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So what form does the resistance take?

Don't put your faith into any Democrat on the Federal Level - look for people in your Community and State you do and do not want in power.
Explore options of joining or founding a Union at Work.
Go to meetings of mutual aid groups.
Take a First Aid course and carry a kit with you.
Learn how to spend time without a phone, and make sure your phone is not unlocked with any biometrics.
Talk to friends what you need each other to do if you get arrested during a protest or with you are caught being curious about your neighbor being brutally deported.
 
Now that insanity and evil have triumphed, what comes next from the opposition?

I voted for Dean Philips in the Democratic Primary, as one of a handful of candidates who recognized that Biden-Harris would be a complete disaster.
He got 3% of the vote here, while Biden racked up 83+%.
Progressive candidates and reform candidates warned of the danger. Bernie was very outspoken about it. Andrew Yang correctly noted the Dems were committing suicide.

If MAGA is to be resisted, there has to be a *quick* organization of an opposition, cause once entrenched, a Trump dynasty will crush the opposition just as the Nazis did. Bernie is too old to be a viable voice. Walz might have had a shot but he tied himself to the sinking ship. No celebrities seem to want to step forward as a populist candidate. And that is clearly what is needed, someone popular and/or populist. So who is it--who is the leader of the resistance? Does there even have to be one? Can a strongman be countered by a hodgepodge of contrary voices? Should it be far left, like the Democratic Youth who want to not only defund but eliminate the police? Or does it have to be someone/something more centrist? I really don't know--hence me writing this post. ;)
Re Bernie Sanders, I saw yesterday that the outgoing chair of the party got into an unmerciful snit over Bernie's postmortem, despite it being correct in every detail. I don't see the party changing without an internal revolution, they're too wedded to the idea of a bad authoritarian being better than a good social democrat, as long as the economic system remains intact.
 
I've already heard argument from the right that there are loopholes to the 22d amendment. Trump of course has explicitly said he believes those part of the Constitution that prevent him from holding power should "be thrown out"

The midterms are a huge point of discussion, so thanks for bringing them up. I am not sure we can expect a repeat of 2018. Trump is inept, no doubt, but I worry that with both houses he will (as many dictators do) build a perceived economic and political boost, by doing things like completely obliterating our wilderness areas by indiscriminately drilling, to increase domestic oil production, which in turn will lower the prices of goods. So, short term perceived success which will enable MAGA to retain power, only at the expense of the planet and our species survival. But it will be an interesting 2 years for sure!
If project 2025 is the guide (spoiler: it is), his handlers are simply going to make it impossible to lose another election. Eventually (ok, fairly rapidly) the idea of even having them will be done away with altogether.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, this has been the repugs long game.
 
So before this thread goes too far left--of--center (pun intended) is anyone willing to venture a suggestion to the original question I posed, which is (rephrased) How should the opposition be framed?
1) Go left, more socialist
2) reach out more to the moderates and conservatives
3) A broad coalition of progressive or reform groups, or just one main one with an umbrella of support below?
4) If one person has to take the lead as leader, who is the most likely or who is the best candidate?

My gut tells me it should be one strong populist candidate (like a Bruce Springsteen jumping into politics) who is willing to speak to the demand for universal health care, wealth equality, ending the police state etc...but I could be wrong. Thoughts??
The best approach would be an alliance of progressive social issues with bread and butter traditional labour issues, raise wages, improve safety, sickness cover and job security and cut back on worker exploitation along with a chunk of eating the rich to cut the chasm between the top four or five percent and the people that is destroying the country.

Whether such a coherent opposition will be allowed absent a revolution is a different matter.
 
Dems need something clever and big as their program, and fast, whether they get it done or not. the important thing is to change the conversation.

Like for example a significant Estate Tax ... unless you give the money to your Grandkids instead of children.
 
The best approach would be an alliance of progressive social issues with bread and butter traditional labour issues, raise wages, improve safety, sickness cover and job security and cut back on worker exploitation along with a chunk of eating the rich to cut the chasm between the top four or five percent and the people that is destroying the country.

Whether such a coherent opposition will be allowed absent a revolution is a different matter.
Yep, That is clearly what is needed and they aren't controversial issues, even Republicans support a lot of it. I just wonder who/what should take the lead.
 
Resistance would be higher if the potential weren't so currently divided.
 
Gotta admit, I got a charge out of that one. I need to step up my game in the face of that kind of static.

Eta: yet shockingly on point. We are shorting out against each other, while they use our polarity to keep our direct power from alternating to the source of the primary surge
 
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Right now there are democrat-controlled states plotting legal challenges if Trump tries his worst.

If we lose the House, that's probably the most legitimate resistance we can do.
 
Resistance would be higher if the potential weren't so currently divided.
But that's just it--Im not sure the division is real. Less than half the population voted in the election. This was not really a contest in my opinion between MAGA policies and Socialist ones, it was a referendum on human decency, and the reason decency lost is because people have lost the ability ro see when they've been conned. I have several long time conservative friends who immediately after the election said "Sure, Trump is flawed but he is not the criminal/lunatic the media has made him out to be--we can all come together now, unite and hopefully get some things done" They don't get it. As someone just posted in another thread here, this is the realization of what the late great Carl Sagan saw would happen as critical thinking skills have failed. This was a societal failure, not a political failure. Is there really 'division' over the importance of facts and evidence? Apparently there is--but a lot of it is artificial. A resistance could take the form of MASA--Make America Smart Again.
ETA: and of course, that group has already been established...now I just have to get the hats and t-shirts made.
 
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Trump is not going to appoint the kind of classic GOP people to postions like he did last tim and who acted as a break on his bad impusles. He will surrond himself with yes men and sycophants, there will be no breaks on Trump's worst impulses.

And as for your bolded statement , I am not so sure. Too many in the GOP will do anything to hold on to their positons, and if that means doing what Dear Leader says so be it.
I am not convinced that some in the GOP woudl not throw out the Consitution they claim to love in pursuuit of pure power. I hope I am wrong.
And his fondness for people like Putin is scary.
The reality is that Trump does not and will not have the super majorities in congress required for it. I've explained the reasons for this with precedents a few times already but I acknowledge that debating with entrenched hyperbole (not you specifically, but others that buy into the end of democracy narrative in general) is something I certainly can't expect to turn around. Back to lurking I go for another 4 years... assuming I feel in the mood to swing by at that point.
 
If MAGA is to be resisted, there has to be a *quick* organization of an opposition, cause once entrenched, a Trump dynasty will crush the opposition just as the Nazis did.
The Nazis lasted 12 years. I'm not saying do nothing, but given how ineffective the opposition has shown itself to be, I question whether "organizing" is going to help much. With poor messaging it could hurt.

I really like the idea behind "Make America Smart Again," but no one is going to be persuaded by being told they're stupid. Give them a chance to get there on their own ;-). Richard Nixon won by a real landslide in 1972 and was history less than two years later. People had simply had enough of him. I don't know what alchemy turns gold into dross - I just know that it does happen.

"The resistance" may mean doing what you can on an individual level to promote fact-checking and critical thinking. Or really listening when your crazy aunt/uncle/niblingo spouts off at Thanksgiving. It might not work great if you're faking it, but if you're genuinely trying to understand? That can be pretty powerful.

BTW, "less than half the population voted" distorts the image. As far as I can tell 2024 is projected to come close to the record turnout of 2020. You don't use the population as the denominator, but rather, registered voters, or perhaps the adult population, though that is also flawed. In any event, this wasn't a low-turnout election.

Say you have 100 voters. You only have to change the mind of one or two of them to flip the election. Or persuade one or two of them to stay home. Trump's raw popular-vote numbers are about what they were in 2020. Harris' raw popular-vote numbers were down a lot from Biden's. Which doesn't matter that much if the lost Dem votes were in California but matters a LOT if they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc.
 
The MAGA movement will keep power as long as possible. My guess is Trump will get his revenge but will have a ahard time getting much into the second year. Of course he could live at Mar-a-Lago and just have them bring in the bills to sign. But it would look bad.
 
Resistance? Against the winner of the popular vote in a very fair election? What's the point?

Instead the Democrats need to do some soul searching and decide on embracing more populist social or economic policies.

If they keep on pushing both social and economic policies that are only supported by wealthy highly educated people in urban areas they will continue to lose.
 
Resistance? Against the winner of the popular vote in a very fair election? What's the point?

Instead the Democrats need to do some soul searching and decide on embracing more populist social or economic policies.

If they keep on pushing both social and economic policies that are only supported by wealthy highly educated people in urban areas they will continue to lose.
Absolutely. But the Dems are not gonna be the resistance, it will be either other a populist that comes out of the Dems or a third party candidate.
Trump certainly wasn't a Republican. They laughed at him when he first ran. He just beat the Dems to the punch in solidifying an anti-establishment base.
 
The Nazis lasted 12 years. I'm not saying do nothing, but given how ineffective the opposition has shown itself to be, I question whether "organizing" is going to help much. With poor messaging it could hurt.

I really like the idea behind "Make America Smart Again," but no one is going to be persuaded by being told they're stupid. Give them a chance to get there on their own ;-). Richard Nixon won by a real landslide in 1972 and was history less than two years later. People had simply had enough of him. I don't know what alchemy turns gold into dross - I just know that it does happen.

"The resistance" may mean doing what you can on an individual level to promote fact-checking and critical thinking. Or really listening when your crazy aunt/uncle/niblingo spouts off at Thanksgiving. It might not work great if you're faking it, but if you're genuinely trying to understand? That can be pretty powerful.

BTW, "less than half the population voted" distorts the image. As far as I can tell 2024 is projected to come close to the record turnout of 2020. You don't use the population as the denominator, but rather, registered voters, or perhaps the adult population, though that is also flawed. In any event, this wasn't a low-turnout election.

Say you have 100 voters. You only have to change the mind of one or two of them to flip the election. Or persuade one or two of them to stay home. Trump's raw popular-vote numbers are about what they were in 2020. Harris' raw popular-vote numbers were down a lot from Biden's. Which doesn't matter that much if the lost Dem votes were in California but matters a LOT if they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc.
Good points. As a long time quasi-pacifist, peacemaker, arbitrator, I try to understand the other side, unfortunately some of them truly are bad people. As for the turnout, there were approximately 245 million people eligible to vote. 74 million voted for Trump. I don't think that 30% is as bad as the "over half the county" I keep hearing over and over.
 
The MAGA movement will keep power as long as possible. My guess is Trump will get his revenge but will have a a hard time getting much into the second year. Of course he could live at Mar-a-Lago and just have them bring in the bills to sign. But it would look bad.
Since when did the Mango Moron give the slightest ◊◊◊◊ about what "looks bad"? Especially if there's something in it for him.
 
Good points. As a long time quasi-pacifist, peacemaker, arbitrator, I try to understand the other side, unfortunately some of them truly are bad people. As for the turnout, there were approximately 245 million people eligible to vote. 74 million voted for Trump. I don't think that 30% is as bad as the "over half the county" I keep hearing over and over.
Seen one way it's not so bad, but seen another, I'm not convinced it isn't worse. 30 percent of the total won the day because almost 40 percent of eligible voters don't vote. Sure it would be a good idea to get better candidates and better policies and better arguments, but it will be a hard road until you can convince a reasonable number of those 90 million to give a flying ◊◊◊◊.
 
Looks like federalism is back on the menu, boys!
The correct strategy, if Biden had been serious about protecting the US for Trump and someone like him, would have been to pass laws divest as much federal power as possible to States and Communities: you can abuse power you don't have.
Unfortunately, the number of people who have willingly given up power is very small indeed
 
No, the signing. He wants to be sitting in the Oval Office and photographed with his sharpie. Not other places.
Like I said, he would only do that if there was something in it for him, personally. In this case, "looking presidential" (when in fact he looks like a caged pre-schooler learning to write).
 
The swing voters were an insignificant part of this result. The real issue was low voter turnout--millions less than last time (and no, that was not the result of illegals being purged) If there was any 'swing vote' it was the racist and sexist men who could stomach Biden but despised Harris.
Funny, everything I am reading says otherwise as to swing voters.
You just don't want to admit here is no huge Lost Tribe of Lefty voters out their.
 
Absolutely. But the Dems are not gonna be the resistance, it will be either other a populist that comes out of the Dems or a third party candidate.
Trump certainly wasn't a Republican. They laughed at him when he first ran. He just beat the Dems to the punch in solidifying an anti-establishment base.
At the moment I don't like populism of any flavor.
 
Assuming Trump means that more than just as a joke, I find it unlikely that'll happen. You need either a 2/3 majority of votes in both the House and the senate, or you need a Constitutional convention with 2/3 of the states requesting congress to call a Constitutional convention. It'd likely be the former path to change things, but even with the current senate and house dynamics it doesn't look likely the votes are available to change the 22nd amendment. Even if he succeeded in getting it proposed... it'd still have to be ratified. The 22nd amendment took 4 years to ratify, ecpect a repeal of it to take similarly long.... by the time it needs to even have a chance of being passed, Trump's going to be too old and too far term limited to really care about doing a third term... By that point I think it'd be opening a huge can of worms letting both parties have that option back. So yea... no thanks to that.
The constitution means what the supreme court says it means, nothing more, nothing less.
 
You're free to believe what you want but this isn't a counter-argument to what I've already pointed out.
It does because you don't need to change the constitution, your governance is set up for the supreme court to be... well the word is supreme, they decide what the constitution means. You may assume it means one thing, but if they say it means something else that's the beginning and end of it. In other words, you may think that the 22nd amendment means Trump can't serve a 3rd term but if the SCOTUS majority decision is that "in these circumstances" it doesn't apply to Trump and he can stand for a third term that's it, he can stand for a third term without a single change to even a comma in the text of the amendment.
 
It does because you don't need to change the constitution, your governance is set up for the supreme court to be... well the word is supreme, they decide what the constitution means. You may assume it means one thing, but if they say it means something else that's the beginning and end of it. In other words, you may think that the 22nd amendment means Trump can't serve a 3rd term but if the SCOTUS majority decision is that "in these circumstances" it doesn't apply to Trump and he can stand for a third term that's it, he can stand for a third term without a single change to even a comma in the text of the amendment.
This is again. Not a counterargument supported by the facts. You're speculating on your own interpretation of the separation of powers and not referencing any comparable precedent to support that the SCOTUS is going to simply make Trump president for life the way comparable situations did for Maduro (Venezuela) and Putin (Post-Soviet Russia) - relevant examples of the process your suggesting will happen. They set very clear precedents for how these dictators grab power and cement it, as well as the infrastructure needed for it. I explained how they laid out their respective governments to enable their power grabs and constitutional changes.

If you see something wrong with my citations feel free to point out your objections. But telling me the SCOTUS is going to do it with no evidence to back it up isn't going to cut it.
 
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Trump doesn't even need the Supreme Court on his side to have a third term. Just run as Vice President with whoever the MAGA equivalent of Medvedev is, that guy resigns, third term for Trump.

I don't think it's likely, but then I guess my sense of what Americans will accept needs some recalibration.
 
Trump doesn't even need the Supreme Court on his side to have a third term. Just run as Vice President with whoever the MAGA equivalent of Medvedev is, that guy resigns, third term for Trump.

I don't think it's likely, but then I guess my sense of what Americans will accept needs some recalibration.
I don't think it's conceivable that Trump would be able to play the role of second banana for a while, even to get a third term.
 
This is again. Not a counterargument supported by the facts. You're speculating on your own interpretation of the separation of powers and not referencing any comparable precedent to support that the SCOTUS is going to simply make Trump president for life the way comparable situations did for Maduro (Venezuela) and Putin (Post-Soviet Russia) - relevant examples of the process your suggesting will happen. They set very clear precedents for how these dictators grab power and cement it, as well as the infrastructure needed for it. I explained how they laid out their respective governments to enable their power grabs and constitutional changes.

If you see something wrong with my citations feel free to point out your objections. But telling me the SCOTUS is going to do it with no evidence to back it up isn't going to cut it.
I haven't said they would - I just gave an alternate path to seeking to change the constitution's text for Trump to be able to run again.

(I think it is highly unlikely he will even want to run again nor be in any state to run again.)
 
(I think it is highly unlikely he will even want to run again nor be in any state to run again.)
I don't have any objection to this, or if you were just positing an alternate scenario as a separate discussion point, at least in concept.
 
The Nazis lasted 12 years. I'm not saying do nothing, but given how ineffective the opposition has shown itself to be, I question whether "organizing" is going to help much. With poor messaging it could hurt.

I really like the idea behind "Make America Smart Again," but no one is going to be persuaded by being told they're stupid. Give them a chance to get there on their own ;-). Richard Nixon won by a real landslide in 1972 and was history less than two years later. People had simply had enough of him. I don't know what alchemy turns gold into dross - I just know that it does happen.

"The resistance" may mean doing what you can on an individual level to promote fact-checking and critical thinking. Or really listening when your crazy aunt/uncle/niblingo spouts off at Thanksgiving. It might not work great if you're faking it, but if you're genuinely trying to understand? That can be pretty powerful.

BTW, "less than half the population voted" distorts the image. As far as I can tell 2024 is projected to come close to the record turnout of 2020. You don't use the population as the denominator, but rather, registered voters, or perhaps the adult population, though that is also flawed. In any event, this wasn't a low-turnout election.

Say you have 100 voters. You only have to change the mind of one or two of them to flip the election. Or persuade one or two of them to stay home. Trump's raw popular-vote numbers are about what they were in 2020. Harris' raw popular-vote numbers were down a lot from Biden's. Which doesn't matter that much if the lost Dem votes were in California but matters a LOT if they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc.
I would have liked this but it started with Godwin's Law, otherwise, spot on.

To the OP, what brain drain?
 
God, you Berniebros will simply not let it go, will you?
Bernie is too far to the left to win in the general election. if anything, last Tuesday should underline that.
As demonstrated by the Democratic candidate who turned so right i nthe last month she campaigned with the Cheneys losing. Despite raising a trillion dollars and partying with Beyonce.

Or, as demonstrated by things like marijuana legalization, abortion being enshrined into state constitutions, paid sick leave codified, and the minimum wage being raised in socialist utopias like...Missouri, Alaska, and Nebraska.
 
Funny, everything I am reading says otherwise as to swing voters.
You just don't want to admit here is no huge Lost Tribe of Lefty voters out their.
It's not about the 'lefties' it is about those who felt disenfranchised, left and right. Which is what JD Vance was writing about 8 years ago in his article on why Trump is the opiate of the people. It explains why people voted for both AOC and Trump!
 
Trump doesn't even need the Supreme Court on his side to have a third term. Just run as Vice President with whoever the MAGA equivalent of Medvedev is, that guy resigns, third term for Trump.

I don't think it's likely, but then I guess my sense of what Americans will accept needs some recalibration.
I doubt Dump is going to be in any condition to run for anything come 2028. In fact, I'm surprised he's lasted this long. Also, his influence and appeal was clearly waning even this election. Sure, it might be rejuvenated now that he somehow became POTUS again, but his condition will just keep deteriorating.
 
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