I wouldn't mind if somebody on TV mentioned voter suppression and the gutting of the VRA any time now.
— Charles P. Pierce (@ESQPolitics) November 9, 2016
I don’t think I underestimated the level of bigotry & hatred in America. I may have overestimated the concern w defeating it
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) November 9, 2016
The grimly fascinating thing will be watching Trump voters slowly realize he was utterly full of shit on every promise he made.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) November 9, 2016
EVERY PUNDIT ON EVERY NETWORK IS TERRIFIED RIGHT NOW. AND EVERY ONE OF THEM CAUSED THIS TO HAPPEN. #Election2016
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) November 9, 2016
Here's a word we're going to be hearing a lot over the next four years: "kakocracy." https://t.co/BTGH7TC0vl
— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) November 9, 2016
As everyone holds their breath over… again… Florida, remember: we can abolish the EC without an amendment: https://t.co/4g2Od0WPTX
— John Pfaff (@JohnFPfaff) November 9, 2016
seaboogie
So now what?
Thus Spoke Zorro
I like kakistocracy better, I believe it is the actual spelling.
BlueDWarrior
@seaboogie: We do what we did in 2002 when the Senate turned over from Split to R, gird our loins and find the best way to argue against the stupidity of the coming Trump Administration.
Ian
How in the name of fuck did all of the polling miss this?
mkro
Wow, the Repubs will have the golden trifecta: WH, Congress & Supreme Court. Mitch McConnell is a genius. And he even was able to get away with stonewalling a SC vacancy for an entire calendar year. BRAVO!
PhoenixRising
Okay, all of you who stayed in your safe states & *voted* as if merely doing the least you can do as a citizen was your entire job…look for a link to my family’s GoFundMe.
Good job, blue state Dems. I told you 8 goddam years ago that they hate our freedom. You said, Black POTUS!!! We won! I said Prop 8, we lost.
Hope you’re sleeping well knowing you did everything you could.
Corner Stone
My only wish would be that people in the media could somehow, in someway, actually pay for this.
Kasie Hunt and others on the very liberal MSNBC being first up.
p.a.
Went to bed 10:30: useless. Never fell asleep so I know this isn’t a nightmare.
Thus Spoke Zorro
My advice: Remain vigilant, suffer no fools, fight the good fight. What else is there to do?
Major Major Major Major
Leonard Cohen
Corner Stone
BECAUSE EMAILS!!
The Dangerman
This.
WTF does the last tweet mean – is Florida close enough for a recount?
ETA: I’m going to have to buy a new TV and if you read about crazed Californian shooting TV, well, that wasn’t me. Just thought it.
piratedan
well, I am sitting here trying to process this….
voters wanted change… so they changed the person who’s party “runs” the country, yet left everything else the same… as if Obama was the problem, despite nearly 60% approval ratings…
so now… Roe vs Wade… gone
VRA… gone
you may see the repeal of gay rights, transgender rights
Putin gets a free hand
mass deportations
ACA gone
tax cuts for the rich
Supreme Court gone
enjoy watching the systematic pursuit of law enforcement against minorities
public schools gutted
scientific funding gutted
climate change progress, reversed
and people voted for THIS.
and the middle class can watch all of this in horror and Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will still not get their jobs back but will be sure ti blame the Democrats for it.
redshirt
Goodbye, Cruel World.
Brachiator
Democracy, we hardly knew ya…
Archon
Do we get to see Trumps tax returns now, or is Trump going to be “under audit” for the next four years?
Diana
@Corner Stone: yeah, from now on, any time anyone complains about anything, I’m going to be, “but Clinton was using a private email server! Doesn’t she deserve to be locked up for that?”
Death Panel Truck
I’m going to get stoned, listen to “God” by John Lennon until I get sick of it, and then go to bed, probably around dawn.
Eric NNY
@seaboogie: Now what?
We keep fighting.
We keep up the struggle.
TO do less is to disrespect our heroes.
MLK.
Susan B Anthony
Harvey Milk
Etc.
We will win because our cause is just.
Breathe and re-group. We’ve been here before 16 years ago. We fought and got BHO for 8 years.
We will persevere.
jl
Wow. I guess better to get the bad news all at once.
Got some messages trying to talk about Trump didn’t really mean all the stuff he said. But I am not consoled. He doesn’t know what he is doing.
Some fools happy since think a war less likely. I see it, a war that is blundered into is a war. Doesn’t make a lot of difference.
Looks like HRC won the popular vote, which is a very small consolation.
How ugly will it get if Trump tries all his empty policies and they don’t work?
Bush III, but worse, since I think Trump is worse than Bush II, by a lot.
I feel sick to my stomach.
Edit: sick about SCOTUS, voting rights, climate. First two may take a generation to recover if things go very badly. Third, may not recover.
PeakVT
@seaboogie: Honestly, there’s not much we can do in the short term except to let the Repukes have the rope they have been so desperately asking for.
After that, though, winning state-level races in 2020 should probably be everyone’s top concern.
Archon
Trump is now one of the most important people in American history, he just shattered movement conservatism and modern American liberalism.
We live in Trumps world now. This is insane
Elizabelle
Dear fucking media: how does “both sides!” sound to you now?
You enabled this. You had the first amendment to protect you, but you were primarily incompetents and cowards and careerists. You became the PR department for the wealthy.
An educated populace is essential to a democracy. You did not perform your duty.
You infotained. You titillated.
I suspect you set fire to your own houses, too. Sad!
piratedan
well, what happens when these lawsuits against Trump start to see the light of day? Does he get to pardon himself?
Bailey
@PhoenixRising:
Seriously? This is who you rage at? Those of us who voted for Clinton, giving her undoubtedly the popular vote margin? Those of us who donate untold dollars and never ever see a campaign actually come speak to us for anything other than being used as an ATM machine. Those of us who lived so far deep in blue that it wasn’t really possible (for me, financially) to put myself up all the way across the country so did my time calling people instead?
Good lord.
Can I rage back? Can I rage against all the times I was called a troll for pointing out some really basic and unmissable flaws about our candidate who was so problematic in so many ways? In being called a troll for pointing out that the Dems have a complete losing economic message in the upper midwest while the candidate sucks down dollars from Wall Street? Did people seriously not consider THAT would be a problem?
Blue states did our job and then some. Rage elsewhere.
fuckwit
@piratedan: The problem is that humans are pretty much idiots, and have a tendency to vote for PEOPLE, not for PLATFORMS.
If those issues were on the ballot and not the people, we’d have a great chance of winning. But that’s not how elections run. They’re personality and popularity contests. Twas ever thus, but our media dials up the stupid to 11.
Dadadadadadada
So, I’ve had a bit of a personal journey the last year or so. I had been extremely religious from birth, and last December I ditched all that and re-thought my life.
tl;dr: Until this very night, I had used profanity maybe five times in my life. Here goes:
Dammit.
Shit.
Fuck.
Motherfucking cocksucking horseshit asshole.
And tits.
Am I doing it right?
jonas
This x1000. Trump has *no fucking clue* what he is doing. A bunch of establishment right-wingers and sundry ideological loons will weasel themselves into the executive and every other branch of government just like they did under GWB and turn our nation over to the 1%. Plus he’s got a GOP Congress top to bottom. The people who elected Trump have no idea what they’re in for. They are so screwed. And we along with them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Archon: there’s no law compelling him to show them, and obviously, most people don’t care
donnah
Richard Engalls, the foreign correspondent for NBC was talking on the panel of commentators and he started spelling out some hard, brutal facts about Trump and his lack of skill and knowlege of foreign affairs and our standing as a world power. He was saying some scary shit, and then Tom Brokaw started to join in.
Chuck Todd said, “Um, you’re scaring me, Richard” and he was dead serious. They all got really quiet. And it pissed me off because instead of talking endlessly about emails, why didn’t any of them ask a few of these questions about Trump’s huge deficits in experience?
We. are. fucked.
Keith P.
I’m finally getting over the shock of all of this. The destruction of the establishment that this will cause will ultimately be good – the pundits, the pollsters. There will be plenty of room in the Democratic party for any moderate #NeverTrumper that is a victim of a purge, so there’s that. And the promises Trump has made are so grandiose so as to require him to either truly make America great or look like a liar. “Believe me” was such a buzzword for him, now he has to back it up in a pretty tight and unfriendly (to some extent…the GOP rallies around winners, to their credit) Congress. He has two years (hopefully) to do his damage.
Linnaeus
Hi everyone.
Drinking a lot now.
Elizabelle
I am not in the least bit interested in hearing the MSM “explain” a Trump victory.
If they were better at explaining, we would not be facing this.
SenyorDave
@Archon: Do we get to see Trumps tax returns now, or is Trump going to be “under audit” for the next four years?
And when will Melania be deported, since she worked here without a work visa she is here illegally.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
A Republican congresswoman (Comstock?) said her internal polling showed her tied with her opponent. She won by ten.
Eric NNY
@Death Panel Truck: I like you’re style. I’LL DO the same.
SiubhanDuinne
One good thing, pretty much all the begging-for-money emails from Dems have stopped.
/snark not snark
Elizabelle
TV’s off, but this, from the NY Fucking Times:
fuckwit
@jl: If we lose this, there is no recovery. Only managed retreat.
Imagine being a liberal progressive in, say, Israel right now? I’m told there is a small enclave of them in and around Tel Aviv. The rest of the electorate has gone full-on Likud right-wing. That’s our future.
The future of America is apartheid. A white rural minority, lording it over a brown and black urban majority.
Irony Abounds
@piratedan: People think the country will muddle through all this, but the fact is nations crumble. Not only will all those terrible things you list happen, but just from a financial standpoint Trump’s fiscal plans are a lot like Kansas’ and we have seen how that works out. This is almost an existential crisis for this country, and don’t be surprised if there are no more free elections as we know it in four years.
enplaned
Racism and misogyny were a big part. But not the only part — the stuff on NAFTA and China trade was not refuted well by Clinton, who was, indeed, about the worst person to be trying to refute it even if she’d had a great response. The fact of the matter is the Clinton name is tightly bound to free trade and other forms of deregulation (like repeal of Glass Steagall) that ultimately hurt a lot of Americans. Conspiracy? Yeah, that’s bullshit, but it’s bullshit that Hillary was especially vulnerable to. Indeed, this is one area where Trump was uniquely Kryptonite — most other GOPers wouldn’t have attacked along that line because their paymasters like free trade and the repeal of Glass Steagall and whatnot.
I do not believe we can lay this solely at the feet of racism and misogyny. Yeah, a lot of it is, don’t get me wrong, the revival of that kind of stuff is horrific. But Trump said a lot of things apart from that which would be meaningful to even those who weren’t racist and misogynist. And I never heard a good riposte from Hillary on that stuff. And again, even if she’d had a good riposte, she was a uniquely bad person to credibly deliver one.
PeakVT
Also, what the fuck, Pennsyltucky? Atrios has some ‘splaining to do.
Lizzy L
@donnah: Shoulda been scared a bit sooner, Chuckie. The rest of us were. Damn, I can’t even talk about the media personalities w/o rage.
dm
This. Very much this. It’s a matter of passing laws in the states that say that the state’s electors in the Electoral College go to the winner of the national popular vote. We can do this, and we can do it without asking Congresscritters or legislators to vote against the system that elected them.
And four years of a Trump Presidency might be argument enough to make it happen.
Nashville fan
I smell a rat . . . sumthin ain’t right . . .
cokane
i feel bad for Clinton, tho i know some want to pile on her. Man is her legacy shot. And you know that stuff is important to her.
The US will survive Trump.
Juju
@seaboogie: I die of a stoke between the age of 60 and 65.
Elizabelle
@enplaned: Good comment.
SenyorDave
@donnah: Chuck Todd said, “Um, you’re scaring me, Richard” and he was dead serious.
its a shame Tom Brokaw and Chuck Todd won’t lose their health insurance, worry about whether their social security will be there for them, or have to deal with fighting in a war with Iran. Nope, but they sure can pass on garbage about the Clinton Foundation.
Lytic
I’m feeling guilty as if I could have done more. What is the best course of action for the next 4 years?
jl
@Keith P.: And how many of us will have a decent chance of voting in two years?
I don’t believe any of Trump’s grandiose policies, he’s said nearly everything on everything. No telling what he’ll do.
Preserve Social Security? Build a Wall next to Mexico? Infrastructure investment? No telling what he’ll do.
Worst case is he will rubber stamp GOP legislation.
Best case is he does stick to some of his more moderate positions, and the xenophobia and bigotry was to win the election… but, bottom line, he doesn’t know what he is doing.
I think he is bone deep bigot and that won’t change, though I doubt he sees himself that way (which might be dangerous in itself).
I think he sincerely sees foreign policy as an extortion racket. That is dangerous.
Soylent Green
They won’t realize any such thing because they thrive on bullshit and he is the master. He will keep right on pulling their strings indefinitely.
enplaned
@donnah: Yeah, fuckheads, NOW you’re asking the right questions. Only now.
Unfortunately, I expect the media to tie on kneepads, attach bibs and drop to their knees in front of Trump. 2016, both here and in Europe, is all about the failure of the elites coming home to roost, and the media is among the front of said pack.
Juju
@Corner Stone: Thank you for mentioning that. That woman gets up my nose. Yeesh!!
fuckwit
@Elizabelle: Wait, what? The world hasn’t ended yet?
Damn, I got sucked into the self-defeating Democratic pattern of assuming loss and giving up and starting the circular firing squad to blame for the defeat.
My bad.
Fuck, we get to repeat 2000 all over again. In many ways.
Elizabelle
@donnah: Yeah. Fuck them.
The Europeans and Canadians and everyone else could see it. But not our cable news trained monkeys.
Emails! Benghazi! Clinton is so corrupt! And Trump says her husband is a rapist. 24/7.
SiubhanDuinne
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes. I’m not quite there yet, but yes, this.
I think I’ll post that to my FB feed. Not until tomorrow, though. I need overnight, and D.V. a few hours of sleep, to process this.
(And, of course, hope, fucking hope, springs eternal.)
Anoniminous
I had family members that got out of Germany one jump ahead of the GESTAPO. I’m not waiting for it to get that close.
Have fun.
Good luck.
Goodbye.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elizabelle: Optics! Shadows cast, serious questions raised! Authenticity.
Bobby Thomson
@piratedan: why would he stop there? He’ll have the plaintiffs prosecuted. All the things right wingers have been saying for eight years about Obama are actually true about Trump.
Juju
@piratedan: Seriously. We are all Kentucky now.
D58826
@donnah: Economically/diplomatically/militarily the US was the rock that the post war world was built on. In times of economic turmoil money flowed into T-Bills because the US was the safe haven. All of that has been blown to pieces. The world is a much more dangerous place tonight. And Putin is one happy camper. David Frum said this was the moist successful Russian espionage operation since the Rosenbergs.
Mike in dc
2018 is 2006. 2018 is 2006. 2018 is 2006.
Bruce K
The next battle isn’t in 2020.
It’s in 2018.
And it starts now.
jl
One bitter memory comes to mind right now. When I spent time in the Baltics working and teaching in early 2000s. NATO was the big deal, and everyone loved Bush and GOP. I told them, to some disbelief and suspicion, that I did not think the GOP could be trusted in the long run to keep commitments if they were not to their short run advantage.
Now, if Estonia gets bullied and threatened, one of the most diligent and paid up and loyal US allies, Trump will tell them he’s looking to see if they are up to date on their commitment to his satisfaction, and get back to them.
The situation makes me sick.
Edit: Anyone feel safe with Ttrump trying to make great deals with Putin? Anyone feel safe when Trump gets pissed off when the deals don’t always turn out they way he thinks they should?
NoraLenderbee
The silver lining when everything goes to hell will be knowing that the people losing their jobs and homes in the cratering economies of OH, PA, MI, WI, KS, and the rest will be getting exactly what they voted for.
I know, it’s not nice of me. But y’know what? FUCK THOSE PEOPLE. And I’ll never spend a dime in any of those places again.
piratedan
@SenyorDave: maybe they can console themselves by re-reading Clinton’s e-mails.
It’s readily apparent that America doesn’t care or is too ignorant to understand their Brexit vote.
why are they too ignorant to understand that? because they’ve been fed 15 fucking months of Benghazi and e-mails without any idea that Trump, when looked at pragmatically, has failed and fucked up every single thing he’s ever done. With the caveat of being able to present himself as the biggest and loudest bigot and sexist running for public office. I guess that’s something after all.
Hope the media enjoys their creation. I wonder if Hilary will be considered a flight risk because of her crimes. I’m sure that will last us until the inauguration.
PhoenixRising
@Bailey: I already knew the racist majority hate me & want me to die of a treatable disease. I expected more from self-styled liberals.
And you did what the party said to, giving money (for ads that aren’t shown to affect voter behavior) & calls (which also aren’t shown to affect outcomes). Can’t blame you. You did what they told you would help.
I told them 8 years ago they were wrong. That’s not very satisfying right now.
Archon
@jl
If we are to believe Trump won because of his policy views then the only conclusion is that the American people just voted for empire without the pretense of the self interested enlightenment we have had since the post war period.
Elizabelle
@enplaned: It’s institutional fail on a scale I’ve never seen before. Maybe not all around the world, but in a lot of it.
Also, Obama did the best job he could, and ran a corruption-free administration. He was not “institutional fail.” But the rightwing media portrayed it like that. 24/7.
And all you hear is “Washington is SO corrupt!” And the idiot voters just handed the government to the corrupt. It’s not sanity.
fuckwit
@Lytic: Do more campaigning, organizing, and outreach.
I feel bad that I didn’t do more too. I busted my ass in 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012. I sat out 2014 because of health issues and family issues. I sat out most of 2016 due to job workload and family obligations.
I feel horrible. If we manage to pull this out of the fire and Clinton ends up winning, I promise to bust my ass in the midterms, rain or shine, good times or bad, and do my damndest to get a Democratic Congress elected. And there’s no way I’ll be complacent in 2020. This country is too dangerous a place.
Sam Wang can suck a bag of.. wangs. What an idiot I was for believing 90% chance of winning…..
Katherine Najjar
As a Red state dem (Nebraska -yes, we gave you Fischer, Fortenberry, and Sasse – you’re welcome!) I am kind of going to enjoy the republican plutocracy. After, all, they will now have control of all three branches of government. Based on their promises, we are going to have a term limited Court, and if the tax code takes my returns to Trumpian levels, fine by me.
Kind of curious to see how the resulting “policies” will be blamed on the democrats, but the republicans are an imaginative, fanciful lot, so it will be nothing if not entertaining. I am sure they will all be “OMG our health care premiums went up 400% because Obama.” That’s my prediction, anyway, and I have no doubt that the republicans will get at least 4 years out of that. I can hardly wait for the “magic-way-better” health plan that republicans have promised us all for the past 8 years. I am certain that it will involve “crossing state borders” and “using your own money & finding out that you could have saved $10,000 if you had only gone to the hospital across the street but don’t worry because you are now bankrupt anyway.”
OTOH, I am pretty tired of voting in every fucking election for the past 35+ years, & all I’ve got to show for it is 8 years of Obama. He was great, but he raised expectations for the future. It is sad when I think he may have been it for my lifetime. I am going to miss his presidency and his role modelling more than I can say.
enplaned
@PeakVT: Pennsylvania has been ripped apart by free trade and other forms of deregulation as much as any state. Again, when Trump starts bleating about NAFTA and free trade and how he’s going to bring jobs back… there are a lot of ex-factory workers who used to make $30/hr with good union jobs with good benefits 20 years ago, who are now in some kind of marginal existence, for whom that resonates powerfully.
There’s no way the jobs are coming back, and indeed, it’s hugely ironic, one of the main guys on Trump’s economic team (Wilbur Ross) was one of the people who made a killing from the bankruptcy (and elimination of labor agreements/pensions, etc) from free trade.
See, there’s an example of how a different Democrat could have killed Trump on this issue. Yeah, NAFTA didn’t reward Americans equitably, and we need to address that — here’s my plan (X, Y and Z). But, you think TRUMP is going to help you with this? He’s got one of the main killers of good union jobs as his economic advisor! That guy Wilbur Ross made billions of dollars off of the misery of people who lost from NAFTA. That guy is a vampire…
Hillary couldn’t do this. She had no credibility on NAFTA at all. It’s all too easy to paint any Clinton as the devil incarnate on this stuff.
Splitting Image
I wish this were true. What they will realize is that Trump was a liberal all along and next time they will have to find a real conservative. Everything bad that happens in the world is Somebody Else’s Fault, and so whatever Trump screws up will be Somebody Else’s Fault.
For example, if Mexicans weren’t rapists, Trump wouldn’t have had to promise to build the wall, and Republicans wouldn’t have voted for him. So it is really the Mexicans’ fault that Trump was elected.
Arclite
Seriously minority people, you had one fucking job. Get out and vote.
Archon
@Anoniminous
Good luck in your new country. Me? I’m staying and fighting for mine.
Lizzy L
@NoraLenderbee: Up to you what you do, of course. But I have dear friends in those states, people who didn’t vote for Trump, people who are stunned and shocked as we are tonight. Their misery will make me miserable too. What you said — it sounds like you have given up. No more United States of America looking to form a more perfect Union.
seaboogie
@Arclite: Snark, right?
MikeBoyScout
Hate to break this to my fellow hard working loving Juicers, but
we lost tonight because the majority of people who look like me support and deep down want a racist white bigot blowhard as their President.
If that angers you, think how those who don’t self identify as white feel.
I don’t know how to fight this.
But I’ve got tomorrow to start figuring it out.
In the meantime, let’s find a way to support and love those who are very frightened right now. That’s the best and most we can do right now.
Mary G
Issa’s pulled ahead of Applegate 51.5 to 48.5 so all my time and money were in service of losers. At least pot is legal here now. California did go 60/34 for Hillary. Maybe we should secede. We still have the death penalty, too.
Seanly
@jonas:
This.
Is it apropos that there seems to be a skunk wandering around our house? Stinks around here & my dogs are going nuts.
I have employer-provided coverage, but I know my wife’s care for her leukemia and blood stem cell transplant have cost well over $1.2 million at this point. So we’d have coverage even when Congress guts the ACA, but we’ll be fucked when the lifetime limits are reinstituted.
Trump is a coward who masks it by pretending to be a tough guy. He’ll roll over like a beaten puppy for McConnell and Ryan.
Bailey
@Arclite:
Have been too heartsick to dig in deep on the numbers, but it seemed to me that the douchebags voting for Johnson / Stein did far more damage than minority voters. Particular since Af-Am voters held the fairly standard edge that Gore/Kerry got. (Obama picked up another 5%). And hispanic voting was up all around, yes? It’s white people that failed here, drastically. And the candidate. And the campaign strategy. And….etc.
GrandJury
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Never mind his tax returns. What about his business interests. There are definitely laws against that.
He will sign everything over to his kids but he’s still gonna try run things and send business that way. Talk about conflict of interest. In a normal world it would be easy impeachment but this is not a normal world anymore.
But….Hillary had Clinton foundation, non-profit…so both sides. Pfft.
fuckwit
@Arclite: Uh, they did. You seen the lines?
Obviously you’re sufficiently privileged to not understand that voter suppression is a thing.
That said, identity politics is a problem. But then you’d have to blame women for not voting. Didn’t they have one job too, to vote?
How about this: we all had one fucking job. As a nation, we failed to accomplish it in sufficient numbers to make the results unambiguous.
There is indeed a silver lining in all this: recount. I am going to sleep now, in a country where the race is still tight and nobody has conceded yet.
I am digging in for a few weeks of 2000-like clusterfuckery. And, this time I hope we won’t blink.
Arclite
@piratedan: Livin’ the dream.
jl
@enplaned:
” 2016, both here and in Europe, is all about the failure of the elites coming home to roost ”
Some truth to that probably. When I did cold call phone banking, a lot of people were pissed about how their lives have turned out over the last ten years, outraged at what they saw as economic ruin of their communities. They wanted change, any change, just some damn change change change. Some said they voted for Obama.
I don’t dismiss bigotry or authoritarianism as part of it. I have to ask myself if they were so upset about diminishing economic opportunities, why they did not look at the Democratic primary? What, maybe hidden impulses nudged them over the the mess going on in the GOP? Looking at the hideous damn election map, some states that went the right way, to Obama, in previous election, went the wrong way this time. Why? That needs to be answered.
But I think part of the puzzle is a failure of consensus economics and politics to provide a dignified and decent life for too many in the middle and working class. And many, looks like mostly whites, made the wrong choice, that will disappoint them, this time.
SenyorDave
For me, the tell on this election was Steve Bannon. When Trump named Bannon his campaign CEO, that should have been a BFD! Here is a guy who runs a website that is a hangout for white supremacists, and the media couldn’t be bothered to make it a story. Clinton gave a speech about it, and I think when it didn’t even seem to register with out wonderful MSM, she got frustrated and that was the basis of the deplorables remark.
Jermiah Wright was a major story back in the day. Bannon is to Jeremiah Wright as Vladimir Lenin is to John Lennon.
martian
@redshirt: “Goodbye, Cruel World.”
Hey, redshirt. I’m just a lurker you probably don’t remember, but you’re scaring me over here. Between this and your comment in another thread about already being dead, I’m concerned for you. Tell me I’m misreading you in the overall drama of a really bad night, pretty please?
Mnemosyne
@MikeBoyScout:
Yep. And yet we still have clueless assholes in the thread below insisting it’s all about the economy! The economy! And war!
Lytic
Yup. Should have done more. God damn feeling guilty. Thought voting and donating was enough. I will no longer bite my lip at my family and friends ignorant comments. Enough is enough. But feeling it’s too late. I’m a miserable guilt pile right now.
SenyorDave
WaPo just called the election for Trump
Mnemosyne
@jl:
I think that a lot of working-class white people have decided that they’re never going to be able to keep it together economically, so they should at least get to look down on other people like they did in the old days.
Hillary extended a hand to them, and they slapped it away.
Viva BrisVegas
Say what you want about conservatives, and there is a lot to say, but they really know how to create a narrative.
They had 25 years to create a narrative about Hillary Clinton, and boy did it pay off big time.
Now watch as they spend the next four years creating a narrative about the success of the Trump Presidency. Despite his achieving less than nothing for the white working class that voted for him.
AnotherBruce
@Major Major Major Major: Or BigAudioDynamite.
How did it happen? Who was to blame?
SiubhanDuinne
I guess this is it, then.
I truly don’t recognize this country.
fuckwit
@SenyorDave: Fuck them sideways with a rusty-ass pitchfork.
It’s not done until it’s done. I hope Clinton doesn’t blink like Gore did in 2000.
GrandJury
@SenyorDave: What about poor WaPo? Anti-Trump from the beginning. Now they are gonna have to kiss his ass big time.
James E Powell
@BlueDWarrior:
Surely you recall that all we got out of that was a few sternly worded letters. Oh yeah, and Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.
We are well and truly fucked and there is really nothing Democrats can or will do about it.
SiubhanDuinne
@SenyorDave:
NPR also.
Edit: maybe not a technical “call,” but all their commentary assumes a … I can hardly type this … a President Trump.
BlueDWarrior
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t either, but it is what it is. I didn’t really recognize it in 2000 and certainly not in 2002 nor 2004. We will just have to hold fast and make do the best we can.
Arclite
@seaboogie: According to 538, turnout for both blacks and Hispanics is down compared to 2012.
GrandJury
@fuckwit: It’s done. Recounts will happen and some numbers will change a bit but it’s not going to change the result.
Lytic
Fuck this guilt. I’m activated! Hope to contribute to this commmunity in the future. I’ve been reading this blog for years. Now I’m alive and in it! And a bit drunk to numb the pain.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
That was my thought, too. We already have plenty of proof that there is no amount of fucking up that will drive white people away from Republicans as long as the Republicans promise that the Others will have it even worse.
Arclite
@fuckwit:
We always fucking blink. It’s our nature. Just like we are the frog that gives the scorpion the ride, and the Repubs always stab us. Because that’s their nature.
Eljai
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m with you. I’m grieving deeply now. I don’t know what the next step is. But half of us agree with you. More if you count the people who were disenfranchised out of voting or too worn down to try. We have to work through this together, that’s all I know.
GrandJury
@Arclite: Normally I would gloat about being right that Latinos would not show up as usual but I’m too depressed.
enplaned
@Elizabelle: Obama failed in two ways. He failed at the beginning. He really believed, and this was hubris on his part, that he could bring people together. Any reading of history would have told him differently, whether FDR during the Great Depression or LBJ in the 60s. Obama should have crushed the banks in 2009, but he went along with assholes like Geithner who said not to. A lot of people would have gotten some satisfaction from seeing bankers having to give up their second, third and fourth houses because Goldman Sachs equity was reset to zero. And Obama needed to go a lot bigger on economic stimulus too. He also should have pushed for everyone with a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage to get a refinancing to a lower rate (given much lower prevailing interest rates). He might not have succeeded in forcing that thru, but he should have pushed for it — he’d have gotten some credit for trying. I chalk it up to rookie mistakes — it took him a couple years of having the shit kicked out of him to catch on. Believe me, I love the guy, but he made some mistakes in his first two-three years.
The other failure was going along with greasing the skids for Hillary. The Democratic establishment came to terms with Hillary being the right person to lead the charge in 2016 — Obama among them. I think this will be widely viewed as a massive mistake, though a lot of people aren’t quite there yet. Hillary was a hugely compromised candidate in so many ways and feeding the US population the same-old-same-old, someone who was already not-the-new-thing in 2008, someone with huge baggage, someone who did not have great political skills (lots of experience, lots of smarts — but being a politician is something else — see Biden, see Obama, see B. Clinton as people with political skills) — that was a huge, huge mistake. Obama was part of that consensus, I believe — the quid pro quo being support of the Clintons in 2012 in return of support of Hillary in 2016. As such, Obama bears some blame for going along with it. I await his forthcoming memoirs with interest, because he no longer has any reason to protect the viability of Hillary Clinton.
Unless a miracle occurs, Hillary Clinton has all the viability of a snowflake hitting a red-hot wood stove. She’s done, she will go down in history as a two-time loser whose overweening ambition and insistence on reaching once more for the presidency consigned this country, and in particular the most vulnerable within it (LGBTQ, poor women, minorities, the disabled, etc) into the grasp of Trump. I gave her the max donation ($5400) and my retired fixed income parents did too, because Trump and once it was clear it was going to be Hillary, we had to do whatever we could. But I had a bad, bad feeling for years on this. Now I’m going to renew a passport I have for a small, inoffensive country a long way from the US because man, I might need it, and I might need to take my parents there too.
Bailey
@Viva BrisVegas:
All true.
Question: what made Dems think they could actually beat this long-standing narrative? Because that is something that always puzzled me.
jl
@Mnemosyne: Quite a few of the Trump supporters I talked to insisted that he doesn’t mean what he says.
I think a lot of factors involved and intertwined in why so many went for Trump. A good number of Trumpers seemed more like authoritarians than bigots to me. A number of them insisted they voted for Obama.
They seemed like the people who Bill Clinton was talking about when he said disappointed scared and bitter people will go for those who the perceive to be strong, even if they are wrong, over people perceived as weaker, even if what they say is right.
But I don’t dismiss an element of bigotry. Otherwise, how could they blow off the nasty things Trump and his supporters were saying. And they did blow it off. “Aw, he don’t really mean all that, he needs to get elected.’ After seeing Trump during the campaign, I don’t care if he meant it or not. Unfit and unready. Who cares if he meant it or not? Horrible day.
Peale
@Viva BrisVegas: yep. Another republican president who will lose the popular vote or barely win it will be treated like the end times transformer and Uniter. We are very divided, but hey…let’s send Somalis back to Mogadishu because e-mails.
GrandJury
US is now officially a banana republic run by a tin pot dictator….with nukes.
gene108
I should not wonder this, because I doubt it will happen, but if the media holds Republicans – especially Trump – to task from day one, we may have a chance.
But we cannot run against Koch money, and the media.
BlueDWarrior
@Arclite: Well the question is is it down porportionally or is it down absolutely. I doubt that’s a question that can be answered any time soon.
All I know is that Trump got what he wanted, which was margins that were run as high as they could be in rural and exurban counties and he managed to consolidate Republicans to the point where it him over the top by about 0.5-1.5 in enough states to win the EC.
There will be lots of ink spilled and bytes flipped trying to process what exactly this means going forward in our politics writ large, but the Democratic party has got to find some way to neutralize the Republican party becoming the party of Aggravated Whites otherwise we are going to be locked into this whipsaw.
Elizabelle
@GrandJury:
re the WaPost:
Hmmm. But are they? Maybe there’s a market for subscriptions bought by people who don’t like and didn’t vote for Donald Trump.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
Unfortunately, in this society, women are always perceived as weaker.
Bailey
@enplaned:
I think I agree with all of this. It’s a good summary of frustration.
Peale
@Bailey: because bill Clinton beat it and left as a very popular president. And she seemed to have beat it and became a very popular Secretary of State. (Her numbers were huge). And to be honest, we figured that the public would grow tired of Benghazi five years later.
frosty
@Linnaeus:
frosty +6 heading to +7 shortly. And then to work in the morning… if the sun rises.
Shit.
Caravelle
Reposted from downthread because I figure it has relevance to the “what now” discussion.
On the subject of whether Trump will sign every piece of legislation that comes across his desk, and Brachiator saying we must dispense with the fiction that Trump can be controlled :
@Brachiator: He’s hard to manage, that’s for sure, but that only matters for things he cares about. Policy is not one of those things. And if it were, whatever political inclinations he has are right-leaning anyway.
Reasons I can imagine Trump would refuse to sign legislation that comes across his desk:
1) laziness
2) a personal feud with Paul Ryan or whoever is pushing the legislation across his desk
3) genuine policy disagreement with the legislation
4) a fear that signing the legislation will make him look bad in a way that matters to him.
4) might be more compelling to me if he didn’t so clearly believe that all publicity is good publicity. I can conceive of it happening, but I think it would involve somebody managing him from the other side to convince him that said piece of legislation will harm his reputation in a way he doesn’t want it to. And if that person is a Trump confidante they’re not a person whose judgment left-leaning people would trust anyway.
3) could happen, I dunno ? If it does I expect it would be like one in a thousand bills maybe. He’d need to care enough to know what it said to begin with. And given his political leanings it’s not something I think should reassure left-leaning people too much. Maybe things like gay rights ?
2) That’s very realistic, except that look at how the Republican leaders have been treating Trump when he *wasn’t* president. I’m pretty sure any feud between Trump and Ryan would result in Ryan kissing his ass in some suitable way to the point he’d sign that bill, and if not that one then most of the others. It could be entertaining to watch that’s for sure.
1) For some reason I feel that one might actually be the biggest factor though it’s the last one I thought of, based on all that’s been said about how he dealt with debate prep and such. It would be hilarious if it actually prevented a significant amount of legislation from going into effect, but I don’t really see that happening. His handler *have* shown themselves capable of getting him to do what they wanted once in awhile, and this would be pretty important to them. It’s fine to say Trump cannot be controlled like he’s a force of nature, but the reality is that he cannot be “controlled” like a spoiled two year-old. And like a spoiled two year-old, he can still be managed with appropriate strategies.
SenyorDave
@jl: Horrible day
Much worse than the 2000 election. Didn’t think much about Bush, but he didn’t surround himself with an overt racist (Bannon), a sexual predator (Ailes), and a governor who should be in jail (Christie). And the amazing thing is that Trump is a racist, a sexual predator, and a thief (remember, he stole from his own charity).
Barb2
Voting against – their own interest.
How many Trump Bros will lose their health insurance? ETc.
Adult role model? What a joke.
The media is to blame. This is on them.
Mister Papercut
@gene108:
The next time they do that will be the first time they do that.
enplaned
The cratering of financial markets will just be another feature as far as Trump supporters are concerned. This is where Obama missed the boat in 2009 by not crushing the bankers. That made it easy to paint him as a protector of the bankers and part of the global conspiracy of the elites — and he was, though I think it was largely because he relied on very bad self-interested advice from Geithner and others.
But if Obama had taken the anti-banker populist route in 2009, this kind of backlash against the global elites would be a lot less likely to happen. Of course, at the cost of Obama, back in the day, being painted as a socialist. At least, by not crushing the bankers, he avoided the GOP smearing him with that label. Oh, wait…
enplaned
@Mister Papercut: Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it.
I do think the media in general is in a weird place — there are so many shows that are openly dismissive and hostile to Trump, and I don’t think any president has ever taken office with that situation.
But I expect the news media especially to strap on their kneepads and bibs and get down to serious knob-gobbling, per usual.
RNA
jl
@enplaned: I agree about Obama’s economic policies. In fairness to Obama, though, he went with the consensus view. Even people like Stiglitz and Krugman and DeLong, who nailed the onset and future path of the recession and the recovery, were somewhat hesitant about what the fiscal multipliers would turn out to be. Edit: what was one reason they wanted them to be so big, as an insurance policy for good recovery if the multipliers turned out to be disappointing.
We know more now than we did then. The consensus is shattered in the economic community, though the academic and financial poobahs still try to prop up the corpse and make it look like its walking.
Don’t know if I agree about HRC. If we had more bold leaders, they could have challenged her. Only Sanders tried. Not one younger would-be Obama tried to step forward, as far as I can see, except O’Malley, and he did very poorly because I think he promised more than he could deliver in terms of substance.
It this is a failure of elites, the Democratic elites have the share the blame, and that is more than HRC herself.
Mister Papercut
@Bailey:
Something something “reality based community.” But I think they could be forgiven for thinking facts mean things. Now with this election I suspect we’ve officially ushered in the Post-Factual Age.
gene108
This is also the time the short lived Obama coalition died.
Not strong enough to deliver the Presidency to another Democrat.
Democrats may well need to go after white voters more aggressively, and rely less on minority turn out.
SenyorDave
I just realized the only good thing I can think of from this election. No Trump TV!
cain
OK, so first of all I don’t think Trump is that bad. He’s going to be a horrible president, but I dont think it is going to be like Germany. That aid, I think our foreign policy is going to take a dive. I have no idea what the next 4 years are going to bring but we are going to have to be resilient and we can’t give up. Democrats need to start getting serious about who we are and what we are. We have demographics no our side, but we clearly had a candidate that wasn’t as good as Obama. We are going to have to find someone else and hopefully we can bring something better.
Darkrose
@gene108: If most POC’s will lose the right to vote, I fear you’re right.
jl
@Mnemosyne: More I think about it, the sicker I feel. Woman president bothered people. Didn’t like voting for ‘lesser of two evils’ BS i had to listen to and try to rebut. And gullible fools who believe garbage pumped out by corporate hacks in on the TV. I heard all that from people. And that is here in CA, besides what I heard phone banking. Really discouraging that people make up their minds about critical issues based on that BS.
gene108
@Peale:
The poles showed Clinton winning PA, MI, and WI, so as of Monday it looked like her path to the Presidency was secure.
I don’t know how Dems rebound from the loss of the upper-Midwest and PA.
SenyorDave
@gene108: The things that seemed to workewith the midwestern WWC are:
1. Lie to them about this huge resurgence of manufacturing jobs (and in WV and OH coal mining jobs, which is even more of a pipe dream).
2. Racism, but not just the dog whistle kind, the overt kind, like re-tweeting stuff from white supremacists
enplaned
@Barb2: Too easy. Media bears a lot of the blame. But failure generally has a lot of factors. It’s like most aircraft accidents these days — all kinds of things have to line up to have an accident — and that’s true here as well.
Yes, it was the media. Yes, it was the unique identity of Trump going after Hillary on things that another GOPer wouldn’t have. It was the candidate — Hillary, who was uniquely susceptible to the attacks that Trump made because of her baggage. Hillary, who was not something new, at a time when the country wanted something new. Hillary, who does have baggage, and a lot of it. Hillary, who was clearly part of the elite that the country was turning against.
It was the Democratic establishment, which greased the skids for Hillary. It was Hillary who insisted on running again, I assume because, like anyone in politics at that level she’s insanely ambitious. It’s Hillary, who has quite poor political skills (she’s intelligent and brutally hard-working — but political skills are something separate) for someone at that level, because she was vaulted to a very high level of power (US Senate) not because of intrinsic political talent, but because her husband was president.
I yield to no one in my contempt for the media, but to lay it *all* on them is too much.
Peale
@SenyorDave: why do I get the feeling that there will be legislation to ban solar power and replace it with home coal fired generators.
Anne Laurie
@GrandJury:
Not until mid-January.
I’m not sure Trump will survive until then, TBH.
SenyorDave
WaPo says Clinton called Trump and conceded
cain
@enplaned: the media will be Trump’s first target… they are going to get the shitty treatment they deserve when Trump focuses on them.
jl
@Darkrose: How much the GOP will retain its belief in states rights and local control will be sickening experiment we will have to live through. I don’t have high hopes. I can see voter suppression efforts under color of federal authority now. And what SCOTUS will do is sickening to consider.
I’m out of here for tonight. A very grim night indeed.
enplaned
@jl: Let’s be clear – misogyny played a significant role. But to think this was solely a rejection of women generically, rather than a heavy component of this woman specifically, is wrong.
Caravelle
DAMMIT ! I’ve just noticed a few “With Her” podcasts I’d downloaded to listen to last night, but then I ended up watching the election so not doing that, and now I don’t have the heart to listen to them :( :( :( :(
Mister Papercut
@enplaned:
I’ve worked in media (support role in local outfits), so I’ve been ringside to the sausage getting made. They really really really do not want to be bothered by right-wing audience members (not that they aren’t harassed on the regular by them for perceived transgressions: “media” == “automatically liberal” after all). The catering to them will only get worse now.
@cain:
Yep, and they will fold faster than Superman on laundry day.
enplaned
@cain: Oh yeah. Trump could not have made that any more clear that he wants major restrictions on press freedom.
I think the powers-that-be among the media never really a Trump win as likely.
2016 was a failure of the elites coming home to roost. The media is in the front rank of the elites who failed us, but they have a lot of company.
Bailey
@Mister Papercut:
That’s part of it, yeah. Of all the horrific things that may come to pass, it is the disagreement about what a “fact” is that bothers me most and is what I’m afraid we can not recover from.
Maybe we’ll get real lucky and one of our esteemed media organizations will go hyper-drive and be all-fact checking, all the time against a sitting president. Could somebody rich as fuck, like Bezos, take this on as a personal mission, and direct resources as such?
jl
@gene108: If you let people vote, then higher than expected turnout is hard to deal with.
I heard on the news that Southern White turnout was much higher for Trump than Romney, unexpectedly higher.,
So, that is why I use the world ‘bigotry’ instead of racism. In this case fundamentalist Christian bigotry against someone they saw as non-Christian.
My God, people wouldn’t vote for Romney, who is every way a magnitude order better than Trump, because of religious prejudice.
OK, more I think and type, the more despondent I get. Time to try to sleep.
Caravelle
@SenyorDave: …. because all TV will be Trump TV ?
I was going to say “at least political comedians will have fodder” but then I remembered the latest Sam Bee show.
gene108
@enplaned:
Obama was catching a lot of shit from calling bankers “fat cats”. There are powerful corporate interests that can put a lot of money into opposing Democrats, which Wall Street did in 2010, for as mild as Obama was.
SenyorDave
Its 3 AM, did I just wake up and this all a dream?
CarolDuhart2
@SenyorDave: And it will be a lie. American manufacturing is not going to come back to the states, Wages are cheaper, roads are newer, factories next to the docks. In an Amazon drone world, nobody is going to put a factory in the middle of the cornfields. Another reason it won’t happen is that the world is now a consumer paradise. Building things in Asia/Africa/South American saves money on shipping if you are selling to those places.
Coal is not coming back. Too labor-intensive compared to natural gas, solar and wind. Even here, shipping it from China would be cheaper than opening up a new mine.
Peale
@gene108: I don’t know either. You are correct. I don’t think we can rely on the Obama coalition to bear fruit. It’s been awful at producing mid term results. And I think the results will probably show a more robust turn out for it than it looks right now, but it isn’t large enough yet unless swing voters flee republicans. my guess is that white millennials will be our missing swingable voters.
Eljai
@Mister Papercut: Post-factual age makes more sense to me than anything. I guess there will be plenty of ways to analyze this going forward. But, for me, the truth is that I watched Trump’s speeches and I was horrified. Apparently, a significant number of US citizens did not see what I saw. I am not blaming Obama.
jl
@CarolDuhart2: I am trying to leave to try to sleep, but will say that your understanding of economics and finance is very poor, and you are much more pessimistic than you need to be. By your reasoning, Germany, Scandinavia, Northern Europe generally, should a de-industrialized wasteland full of wandering paupers, eating each other for food. It is not.
GrandJury
@gene108: The problem is that things will have to get incredibly bad before they get better. Remember with all of Bush’s screw ups, he still managed to get re-elected. So things are going to have to get really bad. Right now we are in an improving economy and that is basically on autopilot. Cannot really screw that up but I’m sure they will try.
My guess is another stupid war and lots of lives lost and a few more trillion in debt.
enplaned
@gene108: I think it could have been delivered to a different Democrat — Hillary was just too flawed. I think Obama would have been re-elected to another term if it were legal, and someone without Hillary’s negatives would have started at a better place (and a I mean not someone like Bernie, who never had to take a real punch in the primaries and had all kinds of bizarre baggage).
Mel
@NoraLenderbee: Except, so, so many of us here in the states you mention fight the good fight every day, working incredibly long hours for low pay to do jobs that try to help uplift others. We live without a financial safety net because we chose the jobs that our hearts told us were right and true, and so now we might not survive this, despite a lifetime of just trying to be of service, to be open hearted – and you think that we deserve to suffer b/c we happened to stay in the places where the work is hard and heartbreaking and the most people are in need of help, of education, of some sane voices to try and open their eyes to social and political truths.
I find that appalling.
SenyorDave
I just realized that unlike Rush Limbaugh and Mitch McConnell I want the next four years to be good for this country, which means I want Trump’s presidency to be successful. But that means he has to be a different person when he governs than he has been for his whole life. Maybe the leash that he was put on the last two weeks of the campaign can be maintained, but I don’t see how. And there is still the matter of the GOP that will continue in their attempts to turn the US into Kansas.
enplaned
@gene108: Yes, and the interesting thing is that if he’d crushed the banks in 2009, there would have been many fewer bankers able to fund such things. And, he’d have had a lot of populist support. It sucks to lose your house to a mortgage foreclosure. It hurt even worse to see the bankers get away with it. Big, big mistake. I have talked to rock-ribbed Republicans with decades of financial experience who were appalled that bankers got away with it.
Bailey
@Peale:
Answers, not avoidance, for economic distresses in the upper midwest should keep both non-racist white working class AND Obama coalition together. Reasonably, both groups should benefit. But our economic outlook, at least as presented by HRC, missed the mark entirely while the coalition came out strong out of fear of Trump.
SenyorDave
I’m thanking God I don’t have a mortgage, much less an adjustable rate one. And don’t need credit.
Bailey
@enplaned:
Again, I agree. Maybe a candidate like Sherrod Brown. Bernie was the obvious canary in the coalmine no one wanted to listen to. I don’t necessarily think he would have been a great president–or have run a winning campaign–but the rush to dismiss him was a huge error in judgment both by the DNC and by HRC backing voters.
NotMax
Well, Bill Kristol’s record of wrongitude remains unblemished.
Our long national nightmare commences.
enplaned
@NotMax: Bill Kristol. Wow, there is a guy who has no role going forward. A tiny bit of schadenfreude to slightly relieve the horror of this night. The GOP is now hostile territory to him for the next four years. He won’t find a home with the Democrats. He’s out in the wilderness, and it will be interesting to see whether whoever pays for his vanity publication keeps the spigot on.
enplaned
@Bailey: Bernie was the warning that Hillary was a weak candidate. It’s not that Bernie himself was a great candidate, he was just the only alternative pushing back hard on Hillary, so he picked up the support of those who wanted something else. Had the field been open and the candidates numerous, I doubt he’d have run, and if he had run, I doubt he’d have made any headway. The problem was that by the time Bernie’s candidacy delivered that warning, it was kinda too late. It was Hillary or bust. And bust it was.
grievingdem
We had our first African American president, so we shouldn’t really be surprised that there was a backlash. Two steps forward, one step back. We should have expected this, since it was practically inevitable. Maybe there wasn’t any candidate in the Democratic party who could have survived the backlash against progress.
On the plus side: this will help Democrats take the house back, and set us up nicely for 2020 (if we survive.) The incumbent party is always at a disadvantage.
And there’s a non-zero chance that the Republicans might learn to hate Trump as much as rational people do, and actually impeach him before he destroys their party like everything else he’s run. Hell, they might even hire a hitman.
With that, I’m going to drink myself to sleep.
Bailey
@enplaned:
Yeah, you’re speaking my mind here.
What shatters me is that I have no doubt Obama could have won a third term. I honestly think Elizabeth Warren might have won as well. Maybe. There will be a lot of picking up of pieces to re-group I think.
On the brightside: I never though HRC could actually win TWO terms, so there’s at least comfort in only missing out on 4 years. On the brighter side: LOL to the person above who pointed out Bill Kristol’s long, miserable lose streak.
Eljai
@Mel: You don’t deserve this. Thank you doing what you do and for moving through life with an open heart. It’s hard. We need you now more than ever. I live in California at the moment, but I grew up in Minnesota and most of my family lives in Missouri. We need to find our tribe, no matter where we are on the planet, and to keep working for the forces of good.
Caravelle
@Keith P.: How will this result in the destruction of the pundit class ? In fact why wouldn’t it strengthen it – what do you think a President Trump will prefer and encourage (with access and lack of suing and nice hotel stays at Mar-a-lago), a bunch of randos vacuously discussing him, what he thinks and what he’s going to do next, or actual fact-based investigative journalism ?
Same thing for the pollsters – they missed something huge today. And it will be very interesting to figure out what it was, how they missed it, what they might do to avoid missing it again or if that’s even possible. But before knowing more about what went wrong there’s no reason to think it would destroy polling as a science and practice altogether, it “just” demonstrates that it isn’t as mature a science or practice as people thought.
Caravelle
@donnah: Wow I went to the NBC coverage to find that bit, and I haven’t found it yet but I’m seeing a round-table where there’s Richard Engel, Chuck Todd, Brokaw and some other people… And it’s just sickening; they’re all lightly talking about all the ironies of the situation, often laughing, maybe it’s nervous laughter but it strikes me a bit as “this piece of political theater just went CRAY” laughter… And Richard Engel is the only one who isn’t joining in; he just looks defeated. I’ve only seen him say one thing so far and he didn’t get very far but you can tell he was trying to get away from the laughter and ironies and more into “what the fuck is going to happen to this country now, that’s the question we need to ask”.
Hey lady laughing about how both sides hate the media : THAT DOESN’T NECESSARILY MEAN YOU’RE DOING A GOOD JOB.
But hey, why would they be upset. They’re not in a position where anything will happen to them, or they think they aren’t (Trump does have a track record with journalists), and a Trump presidency will certainly be entertaining political theater. Fun for them, and maybe ratings too.
Caravelle
@donnah: Wow, found the section now and I’m PISSED. To me it didn’t seem like Todd was actually scared, he was more like “OK I’m going to interrupt you here Richard because you’re painting a fearful picture but what I want to talk about is…”. Basically not “I’m scared”, but “this is unseemly, let’s get this conversation back on track”.
W. Kiernan
“The grimly fascinating thing will be watching Trump voters slowly realize he was utterly full of shit on every promise he made.” No they won’t, absolutely not, because they’re morons. They don’t remember the unemployment rate in 1983, they don’t remember the Iraq War, they don’t remember the recession of 2008, they, like their imbecile President, weren’t paying enough attention to the news to learn that the Russians occupied Crimea in 2014, and they still don’t know it. They’re stupid, mean professional wrestling fans, and they’re the American majority.
If you’ve read a book in the last ten years and you remember how to do the basic arithmetic you learned in elementary school, then you’re in a minority, you’re not one of them, and they hate you.