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  • George Simion, who proudly wears Trump baseball caps

    On one hand, that seems weird.

    On the other hand, Musk was off doing Nazi salutes with the AfD, so it seems bidirectional.

    The war poses a dilemma for Simion. Although he’s a nationalist who aligns with MAGA on leaving Ukraine to fend for itself, he’s far less keen than Trump to align publicly with Russia. Indeed, Simion styles himself as the candidate who can keep the U.S. committed to stationing troops in Romania.

    “What we wish, as a country affected by German and Russian imperialism in history, is that this peace formula comes with new security guarantees for the next 30 to 50 years so that Russia cannot do again what it did, violating all international treaties,” Simion said.

    Um. I think that the US leaving NATO is probably not likely to happen regardless, but I think that stationing a ton of soldiers in Europe is probably exactly what Trump doesn't want to do. His thing has been drawing down troops in Europe.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-considering-proposal-cut-thousands-troops-europe-officials-sa-rcna199603

    Senior Defense Department officials are considering a proposal to withdraw as many as 10,000 troops from Eastern Europe, sparking concern on both continents that it would embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to six U.S. and European officials who have been briefed on the matter.

    The units under consideration are part of the 20,000 personnel the Biden administration deployed in 2022 to strengthen the defenses of countries bordering Ukraine after the Russian invasion. The numbers are still being discussed, but the proposal could involve removing up to half of the forces sent by Biden.

    As the Pentagon undergoes budget cuts under Trump, shrinking the U.S. military’s footprint in Europe would free up resources, potentially for the Indo-Pacific region, which administration officials have said they see as a higher strategic priority. Canceling the deployment of combat units to Eastern Europe could also save money for the Army, which is trying to boost investments in innovative equipment and weapons.

    Roughly 80,000 American troops are stationed in Europe. After Russia launched the war, lawmakers from both parties backed a strong U.S. military presence along NATO’s eastern flank, seeing it as an important signal to Putin that the United States remains committed to the defense of those border states.

    But Trump campaigned on a promise to end the war quickly and is now pushing for a ceasefire. He has taken a very different stance toward Ukraine from that of Biden, who vowed to provide weapons and other aid to Kyiv “as long as it takes” to prevail.

    Trump has pressed Ukraine to make concessions upfront. He suspended military and intelligence assistance for a week after a public clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and he has made no specific commitment about future U.S. military aid.

    Ben Hodges, a retired three-star general who oversaw the Army in Europe, said he wondered what kind of analysis was done to lead officials to consider the proposal to withdraw troops in the region.

    “You’ll have a lot less deterrent capability,” Hodges said. “Now Poland obviously is growing its capability, the Romanians are, other European countries are, but that’ll be a hole that’ll have to be filled.”

  • Can a Romanian person with a good understanding of this shit show please give the rest of us a solid rundown of how the second election is likely to pan out?

    • That's too much work... It's a lot and it's chaotic. We've had 3 days of debates too, and George Simion was absent from them (he was on a man date with with Donald Trump Jr.)

      The polling organizations we have are traditionally biased (partisan); there are some new pollsters too, but it's not consistent. There is a lot of "vote splitting" going on. Frankly, I think that a lot of people are going to treat it like gambling, like slot machines (a plague here).

      Simion seems to be the #1, taking the mantle from Georgescu (who did not give it to him) as the reactionary "anti-system" party (AUR).

      Everyone's anti-system now. I mean the politicians too, it's a long-standing grift now for candidates to declare themselves to be anti, despite the opposite.

      The "status quo" parties, which are sort of married, are PSD and PNL. They are deeply hated for many good reasons but they promise a kind of slowly deteriorating stability. The problem is that the main alternatives are even worse, but a lot of people think that "any alternative is better". These two parties, along with UDMR (Magyar minority party), are supporting Antonescu. He's likely on position 2 or 3 in preferences. He's a washout politician who can talk well, he came out of political retirement for this. His votes depend on how well these parties can get their bases to vote for him.

      Antonescu has used a lot of right-wing conservative discourse in his campaign so far, yet he's from the "DL" party (PNL). It's hard to tell if he's being honest about it, but he sounds almost as bad as the far right ones.

      Then we have Nicușor Dan. He's sort of the "golden boy" of Romanian progressives, as he comes from a long career of activism on civic matters and is well regarded in the capital and in the big cities. He's been under attack a lot, which usually means that he's close to getting 2nd place in polls. While he describes himself as a conservative, his political career is about making government work (without corruption) for the people, not for party elites or PPP clienteles, and not for himself. He's a rare kind of politician who's actually trying to strengthen the government (something that the USR party claims to want too, but they don't usually get in power). If he loses, he remains the mayor of the capital (where he's doing a long process of unfucking the Capital's debts, public heating system, and other infrastructure).

      Another interesting candidate is Victor Ponta, who's also a "trumpist". He's from the PSD party but left to be an independent. He has ties to Russia and Russia's allies in Europe. He's a clever opportunist who's trying to do realpolitik ironically. It's unclear what his voter base is, so he might get only a few % or a lot of %. Ponta might split the vote from PSD to Antonescu, he represents a certain "camp" in PSD. It's unclear if he takes votes from the far-right "sovreigntists" types who are being wooed by Simion.

      If Ponta wins, he might take over PSD or split it and join with AUR (Simion, far-right) in Parliament.

      We also have Lasconi who won a surprise 2nd place last year vs Georgescu. That's widely been seen as a protest vote along with some weird shit that PSD and PNL pulled to split their base intentionally and redirect votes to small parties as some proxy undermining strategy (including to Georgescu); she won 2nd place by a very tiny margin. Nevertheless, she let that go to her head and thinks that God wants her to be president now. In the polls, she got way less this time and she's unlikely to even come close to Nicușor Dan, but she shares a good chunk of the base with him. In an weird rational move, her own party leadership (USR) ditched her and called for voting for Nicușor Dan (independent). Nicușor Dan is sort of the godfather of USR, and he has better poll numbers for sure. This has made Lasconi extremely mad and now she's just trying bully and bury Nicușor Dan with every occasion while explaining how much she's a victim of conspiracies. Of course, the status quo parties loved this and are encouraging her, and the not-so-independent BEC (central elections bureau) decided that USR can't drop her so easily and can't support Nicușor Dan.

      The rest of the candidates don't have any serious chance and they're either there for their ego or to mess with others. They do not understand the whole politics of "transferring" votes to the better candidate that they'd support; they think it's a popularity contest with low or no stakes. Literally most of the candidates do not understand the stakes and Simion and his party definitely have "euroscepticism" and ROEXIT desires (not official goals, yet).

      The recent debates have been good at showing how much they all suck, which is probably why Simion stayed away.

      I think that we'll see the "gambler vote" in action especially for reactionary candidates; the people who decide who to vote for very late, maybe in the voting booth. And I bet (sic) that this is going to be impacted by an illegal promotion campaign in the days before the vote and even during the voting day, just like Georgescu did. The infrastructure, the pathways that allowed Georgescu to "come out of nowhere" are still there.

      I would actually support turning off social media for a week before the election day. Not for me, for everyone; servers - blocked. The tech bros and their clients have figured out how to hack the masses.

    • So far, we seem to be doing exactly what Democratic Romania does best: jumping in right after America... (Edit: fuck Putin, too, just to be clear).

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