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10 votes
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How the pandemic has silenced the USA's biggest gubernatorial election
7 votes -
Joe Biden answers the web's most searched questions | WIRED Autocomplete Interview
11 votes -
EU ambassador says Australia played 'bad cop' to Europe's 'good cop' to get coronavirus motion up
5 votes -
Why conservative intellectuals like Viktor Orbán
6 votes -
The system failed the test of Trump: The story of the recent years is of institutions that were unable to constrain the presidency
8 votes -
During Michigan's COVID-19 response, anti-social distancing protests were promoted by a small set of activists linked to the 2012-era, anti-union so-called "right-to-work" movement
8 votes -
The pandemic has pushed Biden to the left. How far will he go?
10 votes -
GOP builds massive voter suppression machine for 2020 US election
4 votes -
Federal judge rules that all Texas voters can apply to vote by mail amid coronavirus pandemic: "the Grim Reaper's scepter of death" is "far more serious than an unsupported fear of voter fraud"
7 votes -
What recent special elections can tell us about November's US election: They may throw cold water on the idea that 2020 will be another “blue wave”
10 votes -
A series of articles on the state of American democracy from early 2015 by Vox
American democracy is doomed ('constitutional hardball' is a great way to describe the 'modus operandi' of the Trump-McConnell GOP.) This is how the American system of government will die I found...
American democracy is doomed ('constitutional hardball' is a great way to describe the 'modus operandi' of the Trump-McConnell GOP.)
This is how the American system of government will die
I found their predictions to be kinda interesting (and clearly minimal)
The best-case scenario is that we wind up with an elective dictator but retain peaceful transitions of power. This is where I'd place my bet. Pure parliamentary systems, especially unicameral ones, give high levels of power to the prime minister and his cabinet, and manage to have peaceful transitions nonetheless. The same is true in Brazil, where the presidency is considerably more powerful than it is in the US.
But parliamentary systems also feature parties that are stronger than their leaders, which serve to prevent single individuals from garnering too much power. America's parties are getting more polarized, but they still aren't as strong as those of most other developed nations.
The worst-case scenario is if the presidency attains these powers and someone elected to the office decides to use them to punish political enemies, interfere with elections, suppress dissent, and so forth. Retaining an independent enough judiciary is a guard against this, but only if norms around obeying its rulings are strong. And, unusually, America allows for true independents, undisciplined by their parties, to become heads of government.
The US political system is not gonna collapse. It's gonna muddle though (A pretty interesting take. There are problems but people won't try to fix them but instead become disengaged and kinda forget about it.)
I think one of the things the authors missed while writing these this is how news became partidarized in the same manner, thus allowing outlets like Fox News to just consume the Republican electorate. They also missed how voting has been targeted too, and underestimated how willing the public was to act and how would the public react to this, which was by electing someone who didn't care about said broken Congress (or any sort of constitutionality), which is what became of Trump.
3 votes -
Do we really want a new Cold War with China? Corporate media is laying the ideological groundwork for a new cold war with China, presenting the nation as a hostile power that needs to be kept in check
20 votes -
Why anger against Trump might not be enough for Biden to win
6 votes -
We’ve updated our pollster ratings ahead of the 2020 General Election
8 votes -
As Putin ages, he seems to want to decentralize the Russian government
2 votes -
Did the coronavirus kill ideology in Australia? How a government both sectarian and divisive learned (briefly) to become inclusive
5 votes -
Are older US voters turning away from Donald Trump?
10 votes -
Lesotho's prime minster wants to stay in power to avoid being charged for his wife’s murder
4 votes -
Grading the US Electoral College: C for chaos
4 votes -
The president’s job is to manage risk. But Donald Trump is the risk: Donald Trump was a gamble. It’s not paying off.
4 votes -
The coronavirus crisis has highlighted exploitative global trade regimes
9 votes -
The prophecies of Q: American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase
6 votes -
The paranoid style in American politics: It had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it (1964)
5 votes -
Rep. Justin Amash ends his third-party White House bid: Amash said the timing wasn’t right, in large part because of the coronavirus pandemic
6 votes -
Never Trumpers will host their own ‘Republican convention’ during the RNC
12 votes -
Rep. Justin Amash “looking closely” at third-party run in US presidential election
14 votes -
In key US state of Florida, Trump stumbles among senior voters: Trump has virtually no path to victory without winning Florida, and older voters - which he is losing - are critical
5 votes -
Reflections on the Bernie Campaign: What it meant, why it inspired us, why we lost, and where we go now
5 votes -
The fight is on for progressives to push Biden to the left. They might just win.
9 votes -
The roots of the October Revolution in Iraq: From October 2019 until the lockdown in March, Iraqi revolutionaries from working-class backgrounds defied state repression to fill the squares of Iraq
3 votes -
US Senate approves bill to sanction China over Uighur rights
10 votes -
As COVID-19 gets worse, Trump is talking about things that the average American couldn't care less about
10 votes -
Stop trying to shame socialists into voting for Joe Biden: It’s really about performatively denouncing leftists as irresponsible, for the edification of the liberals who are watching
19 votes -
Raging at China over coronavirus won't help – scrutinising our own governments might
7 votes -
How to argue with your comrades: it’s easy for socialists to blame our own comrades for our defeats. But those losses are more rooted in the powerful structures we’re up against than our own failures
8 votes -
Bernie Sanders says another US presidential run is 'very, very unlikely'
10 votes -
What to make of those new US Senate polls that have Democrats way ahead
12 votes -
A few articles on the Polish elections' breakdown
Poland 'holds' ghost election with 0% turnout (mostly explains what and who led up to this.) Opposition 'slams' presidential election by post (citing lack of preparation, mostly.) Polish election...
Poland 'holds' ghost election with 0% turnout (mostly explains what and who led up to this.)
Opposition 'slams' presidential election by post (citing lack of preparation, mostly.)
Polish election delayed indefinitely with just 4 days to go (mostly the same as the first article, but also cites how the later these elections are held, the worse Duda (current Polish president) 's chances unsurprisingly become.)
Race to the bottom: all Polish election outcomes are bad [opinion article] (a short analysis on the possibility routes the election could have taken. Admittedly somewhat outdated given the elections have clearly been postponed.
Related article: Poland's ruling party just made it's anti-democratic intention radically clear (tl;dr they're really invested in 'illiberal democracy', not too unlike the Republican party.)
6 votes -
#DemocracyRIP: What the Russian government did to the 2016 elections in the US was just the beginning
9 votes -
Pandemic has shown Australians we have less in common with the US than we thought
8 votes -
US polling suggests Tara Reade's allegations are having a moderate effect on public opinion of Joe Biden
21 votes -
Scott Morrison is now very popular in Australia. He hasn’t earned that.
10 votes -
Judge orders Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, others to be reinstated to New York primary ballot
21 votes -
Never Trumpers' strange relationship with the Democratic Party
11 votes -
Hungary no longer a democracy, Freedom House says
17 votes -
What would the effects of a breakup of the UK be and how likely is that to happen?
6 votes -
Sparks fly in virtual hearing on Andrew Yang’s NY primary lawsuit: ‘New Yorkers are being denied their right to vote’
7 votes -
Republicans are sacrificing other Americans' freedoms for their own, like once happened in the American Civil War
9 votes -
The UK Labour party has a new leader: Keir Starmer
12 votes