Post
Just as Hillary Clinton positioned her run as a third term for Obama ("America is already great"), so did Biden (and then Harris) position their campaigns as a second Biden term. As Biden said (in 2019): "Nothing would fundamentally change":
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/11/postmortem/#house-divided
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So a vote for Biden would be a vote for another four years of forceful, material support for genocide; another four years of compromise with Democratic establishment on student debt and healthcare gouging; and another four years of a president who was obviously in mental decline.
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Harris's campaign was, "A vote for me is a vote for all of the above (minus the cognitive decline)." Actually, it was worse: by conspicuously failing to campaign on the Biden administration's record on reining in corporate power, a vote for Harris was "A vote for all of the above, minus the mental decline *and* the antitrust."
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Whereas a vote for Trump was a vote for change, a vote to give the establishment a black eye. It was also a vote for genocide and racist pogroms and gangster kleptocracy, which is why many voters stayed home, casting a ballot for America's all-time favorite candidate, "None of the above," while any number of furious people and/or vicious racists turned out for Trump.
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There's one book that crystallizes my thoughts on this better than any other: Naomi Klein's 2023 *Doppelganger*, which analyzes our politics in terms of (warped) "mirror images." One of the mirror world pairings that Klein analyzes is the progressive movement, a coalition of liberals and leftists (led by liberals).
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