It’s not anyone’s fault except those who voted red. Hope isn’t a plan it’s a state of mind. We all hoped America was better than this. We built our lives on hope that this was a better America. It’s young and has acted impulsively. Never acknowledging that by putting this very poor excuse for a man on the ballot again they were signing our country’s hope to the gallows. Everyone rest up. Think about how insignificant we are to the universe. We will all die. The “ great” civilizations on which our democracy was fashioned all died. If this is our future, if we will be dug up and analyzed by the future I want my corpse to carry a card that said, “ SHE TRIED!”
Peace and Love to all! We live to fight… to the end.
Also, 47 is about as anti-Semitic as they come. Well, he’s anti everyone who doesn’t curry his favor, preferably with enormous sums of money. And unending praise.
Wow.. classy... You do know that if you took every vote that was 3rd party and put it on Harris, she still would have lost the popular vote, right? Your anger is very misplaced. I hope your day gets better......
You think we don't already know that? He's also gonna let the military shoot pro-Palestine protesters like me. We are extremely aware of the politics of both parties.
I was appalled by the number of people who decided not to vote as a protest, sometimes against women, sometimes against people of color, and sometimes just because they had always voted Republican, but decided they couldn't, and just didn't vote. All of these withheld votes helped Trump.
It accomplished my ability to sleep at night because I didn't vote for genocide. And my Palestinian and Arab American friends voted the same.. Stein got 22% of the vote in Michigan. And so many of them don't care.. asking them to vote for Harris or Trump is like asking "which one do you want to bomb your family?" Why the hell would they vote for that?
Most democratic voters disagreed with biden on gaza, it is the people who support human rights here who will suffer under fascism. I hope you sleep well when american protestors are shot in the street and when people are dragged off to jail or executed for opposing trump. Your clean conscience has only brought down the boot of dictatorship on 330 million people in america, we the people of america are who you voted against. Poor people with disabilities will lose healthcare, housing, medical care. Without democracy there is no path to progress on any issue. And you and all who refused to vote for harris have killed democracy and thrown the vulnerable amongst us to the fascist wolves.
I don't know how accurate that 10 million number is, but even a fraction was too many. I thought the willingness to sell out our country in a fit of pique was characteristic of only Trump supporters. How wrong I was, and about so many things. Until yesterday, I believed that most Americans were basically good people. They are not.
You're right—history shows that no civilization lasts forever.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
She ran a perfect campaign and still lost. She kept asking "is this who we are" and she got her answer. None of us could really get our heads around people who were willing to return a NY mobster and a Russian asset to the Whitehouse, but his followers came through for him. We are in a world of hurt. He, himself is not smart, but he has some very dedicated, smart fanatics working for him. My guess is that there are already plans to turn his Proud Boys, Aryan Nation, KKK, and other sundry nasties into his own SS troops.
I agree with you. Those 70+ million people are as awful as you can imagine. Angry, resentful, full of vengeance. We need to know more about what has made them that way, sociologically and psychologically. And they are not going away. Unless we understand what motivates someone to vote for a sexual predator, mobster and Russian asset, we will never be able to make a dent.
If we don't understand what has brought them to this, we will never be able to counter their dominance. But I don't mean listen to them -- nothing will change their minds. You are correct, they are mind numbingly stupid (and very very dangerous). However, the origins of their rationality, may give us clues as to how to overcome them. There is something very fundamentally wrong with millions of Americans and they are not going away. We have seen the enemy and they are us.
For them reality is just another tv show, video game or carnival. They vote for him because he keeps them entertained, as in "Tune in for the next episode..." Their own lives are vapid and they are on the margins, but he brought them together and now they "belong" to Maga, something they see as bigger than themselves even if it's just a dark cloud of bigots and sado-masochists. The only thing that will force them into serious thought is a national crisis of such vast proportion that I don't want to think about it. War, space aliens, cataclysmic natural disaster, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, etc. Anything short of that will not move the needle until the radical rights SS comes kicking in their own doors.
I think it is in part our collective human history of extremely high rates of child maltreatment (>50% for 1+ kind) combined with lack of community support, socio-economic inequality, poor political literacy and being raised in cultures where success is seen as a zero-sum game (ie you'd better align with the schoolyard bully or you'll be bullied).
People with unhealed trauma (absolutely not everyone) can sometimes externalise a lot and project their more legitimate feelings of victimhood onto unrelated situations because of emotional flashbacks. I have come to realise recently there is even a lot of grief in us for being in positions of privilege or colonisation (see: Japan) and working through these things is not easy and not many people are doing this work professionally (Richard Schwartz who invented IFS talks about legacy burdens and this is hugely useful).
Also not easy because narcissists and psychopaths (the schoolyard bullies) are superficially convincing and charming and provide these con-man quick fixes which people stick to when they're in that state of fight/flight.
I agree with you. I also believe childhood trauma that is unresolved is much more common in the US than any of us know. I believe that that this is a factor, among the others you mention, that explains why people would vote for a narcissistic bully who never had their best interests. I would like to know about the work of Richard Schwartz and will look him up.
Many years ago, I was the director of an organization that worked with those who had experienced domestic violence. Somewhere, I came across the work about Adverse Childhood Experiences and it was a revelation. It helped explain so much. And I continue to believe that millions of Americans have had a significant number of those ACE's and it has influenced their lives in every possible way. I wish there was more discussion of this and its widespread implications and more efforts made to mitigate and/or eliminate those experiences.
At the end of the day, in 2020; 81.2 million people voted for Biden.in 2024 67 million went for kamala. Roughly 15 million people didn't turn out for blue this time around.
74 million voted for Trump in 2020, and this time, in 2024 he got 71.8 million. So right there you see that there's a HUGE issue with getting people to go out and vote after 4 years of relative comfort and stagnation. The blue party spent it's money poorly, and thought it had certain demographics in its bag. It's not even the fault of those tho went red, as less did now than in 2020, it's the 20 million-ish that stayed home, and didn't even mail in a slip.
Lawrence O'Donnel said something that shocked me to the core last night: 7 million registered voters in CA and NY who aren't voting. Let that sink in. Later, someone said TX had about the same number. So if we want to lay some blame, I think we can start there.
If someone lives in a state that they feel is going to give the electoral college votes one way or the other, they may feel their vote doesn’t matter. The electoral college is screwing us in more ways than we realize.
This was his point, yes. We’d need a direct popular-vote democracy to answer low-info voters’ constant whine of “what’s in it for meeeeeee?” (I paraphrase)
Because their votes would not have changed the outcome of the election one iota.
Not in CA, not on the federal level.
Their votes DONT change anything because of the structure of our presidential elections.. specifically the Electoral College. California would go blue for Kamala with or without those votes. Their votes add up to nothing changes in the outcome
I've voted on the west coast and gotten home from the polls as they were announcing the winner. It'll be a long time before all of California's votes are counted so you can be assured her popular vote numbers will rise. All of a Dakota or Wyoming has fewer people than San Diego (let alone Los Angeles) but our votes are basically useless. (I stood in line for 2 solid hours to vote.)
I'm guessing it's a big mix of things that varies from person to person. Some more benign and some more malignant. I am also wondering how many people who queued for hours without food or water actually even got to vote given the long delays and the bomb threats tho that doesn't explain that huge gap at all.
Tbh just like people deciding to do a protest vote and elect Trump which is also multifactorial.
For example some people may have been complacent (in the context of a country with historically poor voter turnout) while others may have been suffering from despair
I actually think there was a lot of despair before the election. I think there has been an undercurrent of despair for decades. I also believe that unresolved trauma -- childhood abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence -- plays a huge role in many people's lives -- much more prevalent than we have acknowledged. These people lack empathy and compassion as well as the ability to think critically. What are the factors that have combined to make them this way? What are the factors that have combined to prevent us from being this way? After WW2 there was much psychological analysis of how/why so many "decent" Germans could have followed Hitler and committed such crimes. We need to do some of that same kind of analysis.
that's the part I find hardest to understand and to believe in: the low turnout. The ground game looked so strong and the lines so long. do we really believe he won the popular vote?
He won the popular vote of people who voted. And many more clearly decided it was too hard, or that nothing would change, if they voted so they stayed home. Reaching them and understanding why they did it matters. We also have to understand that the "activate young men to vote through bro-podcasts" strategy that everyone scoffed at, actually worked for Trump. He made up the ground he lost with voters who care about the rule of law by picking up douchebags.
i know you are most likely correct but right now I'd rather become a conspiracy theorist than face the horrendous facts. my nephew is a joe rogen douchebag.
Don't become a conspiracy theorist. It is comforting yes but once you adopt it, it becomes easier and easier to lie to yourself. I knew someone who went down the 9/11 truther hole and spiraled deeper and deeper to the point where he essentially had to treat it like recovering from alcoholism.
For your nephew all you can do is push back against what he says. He may not like it, but better to have someone in his life calling him out, then everyone going silent and letting him go. That happened to my friend. It wasn't good.
Yes it does. He is claiming and mandate and shedding any pretense that Project 2025 is someone else's plan. We now have to learn from Republians and fight in every way at every level or else the whole thing will be in place overnight.
By the time all votes are counted, Trump will probably match his 2020 vote. I don't think the Harris campaign did anything wrong. Nothing more could have been done, at least with the conditions we had. If it was a close loss, I might say that a white male candidate could have won - that's why Dems chosen Biden four years ago, after all. But it wasn't that close, so I don't think that would have changed the result.
I would bet there were a lot of Blue that voted for Trump over Kamala because he is a white male, or who chose not to vote at all because Kamala is NOT a white male.
I know that and you know that but it doesn't matter to maga. What crimes did Liz Cheney commit? And trump wants her killed. I don't like her political views, but I can accept her as an opponent. What crimes did HRC do? He wants her locked up if not killed.
IT DOESN'T MATTER IF IT'S LAWFUL OR NOT, he wants revenge and who can stop him? He's has blanket immunity according to SCOTUS
And for those reasons and so many others, I am deeply fearful of what our future portends. I'm 77 years old, and Never thought something or someone like this could happen to the U.S. And that includes the legacy of St. Ronald and all his ilk.
Same here. I just got on medicare. so I'm about 10 years younger.
I thought people were better than this. Turns out they are not and are likely worse than I ever imagined. I'm out of sympathy for others. And I'm culling my charity giving to local groups when I know the help is going to help blue areas.
No, it just feels like it. We tried so hard!!! In books and movies there’s immediately a happy ending. This time for us is when the rubber meets the road. Is the America we hoped for also worth fighting the long fight for? I believe so. I’m not sure what waits ahead, I just KNOW it’s my vision that’s worth fighting for. Be strong. Rest and come back stronger.
I think a vast amount of people that believe trump will improve their economic standing, saw their vote as a free lottery ticket. So, now, like so many lottery winners, they will now be rendered powerless when they're confronted by the powerful, unforeseen consequences their choice ushered into their lives.
And as a 74 yr old, inflation will continue And heaven help the US economy if the Trump tariffs are enacted or the expulsion happens of migrant workers.
They’ve been doing it for 8 years and either haven’t noted the results, or they like the pain. Just wait till the tariffs kick in. that’s gonna be fun to watch.
I guess the ephemeral cost of groceries was more important that fighting racism and bigotry. I say ephemeral because the political party in power has nothing to do with high grocery prices.
Wondering who the famers are going to employ to plant and pick crops after immigrants are rounded up and tossed out of the country. 97% of the workers on US farms are immigrants.
Also, are they going to get a bail out this time? If there is no bailout, a lot of land is going to go unplanted, beef and chicken will suffer as well.
I don't expect that we will be doing very well in the near future. I figure it will take a year to kick in.
Many agribusinesses didn't do too badly with the Trump tariffs because his administration provided a historic amount of taxpayer money.
Yes, agricultural exports to China fell to only $9.1 billion by 2019. However, from 2016-2019 the Trump administration used the Commodity Credit Corporation to provide $28 *billion* in additional subsidies beyond those authorized by Congress.
The CCC is run by a board of directors appointed by the President. It has the authority to borrow up to $30 billion without Congressional approval, and the Secretary of Agriculture has the sole authority to decide how to spend that money. According to the Congressional Research Service, "The corporation’s permanent, indefinite funding authority means that trade aid expenditures are reimbursed annually as a net realized loss, thus increasing total federal spending.”
Trump will undoubtedly provide agribusinesses with historic subsidies. I have little doubt the CCC will end up borrowing up to their $30 million satutory limit.
Trump's Chief of Staff and other cabinet officisals will only let Musk destroy parts of the federal government they don't like or think they need.
Trump's not smart enough to know why he needs the CCC, but his Secretary of Agriculture likely will be. It's not like using the CCC to borrow $28 billon was Trump's idea. Because it didn't involve him having to sign anything, I seriously doubt he even knows where that money came from. Trump just knows that "he" provided money to farmers (which he bragged about in 2019.)
They'll gut the rest of the USDA, but the CCC will stay. Remember, for Republicans corporate welfare is completely acceptable. I wouldn't be surprised if big agribusinesses got most of that $28 billion.
I will like asking them when it's going to be fixed. Why has trump raised all the prices. Why aren't THEY fixing this. They blamed us for everything, I don't think they are going to like having the shoe on the other foot.
But likely they will blame Biden no matter what the reality is.
My sister is one of those. She said she didn't believe Trump would do all the hateful things he said. Her ignorance (and others') will have a rude awakening in the coming months and years.
Yea. This has been the proposition since before the founding. A multi-class coalition cleaved on race and other identities. The elites thrive when the underclass think they have more in common with billionaires than with themselves.
I think a lot of it is ignorance along with grievance. My son, age 19, voted for Trump. All along as I’ve talked to him, he just never understood (or believed) facts about how inflation happens and who can or can’t change it, or what a vice president’s job is or isn’t, or the vast history of wars in the Middle East and how US presidents have never been able to stop them, or the grievance beliefs of Russia right now that look so similar to those of Germany in the 1940s. This young adult got a public school education but almost no knowledge of civics or history, and he doesn’t think mom knows anything right now. I think there are an awful lot of kids like him out there.
If you think someone is voting against their self interests, you probably don’t understand what they’re interested in.
Macho, low education males have a lot to gain from a Trumpified World. He promises status, which comes with women and the historic power such men had in society. You think that vote for Trump was against their interests?
Older folks on fixed income, particularly uneducated ones that don’t understand globalized economics, suffered greatly from high inflation. Trump promised easy answers to their biggest problem (even though it’s nonsense and his policies are likely to exacerbate inflation). You think they were voting against their interests?
Dems have to get over the condescending tone. Whether that means clearly educating folks, or what…. I don’t know. But telling folks that they are stupid or don’t understand is not going to bring them home.
And some folks just need to be outvoted. Toxic men that want women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen while they watch pro wrestling and MMA may not ever be swayed by a party that advocates women’s rights and social equality….
But that means the Dems have to show up and vote…. And whether that was because of Gaza, Biden, or whatever reason…. We didn’t this year. And those that show up get to rule. That isn’t the Trumpers fault, and is something we have to own.
They think they were voting against "inflation". They are truly uneducated. They don't recognize how lucky we were to come out of the pandemic with an economy in such good shape. There was also a staggering level of Big D Energy behind this victory. Hence the engagement of young men, many of whom are undereducated and spend a huge amount of time playing video games. They did not think about their mothers or sisters. Or if they did, they didn't care. Or they thought all the money they expect to get was more important. Good luck with that. Also, the dems have not addressed how those of us in the lower 50% are experiencing this economy, and Trump took full advantage of that. He will not improve things - he will worsen them - howeveer he has a gift for getting all kinds of mileage out of lies and fairy tales. His sick sick fairy tales.
A lot of people don't follow the news. As angry as I am with the NYT and WaPo and everyone else for "sane-washing" and for normalizing the idea of a convicted felon and confirmed rapist as our president, would it have mattered if they didn't?
These aren't evil people. They just want to live their daily lives.
So all they know is that they're paying more for groceries.
And I for one don't know how to explain to them that (A) that's not the Democrats' fault and (B) there's a lot more at stake.
Sorry, but we all just want to live our daily lives. They could’ve just lived their lives AND voted for Harris/Walz, just as we did. Yet they were drawn to an out racist instead of Hillary, Biden, or Harris. Why? I think his voters love what he says. Remember Arendt’s “banality of evil”? I do think that those who vote for fascists aren’t exactly good people. Maybe not “evil” but accomplices to evil-doing.
I sadly agree. They voted for the cruelty, the retribution, the justifying of their grievances. This time around, they know who Trump is and it's what they want.
We will now not be able to just live our daily lives. We are going to have government in our dr’s offices. I wonder how long it’s going to be before there is a national religion. I also wonder if trump will even bother to take an oath of office. And watch for the military parade at the inauguration.
and goodbye Obamacare. They'll cut taxes for the rich and corporations then cry about the deficit and that will be end of most safety net programs. And Lord help you if there's a natural disaster in a state that voted blue.
And here my husband and I are. Turning 65 in Feb. and Mar. What have we worked for our entire adult lives just to have it yanked away by an orange, deranged, etc?
If he does take an oath of office, as he supposedly did before, he again won’t honor it. The same can be said for most of the republican MAGAt senators and congressional representatives.
I thought and said that he was an evil man when he won in 2016. Even then I couldn't believe that the American people voted for him over Clinton. As a Canadian I am horrified that he could be elected again! So sad!
They felt validated by his various isms. They agree with him and he made them feel good about it. He brought all the assholes out into the open and gave them red hats. At least we know who they are now.
I agree that we all want to live our daily lives, but I think you are missing the greater point in what Beau Dure says… “So all they know is that they're paying more for groceries.”
They are not paying attention to anything beyond the fact that they are paying more for groceries. They are ignorant, and ill informed.
There is such a degree of intellectual dissonance, though, will they even make the connection? It’ll be someone else’s fault, but never the government.
I had an unrelated but telling incident occur last week. I was walking to my car through a crowded parking lot. There was a line of cars waiting for someone to back out. As I was walking between two cars, the car in front of me started to back up. I slapped the trunk, not hard but loud enough for the driver to hear. She rolled down her window and said to me in a nasty scolding voice “you have to be careful when cars are backing up!“
The reality is that those groceries are going to get a lot more expensive. No farm workers to get it to the market, tariffs on produce and commodities coming into the country…that’s when the reality of their choice will come to roost at their door.
They actively want to maintain the status quo - the one where White, cis-het males rule. I will never understand the women, POC, and others who are what his base sees as "other" who buy into this, but here we are.
This normalization of Trump voters really needs to stop. They voted for homophobic, transphobic, racist policies that are going to actively harm millions of Americans. They are bad people, and Democrats *really* need to stop sugar coating this fact. Hillary was 100% right. In fact, she was being kind.
Racism and bigotry was "baked into" the American experiment from the beginning. We have managed, at great cost, to beat it somewhat back into submission only once, and that took 100 years *after* the conclusion of the Civil War. Republicans embraced bigotry once again with Reagan's "dog whistles," like his campaign stop in Philadelphia, MS. The GOP fully embraced bigotry in their attempt to defeat President Obama. In 2015-16, the Trumpists used it to eat whatever small redeemung parts remained of the GOP's soul.
Furthermore, an "academic lecture" is *exactly* what the Trump voters needed, they just don't like it.
Democrats and a (very) small number of Republicans have actually been saving Republican voters from themselves for *years.* This includes Congress legislating changes to certain programs so benefit checks go out even during a government shutdown, to John McCain's "thumbs down."
What Republican voters have made very clear is they're unwilling to learn anything except through personal experience.
It's sadly going to take millions of innocent Americans down alongside them, but Republican voters are going to find out why the economic policies they voted for don't work, and how they voted against their own interest. Unfortunately, because Fox News, Carlson and the right wing echo chamber will still be feeding them a constant diet of lies, I'm not confident they'll learn their lesson even after the economy tanks, prices and inflation are higher and they lose their jobs.
Using grocery prices as an example, what they actually blame the Biden/Harris administration for is not "just inflation," but a lack of deflation. They don't understand how bad deflation is, and how taming inflation does *not* mean prices stop rising or go back to where they were "before inflation" (as if such a time existed.)
Furthermore, their other economic "ideas" are just as loony. My parents are MAGA, and they want to go back to the size of the federal government and taxes of the early 1960s...but keeping 21st century salaries, and other "good inflation." It's complete mathmatical and economic lunacy.
When confronted by facts that contravine their accepted beliefs/narrative, they fall back on "agree to disagree" and then go back to Fox News, which tells them things that reinforce their existing beliefs. Conway's "alternative facts" wasn't a joke. They really have constructed their own "alternative facts" on many different issues.
You are correct that Trump voters largely operate on how they "feel" instead of objective reality. We have decades of eroding funding of education to blame for that
Exactly right. The press and Republicans normalized trump - when any one of the myriad of things he did would have sunk anyone else, which let him keep on. This takes it to the next step - stop normalizing ANY of his voters. They all knew what they were getting. Thanks for this.
I agree with you. However... the wealthy Republicans who voted for their wallets are despicable. They are "educated" and one would think they have the ability to understand history. What does it say that today's stock market is going great guns? I am disheartened and afraid. But I know I will stand back up and fight for this great nation once I've had some time to grieve. Thank you Jay, and all of you, for being a safe haven.
"... the wealthy Republicans who voted for their wallets"
They also voted for their misogyny, racism, homophobia, and religious intolerance.
They voted against "Not Like Me."
And they will be mystified when they can't get an avocado or some lettuce or strawberries or asparagus, etc., or IF they can, why it costs so damned much. And when they complain, why, they will not understand why the political police are coming to see THEM.
*They also voted for their misogyny, racism, homophobia, and religious intolerance.*
Right. Apparently a lot of people cast their vote in large part to keep from electing a smart, successful, highly capable but NON-WHITE WOMAN with a JEWISH husband.
Right. If you have money, you will be affected far, far less then those who need the ACA for their healthcare, or who will depend upon Social Security and Medicare.
There are two Americas. It’s also true that there are many people who don’t follow the news like we do, who don’t get into politics like we have had to over the past eight years, and only see that things are more expensive for them. Unfortunately, there will always be people who can’t afford stuff, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t look for someone to blame. So many emotions today and right now, I’m really tired of this fight. I don’t know if I can take another four years of the daily Trump shit show because this time the program will be so much worse.
You are so spot on. And that’s what hurts most, is that we DO know so much about all of this because we’ve put in the work of real patriotism. And others not only chose to ignore it with their rose colored glasses, but are actively throwing it back in our faces like we were the ones gaslit and duped by our party. Ugh.
They know what he's like. It's impossible to not know what he's like at this point. I'm not even American and every time I turn on my tv or check my email or jump onto an MMO he's there, his latest insane and cruel tirade being broadcast constantly.
I've actually been telling people that I'm personally done with "the news." (And I'm a journalist! Good thing I focus on sports.) I was going to say that regardless of the outcome. I'm exhausted. I spent so much time compiling thorough logical arguments based on all of the evidence, but I'm not reaching the people who matter.
One of the aspects feeding this entire experience is that these voters were given permission, nay encouragement, to be the absolute worst of themselves at all times, and in every possible way. Everyone can have a bad or negative side, but now it's the "through and through awfulness" that is rampant.
I agree some uninformed/misinformed voters might have voted because of “cost of gas and groceries” like I see making the rounds. I also think that is as easy cover for most having deeper grievances with a world that scares them or just any form of selfishness was actually sufficient. Which is why it is my challenge to not hunker down in my own self needs right now after 9 years of trying to care about ALL of us .. just like the rest of you here were trying.
Women and girls having power, (newer) immigrants and trans and LGBTQ+ who might speak or look different than them became easy scapegoats and christianity was a means to spread propaganda every week regardless of whatever facts might be in publication or on television (which billionaires already corrupted anyhow). I saw an online sermon in Tampa called Politics and Religion where the young white pastor never directly said vote for Trump but said it was all of their duties to put their church even ahead of their country. That meant three things he said. 1) They had to vote “morally” and to protect the unborn. 2) They had to vote to protect religious freedom so Christians would not be arrested or stopped from preaching and showing their values anywhere (the founders of our country believed separation of church and state meant only the state needed to stay out of church but church should be in government and state he said). 3) The church members needed to be in government and political positions.
I was getting nervous the last few days here in my lost state of FL by hearing people were voting for Trump that I assumed were not voting at all or were in attacked groups was more and more apparent. My neighbors are Puerto Rican and were angrily preaching and Venezuelans taking over their home town of Chicago. Another distant family member of mine down here who is Puerto Rican and raised her kids in New York posted on Facebook immediately after the “garbage island” comment some video of a Puerto Rican gay tiktoker claiming the comedian worked for Kamala and other conspiracies that justified looking the other way “because Puerto Rico was corrupt right now anyhow and Trump will fix that” versus obviously sexist, racist hints about Harris. My female cousin mislead me to believe she and her gun loving husband weren’t political but then casually said they had to eat dinner late because he and his mom were off voting. So he voted and she would get glassy eyed and change the subject when I mentioned she should vote because her (and her two daughters!) rights are on the line and then reason they cannot afford to live is because the Repubs let the child tax credit expire. Every summer it got them through since she is a teacher’s aide at our public Title 1 elementary and she is unpaid summers and their house always needs a million repairs. I am sure he is a Trump fan because her husband is already in fear of a world unkind to his love of guns and ability to mansplain. And my AA friend told me her sponsor, a 40 something women, voted for Trump because she is in a “military” family and “we can’t be the police of the world”… ie Russian propaganda about Ukraine ignited her selfishness. Her early 20s daughter had to be convinced to vote and apparently came back gleeful because she voted for Trump just like her friends had.
I would suggest that if you want to know where this is heading, you read 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William L. Shirer. When I saw him in the black and yellow, proud-boys-colors MAGA hat, there was no longer any doubt in my mind.
Ignorance isn’t an excuse. You can choose your educate yourself or stick your head where the sun doesn’t shine. They will care when it gets worse and be the first to complain.
Legacy media carries a huge responsibility for the thinking and resulting behavior of red voting Americans who are not what we’d call full MAGA.
Rather than provide factual information delivered in accurate context, which would have felt -at least initially- uncomfortable to the masses, they took the easy path; they massaged the bias.
What is particularly maddening, and frankly unforgivable, is that it was done eyes wide open to the outcome. While the average human has not a clue how their thinking happens, the people running legacy media do. They had an opportunity to shift awareness, and with it thinking and behavior of the masses.
There was a time, long gone, when those at the helm of our major media sources recognized that they held an instrument of massive power within society and with that power came a responsibility to align to the truth; to do and print the facts and the context of those facts even if that carried risk.
Bezo’s decision was the final nail in the coffin of a what was once one of America’s most laudable achievements, a free and fair press.
In the early 1930's in Germany, there were Jews who supported Hitler. It took only a few short years for them to realize how wrong they were to have done that.
Well he will let Bibi do whatever he wants. So the Jews in Israel could be for trump. But I don't think trump does anything to stop the antisemitism in the US. He likely ramps that up. Maybe they should all move to Israel, they will have all the Palestinian lands soon to expand into....
Not exactly - he will keep NETANYAHU safe. And Bibi will now have no restraints at all. Gaza may be about to become a gigantic beachfront condo development.
I don't think a lot of Jews would be upset with that. They have always wanted to expand into those lands they didn't directly control. Getting rid of Palestinians is just icing on the cake after the Hamas attack.
The election of Trump is only going to increase Iran's involvement in Lebanon and Yemen, not to mention their continued domination of Iraq. Now the Iranians have even less of a reason to negotiate, or permit Hezbollah and the Houthis to negotiate with anybody.
Iran's lready got evidence that a second Trump administration is likely going to target them (the drone strike on Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad and the US unilaterally pulling out of the nuclear deal.) A proxy war in Lebanon is the cheapest way for them to fight the US and Israel.
Given Trump's anti-Chinese rhetoric and likely trade war, Xi's also now got an even bigger reason to keep supporting Hamas. The more the US is sucked back into the Middle East, the easier it is for China in the Pacific.
Additionally, what Trumpists (and Bibi) really don't understand is the same thing W and American policymakers didn't understand when the US invaded Afghanistan.
The Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups are "ideas" just as much as they are organizations. You can't militarily defeat ideas. Furthermore, some of these groups will continue to garner support because they provide social services the local government is unwilling or unable to provide.
You can destroy the fighting force militarily, but absent replacing them with a better idea and a more effective government you're going to lose. It's just going to take you longer to lose.
Hamas has already been utterly destroyed as a capable fighting force, and according to a October 28 report issued by the Institute for the Study of War, Hezbollah is "badly damaged" and disorganized.
However, none of this actually matters all that much. If Israel ends combat operations it'll only take a matter of a few months, at most, before Hamas and Hezbollah regroup and rearm or successor organizations form. Especially with the aid of client states like Iran and China.
The people who learned the most from America's 20-year misadventure in the Middle East are the terrorists, Iran and China.
The "best" Trump and Bibi are going to get in Gaza and Lebanon is an Iraq and Vietnam-like quagmire.
We failed the world. The election results have far-reaching consequences way beyond our borders. It may be unintended consequences for those who voted for the felon, but I feel confident that the consequences will be very much intended, indeed.
I already know the effects this is going to have on Australia's economy and our industry. We make most of your prescription meds. We supply a decent amount of your food. And you have such a horrifically tight hold on our metaphorical nads that our choices are either roll over and take it or risk a huge hit to our economy for refusing to.
Words cannot express the damage this GOP victory is going to do to the whole world.
I don't quite understand. We are still going to need meds and food. Sounds like you guys are in a great position to negotiate. Although we are going to go into a depression and won't be able to afford anything. Why not look at other trading partners? I know the UK is desperate for more trading partners since they lost the EU.
That thing I said about the metaphorical nads? I mean it. We're so tightly tied into you, especially since the rotten orange's first term happened to coincide with the last LNP (our GOP equivalent) term. We are so entwined with you that the only reason we won't have an entire economic collapse is China's obsession with our mining industry. Add to that the fact that Scott Morrison sunk some very important military deals with France and Germany in tRump's favour and we're in deep shit.
Sorry about that. We are definitely going down the toilet. But we will always need drugs and food. Especially the food since our farming industry is going to be decimated without any workers. You guys can name your price, we will have few options.
Thanks for all you do, Jay. After the shock of it, I figured it boiled down to inflation. Explaining how that's gotten better is an academic lecture, all people see is higher prices and bigger grocery bills and aren't interested in a lecture when they "feel" bad about it. The racism and misogyny are the fun bonus of all of this. We'll need a new plan going forward, just don't know what that looks like.
People just don't seem to understand how much tariffs are going to implode the price of goods here in the US. He says "don't want to pay tariffs, move your plants here". He doesn't understand manufacturing. One does not pick up a plant and move it. Prices are high now due to corporate price gouging, they will just increase now because they can use tarffs as an excuse.
It scares me. The logistics of rounding up and deporting millions of people are too complicated--by air, or rail? Countries are not going to take on millions of deportees when they're already in dire straits. I fear many won't be deported, but will be rounded up, put in holding pens, and then mysteriously disappeared.
People talk a lot about how that tariff will affect prices. But since other countries will retaliate, many export-based companies many go under, triggering unemployment and recession at the same time as that inflation, so stagflation. And since Trump needs no Congressional approval, it is something he really can do on day one. Then if he really starts a mass deportation effort, that will cause more inflation. I told my friends to look at the bright side: Democrats will have a knock-out midterm in two years.
The resulting chaos is the point; when civil unrest arises out of the chaos, the time will be ripe for the government to ‘step in’ and ‘fix it’. Trump remains a puppet, a tool of the monied class which will now control the entire program…sad.
Actually, true Fascists figure out how to manipulate the monied class to their own interests. It remains to be seen who will do the more manipulating here. Trump may well not even live out his term - he won't be thinking long term to make the corporations happy. They will get their way on the things he doesn't care about, but the monied classes mostly do not support broad tariffs or mass deportations. We will see.
Spot-on. There was a mismatch of expectations. Many people don't know exactly what inflation is, just that it has to do with grocery prices. Inflation did go down, but people expected prices to return to the previous levels.
They’re about to find out in January that Trump can’t do anything to lower grocery prices..unless the grocery stores were in cahoots with him to get him elected!
You are mostly right. One fundamental problem we've had ever since Reagan is that our definition of "strong economy" is warped. An economy that does not benefit the middle and lower classes isn't a strong economy, no matter how the stock market performs.
There is another aspect: a lot of the stock market rise is artificial. Today, companies don't pay dividends any more, but instead do stock buybacks. Investors then get paid back by a rising stock price (which gets better tax treatment), but a side effect is that, well, stock prices are rising without an underlying cause.
Not sure here is the spot to write this. How many people crying about grocery bills also have cash for NFTs, fake sneakers, and red hats?
I understand that it’s tough, but FFS, make some thoughtful choices about what you blow your money on if you think the price of a loaf of bread is Joe Biden’s fault.
No quick fixes and I hope it’s not too late for anything to save us.
Thank you, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and Joe Biden. And Jay Kuo.
Estimated that at least 50 Million will either loose healthcare altogether or be priced out. Welcome back pre-existing conditions exemptions and look forward to children dying of Type 1 diabetes and cancers or be forever uninsurable.
The most of the people who voted REpub only watch News Max, Oan and similar stations. I have watched both types and you don't see anything negative about djt, only praises.
Thank you for not placing blame. The next few years are going to be very hard. Many of us will need to rest and recover before we are ready to fight like hell. And that’s just what we’re going to have to do.
YES, THIS!! I am SO angry and confused. Bad enough that what we hoped was the excitement of those new young voters was not for her....but to not vote at all??
It does seem fishy. I think Biden should have a recount. And I can’t fathom his handing over our democracy to fascists. I know our Constitution requires he does so, but this is a unique situation.
It is simply not who he is. He swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. And that is what he will do until his last second in office. And that Constitution at this point, contains the seeds of its own destruction, but Mr. Biden will not be able to bring himself to go against a single word of it.
he'll hand it over, and unlike Trump, will provide good information for the handover. He is an institutionalist. He'll do what is "right" no matter what. Trump will start off in much better shape than Biden did, because of that.
Sadly, for us, you are right. Biden is an institutionalist. Lots of people on chats are placing their hopes in Biden doing something what with the leeway the SC has given the president.
I've had the same question myself. Both candidates drew fewer votes than last time, and the D vote plummeted. Eventually, we'll have an answer or answers for this, but it's dumbfounding.
Thank you for sharing this, you could see, last night on the election coverage and polling, that Harris's numbers weren't as high as Biden's had been. Those were the people that apparently didn't like either choice. They wanted a change but not trump and saw Harris as an extension of the Biden administration and not a change. Also, could be some who just won't vote for a woman.
I understand what you are saying, but I have a hard time understanding that so many people are that ignorant. How can someone who is a convicted felon, facing more federal charges, lies incessantly to the American people, and does not make sense possibly win this election. Not to mention he did not really mount a decent campaign. Maybe it will make sense down the road, but I fear for our way of life.
None of those facts mattered. The majority wanted what he was selling - the grievance, the hatred, the ugliness. Watch for it to very quickly filter down to lower levels.
There are a lot of low information voters who simply haven't been paying attention to any of that. Saw that recently in my family. She said she was going to vote for Trump because of the grocery prices. When I reminded her that Trump was a known liar who wouldn't actually fix grocery prices, she indicated that she vaguely recalled hearing some rumors to that effect.
Brenda, it will make a lot more sense if you read Ruth Ben-Ghiat's book Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall. It was published in 2000. A history professor who specializes in fascism, authoritarianism, and propaganda, she shows how trump comes from the same mold that produced Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Gaddafi, Berlusconi, Pinochet, and Putin. In words and deeds, trump is a member of that club, and a substantial percentage of Americans have no problem with that, alas.
I also fear for our way of life, too. I'm embarrassed about the things this says about us, as a country, to our allies. It appears that the majority of the country voted for a shiny object in the room rather than stability.
He probably won’t even show up for the scheduled sentencing and dare the court to do anything about it. Even though he isn’t yet actually president. Will they go arrest him? After seeing how he’s been so gently handled so far, I doubt it.
In my dreams, he gets put in prison for the conviction he already has, and is not allowed to pardon himself from there. In reality, he puts the judge in prison, then has him executed.
He is never going to spend so much as a minute behind bars. Right or wrong, that is how it will be. He will likely get fined. And refuse to pay it - "whaddya gonna do - jail the POTUS? Come get me. Just try it."
He will, as he has done his entire life, Get. Away. With. It.
I agree, Jay. The Harris Walz campaign was historically flawless, but the American people apparently prefer a narcoleptic orange fart factory fascist. I am so ashamed to be part of the ethnicity (WHITE) that is inflicting this asshat on our country.
Well stated. Tom Nichols has a piece in the Atlantic today. That is worth everyone’s time.
The triumph of the right wing media machine needs to be recognized. Their willingness to distort, misrepresent, and falsify, any- and everything for political gain produced this result. Furthermore, we can now plainly see that Sulzman, Bezos, and other mainstream media cowards made a good business decision rather than a principled journalistic one. They contributed materially to Trump‘s ultimate victory. The fourth estate as originally constituted is officially dead.
Absolutely right. Moscow Mitch will be seen as the architect of America’s downfall and Merritt Garland will be seen as an incredibly weak, effete and indecisive Attorney General.
Precisely right. If Garland had not been a temporarizing, timid ass, Trump would have been indicted for inciting a riot and conspiracy etc. no more than three months after January 6. He would have been tried and likely convicted, and probably given some criminal sentence. OR, if McConnell -- who said explicitly that Trump had incited the violence of Jan. 6 -- had decided America had had enough of Trumpism, he could have voted to impeach and remove him, and that would have been the end of Trump's political career. Instead he preferred the MAGA GOP in the end.
The Democratic ticket was perfect. The campaign was beautiful. I truly held out hope. I'm now simply numb with grief and pain. I will get up and fight, but not today.
Nope, it was not perfect. Tim Walz was an unforced error although it probably would not have changed the outcome. Andy Beshear is a better speaker and could have helped in the South. Everyone's first thought about a VP choice is "would they make a great president if necessary" and nobody wants to hear their president say "yulk, sometimes I just a big knucklehead".
It’s not anyone’s fault except those who voted red. Hope isn’t a plan it’s a state of mind. We all hoped America was better than this. We built our lives on hope that this was a better America. It’s young and has acted impulsively. Never acknowledging that by putting this very poor excuse for a man on the ballot again they were signing our country’s hope to the gallows. Everyone rest up. Think about how insignificant we are to the universe. We will all die. The “ great” civilizations on which our democracy was fashioned all died. If this is our future, if we will be dug up and analyzed by the future I want my corpse to carry a card that said, “ SHE TRIED!”
Peace and Love to all! We live to fight… to the end.
It is also the fault of people who voted for Biden but did not vote for Harris, which is probably at least 10 million people.
And that's the misogyny part.
Not to mention the racism. I had hoped that we learned something from history.
Racism is endemic here, coupled with misogyny, it is simply who we are, sadly.
Also the fault of those who withheld their vote in protest against... something....
Also, 47 is about as anti-Semitic as they come. Well, he’s anti everyone who doesn’t curry his favor, preferably with enormous sums of money. And unending praise.
He's also Islamophobic. Just like our current commander in chief...
That's bullshit.
Why don't you ask the Palestinian American who quit the Biden administration because HE saw Biden's islamophobia first hand...
Oh fuck you… Stein is in Putin‘s pocket
Wow.. classy... You do know that if you took every vote that was 3rd party and put it on Harris, she still would have lost the popular vote, right? Your anger is very misplaced. I hope your day gets better......
trump instituted a Muslim ban and plans to do it again. I also read that he plans to ban Gazans from coming to the US. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-vows-expand-travel-ban-gaza-rcna120711
You think we don't already know that? He's also gonna let the military shoot pro-Palestine protesters like me. We are extremely aware of the politics of both parties.
I was appalled by the number of people who decided not to vote as a protest, sometimes against women, sometimes against people of color, and sometimes just because they had always voted Republican, but decided they couldn't, and just didn't vote. All of these withheld votes helped Trump.
against "something"??? Something like a holocaust???
I can be in favor of Israel and totally opposed to Netanyahu. Sorta like loving America but opposing 47.
What do you think that accomplished? Do you think old dump will honor their wishes or do you think he'll deport them?
It accomplished my ability to sleep at night because I didn't vote for genocide. And my Palestinian and Arab American friends voted the same.. Stein got 22% of the vote in Michigan. And so many of them don't care.. asking them to vote for Harris or Trump is like asking "which one do you want to bomb your family?" Why the hell would they vote for that?
Hope you enjoy seeing those Palestinian and Arab American friends being deported. Enjoy it! Maybe you can buy up their property on the cheap.
trump has given Bibi carte blanche. Don't expect there to be a Gaza left or any Palestinians for that matter.
But good for you! You are the best little white soul in the world.
Most democratic voters disagreed with biden on gaza, it is the people who support human rights here who will suffer under fascism. I hope you sleep well when american protestors are shot in the street and when people are dragged off to jail or executed for opposing trump. Your clean conscience has only brought down the boot of dictatorship on 330 million people in america, we the people of america are who you voted against. Poor people with disabilities will lose healthcare, housing, medical care. Without democracy there is no path to progress on any issue. And you and all who refused to vote for harris have killed democracy and thrown the vulnerable amongst us to the fascist wolves.
She did not get 22% of the vote in Michigan. Not even close.
NEVER AGAIN! Yet it seems it’s on the doorstep of every country in the world. Or has one foot in the doorway already. ✡️🇺🇸
And then tell us we deserve Trump.
I don't know how accurate that 10 million number is, but even a fraction was too many. I thought the willingness to sell out our country in a fit of pique was characteristic of only Trump supporters. How wrong I was, and about so many things. Until yesterday, I believed that most Americans were basically good people. They are not.
Its 16 million I think
Greedy and Self-Centered, Entitled and Misogynistic, GULLIBLE, sound-bite believing voters.
When Obama was elected, I naively believed that we had finally become a nation that didn’t see color.
I COULD NEVER HAVE BEEN MORE WRONG.
My hope is for a color blind, critical-thinking country that can listen, read, analyze and discern fact from fiction.
I remain hopeful.
You're right—history shows that no civilization lasts forever.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Oh man... what a perfect -although organized- representation of my jumbled thoughts and feelings.
She ran a perfect campaign and still lost. She kept asking "is this who we are" and she got her answer. None of us could really get our heads around people who were willing to return a NY mobster and a Russian asset to the Whitehouse, but his followers came through for him. We are in a world of hurt. He, himself is not smart, but he has some very dedicated, smart fanatics working for him. My guess is that there are already plans to turn his Proud Boys, Aryan Nation, KKK, and other sundry nasties into his own SS troops.
I agree with you. Those 70+ million people are as awful as you can imagine. Angry, resentful, full of vengeance. We need to know more about what has made them that way, sociologically and psychologically. And they are not going away. Unless we understand what motivates someone to vote for a sexual predator, mobster and Russian asset, we will never be able to make a dent.
I don't effing care why they are that way. I would like them to crawl back under the rocks they came out from.
This bizarre idea that if you just listen enough you are going to change their minds is stupid. Mind numbingly stupid.
If we don't understand what has brought them to this, we will never be able to counter their dominance. But I don't mean listen to them -- nothing will change their minds. You are correct, they are mind numbingly stupid (and very very dangerous). However, the origins of their rationality, may give us clues as to how to overcome them. There is something very fundamentally wrong with millions of Americans and they are not going away. We have seen the enemy and they are us.
For them reality is just another tv show, video game or carnival. They vote for him because he keeps them entertained, as in "Tune in for the next episode..." Their own lives are vapid and they are on the margins, but he brought them together and now they "belong" to Maga, something they see as bigger than themselves even if it's just a dark cloud of bigots and sado-masochists. The only thing that will force them into serious thought is a national crisis of such vast proportion that I don't want to think about it. War, space aliens, cataclysmic natural disaster, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, etc. Anything short of that will not move the needle until the radical rights SS comes kicking in their own doors.
Good luck with that. You'd have better luck teaching chimps to talk.
We have seen the enemy and they are them!
I think it is in part our collective human history of extremely high rates of child maltreatment (>50% for 1+ kind) combined with lack of community support, socio-economic inequality, poor political literacy and being raised in cultures where success is seen as a zero-sum game (ie you'd better align with the schoolyard bully or you'll be bullied).
People with unhealed trauma (absolutely not everyone) can sometimes externalise a lot and project their more legitimate feelings of victimhood onto unrelated situations because of emotional flashbacks. I have come to realise recently there is even a lot of grief in us for being in positions of privilege or colonisation (see: Japan) and working through these things is not easy and not many people are doing this work professionally (Richard Schwartz who invented IFS talks about legacy burdens and this is hugely useful).
Also not easy because narcissists and psychopaths (the schoolyard bullies) are superficially convincing and charming and provide these con-man quick fixes which people stick to when they're in that state of fight/flight.
I agree with you. I also believe childhood trauma that is unresolved is much more common in the US than any of us know. I believe that that this is a factor, among the others you mention, that explains why people would vote for a narcissistic bully who never had their best interests. I would like to know about the work of Richard Schwartz and will look him up.
We know
https://www.cdc.gov/aces/about/index.html
We know
https://www.cdc.gov/aces/about/index.html
Many years ago, I was the director of an organization that worked with those who had experienced domestic violence. Somewhere, I came across the work about Adverse Childhood Experiences and it was a revelation. It helped explain so much. And I continue to believe that millions of Americans have had a significant number of those ACE's and it has influenced their lives in every possible way. I wish there was more discussion of this and its widespread implications and more efforts made to mitigate and/or eliminate those experiences.
100%. I’m almost afraid to go outside, as a woman.
👆👆👆👆👆👆👆🎯
At the end of the day, in 2020; 81.2 million people voted for Biden.in 2024 67 million went for kamala. Roughly 15 million people didn't turn out for blue this time around.
74 million voted for Trump in 2020, and this time, in 2024 he got 71.8 million. So right there you see that there's a HUGE issue with getting people to go out and vote after 4 years of relative comfort and stagnation. The blue party spent it's money poorly, and thought it had certain demographics in its bag. It's not even the fault of those tho went red, as less did now than in 2020, it's the 20 million-ish that stayed home, and didn't even mail in a slip.
Lawrence O'Donnel said something that shocked me to the core last night: 7 million registered voters in CA and NY who aren't voting. Let that sink in. Later, someone said TX had about the same number. So if we want to lay some blame, I think we can start there.
Apathy is deadly.
Especially when one's voters believe empathy is a sign of weakness and have none.
Yes, this is an important part of this tragedy. Why did they stay home?
If someone lives in a state that they feel is going to give the electoral college votes one way or the other, they may feel their vote doesn’t matter. The electoral college is screwing us in more ways than we realize.
This was his point, yes. We’d need a direct popular-vote democracy to answer low-info voters’ constant whine of “what’s in it for meeeeeee?” (I paraphrase)
Very true. But I don't think there is going to be any effort to change it.
Because their votes would not have changed the outcome of the election one iota.
Not in CA, not on the federal level.
Their votes DONT change anything because of the structure of our presidential elections.. specifically the Electoral College. California would go blue for Kamala with or without those votes. Their votes add up to nothing changes in the outcome
I've voted on the west coast and gotten home from the polls as they were announcing the winner. It'll be a long time before all of California's votes are counted so you can be assured her popular vote numbers will rise. All of a Dakota or Wyoming has fewer people than San Diego (let alone Los Angeles) but our votes are basically useless. (I stood in line for 2 solid hours to vote.)
Their votes or lack there of could very well make a difference down ballot.
I'm guessing it's a big mix of things that varies from person to person. Some more benign and some more malignant. I am also wondering how many people who queued for hours without food or water actually even got to vote given the long delays and the bomb threats tho that doesn't explain that huge gap at all.
Tbh just like people deciding to do a protest vote and elect Trump which is also multifactorial.
For example some people may have been complacent (in the context of a country with historically poor voter turnout) while others may have been suffering from despair
There wasn't despair before the election. That a nonsensical argument.
I actually think there was a lot of despair before the election. I think there has been an undercurrent of despair for decades. I also believe that unresolved trauma -- childhood abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence -- plays a huge role in many people's lives -- much more prevalent than we have acknowledged. These people lack empathy and compassion as well as the ability to think critically. What are the factors that have combined to make them this way? What are the factors that have combined to prevent us from being this way? After WW2 there was much psychological analysis of how/why so many "decent" Germans could have followed Hitler and committed such crimes. We need to do some of that same kind of analysis.
Anytime someone says, "Let that sink in," I am done with their argument.
For residents of Earth 2, it doesn't sink in.
Let’s not blame the two states that voted blue. Sorry. But no.
There were more than two states that voted blue.
Yes. I should have phrased better. TY
that's the part I find hardest to understand and to believe in: the low turnout. The ground game looked so strong and the lines so long. do we really believe he won the popular vote?
Voters were purged and ballots weren't counted. I'll never believe it was a legitimate win.
Where did you get that info?
The voter purges were well-reported by media. The non-counting of ballots I haven't seen too many reports on though.
Don't be like them. He won fair and square.
He won the popular vote of people who voted. And many more clearly decided it was too hard, or that nothing would change, if they voted so they stayed home. Reaching them and understanding why they did it matters. We also have to understand that the "activate young men to vote through bro-podcasts" strategy that everyone scoffed at, actually worked for Trump. He made up the ground he lost with voters who care about the rule of law by picking up douchebags.
i know you are most likely correct but right now I'd rather become a conspiracy theorist than face the horrendous facts. my nephew is a joe rogen douchebag.
Don't become a conspiracy theorist. It is comforting yes but once you adopt it, it becomes easier and easier to lie to yourself. I knew someone who went down the 9/11 truther hole and spiraled deeper and deeper to the point where he essentially had to treat it like recovering from alcoholism.
For your nephew all you can do is push back against what he says. He may not like it, but better to have someone in his life calling him out, then everyone going silent and letting him go. That happened to my friend. It wasn't good.
But giving him the popular vote just gives him more power.
Yes it does. He is claiming and mandate and shedding any pretense that Project 2025 is someone else's plan. We now have to learn from Republians and fight in every way at every level or else the whole thing will be in place overnight.
Some of those standing in line could have been his voters. And most likely were.
Of course.
Blame the apathy of those who feel too comfortable or too safe to bother to push like they did 4 years ago
By the time all votes are counted, Trump will probably match his 2020 vote. I don't think the Harris campaign did anything wrong. Nothing more could have been done, at least with the conditions we had. If it was a close loss, I might say that a white male candidate could have won - that's why Dems chosen Biden four years ago, after all. But it wasn't that close, so I don't think that would have changed the result.
I would bet there were a lot of Blue that voted for Trump over Kamala because he is a white male, or who chose not to vote at all because Kamala is NOT a white male.
Our signs shld also say "I tried!"
Fuck tRump and HIS pardons, Joe Biden must pardon Hunter as a parting shot, no question!
I'd rather he pardon Jack Smith for any and all crimes committed previously or in the future.
Hunter can do whatever, he'll be fine. He does a few years in prison and I think it's federal, so he's more Martha Steward than a guy on death row.
Jack Smith has committed no crimes.
I know that and you know that but it doesn't matter to maga. What crimes did Liz Cheney commit? And trump wants her killed. I don't like her political views, but I can accept her as an opponent. What crimes did HRC do? He wants her locked up if not killed.
IT DOESN'T MATTER IF IT'S LAWFUL OR NOT, he wants revenge and who can stop him? He's has blanket immunity according to SCOTUS
And for those reasons and so many others, I am deeply fearful of what our future portends. I'm 77 years old, and Never thought something or someone like this could happen to the U.S. And that includes the legacy of St. Ronald and all his ilk.
Same here. I just got on medicare. so I'm about 10 years younger.
I thought people were better than this. Turns out they are not and are likely worse than I ever imagined. I'm out of sympathy for others. And I'm culling my charity giving to local groups when I know the help is going to help blue areas.
Fight to the end? Nice sentiment, but this IS the end. This is the end. Why didn't we get rid of gerrymandering while we had the chance?
No, it just feels like it. We tried so hard!!! In books and movies there’s immediately a happy ending. This time for us is when the rubber meets the road. Is the America we hoped for also worth fighting the long fight for? I believe so. I’m not sure what waits ahead, I just KNOW it’s my vision that’s worth fighting for. Be strong. Rest and come back stronger.
All these people voting against their own self interest is just incomprehensible.
I think a vast amount of people that believe trump will improve their economic standing, saw their vote as a free lottery ticket. So, now, like so many lottery winners, they will now be rendered powerless when they're confronted by the powerful, unforeseen consequences their choice ushered into their lives.
And ours
And as a 74 yr old, inflation will continue And heaven help the US economy if the Trump tariffs are enacted or the expulsion happens of migrant workers.
I'm the same age. It's a tragedy that we have to end our lives with the Trump future hanging over our children and grandkids.
amen
I’ll be 70 in July. I’m still working, I was holding off on collecting my social security, but now I’m afraid I might not be able to collect.
I would say count on both of them.
Yes. Social security and medical care undermined, and the income gap made even larger.
Really sad.
Powerful thought.
They’ve been doing it for 8 years and either haven’t noted the results, or they like the pain. Just wait till the tariffs kick in. that’s gonna be fun to watch.
Unfortunately, the tariffs are also going to kick in for those of us who voted for Harris.
I realize that, but I can't stop the tariffs or the bad government. My plan would be to make them own it.
That said, I don't know how I'm going to protect my retirement savings.
Same here..we were self employed and put away as much as we could. We have no employer pension…it’s going to get rough.
self employed here too. Buying your own insurance just became a nightmare if the ACA is the first to go along with SS and MC.
I have a pension coming but if a retire tomorrow, it’ll only be about $17,000 a year, now enough to live off of.
collateral damage, and they don't give a damn.
Schadenfreude is one of my favorite desserts!
I was really really hoping for the one where the racist and misogynist was defeated by a woman of color.
I guess the ephemeral cost of groceries was more important that fighting racism and bigotry. I say ephemeral because the political party in power has nothing to do with high grocery prices.
Thank you Judy. yes. I’m not proud of the thought, but I’m willing to own it.
Forced feeding…
They've been doing it for far longer than that - think Reagan.
Farmers already experienced the consequences of tariffs and voted for Trump anyway, apparently, going by results in places like Iowa and WI.
Wondering who the famers are going to employ to plant and pick crops after immigrants are rounded up and tossed out of the country. 97% of the workers on US farms are immigrants.
Also, are they going to get a bail out this time? If there is no bailout, a lot of land is going to go unplanted, beef and chicken will suffer as well.
I don't expect that we will be doing very well in the near future. I figure it will take a year to kick in.
Us old folks who depend on Social Security and Medicare? They can plow our dead bodies under for fertilizer.
Many agribusinesses didn't do too badly with the Trump tariffs because his administration provided a historic amount of taxpayer money.
Yes, agricultural exports to China fell to only $9.1 billion by 2019. However, from 2016-2019 the Trump administration used the Commodity Credit Corporation to provide $28 *billion* in additional subsidies beyond those authorized by Congress.
The CCC is run by a board of directors appointed by the President. It has the authority to borrow up to $30 billion without Congressional approval, and the Secretary of Agriculture has the sole authority to decide how to spend that money. According to the Congressional Research Service, "The corporation’s permanent, indefinite funding authority means that trade aid expenditures are reimbursed annually as a net realized loss, thus increasing total federal spending.”
Trump will undoubtedly provide agribusinesses with historic subsidies. I have little doubt the CCC will end up borrowing up to their $30 million satutory limit.
Not if Musk has his way
Trump's Chief of Staff and other cabinet officisals will only let Musk destroy parts of the federal government they don't like or think they need.
Trump's not smart enough to know why he needs the CCC, but his Secretary of Agriculture likely will be. It's not like using the CCC to borrow $28 billon was Trump's idea. Because it didn't involve him having to sign anything, I seriously doubt he even knows where that money came from. Trump just knows that "he" provided money to farmers (which he bragged about in 2019.)
They'll gut the rest of the USDA, but the CCC will stay. Remember, for Republicans corporate welfare is completely acceptable. I wouldn't be surprised if big agribusinesses got most of that $28 billion.
I will like asking them when it's going to be fixed. Why has trump raised all the prices. Why aren't THEY fixing this. They blamed us for everything, I don't think they are going to like having the shoe on the other foot.
But likely they will blame Biden no matter what the reality is.
Except that we all have to live it, too.
My sister is one of those. She said she didn't believe Trump would do all the hateful things he said. Her ignorance (and others') will have a rude awakening in the coming months and years.
But she was willing to vote for someone who said that he would. What does that say about her? What does that say about all of them?
It says that they’re just plain stupid
Yea. This has been the proposition since before the founding. A multi-class coalition cleaved on race and other identities. The elites thrive when the underclass think they have more in common with billionaires than with themselves.
Or when the rich convince a large group of the poor that some other group of poor people are to blame, not them.
Wishful thinking.
I think a lot of it is ignorance along with grievance. My son, age 19, voted for Trump. All along as I’ve talked to him, he just never understood (or believed) facts about how inflation happens and who can or can’t change it, or what a vice president’s job is or isn’t, or the vast history of wars in the Middle East and how US presidents have never been able to stop them, or the grievance beliefs of Russia right now that look so similar to those of Germany in the 1940s. This young adult got a public school education but almost no knowledge of civics or history, and he doesn’t think mom knows anything right now. I think there are an awful lot of kids like him out there.
Insecure, hostile sexism/racism
It's actually quite common.
If you think someone is voting against their self interests, you probably don’t understand what they’re interested in.
Macho, low education males have a lot to gain from a Trumpified World. He promises status, which comes with women and the historic power such men had in society. You think that vote for Trump was against their interests?
Older folks on fixed income, particularly uneducated ones that don’t understand globalized economics, suffered greatly from high inflation. Trump promised easy answers to their biggest problem (even though it’s nonsense and his policies are likely to exacerbate inflation). You think they were voting against their interests?
Dems have to get over the condescending tone. Whether that means clearly educating folks, or what…. I don’t know. But telling folks that they are stupid or don’t understand is not going to bring them home.
And some folks just need to be outvoted. Toxic men that want women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen while they watch pro wrestling and MMA may not ever be swayed by a party that advocates women’s rights and social equality….
But that means the Dems have to show up and vote…. And whether that was because of Gaza, Biden, or whatever reason…. We didn’t this year. And those that show up get to rule. That isn’t the Trumpers fault, and is something we have to own.
Not if its virtually impossible to reach or convince those that they are doing that.
They think they were voting against "inflation". They are truly uneducated. They don't recognize how lucky we were to come out of the pandemic with an economy in such good shape. There was also a staggering level of Big D Energy behind this victory. Hence the engagement of young men, many of whom are undereducated and spend a huge amount of time playing video games. They did not think about their mothers or sisters. Or if they did, they didn't care. Or they thought all the money they expect to get was more important. Good luck with that. Also, the dems have not addressed how those of us in the lower 50% are experiencing this economy, and Trump took full advantage of that. He will not improve things - he will worsen them - howeveer he has a gift for getting all kinds of mileage out of lies and fairy tales. His sick sick fairy tales.
An important thing to remember ...
A lot of people don't follow the news. As angry as I am with the NYT and WaPo and everyone else for "sane-washing" and for normalizing the idea of a convicted felon and confirmed rapist as our president, would it have mattered if they didn't?
These aren't evil people. They just want to live their daily lives.
So all they know is that they're paying more for groceries.
And I for one don't know how to explain to them that (A) that's not the Democrats' fault and (B) there's a lot more at stake.
Sorry, but we all just want to live our daily lives. They could’ve just lived their lives AND voted for Harris/Walz, just as we did. Yet they were drawn to an out racist instead of Hillary, Biden, or Harris. Why? I think his voters love what he says. Remember Arendt’s “banality of evil”? I do think that those who vote for fascists aren’t exactly good people. Maybe not “evil” but accomplices to evil-doing.
I sadly agree. They voted for the cruelty, the retribution, the justifying of their grievances. This time around, they know who Trump is and it's what they want.
Thank you. They did. It’s misery all around. I can’t believe this is happening.
Thanks to everyone on this thread. I'm numb. I understand nothing.
We will now not be able to just live our daily lives. We are going to have government in our dr’s offices. I wonder how long it’s going to be before there is a national religion. I also wonder if trump will even bother to take an oath of office. And watch for the military parade at the inauguration.
I also fear greatly for the future of Social Security and Medicare.
and goodbye Obamacare. They'll cut taxes for the rich and corporations then cry about the deficit and that will be end of most safety net programs. And Lord help you if there's a natural disaster in a state that voted blue.
If they get rid of FEMA, Lord help you if there is a disaster in a red state as well
Or a Blue state. FEMA serves them all.
And here my husband and I are. Turning 65 in Feb. and Mar. What have we worked for our entire adult lives just to have it yanked away by an orange, deranged, etc?
If he does take an oath of office, as he supposedly did before, he again won’t honor it. The same can be said for most of the republican MAGAt senators and congressional representatives.
The Pride Bands Alliance has been invited to march in the inaugural parade. Wonder how that is going to go. I will not be joining them.
They will probably get things thrown at them if they march.
I hope they don't. It would look like endorsing him.
I thought and said that he was an evil man when he won in 2016. Even then I couldn't believe that the American people voted for him over Clinton. As a Canadian I am horrified that he could be elected again! So sad!
They felt validated by his various isms. They agree with him and he made them feel good about it. He brought all the assholes out into the open and gave them red hats. At least we know who they are now.
I agree that we all want to live our daily lives, but I think you are missing the greater point in what Beau Dure says… “So all they know is that they're paying more for groceries.”
They are not paying attention to anything beyond the fact that they are paying more for groceries. They are ignorant, and ill informed.
But undoubtedly a reality check is in the future
There is such a degree of intellectual dissonance, though, will they even make the connection? It’ll be someone else’s fault, but never the government.
You are probably right.
I had an unrelated but telling incident occur last week. I was walking to my car through a crowded parking lot. There was a line of cars waiting for someone to back out. As I was walking between two cars, the car in front of me started to back up. I slapped the trunk, not hard but loud enough for the driver to hear. She rolled down her window and said to me in a nasty scolding voice “you have to be careful when cars are backing up!“
My first thought was that she must be a Trumper.
The reality is that those groceries are going to get a lot more expensive. No farm workers to get it to the market, tariffs on produce and commodities coming into the country…that’s when the reality of their choice will come to roost at their door.
Yes, that’s what I meant by reality check
And sadly, at everyone’s door. The rest of us are collateral damage. We will suffer for their votes.
They actively want to maintain the status quo - the one where White, cis-het males rule. I will never understand the women, POC, and others who are what his base sees as "other" who buy into this, but here we are.
But, as the total votes illustrate, they didn't vote for Trump - they just didn't vote at all.
I think misogyny played a part as well.
They *are* bad people.
This normalization of Trump voters really needs to stop. They voted for homophobic, transphobic, racist policies that are going to actively harm millions of Americans. They are bad people, and Democrats *really* need to stop sugar coating this fact. Hillary was 100% right. In fact, she was being kind.
Racism and bigotry was "baked into" the American experiment from the beginning. We have managed, at great cost, to beat it somewhat back into submission only once, and that took 100 years *after* the conclusion of the Civil War. Republicans embraced bigotry once again with Reagan's "dog whistles," like his campaign stop in Philadelphia, MS. The GOP fully embraced bigotry in their attempt to defeat President Obama. In 2015-16, the Trumpists used it to eat whatever small redeemung parts remained of the GOP's soul.
Furthermore, an "academic lecture" is *exactly* what the Trump voters needed, they just don't like it.
Democrats and a (very) small number of Republicans have actually been saving Republican voters from themselves for *years.* This includes Congress legislating changes to certain programs so benefit checks go out even during a government shutdown, to John McCain's "thumbs down."
What Republican voters have made very clear is they're unwilling to learn anything except through personal experience.
It's sadly going to take millions of innocent Americans down alongside them, but Republican voters are going to find out why the economic policies they voted for don't work, and how they voted against their own interest. Unfortunately, because Fox News, Carlson and the right wing echo chamber will still be feeding them a constant diet of lies, I'm not confident they'll learn their lesson even after the economy tanks, prices and inflation are higher and they lose their jobs.
Using grocery prices as an example, what they actually blame the Biden/Harris administration for is not "just inflation," but a lack of deflation. They don't understand how bad deflation is, and how taming inflation does *not* mean prices stop rising or go back to where they were "before inflation" (as if such a time existed.)
Furthermore, their other economic "ideas" are just as loony. My parents are MAGA, and they want to go back to the size of the federal government and taxes of the early 1960s...but keeping 21st century salaries, and other "good inflation." It's complete mathmatical and economic lunacy.
When confronted by facts that contravine their accepted beliefs/narrative, they fall back on "agree to disagree" and then go back to Fox News, which tells them things that reinforce their existing beliefs. Conway's "alternative facts" wasn't a joke. They really have constructed their own "alternative facts" on many different issues.
You are correct that Trump voters largely operate on how they "feel" instead of objective reality. We have decades of eroding funding of education to blame for that
Exactly right. The press and Republicans normalized trump - when any one of the myriad of things he did would have sunk anyone else, which let him keep on. This takes it to the next step - stop normalizing ANY of his voters. They all knew what they were getting. Thanks for this.
Okay, yes please let’s go back to the 60s when the wealthiest paid 90% income tax.
I agree with you. However... the wealthy Republicans who voted for their wallets are despicable. They are "educated" and one would think they have the ability to understand history. What does it say that today's stock market is going great guns? I am disheartened and afraid. But I know I will stand back up and fight for this great nation once I've had some time to grieve. Thank you Jay, and all of you, for being a safe haven.
"... the wealthy Republicans who voted for their wallets"
They also voted for their misogyny, racism, homophobia, and religious intolerance.
They voted against "Not Like Me."
And they will be mystified when they can't get an avocado or some lettuce or strawberries or asparagus, etc., or IF they can, why it costs so damned much. And when they complain, why, they will not understand why the political police are coming to see THEM.
*They also voted for their misogyny, racism, homophobia, and religious intolerance.*
Right. Apparently a lot of people cast their vote in large part to keep from electing a smart, successful, highly capable but NON-WHITE WOMAN with a JEWISH husband.
They will just charge the peons more for whatever crap they sell. The bottom line of the wealthy will not change. Not a loss to them.
Unfortunately, for many folks the things that will cost more are food, medical care and housing. Not a third yacht.
Right. If you have money, you will be affected far, far less then those who need the ACA for their healthcare, or who will depend upon Social Security and Medicare.
There is no explaining anymore. We are a divided country. Period.
There are two Americas. It’s also true that there are many people who don’t follow the news like we do, who don’t get into politics like we have had to over the past eight years, and only see that things are more expensive for them. Unfortunately, there will always be people who can’t afford stuff, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t look for someone to blame. So many emotions today and right now, I’m really tired of this fight. I don’t know if I can take another four years of the daily Trump shit show because this time the program will be so much worse.
You are so spot on. And that’s what hurts most, is that we DO know so much about all of this because we’ve put in the work of real patriotism. And others not only chose to ignore it with their rose colored glasses, but are actively throwing it back in our faces like we were the ones gaslit and duped by our party. Ugh.
That’s why I need to stay in my bubble for a while!
There is no other rational explanation.
They know what he's like. It's impossible to not know what he's like at this point. I'm not even American and every time I turn on my tv or check my email or jump onto an MMO he's there, his latest insane and cruel tirade being broadcast constantly.
The cruelty is the point. They WANT this.
Yes, was formulating this thought this morning. You nailed it, I think.
I've actually been telling people that I'm personally done with "the news." (And I'm a journalist! Good thing I focus on sports.) I was going to say that regardless of the outcome. I'm exhausted. I spent so much time compiling thorough logical arguments based on all of the evidence, but I'm not reaching the people who matter.
One of the aspects feeding this entire experience is that these voters were given permission, nay encouragement, to be the absolute worst of themselves at all times, and in every possible way. Everyone can have a bad or negative side, but now it's the "through and through awfulness" that is rampant.
This is the clearest, simplest explanation for what happened and has been since 1980.
I agree some uninformed/misinformed voters might have voted because of “cost of gas and groceries” like I see making the rounds. I also think that is as easy cover for most having deeper grievances with a world that scares them or just any form of selfishness was actually sufficient. Which is why it is my challenge to not hunker down in my own self needs right now after 9 years of trying to care about ALL of us .. just like the rest of you here were trying.
Women and girls having power, (newer) immigrants and trans and LGBTQ+ who might speak or look different than them became easy scapegoats and christianity was a means to spread propaganda every week regardless of whatever facts might be in publication or on television (which billionaires already corrupted anyhow). I saw an online sermon in Tampa called Politics and Religion where the young white pastor never directly said vote for Trump but said it was all of their duties to put their church even ahead of their country. That meant three things he said. 1) They had to vote “morally” and to protect the unborn. 2) They had to vote to protect religious freedom so Christians would not be arrested or stopped from preaching and showing their values anywhere (the founders of our country believed separation of church and state meant only the state needed to stay out of church but church should be in government and state he said). 3) The church members needed to be in government and political positions.
I was getting nervous the last few days here in my lost state of FL by hearing people were voting for Trump that I assumed were not voting at all or were in attacked groups was more and more apparent. My neighbors are Puerto Rican and were angrily preaching and Venezuelans taking over their home town of Chicago. Another distant family member of mine down here who is Puerto Rican and raised her kids in New York posted on Facebook immediately after the “garbage island” comment some video of a Puerto Rican gay tiktoker claiming the comedian worked for Kamala and other conspiracies that justified looking the other way “because Puerto Rico was corrupt right now anyhow and Trump will fix that” versus obviously sexist, racist hints about Harris. My female cousin mislead me to believe she and her gun loving husband weren’t political but then casually said they had to eat dinner late because he and his mom were off voting. So he voted and she would get glassy eyed and change the subject when I mentioned she should vote because her (and her two daughters!) rights are on the line and then reason they cannot afford to live is because the Repubs let the child tax credit expire. Every summer it got them through since she is a teacher’s aide at our public Title 1 elementary and she is unpaid summers and their house always needs a million repairs. I am sure he is a Trump fan because her husband is already in fear of a world unkind to his love of guns and ability to mansplain. And my AA friend told me her sponsor, a 40 something women, voted for Trump because she is in a “military” family and “we can’t be the police of the world”… ie Russian propaganda about Ukraine ignited her selfishness. Her early 20s daughter had to be convinced to vote and apparently came back gleeful because she voted for Trump just like her friends had.
I would suggest that if you want to know where this is heading, you read 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William L. Shirer. When I saw him in the black and yellow, proud-boys-colors MAGA hat, there was no longer any doubt in my mind.
Ignorance isn’t an excuse. You can choose your educate yourself or stick your head where the sun doesn’t shine. They will care when it gets worse and be the first to complain.
Legacy media carries a huge responsibility for the thinking and resulting behavior of red voting Americans who are not what we’d call full MAGA.
Rather than provide factual information delivered in accurate context, which would have felt -at least initially- uncomfortable to the masses, they took the easy path; they massaged the bias.
What is particularly maddening, and frankly unforgivable, is that it was done eyes wide open to the outcome. While the average human has not a clue how their thinking happens, the people running legacy media do. They had an opportunity to shift awareness, and with it thinking and behavior of the masses.
There was a time, long gone, when those at the helm of our major media sources recognized that they held an instrument of massive power within society and with that power came a responsibility to align to the truth; to do and print the facts and the context of those facts even if that carried risk.
Bezo’s decision was the final nail in the coffin of a what was once one of America’s most laudable achievements, a free and fair press.
AMERICA’S FASCISTS
First, they came for their political opponents.
Then, they came for the free press.
Then, then came for immigrants not of their heritage.
Then, they came for people of color.
Then, they came for people not of their religion.
Yet so many Orthodox Jews believed Trump would keep them and Israel safe.
In the early 1930's in Germany, there were Jews who supported Hitler. It took only a few short years for them to realize how wrong they were to have done that.
😢
Well he will let Bibi do whatever he wants. So the Jews in Israel could be for trump. But I don't think trump does anything to stop the antisemitism in the US. He likely ramps that up. Maybe they should all move to Israel, they will have all the Palestinian lands soon to expand into....
They are correct about that in all likelihood.
Not exactly - he will keep NETANYAHU safe. And Bibi will now have no restraints at all. Gaza may be about to become a gigantic beachfront condo development.
I don't think a lot of Jews would be upset with that. They have always wanted to expand into those lands they didn't directly control. Getting rid of Palestinians is just icing on the cake after the Hamas attack.
No, they're not.
The election of Trump is only going to increase Iran's involvement in Lebanon and Yemen, not to mention their continued domination of Iraq. Now the Iranians have even less of a reason to negotiate, or permit Hezbollah and the Houthis to negotiate with anybody.
Iran's lready got evidence that a second Trump administration is likely going to target them (the drone strike on Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad and the US unilaterally pulling out of the nuclear deal.) A proxy war in Lebanon is the cheapest way for them to fight the US and Israel.
Given Trump's anti-Chinese rhetoric and likely trade war, Xi's also now got an even bigger reason to keep supporting Hamas. The more the US is sucked back into the Middle East, the easier it is for China in the Pacific.
Additionally, what Trumpists (and Bibi) really don't understand is the same thing W and American policymakers didn't understand when the US invaded Afghanistan.
The Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups are "ideas" just as much as they are organizations. You can't militarily defeat ideas. Furthermore, some of these groups will continue to garner support because they provide social services the local government is unwilling or unable to provide.
You can destroy the fighting force militarily, but absent replacing them with a better idea and a more effective government you're going to lose. It's just going to take you longer to lose.
Hamas has already been utterly destroyed as a capable fighting force, and according to a October 28 report issued by the Institute for the Study of War, Hezbollah is "badly damaged" and disorganized.
However, none of this actually matters all that much. If Israel ends combat operations it'll only take a matter of a few months, at most, before Hamas and Hezbollah regroup and rearm or successor organizations form. Especially with the aid of client states like Iran and China.
The people who learned the most from America's 20-year misadventure in the Middle East are the terrorists, Iran and China.
The "best" Trump and Bibi are going to get in Gaza and Lebanon is an Iraq and Vietnam-like quagmire.
And then they came for me and there was no one left to fight 😢
I have the ending sentence on a T-shirt as a constant reminder of he past
Yep. I wouldn’t be shocked if he made friends with Iran, seeing as he prefers dictators and despots to normal people.
Damn right we as a country failed her. What an embarrassment.
We failed the world. The election results have far-reaching consequences way beyond our borders. It may be unintended consequences for those who voted for the felon, but I feel confident that the consequences will be very much intended, indeed.
I already know the effects this is going to have on Australia's economy and our industry. We make most of your prescription meds. We supply a decent amount of your food. And you have such a horrifically tight hold on our metaphorical nads that our choices are either roll over and take it or risk a huge hit to our economy for refusing to.
Words cannot express the damage this GOP victory is going to do to the whole world.
I don't quite understand. We are still going to need meds and food. Sounds like you guys are in a great position to negotiate. Although we are going to go into a depression and won't be able to afford anything. Why not look at other trading partners? I know the UK is desperate for more trading partners since they lost the EU.
That thing I said about the metaphorical nads? I mean it. We're so tightly tied into you, especially since the rotten orange's first term happened to coincide with the last LNP (our GOP equivalent) term. We are so entwined with you that the only reason we won't have an entire economic collapse is China's obsession with our mining industry. Add to that the fact that Scott Morrison sunk some very important military deals with France and Germany in tRump's favour and we're in deep shit.
Sorry about that. We are definitely going down the toilet. But we will always need drugs and food. Especially the food since our farming industry is going to be decimated without any workers. You guys can name your price, we will have few options.
Ukraine is going to have negotiate a "peace" that gives up a large chunk of their nation, if they are even allowed that.
Thanks for all you do, Jay. After the shock of it, I figured it boiled down to inflation. Explaining how that's gotten better is an academic lecture, all people see is higher prices and bigger grocery bills and aren't interested in a lecture when they "feel" bad about it. The racism and misogyny are the fun bonus of all of this. We'll need a new plan going forward, just don't know what that looks like.
People just don't seem to understand how much tariffs are going to implode the price of goods here in the US. He says "don't want to pay tariffs, move your plants here". He doesn't understand manufacturing. One does not pick up a plant and move it. Prices are high now due to corporate price gouging, they will just increase now because they can use tarffs as an excuse.
Not to mention the effects of his immigration policy on the economy.
It scares me. The logistics of rounding up and deporting millions of people are too complicated--by air, or rail? Countries are not going to take on millions of deportees when they're already in dire straits. I fear many won't be deported, but will be rounded up, put in holding pens, and then mysteriously disappeared.
And when millions of workers in agriculture, dairy, construction, etc., are deported prices will likewise increase substantially.
Meg Athey, If we can even get the products!
People talk a lot about how that tariff will affect prices. But since other countries will retaliate, many export-based companies many go under, triggering unemployment and recession at the same time as that inflation, so stagflation. And since Trump needs no Congressional approval, it is something he really can do on day one. Then if he really starts a mass deportation effort, that will cause more inflation. I told my friends to look at the bright side: Democrats will have a knock-out midterm in two years.
trump, paraphrased, to his supporters:
You only have to vote this ONE time.
After that, you don't have to vote.
We will still have elections but the winners will be predetermined.
The resulting chaos is the point; when civil unrest arises out of the chaos, the time will be ripe for the government to ‘step in’ and ‘fix it’. Trump remains a puppet, a tool of the monied class which will now control the entire program…sad.
Actually, true Fascists figure out how to manipulate the monied class to their own interests. It remains to be seen who will do the more manipulating here. Trump may well not even live out his term - he won't be thinking long term to make the corporations happy. They will get their way on the things he doesn't care about, but the monied classes mostly do not support broad tariffs or mass deportations. We will see.
Vance takes over within a year.
Don't assume that there will be midterms on 2 years. Or a general in 4. Or another election anytime thereafter.
They will once it happens!
Nah. They'll still blame Biden/Harris/ the Dems.
They don't know Jack shit, oops
Spot-on. There was a mismatch of expectations. Many people don't know exactly what inflation is, just that it has to do with grocery prices. Inflation did go down, but people expected prices to return to the previous levels.
They’re about to find out in January that Trump can’t do anything to lower grocery prices..unless the grocery stores were in cahoots with him to get him elected!
Right, but it's too late. And by the next election cycle, they would have forgotten that again.
As they forgot Jan. 6 and mishandling (too kind of a word) a global pandemic.
People cited “the economy” as their chief concern in exit polls, notwithstanding that we’d had the strongest in the world.
That will change when DJT’s policies are in place.
And I understand that a strong economy did not benefit the middle and lower classes. But voting for DJT is not going to go the way they thought.
You are mostly right. One fundamental problem we've had ever since Reagan is that our definition of "strong economy" is warped. An economy that does not benefit the middle and lower classes isn't a strong economy, no matter how the stock market performs.
I agree. A strong stock market does not help anyone but corporations’ bottom line, along with upper-class investors.
There is another aspect: a lot of the stock market rise is artificial. Today, companies don't pay dividends any more, but instead do stock buybacks. Investors then get paid back by a rising stock price (which gets better tax treatment), but a side effect is that, well, stock prices are rising without an underlying cause.
Not sure here is the spot to write this. How many people crying about grocery bills also have cash for NFTs, fake sneakers, and red hats?
I understand that it’s tough, but FFS, make some thoughtful choices about what you blow your money on if you think the price of a loaf of bread is Joe Biden’s fault.
No quick fixes and I hope it’s not too late for anything to save us.
Thank you, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and Joe Biden. And Jay Kuo.
Watch their concerns about "high prices" and "inflation" magically vanish after trump takes office, even if the prices are exactly the same or higher.
Wait until they get their Medicare and Social Security privatized. A lot of people who got insurance under the ACA are going to be uninsured as well.
Estimated that at least 50 Million will either loose healthcare altogether or be priced out. Welcome back pre-existing conditions exemptions and look forward to children dying of Type 1 diabetes and cancers or be forever uninsurable.
The most of the people who voted REpub only watch News Max, Oan and similar stations. I have watched both types and you don't see anything negative about djt, only praises.
I agree 100%. And I am sad. Just so sad.
Thank you for taking the trouble, today and everyday, Jay.
Thank you for not placing blame. The next few years are going to be very hard. Many of us will need to rest and recover before we are ready to fight like hell. And that’s just what we’re going to have to do.
2024
66,600,564 Harris
+ 71,649,836 Trump
138,250,400
2020
≈ 81,300,000 Biden
+ ≈ 74,200,000 Trump
≈155,500,000
What happened to the approximately 17,249,600 voters?
YES, THIS!! I am SO angry and confused. Bad enough that what we hoped was the excitement of those new young voters was not for her....but to not vote at all??
I am beside myself.
With all the long lines in red and blue states, it does seem fishy?
It does seem fishy. I think Biden should have a recount. And I can’t fathom his handing over our democracy to fascists. I know our Constitution requires he does so, but this is a unique situation.
It is simply not who he is. He swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. And that is what he will do until his last second in office. And that Constitution at this point, contains the seeds of its own destruction, but Mr. Biden will not be able to bring himself to go against a single word of it.
he'll hand it over, and unlike Trump, will provide good information for the handover. He is an institutionalist. He'll do what is "right" no matter what. Trump will start off in much better shape than Biden did, because of that.
Sadly, for us, you are right. Biden is an institutionalist. Lots of people on chats are placing their hopes in Biden doing something what with the leeway the SC has given the president.
But can’t the SC overrule any Pres they choose?
I AGREE!!!!
Could have been lines of people secretly voting for trump. The young men and white women seem very easily swayed.
I've had the same question myself. Both candidates drew fewer votes than last time, and the D vote plummeted. Eventually, we'll have an answer or answers for this, but it's dumbfounding.
Thank you for sharing this, you could see, last night on the election coverage and polling, that Harris's numbers weren't as high as Biden's had been. Those were the people that apparently didn't like either choice. They wanted a change but not trump and saw Harris as an extension of the Biden administration and not a change. Also, could be some who just won't vote for a woman.
??????
I understand what you are saying, but I have a hard time understanding that so many people are that ignorant. How can someone who is a convicted felon, facing more federal charges, lies incessantly to the American people, and does not make sense possibly win this election. Not to mention he did not really mount a decent campaign. Maybe it will make sense down the road, but I fear for our way of life.
None of those facts mattered. The majority wanted what he was selling - the grievance, the hatred, the ugliness. Watch for it to very quickly filter down to lower levels.
There are a lot of low information voters who simply haven't been paying attention to any of that. Saw that recently in my family. She said she was going to vote for Trump because of the grocery prices. When I reminded her that Trump was a known liar who wouldn't actually fix grocery prices, she indicated that she vaguely recalled hearing some rumors to that effect.
a bit late for that one.
His supporters are probably looking at it as a how-to guide by now.
Only via an audio version.
Brenda, it will make a lot more sense if you read Ruth Ben-Ghiat's book Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall. It was published in 2000. A history professor who specializes in fascism, authoritarianism, and propaganda, she shows how trump comes from the same mold that produced Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Gaddafi, Berlusconi, Pinochet, and Putin. In words and deeds, trump is a member of that club, and a substantial percentage of Americans have no problem with that, alas.
I have read that book along with Autocracy, Inc by Anne Applebaum. Both are frightening in how autocrats can rise.
I also fear for our way of life, too. I'm embarrassed about the things this says about us, as a country, to our allies. It appears that the majority of the country voted for a shiny object in the room rather than stability.
I think the word is slimy
It will never make sense, 10 years from now (if we are recovered) it still won't make sense.
He probably won’t even show up for the scheduled sentencing and dare the court to do anything about it. Even though he isn’t yet actually president. Will they go arrest him? After seeing how he’s been so gently handled so far, I doubt it.
In my dreams, he gets put in prison for the conviction he already has, and is not allowed to pardon himself from there. In reality, he puts the judge in prison, then has him executed.
He is never going to spend so much as a minute behind bars. Right or wrong, that is how it will be. He will likely get fined. And refuse to pay it - "whaddya gonna do - jail the POTUS? Come get me. Just try it."
He will, as he has done his entire life, Get. Away. With. It.
I would “like” that, but I hate it. Maybe there should be an “agree” button instead.
Hitler never had a majority. His party actually had experienced a decline in support when he was appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg
Good points.
I agree, Jay. The Harris Walz campaign was historically flawless, but the American people apparently prefer a narcoleptic orange fart factory fascist. I am so ashamed to be part of the ethnicity (WHITE) that is inflicting this asshat on our country.
“In the end, Kamala Harris did not fail us. We as a nation failed her.
And that is a very hard truth.”
Yes indeed.
Well stated. Tom Nichols has a piece in the Atlantic today. That is worth everyone’s time.
The triumph of the right wing media machine needs to be recognized. Their willingness to distort, misrepresent, and falsify, any- and everything for political gain produced this result. Furthermore, we can now plainly see that Sulzman, Bezos, and other mainstream media cowards made a good business decision rather than a principled journalistic one. They contributed materially to Trump‘s ultimate victory. The fourth estate as originally constituted is officially dead.
Can’t like it, but sadly agree.
Our Senate and DOJ failed us. Let him and lawlessness win.
Absolutely right. Moscow Mitch will be seen as the architect of America’s downfall and Merritt Garland will be seen as an incredibly weak, effete and indecisive Attorney General.
Precisely right. If Garland had not been a temporarizing, timid ass, Trump would have been indicted for inciting a riot and conspiracy etc. no more than three months after January 6. He would have been tried and likely convicted, and probably given some criminal sentence. OR, if McConnell -- who said explicitly that Trump had incited the violence of Jan. 6 -- had decided America had had enough of Trumpism, he could have voted to impeach and remove him, and that would have been the end of Trump's political career. Instead he preferred the MAGA GOP in the end.
The Republican Senate.
I think misogyny and racism are at the root of this devastating result. Democrats only won against That One with a white man.
Well, Hillary did win the popular vote. Of course, she is white.
And Obama won twice. 🤷🏼♀️
With a white man as VP.
The Democratic ticket was perfect. The campaign was beautiful. I truly held out hope. I'm now simply numb with grief and pain. I will get up and fight, but not today.
Nope, it was not perfect. Tim Walz was an unforced error although it probably would not have changed the outcome. Andy Beshear is a better speaker and could have helped in the South. Everyone's first thought about a VP choice is "would they make a great president if necessary" and nobody wants to hear their president say "yulk, sometimes I just a big knucklehead".