OK. I'm Convinced. Biden Needs To Hold The Line. Get On The Bus. (Trump, Vance TechBros)

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Sat Jul 20, 2024, 11:34 PM - Edit history (2)

'OK. I'm Convinced. Biden Needs to Hold the Line,' Daily Kos, July 19, 2024. - Biden Photo: This is the guy, and he's the only one we got.
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It cannot even be remotely said that I’m not a Biden critic. While many on the board see a transformative President with nothing but success and prosperity to his name, folks like me are still reeling and angry from a number of decisions (the appointment of Garland, BBB getting tossed to the wolves, and so forth).

However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the whole movement to unseat him as the incumbent is coming from the 1%, and they don’t give a shit if Trump wins. They don’t give a shit about concentration camps. They don’t give a shit about Trans people. They give a shit about their balance sheets.

People who have been trying to stop any progress with regards to taxing the rich have now started pulling hard on the reins they hold with Democratic lawmakers, who have to choose between their paymasters and possibly losing their elections for lack of funds. This is of course the problem with our reps being so beholden to monied interests — they have too much sway over the party. They always have.

AOC is right, as many have pointed out. We can’t just change horses, even if we wanted to. It would be a nightmare, and we may wind up entirely fucked.

Get on the bus. It’s the only bus we got.

I did something today I told myself I wasn’t going to do this cycle — I made a donation to the campaign. You should too. Because if the 1%’er assholes are willing to try and blackmail this party, we need all the small donations we can get. I don’t have to love Biden or his time as President to recognize the clear and present danger this brick-stupid dump the incumbent movement poses to everyone’s lives.

Short and sweet, but if I can buck up and say “It
has to be Biden, get over it”, so can you. --
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- Select comments: - "People who wanted to ditch Biden should have done it a year ago. That ship has sailed. - It's the same billionaire class or donor forces that want to choose the university presidents and curriculums. - I don't care to hate on Brown or Tester - they've got races to win. They may well have to sing this song to keep the money coming in"...
+ Comments,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/7/19/2255959/-OK-I-m-Convinced-Biden-Needs-to-Hold-The-Line
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*Also: 'Tech broligarchs are lining up to court Trump. And Vance is one more link in the chain,' The Guardian, July 20, 2024. Ed.- Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, others pledge support.
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.. Last week Trump not only appointed a tech bro to be his 2nd in command, choosing Sen. JD Vance to be his VP, but he received the benediction of the tech bro-in-chief, Elon Musk.

Musk has said he will donate $45m a month to Trump’s campaign, though his ongoing endorsement on X, the platform he bought and owns, is worth countless millions more. Some lesser-known figures in Silicon Valley who last week boarded the Trump bandwagon include Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, owners of the influential venture capital (VC) firms who have declared they’re all in for Trump as well as the Winklevoss twins, Chamath Palihapitiya and David Sacks.

Back in 2016, Peter Thiel was the voice in the wilderness. In that meeting in Trump Tower, it was Thiel’s hand that Trump picked up and stroked. (Thiel's data mining firm, Palantir, gained billions of dollars in contracts from Trump’s Dept. of Defense, and, most controversially, Homeland Security’s ICE agency, where it profiled and surveilled migrants.) Silicon Valley's key investing principle is to bet early and bet big. It worked for Thiel with Facebook. It worked for Thiel with Trump. Last week another of his bets paid off, though few could ever have predicted how spectacularly.

Because JD Vance, the new potential VP, is Thiel’s creature. He is a man Thiel moulded in his own image.

Thiel gave Vance a job at his VC firm, Mithril Capital, backed him to start his own venture fund, Narya Capital, then later invested $15m in his successful run for the senate. Max Chafkin, Thiel’s biographer, describes Vance as his “extension”.. The payoff from Thiel’s early gamble in Trump is a lesson that has not passed others by. Like their other obsession, crypto, the best time to have invested in Trump was 2016, and the 2nd best time is today.

We already have a word for what we’re watching now: it’s oligarchy. We’ve seen how this plays out. In Putin’s Russia, political and commercial interests are one and the same.

Thiel is betting - again - on the same phenomenon in America. Betting that he will be 1st among a new breed of tech bro oligarchs – a new super-class of broligarchs. In Trump’s America, there will be hard choices for everyone, including the billionaires. Though it may be less hard for them. Vance has said he wants to deregulate crypto and unshackle AI. He’s said he’d dismantle Biden’s attempts to place safeguards around AI development...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/20/tech-broligarchs-court-trump-vance-elon-musk-peter-thiel