We can no longer hide behind the excuse of "the electoral college". We can no longer say that Trump did not win the popular vote. Trump won the Presidency, retook the Senate, and are poised to retain the house. Progressive candidates and initiatives either underperformed or failed nationwide. A majority of voters nationwide saw everything that came with a Trump presidency and a MAGA agenda and said "Yes. We want more of that."
We are not better than this.
I dont get how someone can vote for Obama twice and then just say fuck it at some point. Isn't that what more or less keeps happening, how does one make sense of all this?
How is there so much turnover and churn every election, how can someone who says he's going to make everything harder for you have any appeal?
My only guess is he's promising to go even harder on people they don't like which magically makes it all palatable
That was my brother-in-law. In West Virginia. Votes for Obama twice then Trump.
Near as I can tell, they want “change” and doesn’t matter much what that means. They feel powerless in the face of the “other”. The government itself is “other”. It’s who they blame for problems whether it’s taxes or complicated rules for their small business or the way “elites” get away with doing the stuff they can’t do. They have some legitimate gripes with the government and “elites”.
Obama sold “change” really well. So did Trump. It’s not the same kind of change. And, he employed many more “others”. Trump’s change is a lie but Obama’s change never materialized even though he was probably more sincere about it.
These people are dealing with feelings of frustration, inadequacy, envy and shame. They’re lashing out and their only power is their vote. Trump fed those feelings and gave them a target and convinced them that only he could help them.
If you were to put on your diagnostician hat, what do you think he actually needs and would be satisfied with. Like what actual change does he seek and would it actually satisfy him?
What kind of change was Obama actually selling, what ideas did your relative have that Obama was going to fix that he became disillusioned by?
I think making them financially and emotionally comfortable. Reduce the wealth gap and convince them that government is advocating for them in concrete ways.
This would be real change and I’m not sure many places in the USA—especially where it’s most needed—are capable of making that change.
Certainly, Trump and his ilk are working to do the opposite while waving panaceas in their faces.
Sometimes, I think Democrats and the left get too caught up in the big picture issues and ignore the ground work that’s needed. They’re trying to grow a forest without clearing the rocks and weeds. You don’t combat transphobia, misogyny and racism just by preaching the virtues of inclusivity. You have to address the insecurities that lead to that kind of hate. That means helping the despicable people and I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to help them. But, that puts us in a vicious circle.
I don’t think change will ever come from the top. It’s got to start very local. Think about conservative talk radio and how influential that is/was. It was someone talking directly to them even if it was a syndicated show it was on a local AM station. They sowed the fear and anxiety that lead us here. The Dems/liberal/left still seems to mostly ignore that.
Post scriptum: This got way longer and way more opinionated than I intended. I still believe there is some fundamental argument in there, but it's not delivered rational. Sorry.
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Something I have repeatedly heard and read in criticism of modern democratic governments is that they don't actually do anything.
The calculus of political compromise, the promise and ideal of stability, and over complex systems they over see make them fundamentally incapable of changing anything. The way democracies govern cannot adapt to outside change and will not deliver on inside demands. Change is opposed to how they calculate decision paths, how they understand incentive.
They promise you that the continuation of injustice will guarantee price stability and then inflation happens. They ask you to cut back your carbon footprint and climate change escalates anyway. And when the fascists are appearing on the horizon they ask you to defend democracy, the system that fails you over and over again, by sacrificing your ideals, your needs, and in many cases your personal safety and security by opposing fascism.
Democratic governments have proven that they cannot and will not protect you from economic hardship, war, climate catastrophe, wealth inequality, and your neighbor's tree standing to close to your fence.
This is nothing that is necessary or inherent to democracies, it is how the internal way of thinking of democratic governments incentives their decision making.
People want things to change. Past governments have shown that they won't deliver on that ever.
And to make that clear I don't think minority rights are nothing, but they are for minorities. There is no fundamental change to the lives of the majority populous on the scale of same sex marriage.
What they choose instead is burning books and people, because that is an expression of their internal suffering and pain, which they feel is ignored. They don't care that they might be next on the chop block, as long as they get to chop for a time.
It's a nihilistic reaction to political frustration.
Every cycle there is a fresh new batch of voters. I'm sure most of the people who voted for Obama the first two times didn't throw their vote in for Trump.
I hate to say this, but from what my kid tells me, Trump is more popular at his middle school than Kamala, just because he's the goofy meme president and they aren't aware of much else. This is in the middle of Baltimore. So I imagine a lot of voters choose based on that alone. We never got any Biden or Kamala centipede memes. Just that lame, forced, "dark Brandon" shit. The Democrats have become the stuffy old boomer party in the eyes of the youth, even though that's almost the exact opposite. Their Internet game is weak as hell, and that's what matters these days.
Trump got about the same amount of votes as he did in 2020. Harris got about 16 million less than Biden did.
It’s less that voters changed their mind and more that millions of voters will show up and vote Democrat when they care and stay home when they don’t.
I'm German, and non-Germans always find it weird that most of us don't have a very strong sense of national pride and are even very critical of our country, sometimes maybe even excessively so.
We have learned what uncritical, unreflected national pride leads to. What the price is to not confront the dark side that every society has.
And now, sadly, the US has to learn the same lesson the hard way too. I only hope the US and the rest of the world can come out of it with as little bloodshed as possible. But I fear for the worst.
"Remember, remember the 5th of november." has a altogether new meaning now.
cough AfD cough
Yeah, that's the tragedy of it. Even in a country where it already happened once and millions of people died because of it, there are people eager for another run at it.
Even a country formed by survivors of the last round is engaging in genocide.
Instead of doubling down on our beliefs with authenticity as the Right does (I mean, many abortion referendums did pass), we repeatedly cede ground to the Overton Window.
The problem is we don't actually engage in the same degree of activism in the off-season and always let conservatives control the narrative on largely manufactured issues and half truths.
This is basically the big thing that has been weighing on me. It’s very clear that the culture I thought I was brought up in, the thing that gave me pride, was not really US culture. It’s very clear to me that US culture values justice, democracy, truth, and the general wellbeing of people in no meaningful ways beyond the PR value of pretending to value these things. It’s very clear to me that this culture is way more racist, sexist, and classist than I was led to believe. It’s also very clear that this culture has an active disdain for education. In aggregate we are a gullible, irrationally emotional, entitled and greedy population with a nearly insatiable bloodlust for violence. We are, on the whole, a profoundly evil country made up of willfully ignorant masses that are ruled by duplicitous oligarchs. Now, I know that there are a lot of good people here. But there is nothing intrinsically American about their goodness. If anything they are an aberration from the seething awfulness that is America.
This hurt me to read because I believe it. I wouldn’t have yesterday. I feel shame to live among these people anymore. I can’t reasonably leave but I’m not sure what else to do. This feels like defeat in a way I thought could never happen. Probably because I believed in those things that made America great. Not the government, but the people. You’re right, they are not the norm but the exception to what it means to be American. Fuck me.
This is the thought that I’ve been trying to articulate. Those that are decent people aren’t good because they are Americans but in spite of being American.
Yep. Our culture teaches our children that being uneducated (or at least acting the part) is cool. That money and physical attractiveness are the only truly important things. We embody everything that all moral philosophies warn against. Even the good ones among us in this country are tainted by the toxic culture.
A lot of people are going to flip out mentally over this, maybe Ted Kazinsky level. I'm hoping to not lose my sanity, but I will never believe in America again. It cannot be trusted with not killing itself in a haze of selfish rage. Fuck this country.
This post does a good job of articulating how I've been feeling. I think last night made it very clear what the character of our country really is. Unsalvageable garbage, unworthy of our efforts to improve it.
We absolutely are not. We are a nation of bigots, racists, and simpletons.
This is us, this is America.
Even the far left is stupid in America. They're supposed to be the educated ones. But instead of doing their civic duty, they stayed home. And you can blame it on Democrats all you like, but it's your duty to go vote, no matter who you vote for. The turnout this election was pathetic.
I don't understand how these people are going to complain now for the next 4 years, when they didn't even want to take part.
It is absolutely fucking infuriating how many people disagree with your assessment here but you are absolutely 100% right as fuck.
She got 14 millions less votes than Biden.I doubt there are even 10 million far leftists in the USA.
Back in 2016 they did a panel of all the creators of the TV political dramas. West Wing, Veep, Scandal, House of Cards, and all the rest.
All the creators said the same thing; if they'd had a character who said he 'liked soldiers who didn't get captured' the networks and advertisers would have demanded that character be shown to be hated by all Americans.
I used to give the collective 'us' the benefit of the doubt and assume we're just stupid, not evil.
After 4 years of Trump + all the Nazi shit he's said since, he did even better than he did the first time. People aren't ignorant to all that, they fucking love it.
We need to hurry up and go extinct and hope some critter rises from the ashes and evolves to be less of a collective sack of shit.
Trump, again, played the god card. Affirming his divine and righteous purpose.*
* god put him here because he's the Antichrist. A fucking demon. There are no angels left.
(Shamelessly stolen from c/politicalmemes:)
This video explains it well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzIaIiiZIpY
Basically Trump is a very American person, stemming from a very American history and culture.
He's not an ideal, he's not what they want American history and culture to have been. He's a product of what it actually has been.
An exploitive, greedy, stupid, destructive, democracy overthrowing, racist, misogynist, killer on 5th avenue..
Not great.
Just with a bit of estimation of the remaining 12% of votes uncounted, Trump is going to beat his 2020 vote record by a couple million, 81 million on the high end and maybe closer to 77 million on the low end. Unlikely, but possible he beats the 2020 all time record set by Biden. Definitely beats his 2020 numbers.
Kamala recently pulled ahead of Hillary’s 65 million and Obama’s 66 million, she’s gonna end up around 71-74 million.
Kamala lost the Popular Vote. In fact she won some blue states by smaller margins then she lost some ‘swing’ states. Nevada might not even be tight enough to qualify as a swing state this election(needs to be 5% or less, Trump’s currently winning by 5.2% meaning it wasn’t a swing state), meanwhile Minnesota was won by 3, New Jersey by 4, New Hampshire by 4 and a half, and Maine might be lost we’ll see, but those 4 were all swing states as the margin was less than 5%. New Mexico and Virginia came very close(and New Mexico would have been under 5 without RFK Jr dragging Trump down a point).
This also suggests the Electoral College no longer favors Republicans, and is somewhere between neutral and actually favoring Democrats again. 2028 a tight election with a Democrat win could see them lose the PV and win the EC.
I had a ton of 2004 vibes from the start and it looks like that was correct. He is coming back to serve a second term, and YES, this time he won the national electiiion
(Also you can’t blame third parties this time, they did horribly nationwide. At worst maybe they tightened up Virginia a bit just through how uniquely bad for Democrats it was there, but on the other hand RFK Jr is the only reason New Mexico didn’t crack a sub 5 margin and go into Swing State territory again(Harris won by 5.2 there and RFK got 1 point. No third party means that crosses the 5 point threshold)
I saw some numbers that showed Kamala underperformed in EVERY SINGLE COUNTY compared to Biden. I hope the Dems will learn from this but they literally never do.
‘member when Americans apologised to the world for re-electing Bush?
Yeah. They didn’t mean it.
To be fair, the Americans doing the apologizing probably did, the ones that liked having Bush wouldn't have apologized in the first place?
Either that or America wanted a progressive Democrat candidate. We will never know because the second never happens.
Funny, because it has happened a couple times.
1860, 1936, and 1960. You know, some of the only moments in history America had a right to be proud of.
Nope, America is and wants to be, a big, racist wagie prison. I hope the jumpsuits are red white and blue.
If only journalism was this blunt at an earlier point than after he won, again.
America is a shit hole. Who could argue at this point?
We are a nation of sad small scared people. Machiavelli was right.
Running as Republican-lite and courting the neocons will just serve to validate right-wing ideologies and strengthen the vote for the real Republican candidate. Harris needed to lean into the Walz platform, but her consultants clearly failed (sabotaged?) her. Add to this the fact that Americans grown to hate standard politicians—at least for president—and it's clear this was Trump's election to lose.
I'm fully ready to admit that America is an Idiocracy. It prefer to stay optimistic about the future, but when the majority of voters choose the Orange Sack of Shit in spite of everything we know about him, they must be fucking idiots. I'm ashamed to be associated with this country anymore. I've actually been anticipating that it will break up and balkanize. The goalposts keep moving but I really think it's inevitable, and I just hope the process isn't an apocalyptic mess.
I used to naively believe that sometimes things need to get bad before they can get good. Like, sometimes someone needs to lie in the gutter first before they are able to look up at the stars…
It seems there’s no floor to how bad things can get.
It’s mostly just all gutter now.
We were so close to electing a president that can speak in complete sentences!
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