Gretchen Whitmer responds to calls by some Democrats to vote ‘uncommitted’ in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday
Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, pushed back on calls to not vote for Joe Biden over his handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict, saying on Sunday that could help Trump get re-elected.
“It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote that’s not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,” she said on Sunday during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union. “A second Trump term would be devastating. Not just on fundamental rights, not just on our democracy here at home, but also when it comes to foreign policy. This was a man who promoted a Muslim ban.”
Whitmer, who is a co-chair of Biden’s 2024 campaign, also said she wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to the protest vote.
Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who is the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, urged Democrats last week to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s 27 February primary.
Americans probably believe that if more Germans voted for Hindenburg in 1932 that WW2 wouldn’t have happened. Look, if you really believe that you are voting to stop fascism with this election it is too late, Fascism is created by material conditions not elections. The United States has the material conditions to be a fascist state and it will come no matter what you do. If you have elections, eventually like 1933 they will simply be ignored. You can’t vote to change the material conditions that lead to fascism you must destroy that political system and start over.
Yes, the “fascization” of the US government has been unfolding for decades.
To make a leap from that to an inevitability that “destroying the system to start over” is the only cure…
Well, isn’t the cure is worse than the disease?
What are the practicalities your presumptive solution hand-waves away?
Insurance and reinsurance markets, for example, provide regional/national/global stability for business to happen in the face of mass catastrophe. Medicare and Medicaid provide millions of people with healthcare.
These details, and literally thousands like them, make up the everyday function of government—even if they are currently not working in some places or not working as well as we’d like in many others!
If you’re actually committed to the welfare of millions of ordinary people, then your position has got to be more nuanced than “destroy the system!”
What are we destroying? What are we replacing it with? What kind of work are we doing to ensure a reasonable transition? Who is the we that is organizing toward a new vision? How do we work with opposing forces inside and outside of our camp?
All of those questions fall under the banner of politics and the answers are constrained by the agendas of the participants engaging with the existing system.
Lots of governments have methods for holding constitutional conventions without major crisis. France has rewritten its constitution multiple times in the past 100 years. The US is the only country in the world that uses a pre-industrial document to guide the structure of the government and it is literally inadequate. This system needs redistricting on every level including the states level. This system must be torn down and replaced with an equitable, just, socialist, non military system and that will require tearing down this system.
To be clear I don’t think anything anyone does in America will matter. I am saving cash, have an up to date passport and my wife and I are prepared to flee when it starts to get really bad just like my parents did from Iran.
I appreciate that your answer was something other than violent revolution or its buddies. Thank you for elaborating!
If you’re willing to share: where would you go?
My family are rug dealers and are spread around the globe and I’m looking at Lima or Thailand where I have cousins and would be able to get a place. I speak Spanish so its probably Lima. The whole world is going to contract when the US Empire is established and it is hard to know what is going to happen.
The US is in big trouble. The problem started in the legislator, where the seat of power is, in the 1970s. They ground down the ability of the US congress to pass any legislation and gummed up the system to where passing the bare minimum (things like Build Back Better) are major accomplishments. The constitution is supposed to be a living document, this means that it gets updated. The last update to it was in 1992 to give congress a raise. The previous one was in 1971. In the earlier years of this country we passed legislation and amendments all the tiem. The way that the history has gone when congress is working they pass Amendments at least every 10 years. The last time they didn’t pass an amendment for 50 years was 1865.
All the discussions are about the president and t his single election, but the game has been rigged on the local and state level to invalidate the outcomes of the elections themselves. Hillary Clinton should have won in 2016, she won - but we have a system where Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming get 10 senators and 15 electoral votes. Less people live there than in just Brooklyn and Queens in NYC. There is no reason a rural vote should be so weighted towards in a society with the Internet.
This country is broken, I won’t scream violent revolution because I know that doesn’t work. The communists started the 1979 revolution in Iran, toppled the government and opened the door for Khomeni. The only reason that isn’t a threat here in the US is that there literally is no left or leftists here, we have upset people online. We have an actually fascist system where business interests and government coordinate behind closed doors and conduct wars for profit while managing a vast complex of prisons at home.
Yes, very well said.
I’m considering the Lusophone world for myself and my family. My vision is to find a place where my kid can put down roots. I’m having a hard time working out the details, though.
I have climate-driven concerns about living near the equator or in Europe. And as part of the contraction you mentioned, I expect moving around the globe will become difficult or problematic.
That doesn’t leave many options.
Without reading your comment, I made the same logic comparison. Kismet.
I wonder if right wing fascism will arrive more easily and more quickly if we vote Biden vs sitting on our hands and watching trump be elected. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned but I’ll try give the non fascism side a leg up every opportunity I get.
This is somewhat true, however there was also a fascist uprising in the US during the 1930’s that was only just avoided.
Was it avoided?
Only 10 years later those same people including Prescott Bush rat lined the Nazis into the country to build out the intelligence community and US defense industries. Then over the next 90 years they actually install Nazi like fascism in the US.
The OSS became the CIA and Prscott Bush’s son and former head of the CIA became president with George HW Bush. Then his son stole an election 12 years later with hanging chads.
This moment in America isn’t the most important election in our lives, this was built towards for decades under everyone’s noses.
Hitler be looking at how the US is handling the Native “problem” and be taking notes