USA Politics

Trump’s in his we need Greenland manic episode again—green as in money, then land. Obviously.
 
Trump’s in his we need Greenland manic episode again—green as in money, then land. Obviously.
He has to deflect from him getting stared down by China and subsequently blinking. The optics isn't of him being the strongman, to put it mildly.
 
I gather, from recent comments, this forum likely includes people who don’t care that much about US politics beyond its foreign policy, but glad to share opinions or answer questions about what things look like here domestically.
No, I'm very interested and follow American media and independent media closely. It has partly to do with fascination stemming both from Trumpism itself, but equally so from the U.S. long having been the dominant cultural force in the west, but also due to the fact that the U.S. tends to export their domestic political divisions to Europe. What happens in the U.S. often have a ripple-effect that shape domestic policies, movements and the health of democracy in other countries.
 
And he fell asleep, lol

The bigger headline is he had a one on one with Zelenskyy. From the looks of it it was WAY less contentions than the one in front of the cameras AND from the little I've read it looks like Trump is finally putting two and two together that Putin isn't interested in peace.
 
Trump is finally putting two and two together that Putin isn't interested in peace.

This is a swallow way to put it. Nobody is interested in unconditional peace. Not Zelensky administration, not eastern NATO (Brussels /UK), not US, not Russia. Or, everybody is interested in peace but in their own terms.
First of all US, as clearly shown in this NYT article, is a major party in the war, not a mediator. Second, an "unconditional ceasefire" was never a thing in a conflict and in this case it has nothing to do with peace and everything to do with regrouping and live to fight another day.
Check carefully what Pete Hegseth said back in February. "Division of labor" has nothing to do with peace either. US has understood that their resources are not endless, so they wish to focus on China and Europe allies on Russia. Thus the declarations of Europe's rearmament following Hegseth's visit.

Third, not related to what I quoted, but still, I fail to see why a 15 minutes talk where we cannot hear what was said was such a breakthrough. It's comical to spin it like this, especially when Macron was initially planned to attend (3 chairs) and that was bluntly rejected by Trump (2 chairs).
 
I couldn't find the full text but it normally should also include ports, natural gas and other resources, under a 50-50 joint fund in perpetuity. An impossible deal to sign for Ukraine, thus a significant Trump victory, subject to see the full text of April 30.
 
Democratic party, unsurprisingly, is split on how to deal with Trump. The progressive arm wants to double down but its moderate wing is becoming more active.

KTSM News

My .02 is: a moderate party (whether rebranding of a current party or forming a new political party) in the U.S. would do so well.

I can’t speak for my whole country, obviously, but I think most Americans are tired of the extremes in both major parties taking over the agenda and asking everyone to choose sides on whose brand of crazy they want.

Day to day, we’re not the nation of ideological whackos the rest of the world sees in the news. General concerns are the economy, public safety, standards of living, and the environment (to an extent), with growing concern over our maintaining democratic institutions.

Kamala Harris speaks out.

Funny, she mostly hid away during the 4 years she was VP, was never that popular even among Democrats, was a weak presidential candidate, and now has something to say.
I don't see how the progressives are all that ideologically extreme. Always wanting to lower our taxes and give us affordable healthcare. Those bastards.
 
I don't see how the progressives are all that ideologically extreme. Always wanting to lower our taxes and give us affordable healthcare. Those bastards.
There was only one party that was even hyper-focusing about identity politics during the campaign - and it wasn't the Democrats. The most identity-related stance that was part of the Democrats' platform was that women as individuals should be the authority of their bodies and if that's ideologically extreme, that should tell you where the overton window's at in the US.

EDIT: Changed a word.
 
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The only gender-related thing I'd heard at all the entire campaign was the nonsensical and patently false claim from the right of "Children are going to school one day as one gender and coming back home with a complete sex change."
 
I’m talking about hyper-focus on identity politics and special interests.

Extreme fringes in both major parties have made their party platform’s leading messages about identity rather than policy.
I'm sorry, but this isn't supported by any data and is actively the opposite of what's happening in reality.

Look at Harris's campaign. It actively avoided identity politics. She ran an objectively more right wing campaign than Biden did in 2020 to court moderate conservatives and lost the election. The only ones going full-in on identity politics and constantly fear-mongering about trans people (for example) are Trump and the GOP.

This talking point about "both extremes" going too far is a right wing talking point, nothing more.
 
Democratic party, unsurprisingly, is split on how to deal with Trump. The progressive arm wants to double down on identity politics but its moderate wing is becoming more active.

Please. This. They already lost to Trump twice, so while I think Trump will hand Dems the victory in the next election, unless the moderates start to take over, the subsequent election they're going to lose to someone possibly even worse.

(Also, they could start to be visible again, so far it seems to me Dems have conspicuously disappeared and that they didn't take the loss very well)
 
On the visibility front, I think there is a strategic logic to letting Trump and the republicans fail at governing for the next two years without democratic interference. At some point before the midterms they need to figure out a message, but it does seem like different wings of the party are test marketing messages at local town halls/etc.
 
Biden went left, Biden won.
Harris went right, Harris lost.

Sure, let the Dems go further to the right. That will certainly win them the next election. Pursuing moderates has certainly never shown to be a disastrous idea that simply doesn't work out and doesn't win elections.
 
Biden went left, Biden won.
Harris went right, Harris lost.
Don't have time to type out a more in-depth post responding to various points raised in the thread since last night as I'm on my phone, but Harris spent a lot of the late stage of the campaign campaigning with Liz Cheney and touting the Cheneys' endorsements.

Sure fire way to make sure Democrats support your ticket: "Hey! Dick Cheney likes us! You know! Famed Democrat hero DICK CHENEY!"
 
Trump won because enough people were tired of the establishment. Democrats need to stop acting like they’re the establishment. If nothing changes for the positive in people’s minds then any Dem win will be reversed in another four years.
 
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To the various other posters saying the Democrats never alienated voters by going too far left, there is enough evidence that the Democratic party saw that as a factor in losing the middle.
I said this sometime after the U.S. presidential elections — maybe not in the most polished way, but still. And mind you, I live on the other side of the world! Yet one particular user went absolutely berserk and wanted to ban me.
 
I think this issue with identity politics is much more an issue with voters than with actual Democratic politicians. As others have said, Harris did not in any way go all in on identity politics but Republicans made it seem like she did. This both emboldened the hordes of disgusting Trumpers who hate anyone who isn't exactly like them and made progressive voters scream louder about it. At least on social media, the months leading up to the election were drowning in identity politics. This became conflated with candidates and politicians being rampantly obsessed with it, when it wasn't the case.

Harris didn't lose the election by pushing identity politics. If anything, she probably could have pulled some lazy non-voters off the couch by going in harder (like Trump did). But if you talk to Joe Backhoe from Buttcracken, Missouri, I'm sure he'd say all those damn liberal trans-queerdos were taking over the world prior to November because that's the narrative that Trump (and algorithms programmed by Elon Musk and other Conservative billionaires with shiny boots made for licking) pushed on them.
 
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