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2024 United States Election Megathread
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I really can't state it any better than countless others have in much more thoughtful ways, but this outcome is beyond sickening whether or not Harris manages to upset current projections in the next day. Regardless of how unhealthy and irrational it is, I increasingly feel hatred for the large swathes of this country for the rights they've just voted to rip away and the cruelty they've just voted to inflict upon others for generations to come.
Even after passing the most monumental economic & infrastructure bills in a generation, a masterful handling of the global inflation crisis that has just seen us return to normal levels, and an incredibly cautious take-no-chances campaign by Harris, it looks like Democrats may truly have never stood a fucking chance against an outright, unabashed fascist described by his own running mate as "America's Hitler" and who almost solely ran on a platform of cruelty, revenge and violence.
As someone who has moved from a rural area (we are talking 30-45 minute drive to Walmart rural) in one state to a rural area in another state in the last 4 months. It's harsh, but most rural struggling families don't care about policies. They have memories of not paying 5.49lb for hamburger meat 4+ years ago, their traveling expenses (fuel/food) being 1/3 of the cost of what it was 4+ years ago, and a dollar going a lot further.
They have memories of 4+ years ago being better for their wallets, and those are powerful memories that connect to powerful emotions like being able to afford to take a vacation or travel for the holidays to see family.
In their eyes, the current administration had 4 years to fix this and failed miserably. It sucks, it's harsh, but it is what it is. If Trump wins, it won't be because he's Trump for people struggling. The current administration had no emotional victories that mattered to people who are truly struggling between a pack of hamburger meat vs beans and rice for dinner weekly.
Honestly this is the problem. Low information lizard brain not connecting the dots between policy and costs. I work in the business that makes that $5.50 hamburger and if the immigration policies they voted for go into effect effect they’ll be lucky to afford bread.
That may very well be the outcome but it doesn't change the fact the current administration had no emotional victories to win these people over for things that mattered to them.
All those lizard-brain people, as you call them, are HUMANS trying to survive on a food bill that has already doubled/tripled during the current administration. Hell, the average price of bread per lb in 2019 was 1.28, and last month, it was 1.98 per lb. That's a 54% increase for just one staple item over four years. In December 2022, it was already at a 35% increase, which is two years into the current administration's term.
Those humans, who you seem to despise by calling them lizard brains, are only trying to do what they feel is best for their family, and to them, the current administration doesn't give a damn about them.
Also, if you can't construct an argument without insulting a class of people, you may need to step back and take a hard look at yourself, my friend. You will only alienate people that way, and your voice will eventually be ignored as a rude, ignorant person.
While prices have gone up, wages have more than kept up and most people are better off now. Unfortunately, "price tag still higher" and it looks like that may be enough to get Trump elected. Some people are not better off, but Americans have never taken more vacations on average. The lower class has actually benefitted the most under Biden's policies.
This is the messaging that killed the Harris campaign and democratic platform, imo.
I can't say where these prospering people are. I believe they exist, but I do not see them in my day-to-day. My neighborhood and my family (I'm a math professor at a state college) have really suffered economically over the last five years like never before. Two 50% hikes in housing costs, continuously rising food and energy costs, and pretty much all consumables.
I believe that the Biden administration inherited a trashed economy due to the poor management and policies of the firet Trump administration and the pandemic; I believe that they did some very clever things to avert the kind of total financial meltdowns we see in places like Turkey, caused by similar mechamisms. However it's not the case that for people like myself and those around me, that "the economy is better than ever" . I don't go on vacations or buy nice things for my kid. I struggle to stay on top of the mortgage. I've had to accept that things I took on in the past, that by my reasonable planning should have been manageable, became unmanageable, and I've had to let go of some of those obligations and accept the damage to my reputation and credit score. It's been incredibly hard, but if I have to choose between housing my family or paying a credit card bill, I gonna do the former.
The left did very little to speak to folks like me. They still got my vote, for so many reasons it's hard to list them all, but their messaging on the economy totally missed me. And it is not at all hard for me to see how, if you're not all-in on the social and democratic principles espoused by the left, then voting for the side that acknowledged your struggle and in some way claims they can help, might be tempting.
I wish this was a surprise. It was closer than I would've expected over the summer. The Harris campaign did a great job of improving their numbers in thr last few months, especially considering the assassination attempts. But most folks are primarily worried about their money. Most regular (read: poor) people have seen their quality of life fall, a lot since 2018/2019. One party messaged to that, and one party did not. I am not surprised that the party acknowledging the elephant in the room won.
I do know that Harris had one major platform point on the housing crisis, but even to a liberal Iike me, it really didn't seem like a good fix. Just offering down-payment assistance won't help in the long run if the mortgage is unaffordable; my instinct was that this would also raise the cost of houses long-term.
It's a sad day. The party steamed straight ahead in the fog of non-communication and echo chamber polling. We could and should have done better to avoid the iceberg. We could and should have talked to our neighbors, asked how they were doing. We could and should have been more aware of what the half of our country that aren't idealogically aligned with us were struggling with and worried about, besides the idealogical stuff. That's where we lost and I hope we learn the lesson.
People intuitively use just price economics. At the statistical level, no one cares that their life has had a myriad of minor improvements over the past three decades if the number on the vending machine is twice as much as they remember from childhood. Those who do care should have the brainpower to immediately recognize that campaigning otherwise is a losing strategy.
The final results are yet unknown, but I am certain that as with 2016 and 2020 the Democrats will win large majorities of the non-white working class. Those people are subject to the exact same dynamics that you outline in your post but did not vote for Trump. Not really sure how you can boil this down to a pure class argument without confronting that.
I agree that people feel the economy is bad. But when his solution is 20% tariffs and mass deportations, moved which will absolutely crater the economy, I find it hard to take the economic frustration argument seriously. People are mad at the economy and want to take it out on immigrants. That’s what this boils down to.
I don't share your optimism.
I am a non-protestant, visible minority, female working class. These intersecting identities come into play let's say, 70% or less of the time. But I am a carbon based mammal life form 100% of the time, that relies on shelter and food to stay alive. I can imagine living in a repressive misogynistic hellscape and having maybe a few years to try it get out, but I won't last one single winter without basic creaturely needs.
The ultra wealthy have squeezed us so much that we now have more needs in common with the other desperate white male working class than race or gender or orientation. Keep the livestock hungry enough, and they'll "choose" to walk through milking stations that hurt.
As for tariffs and immigration, these lies have been repeated for several generations now and are entrenched. The average American think tariffs means other countries pay us tributes like a colonial superpower. They think anti immigration means the market will finally respect workers' bargaining rights. These are not coincidental group hallucinations: they were specifically engineered and repeated ad nauseum the same way "smoking is cool" and "drinking is harmless" was done.
It's blindfolding a bull and smacking it around, lifting the hood and pointing at a designated target.
People have been told for generations that those who seperate workers from the means of our production are job creators and benefactors who must be protected. That they believe this isn't only a moral failing on their part.
What type of response do you expect to this kind of discourse?
Exactly, they are permitted to use their brand of discourse and we are expected to stay civil.
I don't like that kind of talk either, but I don't think the stakes are quite that high? There are lots of situations where exaggeration and rudeness are fine, if it's about the out-group. Comedians even make a living out of it.
It's more about preferences - what kind of conversations do you like? I prefer more civil forums.
"Lizard brain" is a somewhat common idiom referring a person's instinctive reactions as contrasted with the rest of their mental facilities. It's not referring to the person as a whole as having a lizard-like brain.
That's used as an insult. The insult being that the person is a lesser one that is driven by a base animal instinct in contrast to the intellectual that is able to resist.
You might read it as that - I didn’t and there’s a perfectly reasonable read that @Notcoffeetable was speaking in general terms that “the lizard brain cannot join dots between two disjointed things”.
Those who give lessons in how others should look at themselves, ought to maybe step back and learn to give the benefit of the doubt, @romeoblade
Are you intending to respond to Gary or to romeoblade with this?
we can re-phrase it with whatever flowery words we want. But that does indeed seem to be the phenomenon happening. And it is a problem.
I don't know this for sure, but in my opinion, it is this attitude of attributing conservatives' feelings to "lizard brain" and not genuine experiences or thought processes that galvanizes them to vote in such strong numbers.
In my very blue city, in a blue enough neighborhood, people recently have adopted gun ownership at crazy high rates! Democrats kept telling them how violent crime is not actually an issue, but everyone now knows someone who was mugged or carjacked or shot. So a group that was generally gun avoidant is now pro-2A, and it's disgusting to watch that change in realtime.
I'm pissed about what happened tonight. I hope we spend the upcoming months and years reflecting about what we think we know about the Other Side, which we'll never do if we assume they're just voting out of a knee jerk reaction.
Perhaps. As we've seen, hate is a strong motiator to do a lot of stuff in history. I was hoping that would also apply to the women in this election given the hot topic issues, but alas. Maybe it just wasn't quite close to home for enough people as of now.
You know, for a long time I always pondered two things.
it didn't matter here, but I still think that holds true. There's lots of single issue voters on stuff that isn't really that hard to loosen a stance on while focusing on the important issues congress should focus on. But ideaologies can run strong.
There's nothing for me and you to reflect on unless you work in policy. except I guess that people would rather hear a sweet lie than an inconvenient truth that needs to be fixed. Is that the direction policy wants to take? I can't say.
My believes arent fundamentally changed just because some people very angry at the wrong people for the wrong reason reacted with their gut instead of their minds. And I'm also not really someone name calling anywhere either. How am I supposed to change minds on things I diametrically oppose?
Please... people use to make the same/similar argument about the word "retarded" as you do about "lizard brain". Both are offensive, stop trying to justify it.
It's not being used as a pejorative though, it's just a way to describe people going with their guts. Everyone has a lizard brain, it's the part of your brain that drives you to meet your basic needs (even if it's not entirely logical).
I will break down how the sentence reads so you can see how it can be misinterpreted.
In context, his comment directly quotes a subsection of my post targeting it. The subsection refers to most struggling families.
Using the backreference of the pronoun "they" in his quote, they have to mean “most struggling families." His comment, "Low information lizard brain not connecting the dots between policy and costs," directly targets my comment about "most struggling families." by default, it groups everyone in the "they" group as unable to connect the dots between policy and costs.
A better wording of his sentence would have been.
It would have taken all of 30 seconds to reword the sentence.
His comment re-worded.
That's not much better because of the "they" grouping. Because it suggests that struggling families are children who are incapable of separating their emotions from making a rational choice that affects their future.
Not caring about policies when you have more pressing matters like keeping food on the table and having fuel to get to work is not being emotionally driven or having a lizard brain. I could care less about foreign policy if I'm eating the same leftovers two or three days for lunch in a row just so my kids can have a better lunch to take to school or a better dinner at night.
So, in this case, "lizard brain" reads as an insult to me because his comment is directly targeting a subsection of my comment and using the "they" pronoun/grouping.
If the reply would have broken the paragraph up in multiple sections separating the two it would have read better...
Frankly, using it in this manner it currently is ranks up there with the word "retard" for me.
This isn’t a “problem”. This is how it’s always been.
For some reason though the democrats seem to think they can over focus on issues that aren’t “Yeah holy shit stuff expensive” and then say “look the economy is doing great”
I respect the fuck out of what the Biden admin has done with the economy as I totally expected a shit show and they dodged it perfectly, but again you can’t tell people “ummm actually inflation is fixed” when they’re still struggling.
I get that people want to make this about rights and there’s some legitimacy to that, but at the end of the day if you want to win it’s about food and the economy
they are struggling because of the housing kerfluffle. $5 hamburer meat doesn't matter that much when rent goes from $1000 to $1500 a month or more. And Im not exactly confident that Trump won't just make that worse.
He almost certainly will make it worse, but when you're the one in power, you eat the blame. It has always been like this, and pretending otherwise was extremely foolish.
The thing is, MAGAts won't actually blame him. Sure, maybe some of the borderline people who flip-flop on fascism will and will vote Dem next time, but there's zero chance that people so far down this MAGA pipeline will even accept the possibility it's Trump's fault. He'll just lie and say it's Democrats somehow and they'll eat it up the way they believe 2020 was stolen.
This is the problem in a nutshell right here.
Of course there's people who won't flip, there's always people who won't flip. that's not what's winning Trump elections. 15 million people not voting dem who voted dem last time is the problem, and yes, they can flip.
not sure if a "no-vote" is a flip per se. But I am beyond tired of this country being too lazy to look up a voting booth, a voting ballot, and put a paper in a box.
I know the powers that be are making that harder than it needs to be in some areas, but it still isn't "hard". If you can browse social media you have the power to figure out how to vote in your country's elections
we've read very different histories. Or otherwise have very diffeernt perceptions on how much "eating" a leader does proportional to the people that preside under it. Even a mere 4 years ago during unprecedented circumstances.
But sure, feel free to call me foolish. I deleted most of my social media at this point but I know it's gonna be a lot of that kind of talk for the next years to come
If Democrats fail to win votes, it is because the party has failed to convince voters it's on their side. And under a tech/money oligarchy they are correct
People vote Trump not because they hate trans people or hate Palestine whatever, it's because they (mistakingly) believe that this horrible man is their romeo pimp.
Both parties have been making themselves rich over the backs of regular Americans. It's hard to fault the battered, trafficked person for falling in love with the violent pimp who says pretty words and bring flowers once every four years, if the alternative is perceived to be a less violent pimp who won't deign to even say pretty words.
But when does the victim realize their agency? The pimp analogy is colorful but feels tenuous; our elections are a job interview, not a sexual relationship.
I'm glad we can empathize with the plight of the average person. But the average person is also of average intelligence and has the capability to make informed choices. In that light I think they are also accountable for the totality of the platform that they support.
The job interview was with donors, it was never with us.
There's accountability too, yeah, no one forced their hands at the polls (touch wood) and the information about how awful the orange felon is is completely publicly available. But I'm afraid at least the 15 million who voted for Biden and not Harris are very aware of their choice. This landslide loss was a clear referendum.
This is the perspective people miss. Yes there’s some really nasty people who vote Republican in numbers and that number is sadly much higher than it was but so many are just looking at food costs
In general, people are extremely self centered and unwilling to think of how things might be bad for them, but they're way worse in different ways for different people.
They vote for Trump because they don't like Biden's policies and think he'll "fix" things. But in the process, they put someone in power who won't make their lives any better but will make lives worse for millions of others.
I'm being crude here, but 4 years ago I remember a bunch of old people dying out because the current president wouldn't follow basic mask mandates (which sadly included some otherwise well meaning family members on my end) and unprecedented levels of unemployment that would make 2008 blush.
It really showed me how divided the coutntry was when "wear a mask so you don't DIE" became a political statement. To the point where I only feel a slight disappointment rather than contempt here today. I can't even be surprised. But I guess people wanted to desperately get outside and forget about that.
It's definitely true things got economically hard these past 4 years, for no fault of any administration. No country really handled COVID "gracefully" in my eyes. But we're just changing it up to get worse when you consider other unnatural means for why the economy got worse for the middle class.
Democrats did this to themselves by waiting until the last minute for Biden to drop out. We had the chance to run actual likeable candidates for a full year beforehand but decided instead to promote a candidate who realistically was never that likeable even as a VP. Considering we're in yet another "most important election of our lifetime" it made no sense to run a candidate like Harris, it should have been another milquetoast inoffensive candidate like we had with Biden. Would it have been the best choice for America? Probably not, but it would have been the best chance for winning.
I think a lot of people are going to declare that X is the reason why Kamala lost. And X being anything other than "voters shifted to the right and wanted what Trump was selling" is probably wrong. Hell that is probably to simplistic too.
I, and many other people, find Kamala Harris incredibly "likeable."
But that isn't the problem, because Trump isn't "likeable" by the same standards, as his supporters will often acknowledge when they make excuses for him.
It's like how I've seen folks saying "you can't focus on identity politics" while saying "you must focus on men" as if they're not an identity they're the default or "and you can't run a woman" as if that isn't identity based politics. I don't think there's a magic mythical perfect candidate that would have done better.
More people wanted what Trump is selling - and if ultimately that's about believing his take on the economy alongside being given an "enemy" to blame it all on - immigrants - that's what they bought. We know exactly how popular populism is, and how willing we are to turn on the outsider as scapegoats.
As with all campaigns it’s a comedy of errors. It’s sad that most of the elections in my lifetime have been “who fucked up catastrophically the least” and the Dems have managed to keep it close
I voted for Harris, it was one of the first times I actually got off my ass and went out since most of the time it feels like my vote doesn't matter because of where I live. It was never a vote for her though, it was always just a vote against Trump. I really wish I could get a political candidate that I feel actually represents more of the issues I care about.
My silver lining if Trump wins is that we might get Pete Buttigieg in four years. Otherwise, we'd have to wait at least eight years.
I would love to vote for Pete, I wasn't a huge fan of him in past elections but his performance as Secretary of Transportation has been incredible. He really seems to fight for a lot of the issues I find are important, and doesn't resort to garbage politicking to prove his points. I've been impressed with pretty much every video I've seen of him.
I'm not American so I don't know much about him except that he's a centrist and gay, which if Harris - a woman of colour - didn't get elected, then it would also make Buttigieg unelectable because it's my understanding that being gay is "worse" than being a woman of colour in the current political climate where your country as a whole has become a lot more racist, generally speaking, since Obama was elected.
I am also gay so please don't read this as a homophobic comment.
My take is that it would be more accurate to call him pragmatic rather than a centrist. I really think he could do a lot for acceptance of gay rights because "he's one of the good ones" who "doesn't make a scene" and "is just another guy who just happens to be gay." And he is one of the most well-spoken politicians I've heard, at least in this country. It's not just a charisma thing, but that he knows how to speak to get through to his audience without sounding elitist or condescending.
Look at the dip that acceptance took during Trump's first term though: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx - it will get worse again. It is already dipping. However I will say though that I am a little surprised that it is still at around 70% acceptance. I thought it was more like 50/50 if not worse.
I think you're overestimating the importance of identity politics to the average voter, but that's just my opinion
Yep that’s mostly what I’ve been saying since trump hit the scene.
The republicans have mastered the “vote against them” game and every time the Dems stoop to that level they lose. I probably disagree on what issues need to be represented but the main thing people I know know about the Harris campaign is that she’ll tax capital gains, and almost none of them could tell you what that even means
...and it didn't affect any of them either, at least negatively.
I heard somebody going on about that and finally looked into the details of the proposal because on the surface, as it was often presented, it did sound unreasonable, but it took me 30 seconds to look it up and say "oh, that makes perfect sense".
Yeah, tax on unrealized capital gains, but ONLY if you have a LOT of assets (I forget the cutoff, but it was a lot), and that tax was applied towards your final tax burden as a credit, and could be reclaimed if the stock finally fell. So, basically just front-loading the tax burden so that people couldn't just sit on billions in assets that are never withdrawn and never taxed -- boo hoo, a few super rich people would have to liquidate a few assets to cover those taxes.
This is going to be Biden's legacy. Nothing about what he accomplished across his long career. He's going to be remembered as the senile old man whose hubris was one of the biggest contributors to Trump regaining power.
They have sweeped the election and are now in control of the house, the senate, the supereme court.
I'm a Scandinavian but I am very afraid for the queer community over there and for us here - American politics has far reaching influence on western countries. If the right wing wins the next election, they will take many pages out of the Republican book and likely roll back policies on especially trans people - the minister of equality already said "the rights of trans people should be limited".
While Russia doesn't have the capacity to do much else than provoking NATO in terms of playing around on the Eastern European borders, we will definitely be seeing a lot more hybrid warfare in the next 4 years. I am very afraid for Ukraine because despite Zelensky's visit and meeting with Trump, they are a lot less likely if not guaranteed to receive way less support now because the Republican party as a whole is more isolationist than the Democratic party.
This also means that while not under immediate existential threat, I don't think China is likely to turn down rhetoric nor "exercises" and border provocations regarding Taiwan. China has been building their military for years at this point, spending almost as much on it as the US when accounting for purchasing power. There has been speculation that they will be capable of launching an attack by 2030. I'm saying all this because Biden's promise about defending Taiwan probably won't be extended by Trump's government.
Palestine and Lebanon is in more danger than ever. Israel will increase their aggression and more civilians will die through excuses that killing 1 terrorist hiding in a hospital is worth the lives of dozens of innocents. They will annex more of the west bank, settlements will increase, everything will be worse. Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, you name it, can all become more aggressive and commit more and more crimes against humanity because the white supremacist isolationist American government will do nothing.
And then there's all the other things that I don't know as much about. But homophobia, sexism, and racism has once again won. It has been legitimized. Human rights worldwide will suffer because of this.
Edit: I somehow forgot to mention the climate. It is disastrous.
Agreed, sick to my stomach
The frustration that sticks with me is that ever since 2016, the news media has been turned into a legal drama over trump. Case after case. Impeachment after impeachment. Podcasts, YouTubers, sub stacks, you name it. And after all of that, after breaking so many norms because the guard rails had to mean something, he’s got his biggest mandate yet and a Supreme Court immunity ruling to back him up. It was a complete failure. Democrats can blame the courts or whatever, but you’ve got to be more capable and to know ahead of time if you really have a chance of success.
I agree completely. I think one thing to note in comparing the two political campaigns is one campaign was willing to play dirty, cheat, and use any means and rhetoric necessary to win - consequences be damned. If one competitor is willing to do that and the other is not... Well, it's less surprising how badly this election turned out for the Democrats. This might be the last mistake that the Democratic party ever makes.
That's my fucking problem. The GOP has a mandate now and it's not like Dems in congress will do shit to try stonewall their fascist policies anyways. Then when a Democrat is in power, they let the Republicans stop them at every turn.
Father will beat the kids outright, mother will weep and beat the kids so father wouldn't have to. Sick of this charades where both sides work for donors and pretend to care in different ways.
In case anyone wants to get unreasonably upset for some reason: here is the exact wording on the Florida amendment to prevent the state from restricting abortions:
No problems here. A 'yes' vote means abortions would be allowed before viability or when necessary as determined by an actual doctor.
Then directly under that:
This is on every ballot. And it needs a 60% 'yes' vote to pass. Incredible levels of bullshit scaremongering the fuck out of people right up until the last moment. "Hey if you vote yes you might have to pay for other people's abortions, which are gonna skyrocket by the way, oh and they might make it so that your kids can get abortions without you knowing about it, and then there'll be lawsuits which of course come out of your taxes, and fewer kids being born is going to drain the economy WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE ECONOMY"
So if you read later on today or tomorrow that Florida has legalized abortions, know that it was an EMPHATIC 'fuck you' to conservatives everywhere, having overcome every hurdle thrown at it. And if it doesn't pass, just know that it was an uphill struggle from the start.
/rant
Edit: Amendment failed to pass despite 57% voting for it. Disappointing but not unexpected, unfortunately. That 60% threshold is a kick in the teeth for progress and a blessing for the status quo.
Republicans only strategy is to play dirty, it's infuriating. They did the same thing in Ohio with the anti-gerrymandering amendment (even worse actually.)
Regardless, I know it's a long shot, but I'm really hopeful this amendment will push Florida over the line for Harris. Even in red states, abortion bans are deeply unpopular.
Was reading yesterday that the biggest shift this election to the last one (according to polls, that is) was actually older white women, specifically because they're the ones that most remember the effects of a time before Roe v Wade. It was both surprising to read, and not surprising at the same time. Hopefully it spurs some regular non-voters into voting.
Also, in my opinion nothing is quite as insane as another Florida amendment's wording, this time from 2018:
Thankfully it passed, but combining oil drilling and banning vapes in the same amendment is wild. Whoever came up with the 'clean air and waters' spin on it should work in marketing.
My favorite picture from Ohio is of two yard signs next to one another. One says YEA on 1; the other implores you to vote NO. Both promise to end gerrymandering.
When I filled out my ballot I was very surprised by the bold text under this and amendment 3. It's as though they've allowed the right to campaign on the fucking ballot!
Literally never has the bold text on the ballot that's meant (I thought) to explain what the legal language of the amendment is saying, strayed so far from explaining the content of the amendment and gone so deeply into trying to tell people how they ought to vote on that issue.
I had heard that the ballot language was found to be unconstitutional. At the time I wasn't aware of thr exact language that'd appear. Now I'm wondering if that's the part that was problematic. When I heard there were problems with the ballot language, I just assumed it was a problem with the amendment itself. But now it makes more sense. How this garbage got on the ballot is a mystery, but heads should roll.
The economy bit is especially ridiculous cause man if only there were some other way to grow the population of working age adults who pay taxes to the state of Florida. Its such a shame that there totally isn’t an entire population being purposely excluded from the United States. /s
I know so many Democrats who did not vote, claiming to care too much about Palestine, both sides are the same, etc etc etc.
Well, looks like they’re getting their wish — someone who isn’t a Democrat winning the presidency, in a two-party system. How easily foreseen.
At least they followed their hearts, lol.
Guess they'll see how Trump handles Palestine.
America is going to get the president it deserves apparently. It's just so unfortunate for the rest of us.
@Danke said it. I am starting to feel disgust and disconnect from my countrymen. I remember going through grade school. I am a middle school teacher now. For almost a century, we have taught children how to watch out for fascism. We have educated them in what the warning signs are, we have shown them examples, we have shown them the severe and long-lasting consequences. But aside from that, it takes about 30 seconds listening to Trump speak to hear that he is an uneducated asshole who hates people and cares only about himself.
What does it take?
I have for most of my life felt that holding the party you agree with accountable is important and letting them get overly comfortable is a bad thing as they’ll care less about important issues.
I also threw that the fuck out the window when trump hit the scene because a key part to that strategy is being able to vote again next election and it’s just slightly clear trump doesn’t believe in that.
Just the epitome of selfish nonsense, as if someone Trump won’t be 1000x worse for everyone.
Agreed, even as someone who is really starting to hate the democratic party, I couldn't bring myself to make a point with my vote this time around. I'm just happy my state elected a blue governor and it looks like Jeff Jackson is actually going to win the AG race. The country needs more politicians like Jeff Jackson who cut past all of the rhetoric bullshit and just speak plainly and directly to the people that they're representing. I'm so tired of twitter snark and cringey catch phrases being our go-to political strategies, we deserve better.
Edit: The AP just called it, Jeff Jackson won NC attorney general! A small bit of relief in a sea of doubt.
Exactly, we can debate the color and pattern of the drapes when we aren't routinely stopping arsonists.
Everyone kinda said what already needed to be said but I'm just venting at this point. I hope those people who didn't vote can look at their mother's, wives, girlfriends, whoever in the face and tell them why they gave them up for their "principles"
Palestine is gonna be Jared fucking kushner's beach home now and my home country is getting invaded by China these next few years.
Principles my ass.
Voting saw reportedly record turnout this election, especially in early voting. 3rd party candidates received insignificant numbers (statistically more conservatives voted 3rd party than leftists with RFK and a libertarian getting over 1 million votes total) I don't think this was an issue of liberals refusing to vote for Harris, this seemed to just be democrats running a terrible platform and losing the hearts and minds of the majority of the country. Trump is predicted to win the popular vote too, which hasn't happened for an R in decades.
Democrats need to take a long look in the mirror and maybe finally learn the lesson they've been flirting with since Hillary Clinton.
Run. A.
GreatAcceptable. Candidate.I think there are some lessons:
As sad as it is, the Democrats are in for a significant rightward recalibration.
I know the meme is that since 2016 Republicans have gone so far off the right that Democrats are basically center right. But this is bed decades in the making. Biden, Obama and especially the Clintons are hardly bastions of progressive values.
From the outside looking in, it feels like it's just two different flavors of MAGA. The obvious one wants to go back to the good old days of 50c big macs, winning the cold war and life being simple because they were much younger or fetishized that period in time.
But it feels like all the Democrats want is to go back to 2015. Geopolitics was stable, money was cheap, business was boomong and everyone was acceptable levels of miserable. Then the government can go back to being a prop in most peoples lives.
That's a lot of what the last administration looked like. What the Republicans lack in policy pales in comparison to the Democratic lack of vision and strategy. Everything they do is reactionary appeasement and deaf to real world expectations. And now it proves that they are blissfully unaware of the reality for everyone on the ground.
Biden alone had opportunity to side with railworkers. The opportunity to clear student debt. Opportunity to halt Data Model development and its impact on jobs. Refused to intervene in the writers strike. When he found out about price gouging, they had the opportunity to drag every executive over the coals and make an example of them with massive punishment proportional to the corporate crimes, and settled with a slap on the wrist and one click cancellations. They half arsed on Gaza and pissed off both sides while making your government completely impotent, while handing over tons of weapons. They also half arsed on Russia, urging restraint against an existential threat that is now given free reign. Hell, they pussyfooted around prosecuting and charging Trump for years and its too late for that now.
They forgot the popular vote means doing popular things occasionally. And things that are popular to everyone, not just those in your circle. The culture war was a trap democrats walked into and told every American to suck it up and worry about these issues important to subsets of already blue states (I'm not saying they're not important issues with serious outcomes for many people, but it doesn't apply to 50% of the electorate).
Imagine if Harris could go off on Private Equity firms and promise to bring them in line. Force them to sell millions of residential properties at cost. Its stupid, pie in the sky, posturing, but thats something I'd vote for. Or any of the big issues like min wage, price gouging, tech company influence, student debt. Something better to believe in and not just the same old.
It would just get turned around as "bad for the consumers".
Dems tried to remove student loan debt. They were blocked by Republicans citing "but muh money" and "why should THEY get free college"
I'm not saying Dems are perfect, far from it, but they're playing a rigged game. But they still have to play by the rules, because that's the one thing they have.
I also think that it's a bit disingenuous to argue that the Dems have fallen into an identity politics trap (although, I can also make the argument that it was indeed a trap laid out for them) when Republicans talk incessantly about identity politics. The Dems have to respond at some point, and I'd argue they even waited too long to meaningfully come around on giving a shit (if the party even genuinely gives a shit.) I'm not sure if the game is rigged but, coming from a fairly emotional place at the moment, it certainly feels like it must be if Trump's actions didn't preclude him from being elected.
Republicans don't respond to criticisms like abortion rights outside of lying and immediately moving on. It's a rigged double standard. I had a friend tell me "I was really surprised to learn Trump is pro-choice" after watching the debate.
Exactly. The Democrats somehow forgot or ignored that, even though campaign flyers come once every four years in the mail, the average Americans are seeing sticker shock on shelves every day, seeing Due NOW bills every week, seeing a paycheck that doesn't pay for nothing every month, and seeing rent get more insane every year. Every time the Dems cheer for the stock market gains or boast about record wealth it makes me more angry with them.
It's one thing if they cant do anything about it and keep shouting about what a rigged game it is. It's quite another when I can see them sell out rail unions and hush up wage theft and out right cheer for insider trading.
Trump ran on a platform of "everything sucks right now because it's their fault". For the narrow values of "them" being the ultra rich, he's actually right, broken clock style.
Dems ran on "isn't everything amazing right now and let's not loo back!"
It's a losing platform when your entire country has been pushed off the cart and can't do nothing but look back.
In the end, many people are desperate to change and Trump promises that. I can't help but compare it to the Weimar Republic. Desperation really drives people to do stupid things.
And I don't doubt he'll change things. The real question is how much the people will like it. How bad it'll get though... Who knows.
I don't think the American political system will last this decade. How it will end up looking though, who knows.
I think the opportunity to clear student debt was politically risky: it alienates tens of millions of Americans who did pay off their own loans. Of course, college is so much more expensive these days, but it's about the optics. As for the other issues, Biden walked the tightrope because there was so much more to lose were he to miscalculate.
But I do agree that he should have done something popular and bold. He should've sided with the railworkers, even if it didn't make economic sense — because he could've made it a political melodrama that could've left the Republicans without good moves to respond.
Because politics is a reality TV show, which is one thing that reality TV star Trump astutely understands.
In retrospect: he should've gotten Democratic lawmakers to haul rail companies' CEOs into congressional hearings for over-the-top witch trials. When prices started to rise and store shelves emptied out and the US economy began to crater, he should've laid the blame on rail companies: he should've held rallies (unconventional for a sitting president, but people love to see someone in-person angry and up in arms) and orchestrated the Democratic Party to use any means possible—ads, talk shows, you name it—to make boogeymen of the rail companies.
As long as their messaging got ahead of and was stronger than the Republicans', it could've been political checkmate against the Republicans: the R's couldn't argue for siding with the rail companies.
Agreed. We're in a climate where many Americans are foremost concerned about rapidly rising housing, energy, and consumer costs.
Every time Democrats chose to fight Republicans on niche culture issues, it alienated economically struggling Americans who don't feel strongly about them. I think I've seen more articles about the political battle over trans athletes than there are actual trans athletes in the US. I'm for trans rights, words that I'm aware seem hollow here, but these niche culture war issues were a political Napoleonic march to Moscow: the Republicans successfully egged on the Democrats to way over-expend their political capital, energy, and messaging bandwidth on issues that made them appear unaligned with voters' priorities.
As mentioned, the Democratic Party holds a tenuous coalition between social liberals and socially conservative minorities. It could push cultural issues when times were good and it had a lot of political capital. But I think it was a strategic mistake to push cultural issues during economically challenging times when it needed to conserve its political capital to win the messaging war on the economy and fighting corporate power.
Why? I know you're basically just talking the harsh realities and these aren't necessarily your own thoughts, but why is the takeaway here "men are being sexist and minorities are voting against their best interests. Reward that tantrum and appeal to men who wish for their own self destruction".
People are free to be lemmings, but I'll need to be thrown off the cliff, personally. I at least want to go down fighting my unfortunate fate.
I guess it really all depends on if you want Democrats to win next election. My question is this, if you want to vote on moral grounds, why vote for a democrat to begin with? There are plenty of great 3rd party candidates who actually represent progressive social change and have been fighting for it. Why draw the line in the sand with the democrat party, which is widely considered to be hardly more "left" than the republicans from an international point of view?
Being realistic and strategic about how best to represent the country is a bitter pill to swallow, but it's what we need to do to fight against legitimately evil people.
win by abandoning all the ideals of a democrat? I don't know. Thats how we get a one party system disguised as 2. I know that's already kind of how it is seen by EU countries, but it's harder to overstate how utterly right the right's gone in the past 8 years. It's just depressing.
if you want a full disclosure, I actually did vote Libertarian in 2016. So I'm not opposed to it given my state and my little effect on it.
I voted D this year and 2020 because I wanted zero room for anymore "surprises". The maths of first pass the poll do indeed suck. History's taught up that when we make a Bull Moose, both those parties fail.
I think there's significant room between a candidate like Harris and even more moderate republicans, and certainly not trump. It's ok if you don't also think so, but that's not the point I was making at all. In our current system the political candidates need to be representative and appealing to as much of the population as possible, clearly we failed on that front heavily this election.
This is how things should work, you should be able to vote for the candidate you feel best represents your interests, that's the point of representation and I would never hold that against you. I always advocate for ranked choice voting so that we could avoid this whole shitty situation to begin with, but neither democrats nor republicans want that to happen, so its unlikely we'll ever get a system that really works. Until we do, even if that day is never, the lesser of two evils will be our best choice.
Of course there is. I wasn't a fan of Romney, but he's leagues more respectable than Trump. Bush definitely passed many things I didn't agree with and others that turned out bad in hindsight, but I never had this feeling that he was actively trying to destroy America.
But that's not how First Past the post works, and what R's chose to put up is so far right that it's frightening. What D's put up are disappointing, but they feel like the least bad option given my alternative.
And to take it to the extreme: if the "most appealing" take is to bring back slavery (I don't think this will actually happen. It's much more subtle), is that something worth appealing to?
Mind you, in theory the R's stance should have rounded about 50% of the population to vote against him. But given that he's bound to even win the popular vote, clearly something with that strategy went awry. He chose radicalization and it seems they came out in droves.
Yes I should. But the game theory of our system is very simple (for politics). But no one seems interested in changing that either.
We don't live in ShouldLand. People are not angry enough to override it. So what can I do?
yes, hence my chioce being made for not R.
I think we may be talking past each other a little here, I don't think I disagreed with anything you said here in my post. We both agree that ranked choice voting is the ideal system but we're unlikely to get it, and we both agree that the lesser of two evils is the correct choice. Shouldn't it logically follow that we put forward the best candidate that fits those qualifications? Consider that a hypothetical because I don't think we're really having a productive discussion and we do seem to be on the same page about the important things. I appreciate your perspective and thought process when it comes to how best to approach the next election.
yes, and I apologize for that. But I don't think there's much productive for me to do as of now. It's all theory and I feel getting stuck in theory is part of how we end here. I'm just tired.
And yes, I believe we're speaking to the choir about ranked choice voting. But I lack any power to do anything on that front. You probably do too, but I don't want to be assumptuous about your postions and aspirations. I wish you the best of luck if that is a road you want to fight for. You 100% have my
insignifigantsupportI'm far down here but I almost made a comment further up the thread, took a second and reread the posts and realized you two were talking past each other and I was reading past both of you. But I did want to put a post here and thank both you and @OBLIVIATOR for your perspectives and for the resolution in your last two comments, it makes Tildes - and hopefully, in some small way, the world outside Tildes - a little nicer place. It really seems like we might need a nicer place today.
Yeah, I don’t think democrats can afford to run a women as a candidate again. Not unless there’s a lot of polling showing otherwise.
Harris polled ahead of "generic Democrat" by election time. Her ground game and get-out-the-vote operation was unparalleled. She's still running ahead of some swing district Democrats. By all measures, she's a good candidate that ran a good campaign. Union members flipping from Biden to Trump smacks of sexism.
Internationally, incumbents have been getting smashed since COVID. Irrespective of ideology. Voters seem to hate inflation even if their wages keep up.
Apparently not because we just lost when generic democrat Biden won by a sizeable margin in 2020, she's even losing the popular vote.
Blame the voters all you want, hell I do too; but I don't think anyone would have had Harris as their first choice if Biden didn't wait until the 11th hour to drop out. I fully believe this election was completely winnable with a more likable and respected candidate. Inflation may have been "solved" by the current admin, but campaigning with "mission accomplished" while a huge part of the country is still living paycheck to paycheck even after cutting back on expenses was never a winning move. We needed to do more, faster, and better.
Harris didn't campaign on "mission accomplished". She repeatedly emphasized Americans are hurting and she'd do as much as possible to help. On the other hand, Trump just lied and made up numbers and taxes and benefits in every speech. There's a massive double standard.
The international benchmark says Democrats have actually done remarkably well for a party that was in power during COVID inflation. The alternative recovery would've looked like 2010 to 2016, and maybe that would've been better for Democrats but who knows.
Who are you making this argument to? Everyone here knows this already and agrees with it. If Harris repeatedly emphasized Americans are hurting, it obviously wasn't loud enough for 81.2 million people who voted for her and Biden back in 2020 to hear. We know that those people exist already and were ready to vote Democrat, the question is what could we have done better in 2024 to actually make that happen again.
And no, I don't accept the "there's nothing we could have done" answer. If that was the case, then what was the point of spending 5 billion dollars on political campaigning over the last few months? I refuse to accept the defeatist attitude that we never had a chance because of "the wider economic environment" I've heard that excuse from every tech company CEO for the last 2 years justifying layoffs and cutbacks despite stocks and company profits climbing to all time highs.
It's imperative for the future of this country that we learn from this failure and start to implement some solutions. @EgoEimi made some good points in their comment below which I recommend people read.
Congress has been decades overdue for massive turnover. Throwing all the bums out finally got some representation instead of “Congress sucks. Anyway, I’m proud to re-elect my Senator.”
As long as the filibuster exists, nothing will get done with these margins. I think that's a bad thing. Voters should have to live with the consequences of the policies they vote for.
That's probably for the best. "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session," has been a staple since the days of Mark Twain.
Still, I agree that procedural filibusters ought to be banned. If you want to filibuster, it'd better be a spectacle of human endurance that turns C-SPAN into a human zoo.
I don't agree that no regulation is the best regulation because we have regulations right now which could be changed and modified in positive ways. Instead, Trump will rule via executive order which is much worse than Congress doing their job and passing laws.
Arguably, sunshine laws passed to stop bribery, corruption, and wasteful pet projects are a large part of how Congress became this dysfunctional. Without the
bribeearmark money to buy votes, any politician who negotiates gets booted during the primary.An alternative conclusion: ban primary elections.
In a way, I actually hop that the consequences will be big (not too big though) because that way, if there are more elections, the country will hopefully course correct to a significant degree and change for the better in the long run. Short term though.. I don't even know.
NY State actually had no third party candidates on the ballot, so I imagine that was a decent chunk of people. You had to write them in. Jill Stein is the most well-known third party candidate and even the Greens are apparently not on 12 states' ballots, if I'm understanding correctly. I don't recall this being an issue before, but I also voted in a different state for past generals.
I knew some pretty loyal but critical Democrats who were ideologically conflicted over Palestine. I have no idea how they voted considering neither option took a strong stance against that issue; they very well might have left it blank.
Not necessarily. Trump loves Russia and hates China, so he's likely to stop supporting Ukraine and increase military support for Taiwan. And another trade war will hurt the Chinese economy (as well as the US and European and every other), potentially forcing them to reduce military investments.
Well, unless China decides to launch a surprise invasion of Taiwan already this fall, seeing their window of opportunity closing.
He likes xi and other dictators tho.
He'll back whoever flatters and bribes him last. The man only loves himself
Chocobean already said it but if you truly believe that trump isn't gonna just throw Taiwan under the bus because Xi gives him some flattery I have a bridge to sell you.
Offering leftists/anti-zionists nothing and then blaming them when they didn't show up for the Democrats is certainly a take...
The best chance at preserving Palestine isn't good enough? What makes speedrunning the genocide of Palestine a more attractive offer to these "leftists"?
When the Palestinian state and people are gone, I will be blaming this type of "leftist" just as much as I will the far right types. This isn't leftism, this is accelerationism. At least the far right types had a variety of other reasons to ensure this result, these "leftists" specifically chose the full-on genocide option.
I'm gonna double respond to this because i'm so angry right now at this type of response. Leftists that are aware of the situation in Gaza generally understand the politics and understand the rules that we've been playing by this whole time. First past the post, two party. It's always been that way and has been for the last 200 years or whatever. And we all know the type of irrational, irratic, "just finish the job" type of person Trump is. So instead of trying to do something about it with someone who might have a better chance of actually listening, leftists decided to throw it all away to... make a statement.
And now LGBTQ+ rights are in danger, minorities are in danger, and democracy is in danger. The same leftists probably won't ever get to vote in an election again.
I'm glad I'm not stupid and selfish enough to be this type of "leftist".
Okay... well just continue with harm reduction policies and parading out the likes of Liz Cheney and relying on the mythical "On-The-Fence" Trump supporter. You're angry at the result and you should be angry at a Democratic party that refuses to look at the writing on the wall. Tacking to the right was not the play. The play was to go left. Declare a firm stance on Gaza. Offer POPULAR leftist policy reform. Fuck... I am not even saying do full blown universal health care, just lower Medicare to 55... Give people SOMETHING to vote for instead of constantly harping on something to vote AGAINST. That's all the democrats ever do.
Such misplaced "anger" and all you do is excuse the behavior of a failing party.
I can be angry at two things at once. And I can also look my LGBTQ friends and tell them that at the very least I tried to reduce harm to them.
yup and now anti-zionists get everything they wanted.
I get your frustration, and before anyone throws any heat in my direction, I did vote for Kamala Harris.
But, shit, it was such a bad move to take those people for granted. A lot, if not most, of those people wanted to vote for Harris, but she snubbed them. Breaking from Biden, ramping up the criticism of Netanyahu, and/or calling for conditional aid would've been huge.
I just don't get how they can ignore people who are openly saying that they will vote for the Democrats in favor of people who almost certainly won't for the Democrats.
And it's not just the uncommitted movement. She underperformed in just about every demographic that historically voted Democrat.
Not really. Add up the purple and grey here and you have a majority of Americans who do not care about Palestinians. Doing this would have alienated (even more) fence-sitters.
As far as I know, American elections are 99% about domestic politics. Very few Americans care about foreign politics when voting.
Americans don't care about foreign policy until it's the ONLY thing they care about. Also, I disagree with your stance that actioning/signaling strong stances against Israel wouldn't have helped her campaign.
Harris is still an Israeli ally that wants to negotiate with them, but she has been calling for a ceasefire since March. Regardless of all that, none of the critical swing state voters care about Gaza or even put it in their top 5 reasons for voting for Trump (except a few districts in Michigan which don't seem to have mattered).
Demographics aren't destiny. The groups that have shifted cite things like illegal immigration and trans rights as reasons they've shifted right.
Yeah. I wish it was as subtle as the above. But when I read an article from an undecided voter that distilled the issues to "Kamala supports abortion and I like that, but Trump supports weed and I like that", I realize how truly simplistic (and incorrect) the issues can be boiled down to for someone who may at best start thinking about the polls the week before.
Harris also supported weed though.
yeah, that's the "incorrect" part. I don't know where or how they ever got a glimpse of narrative where R supposed looser drug controls. That's one of the "easiest" stances they could take but seemingly don't.
"I care too much about you to treat your cancer with chemo, so I'll just let you die painfully instead"
I guess we’ll see if Jared Kushner gets his resort in Gaza
It's weird that I see people blaming these Democrats who did not vote due to the stance on Palestine and not blame the Democratic party for not asserting policy accordingly. Very wild situation. Offering leftists/anti-zionists nothing and then questioning why they didn't vote is certainly a stance you can take.
It'd be unsurprising if it were discovered that Russian influence operations encouraged that sentiment. It's a low-hanging strategic fruit. I mean, if I were the Russians and I learned that the Democratic Party had this discontent single-issue cohort, I'd milk that discontentment like it's pre-AI boom Nvidia stock.
Presidential elections are an extra big deal to me because I live in a rural (republican) part of PA. My vote (as a democrat) means basically nothing for local elections, but every 4 years my votes matter a lot because of PA's swing'n nature.
We had two groups of Harris folk stop by to remind us to vote over the past few weeks, which I've never seen before. I thanked both groups for their efforts and wished them luck traveling door-to-door in this town. I guess at this point they're only visiting registered dems, but I'm sure there deal with hecklers. Both groups also assured me there are a lot more Harris supporters on my street than I'd expect. Of course none of us can I identify each other because we know better than to put up a sign and risk some grumpy Trumper causing issues. My sign is sitting behind some boxes on my porch...very tempted to put it out just for today.
I used to have a Biden sticker on my car (back around 2020).
Someone intentionally tried to run me off the road by speeding past me and then brake-checking me.
I can't say with certainty that it was because of my Biden sticker, but there were enough stickers on the other guy's car to make me realize I was driving with a target on my car.
A few election cycles ago I wrote my signature wrong on a mail-in ballot, and within 48 hours I had like three texts, a couple of phone calls, and even someone show up to my door to tell me that it wouldn't be counted and that I had to submit a specific form to prove who I was and resolve the issue. I had already done that (checked my ballot status the next morning and filled out the form digitally as soon as I saw the issue), but I was super impressed and thankful that there were so many dedicated people out there putting in their time to ensuring that my vote counted, even going so far as to literally bring me the form I needed to my own doorstep.
Side note, but that's when I learned that your signature only matters in one place: on your ballot. Pretty much everywhere else (at least in the US) you can write whatever the hell you want and it will not make any sort of difference. But the one you sign on your ballot has to match up with the one on your id or driver's license. Now every time I vote I bust out my driver's license and make sure all the letters match up as closely as I can.
A lot of people heard about the commercials telling women they can vote secretly without their husbands knowing, but before that came a commercial for men telling them the boys won't know who they voted for. A lot of people in the comments were joking about an entire friend group secretly being Harris voters. It was a really corny ad, but it was a funny thought in a tough and "manly" rural area.
My daughter’s 1st grade class had a mock vote today in Texas. Not sure if it was a whole school thing or just their class. We never talk about politics with the kids around.
One of the other moms texted my wife because her daughter had voted Harris, and she thought she was the only one (and was feeling anxious) until she found out our daughter had, too. Ours maybe voted Harris because she’s a girl?
Anyway, our daughter then wanted to know what we voted. It was both curious and semi-fear she let us down or was wrong. She’s not quiet. Likes to blurt stuff out. Our parents are all Trump neutral firm Republicans (which I know is WAYYY better than some of y’all’s situations).
I finally was like, yes, I voted for Harris. She was very relieved and excited. Then we had a talk about not telling other people because votes ought to be mostly private (and some half hearted, preservation comments about voting being completely opinion and not exactly right or wrong), followed by the ultimately more important talk about Jesus being who we want to follow and be like, and Jesus loved people no matter what they believed. (Yes, we are super religious in Texas. For us, that means things like taking care of widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor - you know, like in the Bible.)
Anyway, super annoyed at school for not just voting about something dumb. And we’ll see how this all shakes out. But, I obviously couldn’t let her feel bad or alone or like a disappointment for voting Harris.
I swear, this past election cycle I have seen more Harris signs in my own town than I have seen any other Democrat nominee from the past. Even my neighbor across the street had never put out a sign for a presidential election or any political sign. But this election they have a small Harris flag.
Granted there is a fucker in town that has a giant ass Trump sign (with a life-size cut out of Trump) that he puts up every fucking time that there is a election, since 2016, and for Trump's birthday, which is really, really fucking weird.
The margins on this loss are big enough that it doesn’t come down to any one “group”. There is no “if only the Democrats did xyz”. Donald Trump ran a truly horrendous campaign and might win the popular vote. If nothing else, the media environment is unbelievably fucked and until that is addressed this will not get better.
I am numb in a way I wasn’t in 2016. Any remaining sense of hope or even affection for this country left in me is severely diminished. Our institutions, everything, failed us, and a lot of people will pay the price over the next 4 years. Hang in there all.
AP
As middle class keeps shrinking, as the lower classes widen and strain more, the oligarchy will keep backing the most fascist candidate they can find to keep their gravy trains rolling. Folks are worried about democracy sure, but folks are even more worried about having enough money for both rent and food. It's a tragedy, but not the voter's fault, that many many billions of dollars were spent to lie, manipulate and convince poor voters to select the orligarchy's preferred candidate. This isn't a fresh neutral lab result with people suddenly becoming fascists: this was a long long time in the making
From Robert Reich, How America's Oligarchy has Paved The Way To Fascism:
Democracy dies in darkness but guess who first blocked the sun then controls the power plant?
Hang in there indeed.
I think the wrong lesson here is to point fingers at voters who chose wrong and dream of the next election where they might choose the right candidate.
Americans are not going to choose the right candidate because from the beginning the only choices were appointed by the ultra wealthy. Even if Harris wins they'll find enough votes to keep dismantling workers rights and unions and consumer protection and antitrust and environmental agencies. We'd have a better time and less scary gender/identity/choice policies, I'd love that as well, but it would still be four more years of unlimited money consolidating power until the next preferred fascist candidate is pushed forward. The real fight hasn't even begun, so don't despair, folks. Today, Americans have chosen the far worse poison, but all is not yet lost.
Also Robert Reich: Resurrecting countervailing power (Jan 2024)
We have to fight populism with populism. If we ignore the ugly orange schmuck and focus only on (well funded and false) advertising, people chose Trump based on his empty promises to protect citizens against devaluation of their labour. That they found this message credible is incredible, but that they found this message resonant is NOT a surprise.
The democrats' only move here is to bite the hand that also feeds it, and become truly a party for the people, as a countervailing power against the establishment powers. Fight populism with real populism, then we shall see if Americans can recognise the real thing from the fake.
I hate to be a downer, but I am unsure whether we will even have a “next election” in a way that is free and fair. We are in uncharted territory. I genuinely believe that until the information environment gets fixed, it does not matter who the Democrats run.
It does not matter if Democrats run on a perfect populist platform if that platform does not reach the average person.
Agreed. I feel like people completely underestimate the power and prominence of misinformation. It’s not little, easily identifiable garbage posts being shared occasionally by regular people on Facebook. It’s instead completely embedded into the informational environment we’re in, particularly in conservative circles. It’s a feature, not a bug.
And it has huge, devastating consequences.
From this article (archive link) from the beginning of 2024:
We have moved further away from truth over time, despite there being more evidence over time. Misinformation is everywhere, and it’s widely believed.
My people live in an ex-half-democracy and they had to pull some pretty intense stunts before it totally became an internationally recognized sham, and even now they hold "elections". Japan just sent a punishing message to their effectively single party state.
I'd say there's at least four more years.
It hasn't been free or fair for a long while now, it's okay if the bandaid came off.
Everytime money is bad they blame the immigrants. But Trump has a silver spoon and who do you think wants to keep their cheap illegal labor? You think Musk basically commited fraud just so he can employ more American people? Of course not. Did they not see how may immigrant policies were bipartisan? Of course they didn't.
Thinking Trump is going to mass export cheap labor in what's basically a recession shows how easy the American people (as a whole) are to manipulate. Promise everything and do nothing. No critical thinking. No following the money. They just want to hear sweet nothings.
Dream is right. Sorry for triggering a flag, but the only solace for 2028 is that I cannot imagine a candidate worse than Trump in 2028, if he lasts that long. But I'm not sure if that will stop the radicalization.
are nice words, but how do we do this? We had decades, even a few centuries to do this? But we see so seprated, and only get more separate by the year despite having better communication.
It's a societal issue with this need for individualism. But we forgot that villages raise the next generation, not two full time incomes that can barely hire a private nanny.
We had a nice break after the robber barons went bankrupt post world war II and labour movements made strides.
We'll get the next break after the rich are eaten.
Yeah, it does: the group of people who stayed home and didn't vote. It doesn't really matter what we can say about the people that voted and who they chose. Trump got millions fewer votes than 2020. Harris just got way way fewer votes than Biden did. So many people stayed home instead of voting. Even though Trump set himself up to lose by running the same disaster as always--and we need to look at his numbers and see that this campaign did not work to win him the election--people did stay home in enormous numbers and he walked away with it despite himself.
Either the vote counting is nowhere near done, or 15 million people didn't show up, who voted for Biden in 2020.
I was totally wrong. I thought people would wake up and smell the end of the world, the mephitic stench of lies and hate and greed. That they'd accept imperfect choices instead of disastrous ones. But no.
I'm backing away from Tildes for a while, because I just can't at the moment. Words fail, thoughts fail. I'm tired of humans and going to spend time walking in the pouring rain that's 30° F warmer than it should be for this time of year.
For what it's worth, I feel you patience_limited. I feel you.
(for you in particular, but also to others who need a break)
Take care, you'll be missed, and you're doing a good job stepping away. We'll be here when you're ready to come back.
Much love to you, patience_limited.
Enjoy the rain.
I understand why you can feel the need. I don't feel it, yet ai can completely understand. The situation is just all around deplorable.
Best of luck in the mean while from across the Atlantic. I really hope the situation won't crush you or those near you.
A note for the many people who are going to stress over this:
If it's not an obscene blowout, there's almost no way this will be "over" even this week. Save your sanity and stop checking in. If the results are remotely close they WILL be contested from the get go.
I know this but I am too much of an information junkie to turn the tap off and yank the IV out. There will be a point at which my brain gives up and lets me sleep tonight. I have a friend on discord who just plans to take a Benadryl tonight and wake up Thursday. Hoping it's all over. Not the worst idea.
My family started to suggest at first jokingly, now more seriously, that instead of watching the "horror movie" rollercoaster on the news we should just watch The Thing instead (one of our number has never seen it before).
I'll probably still inflict news on myself off and on anyway, but it'll be nice to not have this quite so much at the center of our evening.
Very healthy, tbh, I am aware that my method is not, but I also don't think I can do anything else.
The Thing is so good! Perhaps my favorite horror movie.
Agreed 100%. The pacing, the music, the atmosphere... *chef's kiss*
In fact it's been long enough that I should probably watch it again. Might as well be tonight! :D
I watched it, and was not disappointed. :)
There was a lot more nuance than I remembered. Lots of cuts that made the truth less clear. I think I could recall the intensity of the slow pacing, but had forgotten the details of why every moment of the movie felt so intense. Definitely a must watch for any suspense fans.
Not just the cuts either. Rather than using a cast member, they used stunt coordinator Dick Warlock to cast the shadow that you see on the wall when the dog walks into the bedroom so the audience would have no idea who the first to die was. Everything about that movie was designed to keep you guessing. :P
That's some awesome trivia! I was really trying to work out the silhouette in that scene. I knew it was intentionally vague, but the fact that it wasn't even one of the actors is genius.
Republicans have already been setting the stage to claim it's rigged even if it's a blowout for Kamala.
My stepmother and my dad will be working the polls today. I hope everything stays peaceful. Good luck everyone.
</noise>Not noise at all! Positive vibes are needed and appreciated today, and kudos to your parents for working the polls.
Please relay that I thank them for their service.
What they are doing is not trivial in 2024
Haha, I've seen reporting on this, I admire the lengths to which they've gone to be transparent and the measures they've taken.
I feel sick right now.
Same, seeing Trump still has so much support really just doesn't make any sense.
Don't stress yet. It's way too early to tell anything.
I mean, we should all feel sick that Trump has any realistic chance at the White House. It should be a sign that we have issues that are deeper than we thought...and we already knew they were deep.
I made the mistake of looking at "the needle" on NYT, and watching it creep towards trump. I should really just go to sleep and see how it looks in the morning...
If it helps, the NYT are now controlled by a right-wing billionaire, so they most certainly have a vested interest in a Trump win.
I don’t want this to come across as my being supportive of AG Sulzberger — I literally spent all day today picketing with striking NYT workers outside the Times Tower — but the New York Times is not controlled by a right-wing billionaire. AG is worth less than a hundred million dollars, and I’ve never seen even the remotest evidence that he has republican leaning politics. Here he is, two months ago, writing a guest essay in the Washington Post that openly attacks Donald Trump as an authoritarian and compares him unfavorably to Modi and Orban.
I remember this feeling so well from 2016. Pit of my stomach nausea - it's still early though (at least that's what I'm trying to tell myself).
This one feels so much worse. In 2016 it felt like we elected a clown, but there's was a hope that he could be restrained by our institutions, and by and large he was. This one feels hopeless. He ran without any sort of mask, just pure fascist and our shithole country voted for him. Any institutions that held him back last time will be gutted and filled with loyalists. There are no rationalizations I can come up with to convince myself it won't be a catastrophe. Come January we will live under permanent one party rule. The supreme court is guaranteed to have at least a 6-3 majority for the next three decades. We're guaranteed to hit 3 degrees warming if not more. There will be a crackdown on all independent media and mutual aide organizations like other autocrats have done. There won't be any reporting on the atrocities committed against migrants, trans people, and other vulnerable populations. The Democratic party is dead. According to the exit polls it's coalition has collapsed and demographic changes it relied on to be competitive in the future will not favor them at all. It will take multiple decades to come out of this and there will be so much suffering.
That being said, now is the time to build local organizations to help as many people as we can. Yeah it's going to suck, but we can try to make it suck less for the most vulnerable of us and be prepared to pounce on our chance to take our country back whenever that may come.
This is exactly how I feel. I genuinely feel the most we can do is focus locally in our communities. This is so depressing,
It deosn't have to be depressing if we realise that local communities is where we can truly make a difference. Humanity has lived through thousands upon thousands of years of monarchy and tyranny. Eventually small little local, tight knit groups stand their ground and find each other and reveal themselves to be a force bigger than the prevailing powers.
We've replaced that kind of community with throwing $20 into a superPAC. I'm so glad folks have been door knocking and physically on the ground supporting democracy. We need more of that. And they haven't yet taken our right to volunteer and bake things for each other and share what little we have left. We need more of that in the next however many years to come.
Focus on our families and local communities might be the most we can do, but it's also a huge big MOST that we actually can do.
I agree with you. I meant the situation is depressing, not that we can ‘only’ focus on our communities. It is depressing because there are many people out there (gay, trans, minorities etc) who do not exist in a community to support them. We can help locally but that leaves a lot of people stranded.
Absolutely. I feel awful for Americans but I feel even worse for Ukrainians, Palestinians and Taiwanese people.
In the coming days I hope we have more discussions on how to better reach out to one another, especially those outside of our usal circles, in real life?
We won't. We can't even bring back third places. And people who may have that drive are getting poorer by the day. I'd love to be proven wrong, but it should be a bipartisan take to suggest that people are more connected but lonlier than ever.
That theoretically has an easy solution. But it seems like America has done a great job keeping us on that careful edge of "miserable" but not "desperate". At least for the last decade or so
Ironically, as more of us become disenfranchised from capitalistic society, we'll find each other again on the streets, in line at the food bank, crowding around a single source of clean water, waiting to use free library resources, at encampments that haven't yet been cleared, in crowded boarding houses, at job fairs and sitting on our porches playing D&D because everything else is too expensive to do.
Most of us live in urban dense environments now, and streets themselves will become our third places.
Yup. I'm in California so I've already seen that happen in real time. At this rate we'll have entire shanty towns within Los Angeles. And San Francisco will be even worse off than LA. It's going to get a LOT uglier before it gets better, and sadly the ones who can effect change are dragging their boots and being as inefficient with resources as possible, spending billions to sweep the problem under the rug rather than just treating them as human beings down on their life, or luck, or manipulation by the medicinal industry.
Could you elaborate on this? Did democrats somehow "split" or otherwise shift R for some reason?
It’s looking pretty bad. Nothing determined yet, though.
Based on?
I don't see any surprises yet, which means it's still close, but I'm also not bothering to look too closely with all the damn noise.
Edit-
To go a little deeper on amateur analysis, basically all the models show a blisteringly close race. Yes, that sucks.
On the other hand, I haven't seen anything yet indicating that something that was supposed to go blue is going red, or vice versa. We have the interesting polling data from Selzer for Iowa (which is still margin of error for trump) but other than that almost everyone has said "it's fucking close and probably on PA". We haven't seen deviation from that, and I haven't seen anything relevant that all hope is lost in PA (i basically trust damn near NOTHING on election day outside of AP because dear god do the media clowns say the dumbest shit to milk fear and arguments)
She’s heavily underperforming in Virginia and NH. Still going to win those states, but doesn’t bode well.
The margins in the suburbs of Georgia and NC aren’t looking good.
She’ll have to sweep the blue wall most likely.
Fair enough. I'm still unsure how much people should doom about that given voter exhaustion and apathy.
Oddly I really do think the "gamified" way we've handled our elections with super early and hyper detailed (if not always accurate) polling has led to worse turnout for the "supposed to win" party because "meh why bother"
Well, in the end dooming is just recreational. The die is cast, just waiting for results.
I think it's fair to say the "American Experiment" has failed. Our governmental structure is too vulnerable to misinformation and relies too heavily on people being good, educated, informed individuals. I don't think democracy in general is a good system at this point unfortunately.
Somehow, this comment makes me feel so much better.
There's no reason that America should naturally be a good place. Some people a long time ago tried to set up a system that was resistant to these sorts of problems, but the problems changed enough to live in the system.
So be it.
And the rich and questionably educated people in policy are "lobbied" more and more by the year. We're really a Plutocracy disguised as a democracy.
The US went from full to flawed democracy in 2016 after all, and has been on a steady decline since. It will only get a lot worse.
It's not perfect but so far it has proven to be better then any other system. Which form of government do you propose we replace it with?
Ranked ballot democracy? Anything other than first past the post democracy would work.
How about regulated capitalism? I'd like to see that given a shot.
There's no reason to think Trump wouldn't have won with RCV. Who do you think spoiled Harris?
I’m pretty sure the former is still democracy and the latter is an economic model.
Its hard some come up with a great solution obviously. I don't think having representatives is all too bad. But at the very least representatives need to be chosen by educated and informed voters. Which everyone should be the opportunity to become. I.e. a state funded 'independent' class and test. Obviously there are other issues. But I think it's worth considering alternatives.
Basically the old nobility systems then. Those deemed better get to choose a leader and elevate those commoners they deem worthy. It has its advantages, but such an independent class naturally will just enrich itself, not necessarily choose what's best for the people.
Can't believe this is even this close. I hate living in historic times, like fuck it's been one shit after another since 9/11.
I mean, so far it's looking like a Trump landslide - well, at least what can be considered a landslide these days. Turned the blue wall into the red wall. It's honestly not very close.
So far, he's projected to win the POPULAR VOTE currently. Harris is running under where Biden is in basically every category.
That is truly awful.
When Bush launched an illegal invasion of Iraq and tortured prisoners of war, at least he didn't represent the majority.
When Trump banned Muslims from entering the US and chose Putin over his country's allies, at least he didn't represent the majority.
Now he does. Whatever lunatic things he gets up to the next 4 years, that's the will of the US people. And they can't claim they didn't know better, either. He's been president before; they know full well how evil and incompetent he is.
yeah I just saw that on NYT, was giving my fellow Americans too much credit I guess. How is Epstein bff winning the popular vote in the USA, I just don't know.
He lost the popular vote twice, what happened in these last 4 years that is giving him such a huge margin now? Lot of things I can think of, I'm sure inflation is a big part of that, even if it wasn't Biden's fault and that he handled it decently well.
I think that at the end of the day, what I have never understood, and don't think I will ever understand, is how so many people can stand behind such a wretched human being. He's a textbook narcissist, wants only what's best for himself and doesn't care if it harms others along the way, constantly paints anyone who doesn't agree with him as the devil reincarnate, does nothing but spew vile things, rambles incoherently with the vocabulary of a 10 year old, and is just a petulant manchild. Like if it was the democrat's candidate that behaved that atrociously, I would never be able to support them on a fundamental human level. The fact that so many people not only enable this behavior in what is supposed to be the most dignified job in the country/world, but actively praise his behavior just absolutely boggles my mind and honestly just makes me so damn sad. So many people praising the worst qualities in humans.
"Bidenomics" narrative worked. Economy went to shit over the last 4 years, and while in reality Biden's administration handled it better than most of the worlds (and ironically enough, gave huge handouts to businesses that they forgave...), the narrative over "Biden increased gas prices" proably had more effect than we want to believe.
That plus some very obvious and sad realities of a certain sentiment not unlike 2016's D candidate and you can see where this is going...
We hate him for reasons that are obvious to us.
If you're a shitty textbook narcissist, you think he's the best of you, succeeding while being a fucked up moron in ways you can only dream. You think that makes him strong.
51% of the population are not textbook narcissists though. And yet, here we are.
For real. I will for the next four years (hopefully that's all it is) be shameful to call myself an American.
I stood outside a local polling station for 2 hours today. Wearing my Bernie 2016 shirt, suffragette "Votes For Women" sash and carrying a sign that said:
Reception was generally positive, outside of one gentleman saying "but if you vote wrong you'll burn in hell."
I'm an atheist, but the sign was for my neighbors who by and large are not.
I like what you went with!
On the topic of signage There have been a lot of signs in my town that say "Register Pray Vote"
Normally I'd flag these as conservative and I won't swear they're not. They're in neutral colors mostly. But they do feel like "I can't support Trump" signs. We also have a kindness campaign and some "Love is what makes America great" signs around.
And maybe my favorite which was something like "my grandfather fought fascists and would be disgusted by the Republican party"
So as much as there's been a lot of trump signs it's nice to see others.
That's funny because in my reddish-purple part of the state, I've barely seen anything. Like one Harris sign, several Trump signs, and a ton of coroner signs. I absolutely get why it's a big deal who the coroner is, especially here, but given how much normal people know about the coroner, it's very interesting.
My street has no signs, but we apparently have a few folks with the desire to make the largest signs out of PVC frames that they can. I'm in a small outlying town of a bluish (I think still for the presidency but not local) county that's red outside of the city (we have a stupid-ass house district for example and it's not contested)
In town signs are fairly sparse except on business lots where you'll see the full run of "all GOP" candidates signs, sometimes with Trump sometimes without.
But I haven't been driving around neighborhoods lately so idk how it is. The Trump signs here in small ... Township? Village? Both? are egregious though.
Damn there are two possible districts and they're both just such crazy shapes. But I'm pretty sure I know where you live now, though ;)
And don't worry, I plan to be totally willing to let people know where I live once I move next year so--if I'm right--I won't have you at a disadvantage for long!
Oh I'm in Central IL, which would not narrow your stupid districts down, because both of the stupidest districts are entirely or partially in central Illinois.
I've definitely left enough clues someone could figure out where I work or live at least "ish." I assume you're further north (and maybe west) than me, but that's mostly statistics.
Ay, Central IL represent!
For some positive news:
Democrat Sarah McBride becomes first openly transgender member of US Congress
Her book, Tomorrow Will Be Different, is excellent (and, fair warning: also heartbreaking).
Something that has stuck with me ever since I read it is her description of being trans as a “homesickness.” She was trying to convey to her parents what it felt like to be trans and found herself running up against a barrier where, despite being supportive of her, they didn’t have a framework in which to understand her identity.
Reading it as a cis guy, it gave me an emotional understanding of what it can be like to be trans better than any other description I’ve read, in part because I’ve dealt with immense homesickness in my own life, so her metaphor is particularly resonant for me:
She then goes on:
I'm trans and honestly, homesickness is one of the best ways to describe it that I've ever heard. Thank you for this..! I will tell everyone!!
Thanks for the rec. I genuinely need something else to focus on right now.
Man, it's too bad Harris couldn't get George W. to campaign for her. That might've tipped the balance.
But in all seriousness, as blame gets thrown around over the next few weeks, I implore you to consider the choices the Harris campaign made to move away from the politics and policies that the Democratic base wants in favor of some wishy-washy centrist bs.
Harris seriously underperformed among youth, Black, and Latino voters. I think that's a pretty clear indication that the campaign did not speak to their needs and instead took those votes for granted.
And while there's a lot to be fearful of and angry about, there are some silver linings. For starters, I don't think it was reasonable to assume a Harris administration would be capable of getting much done with a split/republican congress and a conservative supreme court. Even some of the key promises from the campaign like signing a bill to codify Roe were highly unlikely. That would've made '26 and '28 really difficult for the Democrats. Instead, we're probably going to get resistance 2.0 which could bring better outcomes and another wave of young, forward-thinking politicians. Who knows, maybe the 2028 nominee will act like climate change is a big deal!
On the other hand, maybe we're totally fucked. I guess time will tell. Just don't put this on pissed off Arab-Americans or third-party voters. Joe Biden refused to step down, and Kamala Harris refused to distance herself from him. It's on them.
Maybe, but that would be preferable for me than to have a unrestricted Republican rule in all 3 "checks and balances"
We aren't too far out from a global pandemic, but these 4 years are going to be rough if you're not a rich elite.
All in on Pete for 2028.
If Pete is on the docket, he'll have my vote (unless someone better magically comes along)
It baffles me that especially the latter two groups would vote for Trump. He is a proven racist.
I think you'd be surprised at how racist minority groups are. Remember the Venezuelan migrant crisis? In my city, the most anti-migrant voices were from Latinos, Asians, and blacks. Minority groups usually look out for their own but otherwise don't view themselves as in a coalition. And by "own", I mean by their country or even more granular. Chinese people could not care less about Laotian people, for example.
Not saying it's right, just how it is.
You're right, that is definitely very suprising. Especially if they think that the racist government for some reason won't affect their particular minority group.
The latter two groups are also much more socially and economically conservative than the average American voter. I think the fact that Harris is a women seriously dampened democratic support there.
Pretty much, with her underperforming among Muslim and Arab voters (everyone I knew voted for Stein), and I was completely baffled as to why she was endorsed by Dick Cheney out of all people.
I'm not really an election person, but if her campaign just performed better with minority voters then would the story be different? I'm not sure.
This is going to be a long day... I'm also incredibly incredibly worried of what will happen if it's even remotely close and SCOTUS can get their hands on this...
Donald Trump has made it clear time and time again that he is a threat to democracy and still fuckheads vote for him. I hate it here.
I think enough of SCOTUS at least respects this portion of democracy based on how they've handled election lawsuits up to this point. But you never know.
The batshit one’s sure, but Bush v. Gore shows the court is okay with meddling as long as they have a fig leaf to cover their partisanship…
I would be hesitant to compare. The Bush v Gore story gets retold a ton with a lot of details left out.
That said, I don't trust the current court at all to uphold jack or shit so take that as you will.
Recent MAGA election lawsuits are certainly hard to compare to Bush v. Gore. But, everything I understand about that SCOTUS decision has led me to believe they essentially delivered Bush an election he should have (barely) lost. What details am I missing?
That the race was close enough there's absolutely no guarantee the recount would've changed anything. The general arguments about what should or shouldn't recounted were not "well this makes sense" and felt like all the political angle shooting we've become so very very used to. Different standards in different counties and lots of "well if it helps my side I don't care how stupid it sounds". There's practically no way to read the arguments from either side about what is or isn't a vote without instantly going to a dark memory of "that person" you played MTG/40k/Whatever game with.
A couple of studies have been done on if the recounts would've changed anything, and most generally arrive at "too close to call" or giving it one way or another by obscenely slim margins.
Ironically in one of the bigger studies had they done the counts applying a uniform rule and recounting the entire state(which was not on the table), Gore would've barely won, however had they done the counts the way Gore requested (only specific democratic counties), Bush still would've won and maybe even gained votes. In all cases it was less than 500 votes in favor of whoever won and waaay after the fact to the point that's all WELL within the margin of error.
From the position of the court the basic issue was that Gore pushed this up to Florida SC, and then Bush up to the SC. The court took the case (maybe they shouldn't have) but decided (along lines in a split decision) to deny it based on the fact that they weren't following a uniform method of counting, and that a better method of counting could not be determined by florida's own safe harbor dates, and a general vibe of this isn't really a good thing.
Personally, I think Gore was in the wrong to even bring the case, and people hero worship him when he really doesn't deserve it (not a bad person, but not that much better than any other politician during his time). A lot of the behavior around the court case acts as if its some known thing that Gore would've won if only the Supreme Court hadn't stepped in, but it's a lot more likely we would've gotten even more nonsense dragging out the election. There's a point where I feel losing gracefully (even if yes he might have technically won if things were different) for the sake of the country moving on was the thing to do, and he blew past that.
Counterpoint: We would have started actually making climate policy about a decade sooner if Gore won. Oh and also might have paid off the national debt by 2012. Seriously, read the campaign platform and tell me that you don't wish we had abided by it.
I do genuinely believe that Gore fought because he knew if he didn't win, things would get worse quickly. He didn't publish An Inconvenient Truth until 2006, but as VP the information was certainly available to him.
An Inconvenient Truth is also littered with lots of problematic statements and arguably outright lies. So much so the IPCC issued several disclaimers and outright corrections/condemnations of the hyperbole in it.
In short, it's once again an ego piece. I don't sincerely believe Gore was going to magically take the reigns of congress and special interest and magically plunge us into utopia. It would've been talked about more, I do think he would've tried to an extent, but people again hero worship the shit out of these people and don't look at what they've actually done with any scope of skepticism or what they would realistically be able to accomplish.
I would've preferred Gore, for sure, but this "oh if only" mindset flies in the face of every political reality we've ever seen. So much policy is set by more than the president, and the main reason i'd have preferred him is for his judicial picks.
No, but the following three were 100% on track by election:
Those 3 would have killed a lot of that Republican "omg national debt" rhetoric that they used to tank programs.
Because the same Republican legislators (and Democrat aisle crossers) wouldn’t have existed if gore was president?
Again several of these things are the domain of congress not the president. The president can put more pressure on it but literally getting in after a recount that at best puts him up 200 votes isn’t exactly a strong mandate and expectation you can just jam things through
Arguably right. But (as someone who wasn’t alive enough back then to follow the occurrences “live” and only reading about it years later) just the court case being wrong doesn’t make the election less unfair, IMO.
Wiki:
He's a threat to Democracy, but he's OUR threat to Democracy!
It seems pretty over. Harris is not getting the numbers in the urban and suburban areas to win any of the blue wall states, let alone all three.
Oh well, guess we’ll see how much of project 2025 they implement before the midterms.
I'm stressed. Genuinely stressed.
I legitimately feel nauseous 🤢
Sending hugs and ginger
Ooh, ginger tea is definitely not a bad idea. Thanks for the reminder!
Honestly what’s wild is just how hard Trump is winning. He’s probably going to win by a larger margin than Biden did EC wise. It’s not even close.
I wonder what Bezos and the rest knew that the public didn’t…
Access to a couple million in home microphones
It's difficult to find words. Like an expected desperation really.
The US is going to learn some hard lessons and the world with it. I just hope not too many people will die, and that Ukraine doesn't get completely steamrolled.
Fucking hell we learned nothing.
Voted back in October (thanks Mail-in Ballots!) and I am SO ready for people to stop knocking on my front door (and calling) asking if I've voted, who I've voted for, etc.
Good luck and godspeed to all those working at voting booths or anything voting related today.
Wednesday will be so peaceful for me. No more spam texts trying to stick their hands in my wallet.
I live in maricopa county, home of all the crazies like Kari Lake and Joe Arpaio... absolutely can't wait for all the deranged political signs to be taken down and the mailers to stop
I used to live there, stay strong my friend.
...
Fuck ArpaioIt's way too early to start dooming folks, even about Georgia
Georgia will start off red and then turn more and more blue, just like last time. That's how it works when Fulton County is 650x bigger than the smallest county.
Yeah I'm just not sure if there's enough. I hope so but like... Yeah.
I wish Iowa would go blue just cause. The six votes mean almost nothing but it'd be nice symbolically.
There's a reason I didn't say it would go blue, just bluer--we simply don't know.
That doesn’t make me feel better though :(
Have you heard about the "red fade"/"blue wave"? Smaller districts finish counting sooner than larger districts, which mean that generally, the first results are the reddest. As larger districts with more ballots to count finish, the results tip towards the blue. This is part of why Trump can tell such lies about the election being stolen. The earliest results will show him winning, and then his lead will drop as things are counted. One of his tricks will be to try to claim victory and interrupt the count before it gets that far. And some people will believe it, because the early results will favor him. But it's not the whole picture since the different districts aren't each an average of the state as a whole.
I thought the early votes would be the ones counted first, and those were expected to lean blue? I was primed to expect things to (generally) redden over time, not the opposite.
Depends on if they're allowed to pre-count the mail in, which some states prohibit. But also urban areas are bigger, lean blue and take much longer to count than counties of a few thousand.
Many of them basically report just as quickly as mail-ins.
Another interesting factor this election is that unlike past elections republicans were encouraged to early vote this time rather than only vote in person on election day. It's causing havoc for all the pollsters because they literally have next to no data on this kind of behavior in a close race.
It varies by state.
Trapped in this shithole, no desire to live, mental health gains erased. People underestimated how bad it would be last time, but US and Ukraine are pretty much done. This planet's finished anyway.
Need to find a will writer.
I'm clinging on to that last sliver of hope that it's not over just yet but the mere fact that we are sitting here and this is now a very real prospect... idk how I'm going to suffer through this, my life is bad enough as it is already... ffs america why.
Rebuilding the Village
This gave me some shards of hope to start from
A look at some states that were predicted as safe blue.
The thing that really spelled doom was the performance in Virginia and NH. Very soft compared to Biden.
Literally everywhere was soft. Trump got 3 mil fewer votes than in 2020 and Harris got 15 million fewer votes than Biden.
Do you have a top of the head calculation on how those vote totals compare to 2016? I recall the story in 2020 being that it flipped from the historically low turnout of 2016 to Trump earning the second-largest vote total in US history, only being beaten by Biden 2020.
Good luck everyone!
I'd like to stay up and watch the results roll in but I'm in the UK, working tomorrow and have an energetic 2.5 year old so I'll be in bed by 10pm latest. I've got my fingers crossed though, I'm quietly optimistic for you as an outsider but am worried not just for the US but the ramifications across the world if Trump wins. It'll be another domino that's fallen in what seems to be Russian and Chinese geopolitical goals for the West.
We recently had an election in the UK and got the chance to "take out the trash" which was very satisfying. I hope you all get the chance to do the same by showing Trumpism the door for another 4 years minimum.
Hopefully by that point Trump will be far too old or have shuffled off this mortal coil such that the movement fizzles out without another charismatic demagogue to fill his shoes.
Illinois man punches election judge in the face instead of waiting in voting line
Well, that's one way not to have to worry about voting.
I looked it up, and a felony conviction in Illinois means you can't vote while in prison, but you can after you've completed your sentence. I'm generally opposed to anyone losing the right to vote (except maybe if you are convicted of treason). But the irony in this story is also funny.
Yeah he would theoretically have been able to go vote after processing at jail - no cash bail and he's not likely to have been held for safety reasons - but it was 4 felony charges and 6 misdemeanors which is amusing.. not sure if the five resisting charges were resisting five officers or resisting the arresting officers 5x.
Either way, choices were made. But yeah you get your franchise back quickly here. We're not Florida
NYT needle has Trump at 70%.
Maybe it’s time to stock up on stuff you’re going to buy before those 20% tariffs hit.
While I still don’t think its over I think attempting to predict trump at all here should he win is going to be its own shit show.
I'm kind of OOTL on US politics as I've been mostly ignoring it for the past few years... so whats the deal here? Is he planning to put a 20% tariff on all imports or just china?
All imports, supposedly. I kinda doubt he'd actually do it, though.
Jeff Jackson, one of the best politicians (in my opinion) I've ever seen, wins the AG race in NC!
I'm not immune to propaganda, but at least I can understand and agree with pretty much everything that he says. Being a reasonable person should be a requirement for being a politician, not a rarity.
All of a sudden, Montana — and Senate control — is slipping away from Republicans
This article is about polling. Voting is still ongoing, so results haven't started to come out yet. Thought it was interesting enough to share though.
If Dems actually hold the Senate, that will make three elections in a row that Trump and Trump-based candidates were defeated, the last two quite resoundingly and unexpectedly. One can only hope that Trump will start to develop a reputation as an Electoral liability.
There is very little I want more in the immediate future than for the Republican party to swing closer to normality.
I'm 27 and I literally have never voted in a presidential election where the Republican candidate was not Trump. This insanity has been my entire adult life.
I’ll give a textual description of one of my favorite shitposts.
Format Wikipedia election results box
Title Average swing state GOP Primary
Candidates Maga Losealot (69%) v. Rino Woodwin (31%)
Final election result Manelynne Normiedem
Wow Florida is omega doomed. Miami-dade 11% to Trump? This was a county Hillary won with 63%.
How Trump has so much support from Latinos is crazy.
I don't know that they campaigned in Florida at all. I think the accusations of socialism are effective to the Latino populations there.
Every latino immigrant I know is pretty conservative. They are usually religious, anti-abortion, anti-crime, anti-open borders and not huge fans of the lgbt community. It's foolish and a mistake for Democrats to just assume they will get their votes because they are brown.
I don't think that anyone did assume they would get their votes because of their skin color or identity. I was just saying that I don't think that the Democrats considered Florida in play at all and didn't spend any money there.
From the political media I listened to in the leadup to the election, it's a problem of the state Dem leadership being a shitshow, so the national party is reluctant to waste money by giving it to those fools. Don't as me why they don't just replace or sidestep them entirely.
If you see no hope of winning, you don't invest, because that's how the electoral college works. It's not what I prefer, especially for local/House races, but that was the strategy as I understood it.
Unfortunately, it appears that Republicans managed to flip the Senate.
I think this was probably the most expected Republican victory. I remember people saying the Senate would be gone this year back in 2022.
Yeah, not surprising given the state of the Presidential race, but a disappointment nonetheless.
Could you elaborate why? I know it was pretty close, but which states swung and for what reason?
Almost all of the senate races up for grabs were democrats seats. This is because these were seats won in Obama’s blue wave. This included seats like West Virginia, which a democrat somehow held despite WV being the state that voted furthest to the right.
A random number generator determined the “favorite" in our forecast (Nate Silver)
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This was what my initial worries when the whole Biden dropping out and Kamala stepping in were about. Although I changed my mind after that initial month where there seemed to be a lot of excitement for her, and I thought that she might actually pull it off even as the campaign started to falter towards the end.
Even then, never did I imagine that Republicans would win the popular vote, a feat only accomplished now twice this century. I still do think things would have been better for us had Democrats had an actual open primary (I still maintained this even during the initial excitement period). But clearly there’s a broad right wing shift in a lot of key demographics.
And whatever good will the Biden admin had in 2022 that helped Democrats overperform disappeared these last two years.
Figuring out how to run a primary within the time frame would have been a shit show plus requiring raising new money to make it happen, but it's possible that that is what was needed.
I'm sad for Whitmer and Klobuchar and other women contenders who have experience winning in contested territory. They very likely won't get a shot at the presidency now. It's impossible to tell how strongly being a woman factored into Harris and Clinton's failure. Both Harris and Clinton had also never faced an election attempting to persuade significant numbers of swing and right wing voters before their tries for the presidency.
I suspect that for a women to win the presidency (at least initially), she will need to be young (under 50/60) and reasonably attractive (not necessarily like a model, but girl-next-door at a minimum). That isn’t how it should be, but ageism and lookism is stronger against women versus men. And there’s a straightforward candidate for 2028 (especially if the Dems go populist left on economics): AOC
The democratic establishment will never allow AOC to be nominated. Any more than they were ever going to allow Sanders to be nominated.
The DNC is Center-Right. They're Regan Republicans with slightly better PR. That's one of the key reasons they continue to message on identity politics, social issues, and anything other than meaningful Main Street level economic change. Their money, their contributions and donations and nudge-nudge deals come from ... wait for it ... the wealthy! Corporations, billionaires, and a lot of mere nine and eight digit bank account millionaires.
When you don't just take their money, but want it, you can't turn around and message against their interests. The money would stop. Companies don't want regulations, they don't want taxes, they don't want capital gains or equitable wealth distribution, fair wages, universal healthcare, or anything else that eats into their bottom lines.
And they're who fund the campaigns. Who fund the junkets, the think tanks, the side jobs and free vacations, the coincidental largess that will mysteriously enrich the friends and family and actual establishment politicians.
Don't take my word for it. Look at the DNC. Hell, just look at the past decade. They don't help little people. They make no meaningful, impactful changes to the economic futures of voters. Not plans, not long term changes. Right now changes. Things that will kick in this month or next, and lower costs or raise income for the average little person who's desperate to hang on and terrified of being left to fall without a lifeline.
The DNC takes the money wealthy offer, waves social issues at the voter base, and win or lose heads back into the back rooms to celebrate while their wealthy benefactors pat them on the head and tell them what a good job they're doing.
I was paying $1.31 for milk in 2020. $0.49 for a can of soup. Before that year was out, Milk had jumped to $2.53. Soup is now $0.68 each. I was thinking about this early this morning, trying to collect my thoughts, and went out for my walk. On the way back I stopped to pick up milk. And it's gone up another ten cents. $2.63 now. My entire grocery bill is like that, each and every time I eat. And I gotta eat.
Everyone's grocery bill is like that. Everyone's paying a lot more just to put food in their bellies, along with everything else they need to survive and live a basic life. It's all gone up and there's not even a hint of a lie that it might come back down. Pony up peasant, or get lost; we're not running a charity.
Housing used to be roughly a fifth of an American household's costs. Now it's closer to thirty percent than twenty. Landlords, corporate and private, are squeezing. Wage increases aren't keeping up, haven't been keeping up. Not for little people they haven't. Sure it's nice when someone on the good side of middle class is promoted and enjoys a little bit of juice, but it's being squeezed out of the pockets of little people who are down to bedrock and don't have much left to give.
Everything has gone up. And while it pleases the wealthy, and economists (who are usually wealthy) that the stock market is doing so well, and the manipulated numbers the establishment politicians and elite professorial economists will praise to say "inflation isn't high", in real terms to real people who are really struggling to live their lives, real down on the street inflation is high. And it's hurting them in very real terms.
I haven't kept close tabs on AOC in the past year or two, but last I checked, last I heard, she was Progressive who preached Progressive politics. Economic change in so many words.
Something the people who pay for politicians are never going to sit idly by and allow to take the Presidency.
Trump is a populist. He's a lot of other things too, and the list of his negative qualities, the ridiculous insanity he espouses is both well known and really a waste of time to again belabor. Especially now since it doesn't fucking matter because he'll have the power he craves like air in a few months.
But he doesn't talk like an establishment politician. Which is why voters swung to him. Harris talks, acts, like what she is; establishment. She was never a popular choice, and a lot of people, even those who felt they had no choice but to vote for her, weren't happy about it.
Fifteen million fewer voters showed up in favor of Harris than Biden in 2020.
The completely lazy reaction to that is "the nation is racist and bigoted." Or, maybe, possibly, there are a lot of desperate people who live in a constant state of panic over how they can't cover their bills.
A drowning man will drag you down with both arms. The only people shocked by the notion that average ordinary voters would make a decision (right or wrong, it's irrelevant to argue that it's right or wrong in the wake of an election that's already been decided) based on "selfish personal interests" are part of the problem. Are part of the "but why" protests circulating today as they struggle to understand how "but Trump bad" wasn't enough to secure victory.
Which is definitely pissing a lot of people. They hate that "but Trump bad" isn't enough. They hate that "but the stock market is doing great" isn't enough. The hate that "well, if you qualify for these minor programs we could maybe send you for retraining and then in three to seven years you could perhaps be hired in a theoretical better paying job" isn't enough.
It doesn't matter that someone interested in social issues, in the long term, is confused that basic human nature made more people pick the populist who talks like he might help them now versus yet another establishment politician they've already learned won't. Because the populist won.
Will Trump help the little people? Of course not! He doesn't care a lick. And regardless, Trump's campaign was, of course, also funded by the wealthy.
I would love, absolutely love, to see AOC in the White House unless she's pulled some kind of 180 shift I haven't noticed. If she's still the hard charging progressive I remember hearing about, I'd vote for her in a heartbeat. Because I believe she'd help me. Not just me, but lots of people. But I'd vote for her because I'd be better off.
Which is what most people do when they vote. They think about what helps them. It's what the wealthy do. AOC would devastate them and their interests. And while they only have one vote each, they have millions of times more money than the little people of the country. They use that money to buy influence and control the process to ensure nothing will change.
There are a lot of people, here on Tildes, over on Reddit, all across social media, who are just befuddled and angry that "people voted against their interests." That "people didn't care about the issues."
People did care about the issues, and did vote their interests. They saw an establishment politician, and a conman who sold them a story of a better life. Elections aren't about a better nation. They're about winning votes. Those voters want a better life, and the worse off they are the faster they want it, need it.
Trump convinced his base he's their path to some piece of a better life. Harris convinced a lot of swing and independent voters she wasn't. That's one of the things that fifteen million difference in her totals versus Biden's in 2020 is spelling out.
The best case for all of us, and thus the country since a rising tide does lift all ships, would be for economic change that helps the hundreds of millions of little people who aren't wealthy and likely never will be. They'll be less desperate, less panicked, less afraid of losing their house, of starving, of having to leave illness, injury, or disease untreated simply because they can't afford care.
Something the wealthy are never going to support, because they like receiving such a gross outsized piece of the financial pie. Basic human interest.
Democrats haven't done well at convincing little people they care about those things. Democrats point at identity and social issues and say "ooh, scary, do you want those people to suffer?"
Telling that to someone already suffering falls on deaf ears. Sure it'd be nice if everyone was empathetic and kind, if everyone would help flood that rising tide so all boats would lift. But when they're drowning, they want a life preserver first, right now, for themselves. And after they're safely ashore, out of danger, you can reasonably convince a lot of them they might want to help someone else.
Trump is a disaster. There's a non-zero chance the country's going to disintegrate on a nation-state level unless most everything he and Project 2025 have laid out were just some kind of amusing story they don't plan to implement. If they do carry those things through, then most of this doesn't matter because the US will no longer be united and historical change will either permanently divide the nation or turn it into an open, unabashed, shouting the quiet part from the rooftops autocratic oligarchy.
But he talked about life preservers. Not "the future" in some mealy mouthed way while trying to distract things that poor people struggling to get by don't care about when they're starving, homeless, and afraid.
The DNC will never allow AOC, Elizabeth Warren, anyone like that to run. Regan never did, and the DNC won't either. They keep the same company and embrace the same policies.
They had four years to prepare for this election. It is abundantly clear they did not. We can either assume they really are that inept (and, sadly, isolated from sufficient consequences to encourage change), or that they never wanted to succeed in the first place. They like things just like this. The rich getting richer, and the poor being too desperate to ever fight back against a landlord, employer, or oligarch.
There's one hope. The same hope we've had for a few decades now. There are more of us, than there are of them. You saw it in 2020 with the Floyd protests. Little people rose up when they decided their outrage over police brutality had hit a breaking point.
That terrified the establishment, the government, the oligarchs. You saw brutal crackdowns, designed to re-institute the everyman's fear of The Man. Of Government, of police, of speaking out and standing up.
Powder box or ballot box. If the nation survives to 2028, a candidate who harnesses the tens of millions of desperate little people could gather those votes. All that person, man or woman, black or white or any other wonderful human color under the sun, gay or straight, transitioned, whatever ... all that person has to do is convince the country's citizens that he, she, it, whoever, is going to help them immediately. That wages will go up, prices will go down, because people are desperate and being left behind.
The wealthy have a lot of money. But they're still just one vote. If someone can harness populism and gather enough of all those little votes, like Trump did as a con, there's a chance the country could change.
But it's hard. So much easier to just cooperate with the establishment. The Democrats, Republicans (MAGA or not) won't allow it. They'll be the front lines fighting against an AOC who truly, honestly, wants to rip apart the economic status quo and help the little people. Because the wealthy like pie, and don't want to share.
Someone can find a way to rally those people, but the DNC has had a lot of time to "explain" things to AOC. Has she ignored them? Is she just biding her time until she can run once she's 35? Or has she been corrupted into the establishment too?
If she hasn't, they're going to fight her. If she has, then it won't matter anyway because hello status quo.
Living in the middle of a history book chapter sucks, huh? Would've been nice if people had woken up to how uninterested either side of the aisle is in helping them. But they didn't, and they listened to the con man who at least pretends like he cares.
That's how you win elections. You gather votes. And, gasp, if you have to lie to do it ... this is the real world. People lie. They cheat, they steal, they abuse power. Money is power. None of this should be news. That we have idealists who think it's enough to pretend "we're better than them" is enough for the fairy tale ending is a reason why Trump's going to destroy everyone.
Populists get votes. The clue's in the name. Even evil, lying, felonious, power hungry cheats still get votes when they smile and pretend to throw out life preservers.
Maybe the reason Democrats suck so much is the are that principled. That they actually do think, if they can just be "moral" and "play the long game" they'll lead us to utopia. That they're unwilling to lie and manipulate the electorate, even if that means they lose, because they only want to win in the "right" way.
Or, maybe, Democrats don't care and like things just the way they are. One seems a hell of a lot more likely than the other. An awful lot of money flows through the establishment. But nah, they're all principled moral people who truly care and just don't want to get their shoes dirty if that's what it would take to do some good for us little people. That's totally it.
The establishment is about to face a power struggle over losing two elections and barely winning one. Other factions are almost certainly going to go after them. The question is who comes out on top. Ultimately I think the lefty populists have a chance. Fiscal conservatism is historically unpopular right now.
I think Democrats want change. Some want it on the social front, others on the economic front, many on both. Ultimately, big tent parties face the inherent problem of dealing with multiple factions.
Social change won't happen until economic change makes the playing field more level. That's what both of Trump's wins should be teaching anyone paying attention who wants to figure out how to win an election, who is struggling to duplicate Trump's "mysterious appeal." It really shouldn't have taken someone like Trump to teach it, but people never learn until they're smacked in the face with a shovel.
Is the DNC gonna change? It's nice to think they do care and do want to figure out how to best represent the non-right of the country. But they either do that, and do want to do it ... or they don't and they'll just (again) use "social change" as a distraction from any possibility of economic change.
Bush Senior lost because he raised taxes. James Carville hammered George on that that while helping orchestrate Clinton's victory over Bush Sr's reelection with something that's memeing around online today. "It's the economy stupid." Regan ran on economic change (while lying through his teeth and sentencing tens of millions to generational poverty). Obama lied through his teeth and promised economic change (while looking and sounding totally sincere, which got him elected).
If we survive to 2028, baring some miraculous positive change in the economic fortunes of the tens of millions of voters who just pulled the lever for a con man who promised them that change, if the DNC trots out someone who runs on "social change", that's the proof they've learned absolutely nothing. That they want no change that matters, that they aren't seriously attempting to gather the votes needed to win.
People vote their self interest. When most people are poor, they want a better economic future. A social idealist pissed that "but it's not fair" will be pissed on the sidelines, sulking that it wasn't unfair enough to convince people to vote against their self interest. Poor people want jobs, lower costs, a chance at a life they don't live in panic.
It's just that simple. So simple that even a complete idiot like Trump managed to use it.
I definitely wasn’t saying that they would run a social issues candidate, I’m saying that the coalition of D voters includes people who want social change, alongside those who want economic change, and those who want both.
I disagree. Harris is already much younger than Trump and far far prettier. Voters were initially energized by her taking over the ticket, as seen in the widening margins. Then voters were told "hey we're not that guy amirite" and nothing different from Clinton-Obama-Biden policies, no electoral reform, no big money out of government, no union backing, no job income security same old everything. And the lead disappeared.
Voters did not reject Harris because she is a woman.
I agree that I don’t think it played a decisive role, but I do think it trimmed some votes from her. And she is 60, which while not old per se, is getting closer to that status. She is as close to Trump in age as Teddy Roosevelt or JFK when they were sworn into office, and moving in the wrong direction.
I agree with you that 60 isn't young at all. But I also feel like it would be impossible for a woman in her 40s to be taken seriously in American politics. It's a shameful catch-22: we must dismiss any woman who is not young and beautiful, but we must also dismiss beautiful women as incompetent airheads. Society still routinely call full grown women "girls" afterall... *eyeroll
BUT!!! Other countries have been electing women for a long time, old and young. So maybe America is just a little behind; it's not impossible.
Example: former Finnish prime minister Anna Marin was elected when she was 34.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanna_Marin
I think the "down-to-earth" quality is more essential. I think a veteran would do really well. I have no idea what happened to Tulsi Gabbard politically (she... switched sides?) but when she speaks she sounds like you could drop her in any bar in America and get someone laughing. When Harris speaks, I get the vibe that she's nervous and wants to hide (which I guess is relatable for me, but probably not a great candidate quality). I watched fractions of videos of the two and they also have very different body language, one which comes off a bit more teachery / presentational. When it was Clinton, there was a perceived inability to win people over on an intuitive level (whether it be charisma, authenticity, likability, husband baggage, who knows).
I think AOC also carries herself well from what I recall, but I don't know if you could drop her on a farm and have her win a small town over.
I wasn’t suggesting an open primary in July when Biden dropped out, I think Biden should have announced he wouldn’t run for President in 2022 and then let the process go through naturally.
At the time Kamala was pretty unpopular within the party with multiple reports of the VP office being a disorganized mess. This would have allowed someone else better prepared to handle Trump to take over.
I hope the people running the Democratic Party learned something today.
I hope they learned that there's only so far you can go on "everything is fine, pay no attention to the discord behind the curtain, we are the steady hand on the wheel of the country" train when the Afghanistan wrap-up, Russia-Ukraine, and Israel's actions in Gaza and beyond all happened on their watch.
I hope they learned not to give their incumbent an easy primary process only to put their fingers on the scale and swap candidates because the vibes were off and the donors smelled blood in the water.
I hope they learned that basing the primary issue of a campaign on "can you believe that guy?" when he already had time at the White House and a considerable amount of people were willing to welcome him back with open arms was folly when running a candidate who was consciously deprived experience and name recognition in service of their ticket.
I hope they learned that ignoring the needs and concerns from the demographics of their "permanent majority" comes at their own peril.
I hope they learned that learned that not even paying lip service to concerns about the efforts that they were enabling in Gaza at their convention and then partnering up with the architect of the Patriot Act and War on Terror era of anti-Muslim sentiment speaks louder than anything they didn't say.
I hope they learned that they can't cap a round of fundraising of being the true voice of the people's last cry for democracy (again), blame misogyny for a loss they couldn't see coming (again), and then start another round of fundraising on being the even truer voice of the people in resistance to authoritarianism (again), and expect it to be a winning strategy of turning record fundraising into results.
I hope the Democratic Party comes out of this humbled and with a better since of direction than sell people on "we will not go back, unless it's to 2008 where we were unquestioned and all was right in the land." Maybe there's some bit of that populism from 2016 that wasn't extracted and purged from the party's soul. Maybe they could rebuild around that? Or fundraise as an permanent opposition party, they seem to love that niche almost as much as winning, and it's a much more achievable goal.
Pretty neat Philadelphia area turnout estimator:
https://sixtysixwards.com/turnout-tracker/
(I'm curious to see if this stays accurate throughout the day.)
Found via this Twitter thread:
https://nitter.poast.org/blockedfreq/status/1853787513724215721
Also @kfwyre thanks again for posting this megathread!
An archive link for the turnout tracker (circa 15:50 EST), since its being hugged to death.
I think I can speak for most of Canada to say we're hoping for a peaceful, timely outcome. It's going to be a long day/week/month...
The Onion's live view inside a voting booth
https://www.youtube.com/live/MrdQnuey8sc
I enjoyed The Onion's deep zoom into voter intentions video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qI0LTmSr38
Looks like all of the major news outlets have called it. No last minute miracle. Trump wins.
I can't believe it.
Gonna be fun to see how this plays out in other countries that also stand on the precipice of fascism. Looking at you, Germany.
The last time Trump was elected Brazil got Bolsonaro and the CIA was one of the reasons for Brazil's right wing dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. This is actually documented, so not a conspiracy theory at all. Those results do not bode well to our country.
I'm in France, and a married gay woman of colour. I am terrified. The only sliver of hope would be for Trump and his ilk to mess up so badly in such a short time that people in Europe take it as a warning. But my faith in people has been whittled away to almost nothing at this point. It feels like nowhere is safe anymore.
France did well in the elections though, right?
I'm afraid it's not so simple, every election for more than a decade the far right has been gaining ground. People are getting tired of voting just to keep them out of power instead of voting to improve their lives. They're currently the single party with the largest number of seats in the national assembly. Macron's government is veering increasingly to the right and it's working in the far right's favour. I see the same damn mistakes being made here that were made in the US. The centre-left to left Coalition managed to work together to stave off a landslide win by the far right party but the alliance is extremely fragile. The traditional parties are dead in the water for the next presidential election, and I don't have faith in the left wing coalition being able to stop arguing with one another to pull off another miracle. There are just too many uncomfortable parallels with places where the far right has taken power.
Not really. The far right won a plurality of the election. The current government is a centrist right alliance between Macron and the center right. There are zero members of the left coalition in cabinet positions currency as a result. Macron will have to make deals with the far right to get anything done.
The left cleverly averted disaster but it’s still pretty bad.
Hey friends, I've had this open in the background in combination with the Economist's dashboard which is linked in the post. I think it's a pretty nice replacement for the NYT Needle if you like that format.
https://ltelections.com/
Josh Stein Defeats Mark Robinson in North Carolina Governor’s Race
Welp, North Carolina called for Trump by decisiondeskhq.
It’s all down to Pennsylvania!
PA is looking ok, it's Wisconsin and Michigan I'm watching right now. Minnesota just closed but I don't think I'm as worried there.
Georgia doesn't look great but it'll take a while to be sure of it.
I'm sitting in Michigan trying really hard to bend reality to my will
Look I watched a lot of Agatha All Along, we can try.
(I'm getting rate limited ಠ_ʖಠ) This is my own fault.
Would anybody object to officially renaming the Blue Wall to the Purple Unenforced No Tresspassing Sign (PUNTS)? Because I can't recall one time since I started hearing the term used that it's been that blue or that wall-ish.
It's really the largest strategic fuckup the democrats have ever made. 08 under Obama followed by Hilary not even bothering to go there has nuked any chance of those being democratic strongholds in the foreseeable future.
Welp.
I guess I'll also add: beware of election takes well before the dust settles you guys.
We’re cooked. I’ve got Canadian citizenship so worst comes to worst I can leave, but my girlfriend doesn’t and it’s not like I have a job in Canada right now. Fuck.
How is it looking like Trump will even win the popular vote ugh
Unfortunately, I am also feeling like we're cooked.
Still way to early to tell IMO. I'm going to go to bed and see what shakes out tomorrow.
9 hours later: apparently a pile of shit is what shook out.
So much worse than I could've expected. Kamala currently has 15 million fewer votes than Biden got...
We are all cooking on this blessed planet, thanks America!
So at what point do people finally stop listening to 538?
They weren't even close in 2016.
They weren't even close in 2020.
They weren't even close in 2024.
538's article on we-were-wrong-but-actually-we-were-right article in 3...2...1...
Well, in 2016 they were pretty much closer than anybody. They gave trump a 30% chance of winning when everyone else said it was essentially impossible. I don't think it's fair to count that one as a miss
If you give the losing candidate at 70% chance, it's a miss, by a fucking mile.
The thing is, things with a 30% chance happen all the time. If it were not possible for it to happen, the thing to say would be that Hillary had a 100% chance. Which is closer to what other sites did. 538 said there was a strong possibility that Trump would win, and were made fun of at the time for it. But they were right.
Ahh yes, the we-were-wrong-but-actually-we-were-right defense I referenced earlier. There's never a 100% chance of anything, so them saying there's a 99% chance and the 1% happening doesn't give them a pass. You don't get to say you have a flawless roulette record if you bet on red and black every time.
Feel free to disregard 538 or nate silver, but don't get mad at the weatherman when you don't bring an umbrella if there's a 30% chance of precipitation.
I do.
And I don't get mad at the weatherman.
But I am also aware that, just like the weatherman, Nate Silver/538 gets to be wrong constantly, act like they're not, and still keep their job.
I'm going to stop engaging as I'm having trouble keeping my responses polite, but I think you should really reconsider the way you are looking at statistics. They are useful tools sometimes, but going to them looking for absolute certainty is not what they are for. 538 certainly has not promised that, especially this year, when they (and nate silver separately) basically gave it 50 50 odds. You can call that not useful, but it's not wrong either. Having someone pointing out that Trump did in fact have a shot in 2016, on the other hand, was useful, and perhaps the dems should have taken more heed of it at the time.
Pot:Kettle:Black on the reconsider how you look at statistics front as you're seemingly basing your support/defense of 538/Silver on only the headline statistic and not the curves and nuances of their Nostradamus-ian predictive models that declared many more details than just the numbers at the top of the screen.
When you say the election is a coin toss, you can't really be wrong. What would that even mean? As far as I can tell, they were fine this year. They're just not very informative.
Judging a track record for probabilistic predictions is complicated and you can't really eyeball it. So if you want to show that you gotta do homework, analyzing the statistics and writing an article about what you found. I don't expect any of us to do it. If you find something good, link to it.
And they were quite on for 2018, 2022 and the special elections in between. That being said, you do realize that this 538 is barely the same one as the one before. In between 2020 and 24 Nate Silver himself left 538 after Disney/ABC declined to renew his contract. Most of the staff were laid off, and it’s basically a new crew making the model.
They were close in 2016, 18, and 24 as well.
For what it’s worth, you’ll probably get your wish. Disney/ABC has been downsizing them every election, it’s very likely the whole site is sunset after this one and the rest of the staff laid off.
But it’s definitely not the end of poll models. Silver has his own site again, and there’s many more like SplitTicket. It’s just a passing of the torch.
Hey @kfwyre, this seems to be the link for The New York Times' live results page/dashboard:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/05/us/elections/results-president.html
Whenever you get the chance, would you mind updating the NYT link in the topic text to that?
(For anyone wondering why that link isn't already the link for NYT in the topic text, it wasn't available yesterday when we put the list together.)
Probably it wasn't ready because of the strike. I'm ok not linking to their page this time around due to the strike.
The tech guild is only presently asking people to avoid the Games and Cooking apps.
Yep, I know! That's why my statement was quite soft!
Fixed! Thanks for being my link co-pilot on this. I appreciate the help.
World leaders congratulate Trump on election win
As a non-US citizen, I can only say: goddamnit. I’ll just hope the result won’t have any unexpected consequences.
I’m very much worried about my expected consequences.
My last tiny sliver of hope is that my state (Michigan) somehow eeks out a Kamala win, even though it doesn't matter any more.
He managed to pull off the ol’ Grover Cleveland, after all.
Enough of national politics, time for a local observation. Judging by yard signs, a recent municipal levy was a consensus shoe-in with the election being a mere formality. The levy passed, but with only 52%. The yard signs would’ve made you assume 80%.
Suggestions on what to watch/listen to? My plan was Bloomberg and DDHQ, but I’m open to suggestions.
Even uber-liberal bastion San Francisco shifted rightwards. The Latino and Asian neighborhoods shifted up to 10 percentage points toward Trump. Chinatown voted 29.4% for Trump; Visitacion Valley at 34%; Outer Mission at 28.9%.
This is a very worrying trend and it doesn't bode well for Democrats and social progressives.
The Democrats once banked on Latinos, America's fastest growing demographic, to buttress its base; this is backfiring. I think that once they're naturalized and become Americans, they find their interests—being generally working-class, very Christian, socially conservative—much more aligned with the Republican party than with the Democrats. Immigration policy is becoming less relevant to them: why should they care when they're already here?
My last tiny sliver of hope is that my state (Michigan) somehow eeks out a Kamala win, even though it doesn't matter any more.
Welp, so much for that.
So when do we find out what Trump and Johnson's "little secret" is?
Context?
What Is Trump’s “Little Secret” With Speaker Mike Johnson?
Quote from Trump speaking at the Madison Square Garden Rally. His secret wasn't needed. He won openly without dirty tricks.
We won't learn, but here's a guess: if Republicans had won both chambers of Congress but lost the Presidency, they could've attempted to use the Electoral Count Reform Act to disqualify electoral votes by arguing that certain electors' votes (namely those representing the swing states they lost in this hypothetical) were not "regularly given" because of (imaginary) voter fraud.
Well that doesn't help.
It is well and truly Joever
270 for Trump once Alaska is declared.
I honestly really did think it was going to be a lot closer, what a complete blowout. I will take solace in my state's blue victories, and hope that the democrats learn from their mistakes for once.