It's only 209 weeks until Election Day 2028. Get cracking, people.
20 thoughts on “Time is running out”
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Cats, charts, and politics
Cats, charts, and politics
It's only 209 weeks until Election Day 2028. Get cracking, people.
Comments are closed.
Presumes facts not in evidence.
One must not assume there will be anything approximating a fair election in 2028.
Is that a campaign pledge from "Drum for President"?
We're still evaluating whether we want to stay in the US long term. It's pretty clear that this divide is not going away anytime soon and it's also pretty clear that none of our elected officials has any intestinal fortitude to stop the cancer of Private Equity taking over everything and raising prices.
Crackpots continue to suggest that we need a high birthrate to keep the mail moving, but they have no interest in addressing the fact that the job market just don't want or need warm bodies to fill seats anymore. There's a huge demand for skills, but less demand for do-your-8-and-hit-the-gate workers. Breeding more skilled workers will be dwarfed by breeding a lot more average, mediocre skills workers. Those workers still want housing and health care and all the trapping of middle class life in a world where they are quickly becoming irrelevant.
Eventually, they revolt and we get a populist leader with all the negatives of Trump and more.
The trend line is not great and the smart money might be to get out now and find a more stable place to be for the next 20-30 years.
Sadly, I'm afraid you're right. Today's middle class and working class see themselves as temporarily inconvenienced millionaires (with apologies to Ronald Wright) and not as an exploited class. While they could unite and defeat their plutocratic overlords by founding a truly progressive party, they've become convinced that politics is just a form of entertainment and Trump is the consummate entertainer. So they're stuck choosing between the right-wing extremist party and a conservative party.
We're too old to move to another country. I guess we'll just hunker down in our deep blue state and watch the nation crumble around us. Sad.
Where would that be? I'm not entirely sure there is such a place.
It's been a discouraging time outside the United States, too, where I'll count the extraordinarily long run of Tory England (on top of Blair's turn of Labour to the center and to Bush's war) despite the new PM. Somehow Trudeau in Canada has become unpopular as well despite so popular a start. And that doesn't count the gains of the real far right in Italy, France, and Germany plus the destruction of Hungary. Besides, Canada is too cold for me. New York is bad enough.
But I admit I can't explain all this to myself. I think of our country as unique in the legacy of slavery. How can immigration all by itself have turned the world around? Racism, generalized hatred, and stupidity aren't altogether clear answers, since then you have to ask where they came from so rapidly.This is not just "the human condition."
What are you on about? You can review the employment status of the civilian population 25 years and over by educational attainment here:
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm
Even in this day and age, about half the population lacking a high school degree is employed (as compared to 72% of the population with a bachelors or higher being employed). There are plenty of jobs for less-skilled workers. When house painters have months-long backlogs the job market definitely needs warm bodies.
House painters, HVAC, plumbing, carpentry. Those are skilled trades and ones where it's difficult to get young people interested since they involve manual labor and they'd much rather sit in air conditioned spaces on laptops and look at their phones half the day.
Like I said, there's a massive demand for skilled workers (both technology and the trades). Demand for store clerks, cashiers, and other jobs is waning fast.
If things go south next Tuesday (or whenever the shit show is completed), I'm simply going to turn off from watching, reading all news related media, except for the weather reports. Sign onto the remaining streaming services I currently don't have (which aren't many), and hunker down for 4+ years. Try to become a better mediocre guitar player, and a better reasonably decent photographer. Perhaps travel even more, avoiding all the Red states, except to drive through them rapidly to reach some semblance of civilization.
Good plan. Mine too, except the guitar thing. I am lucky to live in the SF Bay which is truly multi-cultural and quite liberal in our politics. I don't have to move, which is good because I'm too old and like my house.
I also live in the SF Bay Area. Personally, I think we are screwed under Trump. So much of the conservative world despises us, they won’t care at all when Trump sends his deputized Texas National Guard to put brown people and the homeless into concentration camps. I expect protests to be put down with military force. I expect it to be ugly. And God help us if there’s an earthquake. We won’t get any help from the federal government, that’s for sure!
Japan has a few million empty homes -- akiya -- for which, many can be had for less than $20K. They also have a wide variety of visas to allow people to stay in Japan for a very long time.
I realize that, presuming Harris wins, the OPS and his minions won't shut up about it until at least sometime in February, but I swear if anybody else mentions the word "election" to me after next week I will dedicate most of my waking hours to arranging their slow and painful death.
Geez, your kill list will be a mile long. This election as a greater process will last into 2025
I guess what Trotsky meant by permanent revolution was perpetual campaign season.
Should Trump win I don't fear the worst. He is not strong or smart enough to organize the right people behind him to be that extreme. I believe members of the military, for example, indicated they would not be bowing to all his potential demands. Even something like Roe can be overcome or worked around in time. Lastly, it's one thing to cheer on your team but if your team starts doing real damage some of the supporters will stop supporting. Most of them aren't as egregiously awful as he is. The worst thing for me is hearing and reading "Trump" all the time. I even had to stop listening to NPR last time. Maybe I should finally learn to play the guitar too. Tend my own garden. And I hear Norway is nice.
" He is not strong or smart enough to organize.. "
He doesn't need to be smart or strong. As a president he is completely immune from any damage to himself. So he can try and see what works.
In the first term he needed to worry about impeachment, and he was intending to win another election. This term there are enough Republican worms in the senate to make impeachment totally unrealistic, and he cannot run for another term without messing the constitution even if he doesn't die first. So he will simply try everything.
"I believe members of the military, for example .."
By the time you need to rely on the military to defend democracy you are already in a deep mess.
He litteraly has nothing to fear except losing the election. If he wins he will gladly and enthusiastically act on his worst impulses. Or at the very least allow people like Stephen Miller to act on theirs.
I don't think you've been paying attention to who is already behind him. He may be incapable of learning, but the people who will be under him are not. They are already applying the lessons they learnt from last time's surprise win.
Plus, the decay of the judicial branch, rotting from the head, has removed the single best safeguard the US had last time around.
"209 weeks"
Yes, even before the votes are counted and the winner confirmed, I have faith that our simple minded infotainment media will be speculating about 2028. And bemoaning "the failed Harris administration" the moment it's clear that she's won.
This isn't new, as Mr Drum alludes to. When Bill Clinton was first elected in 1992, the gripes were everywhere about "the failed Clinton administration" before Thanksgiving 1992.