There is no crisis in the US that results in canceled elections

The US held elections during the Civil War.

There is no crisis that would create a situation where elections "cannot be held".

That is to say, if the current admin attempts to suspend elections, the legality of that and the magnitude of the reaction will be the same, crisis or no.

I really think this gives them too much credit.

They keep making the same mistake: underestimating that your adversary gets a vote, whether it's Iran, trade partners, colleges, Colbert, the Kennedy Center's audience, or Minneapolis.

> Why worry about how the midterms, if you can create a situation where elections cannot be held at all...?

But they claimed "flawless victory".

Both things cannot be true at the same time.

I heard a theory that since someone told Trump that Ukraine wouldn't hold elections until after the war, he thought America had the same law.

The only way you could do something like would be to "appoint" someone as the presidential candidate in a two party system without holding a primary

> If the goal was to hurt China / BRICS and kneecap Iran it seems on point.

While also hurting Europe, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and many more. Very on point...

It will hurt everyone, Americans included, oil is a global market, fertilisers are a global market, those are basic inputs for probably every single thing produced in the world.

So now all of us around the globe have to pay the price for American Imperialism, compounded by the complete shattering of the USA's soft power as an ally, this will only create more animosity against the USA from all sides. Very on point.

But the USA oil industry can make a buck until everything buckles, or perhaps the USA admin will introduce price controls like in the 1970s, that worked very well too.

> in 2 strokes seriously hurt Chinese oil imports.

USA, Europe, and many other countries depend on China for manufacturing. I doubt that this is going to solve inflation.

But it will fill the pockets of a few people in oil rich countries that can still export.

> They also secured oil imports from Venezuela while at the same time in 2 strokes seriously hurt Chinese oil imports.

This 'Venezuelan oil' is a pipe dream for the moment. It will take a significant amount of years to get anywhere near completed.

Oil markets are global, you cannot hike prices for China while enjoying cheap oil yourself.

Venezuela has reserves. Relative to the gulf it doesn't produce any meaningful amount of oil from those reserves.

Just because the US won’t literally run out of oil doesn’t mean the economy (or populace) will be unaffected by a supply crunch. As everyone in the country can already see when they go to fill up their tank.

“If the goal was the hurt China…”

You are mistaken to assume there was a goal. Trump has admitted he did this because he was told that Iran were about to attack the U.S. not because of any strategic goal.

https://youtube.com/shorts/YlkcOjSQVJk

The 'issue' here is that China has good relations with Iran and in talks to guarantee safe passage for their ships, like they had previously with respect to attacks off Yemen by the Iran-backed Houthis.

They don’t need Venezuela look up Guyana next door its the new oil country in the region

China is still moving tankers through the strait, Iran has no quarrel with them.

Not so awful as it may seem. It would be even more awful if election cycle had no influence over decision to wage one more war. "Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".

Including starting with murdering 100+ kids based on stale intelligence, according to the NY times.

It doesn't matter how good the military is if the political leadership is incompetent and the strategic objectives are incoherent. You'd think that after Vietnam, Iraq 2, and Afghanistan this lesson would have been learned, but apparently not.

Biden held back arms support for Ukraine on dubious "we don't wanna test Russia's red line" grounds, gave unlimited support a wannabe despot's (Netanyahu's) wars of aggression even as he tried to backstab democracy in the US, arguably also enabling him to start the current situation in Iran, failed to prosecute an attempt to overturn the US election, and stayed in the presidential race for too long when his body and mind was in visible decline.

We wouldn't be having a discussion about the US having a king if Biden's administration was actually competent at doing its job.

Bothsides-ism is such a plague. While I don't agree with everything you said, I feel like the pandemic response doesn't get enough credit. Everyone hated how the Biden admin responded in the moment, but looking back the US really came out ahead compared to almost everyone else

well, Biden was extremely generous towards Iran at least, which most likely resulted in the current situation we are facing