cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/28102
US military leaders previously warned Trump that they were ‘not ready’ to respond to Iran’s anticipated retaliation and required additional time to prepare
From thecradle.co via This RSS Feed.
Can’t have elections if the us is in a war. Or some shit. I don’t know. But I promise you diddlin Donnie will use this.
I really don’t think that’s the play here.
Yes, Trump wants to cancel the mid-terms. We know because he’s told us, several times. No one is arguing with that. But at some point Trump’s plans do go through the phase where he tells a bunch of people to make it happen, and there’s no question that those people told him this angle isn’t going to work.
Look no further than their pivot to “Taking over” elections instead of cancelling them. This is the usual result of Trump’s bad ideas. A room full of horrendously corrupt people basically come back and either say “Yeah we can probably get away with that despite how horrendously illegal it would be,” or “No, there’s no way for us to get away with that, but here’s a horrendously illegal / immoral / corrupt thing we can try to do instead.” This one was clearly the latter.
The more obvious play here is to hope for a war president bump, like Bush got. Generally Americans don’t like to vote against war presidents. But for Trump that’s far less likely to work, because he specifically made a point of running as an anti-war president. That wouldn’t matter if it was only the usual right wing bullshit that they can just discard when it’s inconvenient, but in this case Trump was actually tapping into a deeper well of anti-war sentiment that was already there, as part of a broader move towards isolationism that’s happening in the US right now. That’s why all his fascist expand the borders BS is going over so badly, even with MAGA. They don’t want Greenland, they want better jobs and cheaper groceries.
Of course, the other potential benefit to a protracted war in Iran is that it eats a lot of headline space, which is less room for the Epstein files, so that’s another possible motivation. And it can easily be both.
There’s no actual rules like that, nor is “martial law” like a bell you ring to cancel elections, but enough people believe it works this way that it’s very likely they will attempt to use this card.
The Afghanistan withdrawal happened in 2021. Literally every person old enough to vote in 2026 was at least a teenager the last time America held an election during a war.
Due to the unique way America gives out powers, technically it hasn’t ever been at war since WW2 ended.
https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/declarations-of-war.htm
Even latest Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t really wars since congress never declared war
Sure, but that just puts the administration in a double bind.
If they appeal to the idea that actually its still a war even without a formal declaration, that means that there have been dozens of elections held during “Wartime.”
If they try to go the other way, that means they need to actually get a formal declaration of war, which hands the power back to Congress. In no way shape or form does Trump want to do that. And even if he did, they’d still have to explain how this constitutes a greater crisis than WW2, which didn’t get in the way of holding elections.
Only if the GOP/trump cared about optics which they never have
They absolutely care about optics. That’s why they’re talking about cancelling the midterms in the first place. That’s why they’re pulling ICE out of Minnesota. That’s why they’re trying to cover up the Epstein files.
They wouldn’t lie so much if the truth wasn’t dangerous. Never forget that.
We have vastly different ideas on optics, especially since they did not actually pull ice out and people that care about optics wouldn’t be floating canceling elections.
And a vast number of the people who voted for Trump voted for Obama and are Bernie supporters, so if we’re trying to figure out some kind of through-line narrative that makes sense, we’re not going to find it.
If you can’t figure out the common element there, you’re really not paying attention to what’s actually going on.
It’s cost of living. Under Biden inflation skyrocketed. Now, that wasn’t really his fault, it was mostly a byproduct of stuff that happened before he got into office.
But what was his fault is how he tried to sweep it under the rug. Biden and Harris ran a campaign centered on how great the economy was. They trotted meaningless statistics and promised to change absolutely nothing. Trump, meanwhile promised to change everything.
People dying of cancer will frequently try all sorts of phony miracle cures, because why the fuck not? On the staggeringly unlikely chance that it works, you’re saved. And if it doesn’t work, so what? You were fucked before, you’re fucked after. What have you lost?
They voted for Trump because what did they have to lose? The last four years destroyed their ability to support themselves, and Biden / Harris essentially promised that the beatings would continue. “What would I change? Not a thing.” So fuck it, vote for the idiot lunatic. Maybe things will get better? How can they possibly get worse?
I’m not calling this a good decision. But it’s a decision they made for reasons that really aren’t that hard to figure out. They voted for Obama because he promised to make things better. They voted for Bernie because he promised to make things better. They voted for Trump because he promised to make things better.
We’re seeing the same play out today. Those same voters are sick of Trump’s bullshit, and they’re voting in people like Mamdani.
It’s not some ineffable mystery of the universe. It’s cost of living, plain and simple.
Nice contention-bait opener, but I am one of the few people who have actually read exit polling. You’re not wrong on any of that, but the reality is definitely not plain and simple, there were more factors at work, but yeah the overall gist is people vote based on what they’re feeling at the moment.
The wild-card is how the populations feelings have been tampered with systemically by capital for decades.
“This thing cannot be understood.”
Actually it can if you just pay attention to X, Y and Z.
“Ahah, you fool! I knew that all along. I just pretended I didn’t understand because that makes me look smart!”
OK? Whatever floats your boat, bud. You have fun with that.
So you think someone who supports Bernie’s policies can ALSO be in favor of Trump.
I hope you’re not a paid shills because this makes so little sense you might lose your job.