Senate Going Postal: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

It's a bit ahistorical to suggest the inaction/unwillingness to work with the SDP, on the part of the communists and revolutionaries, didn't have a part to play in the rise of the Nazi Party.

 

Love the new title

 

I assume he hasn’t read your post yet or else vnc’s would be a 37 page rant.

 

I'm probably on ignore.

 

...but complain about the result.

 

If we are going to talk about history, Hitler's coalition partner was Hugenberg's DNVP, a reactionary party that sought a return to Germany's imperial past and also followed an antisemitic line. You could put them, on the USA's current political scene, about where Trump's GOP is - sans Trump. Along came a number of dissidents from Zentrum, led by Von Papen, who thought he could tame Hitler and use him (just like Hugenberg did), and who had in effect already exercised dictatorial powers during his own time as chancellor - Germany had been ruled by decree since October 1930, after the Reichstag elections returned a chamber where no coalition formed, notably because neither the Communists nor the Nazis wanted to be part of any coalition at the time. With the significant difference that Hitler, however, was willing to be part of one as long as he was chancellor.


There was no liberal party of any meaningful weight in the last years of Weimar's Republic - their only representation came from an alliance of liberals and corporatists barely managed 20 seats in the Reichstag in 1930 (the Deutsche Staatspartei), and dropped down to 4 then 2 in the 1932 elections - and hardly any political space existed for liberals. Industrial konzerns and old money were the ones that made it possible to for the Nazis to keep going. They were the party the establishment rallied behind because they thought the Nazis could be used and controlled too, and chiefly against Socialists and Communists.

NSDAP weren't backed by liberals at all until, like those from most other parties, the 5 MPs that belonged to a party that could be labelled as liberal in part were cowed into voting the Enabling Act of March 1933. They played no part in Hitler's ascension prior, and promptly faded into irrelevance like everybody else.

As to inaction, well, Baldur von Schirach told the tale best in Nuremberg: "There was no victory, adversaries were lacking". It took less than four months for the Nazis to shut down all significant possible opposition forces - many of which, Communists and Socialists included, but also the DNVP, had hundreds of thousands of people in their militant arms, many of them Great War veterans, and plentiful armament, more than enough to take on and defeat all police forces and the Versailles-crippled regular army. But none of them were ready, despite plenty of advance warning, and none of them ever considered working together.

They all went down without much of a struggle, and that was the end of nearly all significant resistance to the Nazis in Germany proper. Only small cells were ever active after that, never a full resistance movement, outside - of all people - high ranking officers in the Wehrmacht, who were the only ones that actually prepared and attempted a coup against Hitler during his entire tenure (in July 1944).

 

Perhaps, but at least electing Biden means we get to live to fight another day. If Trump and McConnell get another four years to cram the judiciary full of far-right loyalists, intimidate the free press, and rig the system in their favor, how does that help anybody?

Right now, the centrists' case is that centrism is needed to defeat the Republicans. Okay, so then let's prove them wrong. AOC beat Crowley but she did so in a solidly blue district. If more Democrats nationwide can count on the support of voters, then that means they're less dependent on corporate donors or pandering to the right to win...and that's a good thing, right?

 

Biden making his first public appearance in a couple months:

 

Dead Joe Biden would still make a better president than Trump.

 

Save it for someone who puts stock in inconsistently invoked utilitarian crap.

 

Am I wrong, then?

Joe Biden once made the rather dumb comment along the lines of "I don't want to beat the Republicans in a massive landslide, because then there's no incentive for us to compromise". So don't give him what he wants, give him the massive landslide. Then, like I said a while back, Democrats won't have any excuse not to pursue a progressive agenda.

 

But isn’t the problem that the Democrats have no real interest in pursuing a progressive agenda because they are merely shills for corporate donor interests?

 

They are somewhere in the middle. They are willing to do good things only within the boundaries dictated by their wealthy donors.

 

and they are more willing to do bad things like kill thousands with drones, and tens of thousands with sanctions as soon as they are told they can profit from doing so

 

The pandemic has exposed virtually every weakness in the "American way of life." For profit healthcare is bankrupt. Our service-based consumer spending economy is in ruins. Our social safety net wasn't remotely equipped for the task. Public health is a 50-state laboratory of catastrophe and incompetence. So into this unprecedented crisis that rivals the Great Depression and the immediate aftermath of World War 2 in terms of human misery, we can either send Joe Biden to turn things around or re-elect Donald Trump.

lol

If there was ever a time for DNC coup, this would be it.

 

hope no longer seems like a lie, but rather a cruel joke conceptually

 

You're actually being ahistorical here. This isn't a case of the SPD holding out their hand to the KPD and the KPD swatting it. The SPD attempted to fight and eradicate the KPD during the end of the German Revolution in 1919 and then the SPD joined the centrist coalition leading the Weimar Republic. There was never going to be a working together because the SPD had already declared the KPD their enemies.

 

Rahm Emmanuel being VP is kinda like Dick Cheney being VP.

 

It's not saying Rahm would be VP, is it? Only that he's advising on selection?

 

I'm speculating myself.

After all, wasn't Cheney in charge of the process of finding a VP for Bush before he himself was chosen?

 

Yes, but Biden's said that it will be a woman. Unless there's something about Rahm...

 

He's petite.

 

I thought for sure if anyone was making a Tootsie joke it'd be you, but alas...