We are already long past the point of no return. He is the manifestation of a popular will. Even if he vanished tomorrow, those voters will remain.
They will not be daunted by an electoral setback. They control the Supreme Court, and will for decades. They control a majority of state legislatures -- which control how voting and districting work.
We've been past the point of no return since 2016. If you still had hope then, it should have died the same day Ruth Bader Ginsburg did. At this point it's all just telling ourselves fairy stories. It gets monotonically worse from here, and there is no longer anything we can do about it.
They were barely more than half of the voters, and did not represent a single unified ideology. This doesn't mean they won't vote against their own interests again.
That very well may be, but considering all his policies do[0], the question must be asked, why?
Maybe we should ask ourselves why, when the american majority supported his entire policy agenda, did they not support him?
Could it be perhaps the billionaire owned media misrepresenting him and his positions? His own party conspiring to take him out of the primary running? Or just average voter ignorance? No one has ever contended that americans always vote in their best interest, after all.
They don't support him because he identifies as pro-socialism and anti-capitalism, while in 2019 socialism polled at -13 and capitalism at +32. Sanders is well aware of this, but as he's explained in the past, his goal is to spark a political revolution and he doesn't care if that leads to opposition from wealthy or corporate interests.
Sure, all of that can be true, but it doesn't change my point that Americans by and large support his policy, even if he isn't the best salesman in the country, or scares the boomers and the uneducated by mentioning socialism and triggering the McCarthy region of the brain, and it merits exploration as to why people support his policies but not him.
I agree, part of it may be his extreme language off-putting those who don't really know what socialism even means, ie the average american. Keep in mind the average american has reading comprehension at or below that of an average sixth grader. Try selling any complex idea or radical change (even for the better) to a sixth grader, it's going to be tough.
Why doesn't opposing capitalism count as a policy? It seems entirely reasonable for one of the people in that +32 to say "well, I like a lot of Bernie's proposals, but he thinks we should put fetters on capitalism and I think we shouldn't do that". (Multiple people I know have told me something along those lines, although I should acknowledge it's true they were all boomers.)
>Why doesn't opposing capitalism count as a policy?
Yeah, fair point, I hadn't really thought about it that way. You're absolutely right, that is obviously a policy, and one that people don't agree with, woe unto them...
I guess it's like that author said: "It's easier to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism." I fell in to that trap of assumption, taking that not as a policy prescription, but as a far off amorphous aspiration.
I guess because it's obvious to me that even if he had had a super-majority that "ending capitalism" would still be a decades long reconstruction of the economy, not something one could put in to a bill put to congress. Plus I always saw him more as opposed to unrestrained capitalism in segments of our life that were basic needs, rather than opposition to capitalism as an idea. I must admit I do still hold some rose colored glasses, I guess.
>I should acknowledge, they were all boomers.
haha. unsurprising. I know first hand the type you describe, as someone who campaigned for him twice and is involved in local politics.
It's not that complicated. In 2016 America though Bernie was a crazy leftist, and didn't vote for him. He did pick up more votes than expected as a protest against Hillary, and he was just starting to get buy-in on his policies.
Then he went out and sold America on some social democrat ideas. He did ok in 2020, but lost, partially because Democratic voters were afraid that Republicans would see him as a crazy leftist, and partially because Biden had more support from some demographics.
Yeah, there's some billionaire pushback, but Bernie chaired the budget committee. It's not like he was whacked by some billionaire hit squad, he just wasn't quite popular enough to win the presidential primaries.
Looking all the way downstream, to the end result (voting numbers) is much less valuable vein to mine for insight than how he was portrayed in media, online and in legacy media, before votes were cast. That provides much more insight in to how his campaign failed, in my eyes at least.
I don't have all the historical polling data to say this with certainty, but his policies were pretty much always supported by a majority of the american public from a cursory perplexity search (grain of salt and all that, but seriously, can you think of one policy of his that wasn't popular?)
The more important question, to me at least, than "in 2016 did america think bernie was a crazy leftist?" is, "why, when his policies all had majority voter support, did the candidate himself carry the McCarthy era veil of 'crazy leftist' and 'communist'"?
And I think the answer is the same as in my original comment, a concerted effort from the billionaire class (who own all our media) to do anything BUT accurately portray the guy who vocally wanted to cost them money in favor of those who wanted to enrich them. I think the billionaire class almost always plays a bigger role than we think, but that might just be all the books I read about the machinations of the rich and powerful to manufacture consent. I'm no expert.
Consider how Obama got piled on for a minor tweak to healthcare laws, and gets called a socialist for ever mentioning that maybe the rich aren't helping out enough.
I've gotta be skeptical that Bernie's policies were majority supported at the time, and any investigation would have to look at the evidence, and especially the polling questions, really carefully.
>I've gotta be skeptical that Bernie's policies were majority supported at the time, and any investigation would have to look at the evidence, and especially the polling questions, really carefully.
Wholly agreed, and I'm unfortunately way too lazy to do that. But I did look at and cite one snapshot in time where all his policy positions had a majority support (except 15$ min wage because it was framed with "risk of job losses")
>consider how Obama...helping out enough
Yeah, agreed, which I think is more evidence that reality, unfortunately, holds less water than whatever the tv/ipad/iphone tells you to believe about the world. That plus the average american reading comprehension being at or below sixth grade level makes for a tough sell of anything but very simple language, very simple policy. And just in general, an uneducated populace tends to be more susceptible to voting against their own interests.
Hardly surprising to us, those paying attention. But that's an ever shrinking percentage, and the percentage that can parse complex realities is also unfortunately shrinking. If you wanna get real pessimistic google literacy statistics for adults in the US.
It's an issue we're seeing all around the West - previously centre-left parties unfortunately were cowed into supporting 'soft-neoliberalism' over the last 30-40 years, and now that's shown to not improve the living standards of the many (but works amazingly for the wealthy), voters are looking for anything that looks different than the status-quo. Unfortunately that plus a bit of culture war drives them into the populist right.
Obviously that's a worse choice (at best it's just corrupt crony-capitalism under a veneer of caring about the little guy, at worst outright fascism) but we all have to admit that parties like the Democrats (and Labor in the UK and Australia, etc.) haven't had policy platforms to make changes that really and substantially help the struggling working-class for decades.
It's hard for us to see, because most people commenting on hacker news are in the professional class and the status-quo works quite well for us.
> now that's shown to not improve the living standards of the many
Inflation-adjusted median real income is up 20% since 1990 in the US. Unemployment is lower. Life expectancy is higher. Air pollution is lower. Crime is lower. Gay marriage is now legal.
The living standards of the many in the US have demonstrably improved dramatically over the last 30-40 years.
Housing affordability is worse, but that is largely due to local rather than national politics, and the policies that have lead to unaffordable housing are largely non-partisan (in that homeowners across the political spectrum are for restrictive zoning and against development).
It's true that many people feel that living standards have not improved. I don't have an answer for that beyond speculation.
There are many things this statistic masks. How many households were dual income vs single income over that same time span? This also doesn't take in to account cost of living changes, which I'm confident have risen more than 20%. Sorry in advance if I'm wrong. Inflation erosion, how CPI is calculated to make things look better than they are (too much to get in to), but my point is that statistic is not the holy grail of progress.
>unemployment is lower
Won't argue that one
>life expectancy is higher
As would be expected with 35 years of progress in medicine? Plus, that statistic hides we've actually plateaued and even declined compared to other OECD nations.
>Air pollution... gay marriage is legal
Won't argue with those, though I wonder how much longer the air will be cleaner when the current admin has severely weakened the EPA and clean air/water regulations.
>The living standards...30-40 years.
Are you deriving that from the median real income? Even assuming it's true, why are a growing percentage of american's living paycheck to paycheck?
>Housing affordability is worse...local
That's... a pretty big one... I'd argue it could be greatly helped by federal policy against oh idk, stopping private equity from buying up homes and apartments, severe taxes on 2nd or 3rd properties, unoccupied property, etc.
All I'm saying is, there's a reason average americans aren't pickin up what you are puttin down. I don't think it's just a feeling.
How the Democrats went from having an excited and involved Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard in 2016, to pushing to re-elect a cognitively-impaired 80 year old in 2024 would make for an interesting expose, that's for sure.
Kamala Harris is a progressive, who by certain objective measures, was the most left senator, even further left than Sanders. Of course in the general election she moved to the center, as did Trump. Kamala lost all seven swing states.
The democrats should move to 90's style triangulation, it works.
This situation is now being corrected. Anyone who sees this as a catastrophe, as getting "monotonically worse", is no fan of a republican form of government
So whose preferences should policy reflect? NGO presidents? Tech company employees in gatekeeper positions? Editorial column writers? Why these people and not the public? What gives them the right to rule?
Are you asking why america has a republican form of government designed to minimize the power of the majority of the population?
Well, partly because travel and communications were extremely slow when the constitution was written, but mostly because the rich land owners (and white males) were the ones writing it.
It can also fail outright if voters and Congress pick up the scent of Emperor at midterms. History does not always repeat. If it did, we would not have had democracy to begin with.
I think in this case it will require the non-voters picking up the scent of a monarch. This is why I believe that point is yet to come (though I do believe that the belief that we are passed it is also very rational, only history will know).
On paper he can't do a lot of things but the amount of gutting and cutting that's happened in the last two(!) months makes one realize the laws aren't worth the paper they're written on without a proactive congress interested in keeping the executive in check. Suspending birthright citizenship as established in the 14th amendment is a big one that "he can't do." Challenges to E.O. 14160 are going through the courts right now so we'll see.
Legally speaking, I think an outright challenge to the 22nd amendment will be interesting. As a 20th century amendment the language is pretty clear. But once again we look to what would actually enforce it?
The scotus would need to strike down the 22nd amendment. Even with as horribly morally bankrupt of a scotus as we have now, I don’t think they’d sink to the low of striking down the 22nd.
The U.S. Supreme Court has never struck down a constitutional amendment, that is true.
But in other common law countries, like India, whose legal system is very similar to the U.S., have had cases where the Supreme Court struck down a constitutional amendment.
With regard to the Indian case above: while I support the goal of judgement, as the goal of the judgment itself is good, the idea of a Supreme Court overriding a constitutional amendment is quite startling.
The supreme courts of several other countries, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Uganda have copied this doctrine.
Who knows when the U.S. Supreme Court will decide to copy this doctrine as well.
Not sure if it is the same in India but in the US there needs to be a supermajority of both houses and the amendment must be ratified by the states. Since the first ten amendments are considered more or less integral to the constitution, I have a hard time believing even this court would consider itself above amendments.
And even then, term limits would be a weird hill to die on, since it would open the door for future courts to strike down constitutional amendments.
They could pull a Trump v. Anderson, and say neither courts nor states can't keep him off the ballot - only the people, the College, or the Congress can stop it.
I don’t have a ton of faith in scotus right now, but I think they understand their only power is in whether people consider them independent. Allowing a third term for Trump would be accepting that they’re basically in charge of parking tickets.
They legalized bribery in plain sight for everyone to see for fucks sake. They stated that the president is above the law. It's insane to me that anyone thinks our institutions will save us.
Thankfully elections in the US are not run by the federal government, they're run separately in every state. Trump may be able to illegally get on the ballot in some states with the support of friendly state governments but he definitely won't get on all of them.
Even seemingly-friendly southern states may have state governments that will take a dim view of Trump attempting to get on the ballot. Kentucky, for example, has a Democrat as governor who is very popular. Kentucky has also had its bourbon industry devastated by Trump's senseless trade war. I would be shocked if Trump managed to illegally get on the ballot in Kentucky in 2028.
This time they have the 22nd amendment on their side. The law is crystal clear. He would need SCOTUS to ignore the constitution in his favour.
Many people think that the conservative majority on the court would automatically side with him and rubber-stamp his candidacy. I highly doubt that. He has already been publicly repudiated by Roberts (chief justice nominated by GW Bush) for his attacks on federal courts [1]. I am confident Roberts would not support any attempt by Trump to ignore the 22nd amendment.
It's a good thing none of the political parties have recently been floating detailed plans to pack the supreme Court with extra justices. < /s >
If they added 10 young MAGA judges to the supreme Court this year, that would be the biggest legacy of the administration. All the XO can just be undone on day one, assuming we have another pro-democracy president.
Supreme Court Judges have careers that outlive Presidents.
I think people consistently misinterpret the overturning of Roe (a calculated, focused effort that took decades and overturned specific judicial precedent that basically had created a right-to-privacy from whole cloth) with "Trump has SCOTUS in his pocket." He doesn't. The GOP got the two things they wanted from tilting the SCOTUS in their direction; there's no reason to believe this SCOTUS is about to start looking at the bare-face text of the Twenty Second Amendment and decide there aren't any words there.
The incentives just aren't there. Especially because it's pretty obvious that if they do ignore that text, it becomes pitchfork time and their necks are no less vulnerable than the President's.
(ETA: And that's ignoring that individual states are not obligated to put him on the ballot if he's inelligible to run for a third term, and by-and-large, Americans do not vote for names not on the ballot because they don't know their own civil rights).
That's complicated, but not actually unexpected. The Constitution lays out the process and authority to check the President's power, and that process flows from Congress. SCOTUS essentially said "If Congress didn't even find a violation that moved them to invoke their maximum penalty of removal-from-office, why on Earth does anyone think we would impose the law to punish the President's official actions where Congress did not?" SCOTUS can restrain Presidential action (by saying, essentially, "that order is illegal" so nobody need comply) but they've never claimed to have the authority to punish the person in the office for doing the job as best he can. Granted, this was new territory because no previous administration had opened the question of such a sanction... But it's not surprising that SCOTUS responded "Jail the President for doing Presidential stuff? Hold on, let me check the Constitution... Nope, don't see it."
I get what you're arguing but isn't "Jail the President for doing Presidential stuff" a bit charitable? "Nope, don't see it" isn't so simple, I think a lot of people would argue that this follows from the rule of law set down in the constitution in the form of things like the supremacy clause and implied by our entire legal/political structure.
> isn't "Jail the President for doing Presidential stuff" a bit charitable?
One of our Presidents, against the will of Congress and in an era where the right to levy war on the part of Congress was far more closely tied to troop deployment (because we weren't yet in the era of Pax Americana with permanent overseas bases on every continent, much less the post-9/11 era of massive power delegation to the Executive), moved our Naval assets away from the Atlantic coast toward Europe and basically tried to hide it from Congress. It would have been extremely impeachable... But then we ended up in a World War soon after. A war we, conveniently, already had our Atlantic assets positioned to fight, over the previous desires of an isolationist American representative legislature.
That President never came under question of whether he should be jailed for putting Americans in harm's way when we were not involved in the European conflict (yet), and Congress had no intention of involving the country (yet). The things Trump did in office were far less risky to life and limb. I'm not implying they were correct or just things; I'm saying that when we talk about whether the other branches should be able to jail the President for malfeasance in-office, this is the realm of decisions and standards we're talking about.
This is assuming one needs to campaign in an election in order to continue their command of the executive branch and the military. I'm pretty sure the president's claim that he can serve a 3rd term means he'll serve for however long he determines, as an official act. Any court that dares issue an order to the contrary will have as little power to enforce their order as they are demonstrating now.
He could certainly kick off a Constitutional crisis by just ignoring the law, on that we agree. But that's always a risk. He could make a kill list of Congress members to assassinate starting alphabetically and it would be the same category of problem.
Unfortunately, he was never convicted of treason or any other crime that would involve the 14th Amendment.
I think we can understand why SCOTUS would ban Colorado from making that decision themselves, for much the same reason it bans Mississippi from having its own interpretation of the parts of the 14th Amendment about due process or citizenship.
In contrast, the 22nd Amendment is plain-letter law, so obvious that it brooks no interpretation.
I disagree it's as obvious as you think. He could run for VP and then act as de-facto President. It says that "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice" - in that case, he would have been _elected_ Vice President, not President.
And as as far as the 12th Amendment goes, "But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."
The 22nd amendment doesn't explicitly say he cannot serve as President, it just says "no person shall be _elected_ to the office of President".
Yes, the spirit of the constitution clearly prevents a 3rd term, but it could be possible to employ a very literal interpretation that allows the above.
He's stated he is contemplating getting Vance to run, then for Vance to step down in favor of Trump.
> Trump, 78, said in the interview that he was serious about seeking a third term in office.
> "A lot of people want me to do it," Trump said, according to NBC News. "But we have – my thinking is, we have a long way to go. I'm focused on the current."
> When asked about specific plans for seeking a third term, Trump confirmed one method — Vice President JD Vance wins the White House in a future election and then hands over the presidency. Trump said there were other plans, but he refused to say what they wer
That plan fails the requirement that to run for Vice president you have to be eligible for president. But sure, Trump trying to pull what Putin did with Medvedev in the 2000s seems about right for a wannabe dictator.
> He's stated he is contemplating getting Vance to run, then for Vance to step down in favor of Trump
Technically illegal due to the Twelfth Amendment: “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States” [1].
Simpler: run two randos, have the House choose Trump as Speaker [2], have the randos resign [3].
It's easy to claim that Trump running as VP would violate the spirit of the 12th amendment, but I think there is genuine doubt as to how the Supreme Court might rule.
Separately, could you contact me by the email in my profile? I've got a (mostly unrelated) question I've been meaning to ask you. No hurry.
But the 22nd amendment forbids being elected to the office more than twice. Eligibility to serve as president may not be the same as eligibility to be elected president.
This would have to be decided by the Supreme Court.
If that piece of paper isn't being followed, what are the rules of the game? And are you agreeing that force does settle it? Should it?
John Adams might agree with you though. He said the constitution was intended for a moral (and religious) people. Maybe Americans are simply out of virtue, and don't deserve the Constitution anymore?
To be clear, I hope it’s followed; I’m just not confident it will be.
Nayib Bukele is limited to one term by the Salvadoran constitution. He’s currently on his second. Turns out that if nobody stops you, you can just do whatever you want.
That "piece of paper" is the only thing saying that the president has any power. He wants us to not follow it? Fine, but he may not like the consequences, which are that he's no longer someone that we have to listen to or who has any actual power. He's just a real estate developer who thinks he's somebody important.
Yes but we've also had ten years of flooding the zone. I am inclined to believe this is the latter. He will get everything he needs from this term - primarily an escape from his Jan 6 and classified documents charges.
> The third presidential term of Franklin D. Roosevelt began on January 20, 1941, when he was once again inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States, and the fourth term of his presidency ended with his death on April 12, 1945
I think it's the other way around: giving an insurrectionist the most powerful office in the land, a violation of the 14th, is a recipe for wanton malfeasance in office. All the other violations were made possible by that first one.
They're already pitching the idea that the 22nd amendment only prevents someone who had two consecutive terms from running again. Looking at the language of the amendment, I have no idea how they can justify that. But stranger things have happened recently. :-/
FDR was seen as getting America out of the Great Depression and navigating America through WW2 successfully. Oh and alcohol became legal again so you could celebrate the roaring manufacturing economy and military victories with a beer. Trump is no FDR.
He said today he was serious about seeking a 3rd term and has multiple ways to do so... it would be absolutely foolish to pretend like 'norms' or the Supreme Court would constrain him.
I’m aware; I’m mostly saying the third term of FDR is not really “precedent” given the degree of popular support FDR enjoyed and the lack of the 22nd amendment at the time.
Trump seeking a third term will be out of the ordinary, and if he were to “win” the election and be recognized as the president, it would mean the end of the constitution. And that could happen.
At some point every dictator was more popular with a crowd, sometimes even the moral crowd (Mugabe was aligned with liberating Zimbabwe from colonial rule). Who's to know what FDR would have become if biology hadn't saved him from extended exposure to power.
Trump merely happened to be far gone prior to stepping into office for the first time.
Don't know why you're getting downvoted, he is openly stating he plans to try to violate the 22nd amendment of the Constitution[1].
If you think that can't happen, think about this: the Constitution already prohibited him from running as an insurrectionist. Multiple states found that he committed insurrection and the US Supreme Court forced him on their ballots anyway. The reason: they assert that the amendment isn't self-enforcing, and congress must proactively write a law in order to create enforcement measures for the 14th amendment's prohibition on insurrectionists. They didn't, so he was allowed to run and take office.
That same logical jiu-jitsu the GOP used to successfully violate the 14th amendment could just as easily be used on the 22nd.
1. He’ll have to change some rules to run again. There will be a lot of resistance.
2. Midterm elections (November of 2026) could take away majorities in the house and the senate, and hopefully bring impeachment back into the picture.
3. There are special elections next Tuesday - 2 house seats in Florida and a Supreme Court justice in Wisconsin. It’s encouraging that Republicans are worried about these, the apartheid billionaire is spraying money all over Wisconsin.
Yes it’s dark and depressing, but things can be changed long before the next Presidential election.
> If Trump wins the next election[..] It happened to Rome
In Rome, Cezar didn't become the dictator for life, he got stabbed to death. What happened is that his successor, Octavian, took control of real power while pretending that the republic was fine.
In reality Republic died before Cezar, while Octavian played Weekend at Bernie's.
