immigrant voter who has family in another country has to ask themselves if Biden might support genocide that kills their family too.

Biden and the democrats as a whole Absolutely have to support first Ceasefire, then De-escalation and further actions towards peace for both moral reasons and because they simply won't win reelection if they don't.

If they actually want to keep Republicans from taking over like they plan, Democrats have to act fast.

A small number of Democrats have begun calling for Ceasefire, keep fighting to push more towards joining those calls. Make them actually listen to their voters instead of worrying about lobbying money; All the SuperPAC money won't buy them anything when it costs them the actual voters.

#us politics #democrats #joe biden #palestine #israel #immigrants #Immigrant voters

[schraubd]

Media Alt-Centrists in Disarray

  When I first saw this Tweet (Xeet?), my eye was drawn to "Dems should pursue working-class voters of all races." It's a great example of something that is simultaneously (a) alt-center conventional wisdom and (b) utterly inane. What are the sorts of policies Dems should pursue to working-class voters of all races? Answer: the ones they're already supporting!  The difference between talking and delivering. pic.twitter.com/mb6bp65eKV — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 31, 2023 Price negotiations for prescription drugs is a great, obvious example of a policy that's geared to the interest of working-class voters of all races. Standing with the incipient wave of labor mobilization is another. The infrastructure bill was yet another. All of these are centerpiece items of the Democratic Party's economic agenda. But the alt-center punditry acts as if they don't exist. The "advice" on offer is "do what you're already doing, but make me pay attention to it." And one cannot help but think that the price the pundits have put on "make me pay attention to it" is "stop distracting me by also supporting policies that are distinctively to the benefit of specific historically marginalized communities." At the same time, there is a separate vapidity in the "advice" that Biden shouldn't run for reelection. Again, as advice this is just terrible: Biden has a proven electoral track record and has already beaten Trump once. There's no universe where a chaotic primary free-for-all would actually be healthy for the Democratic Party or the broader prospect of ensuring that Trump or any of his lackeys stay out of the White House. The desire for "a real primary" is just thinly-disguised thirst for the good old days of "Dems in disarray" and the chaotic intraparty knife fights that aren't happening on the GOP side because virtually all of Trump's "challengers" can't help but cozy up to him (with a not-so-subtle wink to the various factions within the Democratic Party whose definition of a "real primary" excludes any primary where their preferred candidate doesn't march to victory). Finally, "faculty lounge" politics is also a meaningless phrase. If it's meant to refer to the notion that Democratic party politics take their cues from whatever petition is currently being passed around the Wesleyan anthropology department email list, it's delusional. If it's meant to be a general referent to so-called "culture war" politics, then it's horribly outdated -- we are long past the days where the main "culture" wedge issues favored Republicans over Democrats. Republicans are getting absolutely blitzed on reproductive rights as their radical campaigns to imprison, maim, and murder women are predictably reviled. And their anti-LGBTQ agenda doesn't fare much better. Democrats have a lot of room to punish Republicans for their extremism here, and absolutely should. Biden should run for reelection, and in the process will no doubt trounce token primary opposition. He should promote his policies which will improve the lives of working class voters of all races, and he should absolutely torch Republicans for their unabashed extremism in desiring to take American "culture" back to the 19th century. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/zVgUnOJ

#abortion #class #Democrats #economy #Election 2024 #Joe Biden #reproductive rights