I think people need to appreciate that third parties almost certainly did not do this. Disaffected Bernie voters simply could not explain the sweeping victory that we saw last night. For one thing the geography was all wrong. Less well off white people, especially in poor and rural communities, literally came out of the woodwork for Donald Trump. Something he said galvanized them and in so doing almost completely rewrote the electoral map. He accomplished something that George Wallace tried and utterly failed to do.
I think some of Bernie supporters’ critiques hold water here. Hillary gambled on three more years of Obama, and while a lot of people really like Obama, they were getting restless. I recognize fully that a large, probably decisive fraction of their discontent came from the successful Republican strategy to gum up Washington completely. The basic logic says that more patience will probably deliver the same returns, so elect someone who will kick the machine. Bernie Sanders was clearly ready to kick the machine. Obama ’08 was definitely the candidate for giving the machine a swift kick where both McCain and Romney were basically warmed-up Republican leftovers. Voters had seen a dozen times already.
Would Bernie have won? There are too many counterfactuals to say. The primaries are long done and I hope that everyone to the left of Paul Ryan (possibly including Paul Ryan) wants to find out what the hell just happened and do what we can, together, to reverse it. My Bernie friends are no happier about this than anyone else. Let us all air our grievances with respect and then, please, let’s move on to fight fascism.
The first thing I want us all to do is survive. Pour some cereal and cheer up your kids. America is more than the presidency. We have institutions, and even a sizable faction of the Republican party, that Trump can’t just order around. Dick Cheney he’s not.
Then, wen you shake the dust off this morning, look around for someone else who is hurting. It won’t be hard. Maybe just listen to someone’s grief or see if they need anything. It feels good to help someone else, but I have more than that in mind. We need to start thinking this way a lot more. It takes a resilient community to survive hard times. Whatever network of support you have (family, friends, activism), strengthen it. Expand it. I have not done any LGBT or religious freedom activism since forever, but you know what? LGBT Americans are my people. Minorities are my people. Religious minorities are my people. All of them. Anyone the redshirts might bully is my people. Look for a chance to build contacts and build mutual support. Rather than recriminate or argue, we need to build solidarity and start looking out for each other right now. I guarantee that someone’s survival depends on it.
msdc
The comments on every left-wing blog and Facebook feed say otherwise.
narya
I work for an organization that serves LGBTQ folks, and work today is going to be a wake. I am enraged, and I am also terrified–terrified that my social security will be stolen by the greedy fucks on wall street and I’ll never be able to retire; terrified that people will be dying on the street for lack of health care; terrified that hate won. I am 58 years old, and I’ve seen a lot of shitty elections, and this is by far the worst.
Davebo
Trump could care less about issues like gay marriage and LGBTQ rights. I don’t think they need to be concerned.
I could be wrong of course. I certainly never saw this coming. The scariest part is we have no freaking idea what Trump’s priorities will be because you can’t believe anything he’s said on the campaign trail or know if he believes it.
Comrade Scrutinizer
Take a moment to read Sarah Kindzior. She called this, and has suggestions for the future.
Richard Mayhew
@Davebo: trump does not give a shit. His advisors and a solid majority in the House does. His tiny hands will sign anything
David Fud
@Davebo: four words for you: Mike Pence, shadow president
The Nameless One
On a previous thread I mentioned AngryBlackLady blocked me. I was trying to be supportive but obviously fucked up.
I can always just shut up and support you silently (for what that’s worth) but these are the tweets I posted to ABL. Were they really so egregious?
This is basically the type of stuff I have for anyone on twitter at the moment and I’m as blindsided as anyone – I thought America was better than this – but if those words of mine are really not helpful then please kick me in the head and I’ll shut up.
I just want to give someone – anyone – something that might help both of us at this moment.
JPL
@Davebo: Although he could care less, the Supreme Court will.
Lavoris Anusol
I do work for an LGBT Org too and they put out a call for help about midnight last night. There are going to be a lot of terrified queer kids on the phone today. If I breakdown it will be after talking to one of them tonight.
Roger Moore
@Davebo:
I think you’re wrong about that. Trump may not care, but a lot of the Republicans in Congress do, and they’re going to be writing legislation to enact their anti-LGBTQ goals. Do you really see Trump vetoing that legislation out of principle? Worse, at least in the short term, is that a lot of Trump’s bigoted followers are going to see his election as permission to attack everyone they hate. Expect a big spike in hate attacks against LGBTQ people, immigrants, Jews, and basically everyone who looks like one of Those People.
Keith G
I have been watching a live video feed from Kenya, Africa. Watching zebras graze has been very quieting. About last night, I am an AIDS patient that just underwent cancer-related surgery. Among other things, my lifespan is directly related to the quality of the medical care that I’m getting month to month. I have been receiving high quality medical care thanks to the changes in laws known as Obamacare.
I am not alone, but am one person in a large number of folks who’s future will be largely determined by what this government does concerning access to quality medical care. I am not optimistic.
A candidate has won the presidency by making outrageous promises that under no reality can come true. I assume that soon even many of the folks who voted for him will come to realize the size of the fraud that has been committed. Trump cannot deliver on the promises he made to a gullible base. That base will eventually turn on him. The chaos that results is going to leave a lot of people definitely worse off than they were before.
Now back to zebras.
Keith G
@The Nameless One: ABL loves the drama of blocking/banning. Get over it. Focus on bigger stuff.
dlm
No. Just no. I’m 61, female and widowed. I’m tired of being force fed shit and expected to slap a smile on my face while I’m trying not to projectile vomit. I am so angry right now and scared.
Right now, I just can’t deal.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Davebo:
This is pretty much it in a nutshell.
Katy Tur looked like she was in shock last night talking about the possibility of Attorney General Giuliani and Secretary of State Gingrich, etc.
It all beggars the imagination. We’ll have to “wait and see,” of course, but holy fucking shit. My gob has been smacked so hard it may never gob again.
cokane
I’m not so sure this “white surge delivered trump” narrative is going to add up when we have election totals. it’s starting to look like all Trump did was mobilize 98% of Romney voters. And Clinton camp failed to mobilize enough Obama voters.
Tim F.
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Yeah, she has suggestions similar to mine. It seems obvious but it is not.
Baud
@cokane: That’s what I heard too. We dropped off more than the GOP did. We had a midterm election yesterday.
cokane
@Baud: also exit polls are indicating a slight uptick in minority support for trump – even latino – over romney-obama. that isn’t terribly surprising actually
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Davebo:
You mean “could not care less”. While Trump may not give a shit, his voters, and more importantly Congress, do. They’ve just been handed a blank check to wipe out generations of progressive programs, back to and including the New Deal. It’s hard to overstate how crippled the Democrats are, and how the checks and balances inherent in our system are damaged, maybe permanently. This is a generational change, maybe multi generational. I’m 61, and I don’t expect to outlive the evil that was done to my country yesterday.
Roger Moore
@Davebo:
I don’t know for sure what Trump is going to do, but I’m sure part of it will be signing whatever the Republicans in Congress send his way. We know what their agenda is- they’ve shouting about it for the whole Obama administration- and now they’re going to have the power to enact it. That’s the thing that scares me most.
debbie
I think many Clinton supporters underestimated the animus against her. Without the third parties, the counts would be closer, but I’m not sure it would have been enough.
Baud
@cokane: Ok. Whatever then.
Keith G
@cokane: Humans love easy answers (see last night) and the “white surge” is a very clean and simple idea that leaves Democrats and progressives off the hook, so many will embrace it. I do not claim knowledge here. I am going to delay grand assertions of causality until more evidence is gathered.
Baud
@debbie: I thought the Obama coalition was strong enough to take on the propaganda machine. We weren’t.
Walker
Guilliani in DOJ will use his power to prosecute all political enemies. It is going to be like growing up in the old South.
NorthLeft12
@Richard Mayhew:
This, a million times. Deadbeat Donald’s complete disinterest in policy will basically leave any legislation up to Paul Ryan, McConnell, and his odious cabinet. I don’t mean to sound too negative for you guys but just think about all the worst policy positions that have been put forward by Republicans over the last few years and been stopped by Obama and a deadlocked Senate. All that shit will come right back, and I doubt that the Senate Dems will have the resolve to stop it.
The Nameless One
@Keith G: Fair enough.
I’m just an outsider wanting to make you a cup of coffee or something while all of you do the real, hard, important work. (And realising I need to keep an eye on our Pauline Hanson types so those shitburgers never gain a real foothold on power down here.)
But I’ll take my ego out of the conversation now and wish you all the best.
And fuck Trump!
maryQ
This is beautiful, Tim.
Stay focused, all. People in grief tend to lose more, by not paying attention, by misdirecting anger, by loss of will. Love your neighbor. Make sure you remember to buy groceries. Pay your bills on time.
Hal
Three things:
Donald Trump is commander in chief of the armed forces! Holy shit!!
Also, my biggest dawning fear is that Trump is really going to have to be an unmitigated disaster to get rid of him in 2020. This can’t just be a symbolic win for the next four years. He’s really going to have to try and deliver what he promised. People are going to suffer long before the next presidential election.
Finally, there are people in my life that I will never look at the same again. An unrequited bigot and hate monger was elected president and if someone I know voted for him, then I can only assume they are on some basic level the same.
Tazj
@dlm: I know, I feel very bad as well. It’s like a good portion of this country just wanted to punch you in the gut. I know Hillary will be fine, she’s wealthy and successful, but boy did she take a lot of shit from everyone in this election. Just that one debate alone where he put those women in the audience. The fact that he never worked hard to learn policy and just lied all the time makes me want to cry for her.
cokane
@Keith G: i whole heartedly agree, just an interesting bit of data i found comparing the results. vote totals arent even final yet, so trump could pass romney
Baud
@Tazj: Same here.
Lit3Bolt
PA is gone.
MI is gone.
WI is gone.
Ohio is gone.
The Rust Belt is now the White Belt. Only white grievances will be aired, and only white grievances will be allowed. Your demographics are bullshit, and now everybody knows it. White America is back with a vengeance for the next forty years.
Democrats will resist the takings of the gains of the culture wars of the past 4 decades, and Republicans will milk that with their white voters.
The lesson here is, whites matter, and minorities don’t, and that is the lesson the media will take forward for the next four decades. Putin will not be mentioned. The media’s hate for Clinton will not be mentioned.
The narrative now is we must all bow to White America. All hail their Imperial Glory. And then ignore the shit out of them for the next four years.
Another Scott
@Comrade Scrutinizer: I fix your linky – SarahKendzior.
Thanks for the pointer.
The GOP has it all for the next 2 years. They can’t run from the responsibility any more. Maybe Trump is the nation’s Jesse Ventura – a 4 year experiment never to be repeated. We need to keep working, for 2018 and beyond.
Hang in there, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who wishes 2016 would quit punching him in the gut.)
Kurzleg
Clinton fatigue – like Bush fatigue in the GOP primary – is a better explanation. However much people like Obama, and however much HRC was likely to continue Obama’s policies/legacy, the Clinton name represents the establishment in the eyes of many people. Add Bengazi! and Emailgate! (plus all the other investigations over the years that went nowhere), and the Clinton brand was either stale or compromised depending.
Jeffro
@maryQ:
Seconded wholeheartedly. Thanks Tim and thanks maryQ. Once I’m able to process (anything) again, I’m just going to redouble my efforts, work that much harder next time.
Emma
@Lit3Bolt: yes.
JPL
@Another Scott: Kansas keeps electing the same government that caused their economy to go bust. I’m not sure that it can’t be repeated nationwide.
rikyrah
@Davebo:
Trump might not, but Pence sure does. ??
debbie
@Baud:
Agreed. I know it’s too early to see trends with any certainty, but listening to the BBC last night, someone said more white women voted for Trump than for Clinton. If this is true, I think that’ll be the real tragedy of this election.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Baud: Couple of things, not that it matters: First, yesterday’s election seems to dispel the idea that GOTV efforts are helpful, given the relative turnouts. Second, that analysis of early voting trends based on voter registration is as meaningful as reading tea leaves. Third, polls don’t matter. Votes matter. To the extent that Clinton’s continued lead induced complaisance (I don’t know how big an effect that was), the polls hurt while offering reassurance, a deadly combination.
Gindy51
@Tazj: Yes, all my husband’s golf buddies voted for him and he is thinking of quitting the club he worked so hard to get into He just cannot stomach knowing deep down they HATE him because he is a liberal.
schrodinger's cat
This is a kick in the gut. I feel so uprooted right now. Like I have no place to call home.
Inmourning
I think the adage “all politics is local” reflects an important truth. I hope we get a good party leader, a Howard Dean type, who will work to strengthen local parties so we can start identifying and promoting good sensible candidates at that level while the national arena is controlled by the radicals who call themselves Republicans, whose policy ideas, if implemented, will undermine the economy, the environment, and our place in the world.
rikyrah
Would Bernie have been better?
No.
They would have demolished him.
A regular Dem MAN would have won.
Or Elizabeth Warren. I do believe that a woman can be elected.
bemused
I assume that the Trump voters are waking up gleeful this morning, the majority of them anyway, even though they don’t have a clue what the future holds for them with Trump/Pence.
Ok, how are folks going to interact with the Trump voters where we live, our relatives, friends, neighbors? Knowing Republicans where I live, particularly the most right wing ones, they have a tendency to crow about any wins they have over Dems. They can’t resist taunting because nothing is more fun than trying to rub a libtard’s nose in the dirt. I’m not going to ignore digs or proselytizing anymore just to be polite or keep the peace.
rikyrah
As a non-White, White folks… You have issues.
Xenos
@The Nameless One: ABL has blocked me, twice. Just for following her – I never sent her a message, and tweet about once per year.
Don’t take it personally. I suspect that she just does not want to open up a chance for more threats and abuse. It is not my fault that there are thousands of abusive and hateful white guys out there who look just like me, but it I absolutely respect her choice to protect herself from white thugs.
amk
The dems and the left lost the plot in 2010 and never did learn the lesson from that ‘shellacking’ even in 2012, 2014 and in 2016. A threepete which resulted in this mess.
And we mocked the wingnutz for their cluelessness, who at least knew the value of their vote. Consistently despite the dipshits standing for positions from their side.
Plato was spot on on voters’ arrogance aka indifference.
“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
Roshan
I feel very lost right now. I just want to talk with few people here.
Another Scott
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Polling is broken – Sam Wang says it was off 4-6% – a huge miss for a Presidential election contest.
Nearly everyone has CallerID (at least on their cell phones) or answering machines, and I don’t know anyone who enjoys talking on the phone to strangers. Strategy and tactics are all driven by polling, unfortunately. If polling is broken (“Obama has record popularity, the economy is doing pretty well with low unemployment, Trump is a clown – how can she lose?”), then huge changes are needed in the way campaigns are run. That might be for the better (“We can’t take anything for granted – we have to try to win everywhere, even in ‘safe’ areas!”), but man it’s hard to learn that lesson this way…
Cheers,
Scott.
craigie
@Another Scott:
Speaking of Jesse Ventura, clearly the lesson is that people (even in blue states – looking at you, California) like to elect celebrities. We are that far gone that we can’t tell the difference between entertainment and real life.
And so, our nominee in 2020 should be John Stewart. Or maybe Tom Hanks.
rikyrah
I am glad that I work at a place where everyone else will be as depressed as I am today. ???
TriassicSands
@msdc:
Apparently, hyperbole is your strong suit.
Every left wing blog. Hmm. Isn’t BJ a left wing blog? Kevin Drum at Mother Jones writes a left wing blog. Every Clinton supporter I’ve spoken with this night is sick — disgusted with the ever more ignorant American electorate and desperately worried what Trump’s victory will mean for themselves and the people and things they care about. Many of those Clinton supporters began as Sanders supporters. I can’t find any difference in the sadness and disgust that both groups feel. They all desperately wanted Clinton to win, some because they genuinely wanted her to be president and some because they desperately wanted Trump to lose.
I’ve used the word desperately three times now. It fits.
Baud
@rikyrah: Me too.
debbie
I hope Adam knows of people who will work behind the scenes to see if there was any hacking going on last night.
Xenos
@rikyrah: exactly. The antisemitism unleashed if Bernie was the nominee would have been incredible
and I am now confident That It Would Have succeeded.
debbie
@rikyrah:
Wish I did. They’re young, stupid, and prone to gloating. Thank God for ear buds.
TriassicSands
It looks like Clinton may, like Gore, win the popular vote and lose the Electoral College.
I wonder if Donald will concede that the election was rigged.
satby
@dlm: Same age, same emotion. Running out of the energy to snap back when it takes all I have just to get through the days and survive.
Kay
The part I can’t overcome is the bending of truth into pretzels. I can’t really “stand” anywhere with that. I don’t know how to persuade people who believe things that are obviously untrue. They’ll now own everything- the majority of state governments, the Presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court. How can you even oppose them if there’s no common ground on basic facts, no touchstone? They’ll just say..whatever and most people will believe it. You can say “President Trump did THIS” and it will be “no, he didn’t”.
You won’t be able to rely on anything. These are people who believe the unemployment rate is invented. They’ll just invent their own.
I get some weird comfort over “everything”. They own the whole thing. They won’t be able to blame black people, or feminists, or immigrants for what happens next. I do wish I had somewhere other than the stock market or real estate to put savings though. Trump is a terrible businessman. He’ll tank ordinary people.
Lit3Bolt
@Kurzleg:
VOTING IS NOW CONSUMERISM.
And Hillary was “Meh.” Even as the first female President.
But Trump was NEW! And Exciting! Because Media! Because Reasons!
So Hillary proved that there is now a shelf-life to politicians. Voters will not/never come back to an “old bag.” And I’m not saying this because I fucking LIKE it, I’m saying it because we just LOST THE ENTIRE FUCKING RUST BELT TO REPUBLICANS!
That was Obama country, and Dem territory. And it was a complete balls to the wall cock-up. A failure at every level, including the opposition’s!
The narrative now will be whitey-white-white-white-white-whiteness!!! All guised up in “economic anxiety” and “B-b-but Michael Moore-!” and blaming EVERYTHING on the Clintons, when even internal Republican pollsters were predicting President Clinton.
On CNN now: “White America has spoken.”
NO mention of poll intimidation. NO mention of restricted voting access. NO mention of faulty voting machines.
The corporate media has its daddy. And it’s name is now President Trump. And they have all the revenue they want now, until the missiles start to fall…
Iowa Old Lady
There are a lot of Sanders supporters saying they told you so on Kos today. We need to support one another today especially. Everyone here is in pain. Don’t make it worse.
ETA: I have returned to believing there will be no woman president during my lifetime.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Hey Kay.
PVDMichael
Hopefully we can count on Republicans to do what they always do when they receive a 48% “mandate”: totally overplay their cards.
rikyrah
Did the markets open yet?
Mr Stagger Lee
@David Fud: +1000!!!!!
Run, Lillian!
@craigie: Clooney 2020.
Fuck, I am depressed.
rikyrah
@David Fud:
Which is why women and gays should be nervous.
bago
Voter suppression works!
Baud
@rikyrah: Only the ones that voted for Hillary. Don’t care about the others.
lamh36
I’m sorry but i come away from them with the same thought that a lot of midnitirs citizens do right now…a major part of White America owns this.
there were some who were less cynical about this country in regards to race, but this election may have single handedly done more to crater race relations in this country than 8 years of Obama.
I didn’t quite understand how much white people hated us, or could at least live with that hate. Now I do.
morning after…and i see already white MSM journalists already coming out with the “not about racism” BS stories. U OWN THIS WHITE AMERICA.
Now I’m off to work to attempt not to smack some folks in the face who i already know are perfectly happy bout this shit.
If i had time off I’d call in today
hueyplong
@JPL: “Kansas keeps electing the same government that caused their economy to go bust. I’m not sure that it can’t be repeated nationwide.”
I totally agree. Every time they fk up, and the “team” Trump assembles will easily be the worst in modern American history, they will blame their political opponents and double down, just as they have done in Kansas, where no matter how bad it gets, they stick with the program.
When Trump said he’d sign a repeal of Obamacare on day one, that wasn’t an idle promise. That will happen. Instantly making 20 million people uninsured will be spun as “freedom.”
We’ll take some small pleasure, and get a little false hope, from some initial score-settling Trump deals out within the party, but then every GOPer will fall into line and they’ll do all the things they’ve promised. The days of failing to deliver on “overpromising” are over. Controlling all aspects of government that are supposed to provide checks, they’re going to deliver.
And the single most loyal people, those whose word will be gold when they’re whispering into Trump’s ear, will be a pair of amoral bullies (Ghouliani and Chris Christie) and the out-and-out Nazi head of Breitbart. Once Gingrich does his obeisance for having criticized Trump slightly in public when things were going poorly, he’ll join them. And he’ll be the relative “voice of reason” in the group.
It’s going to be pretty bad. I can’t imagine why anyone thinks it won’t. If you idly consider Bundy as head of BLM, who’s to say you are doing so as a deliberate exaggeration?
Sorry this contradicts the lead item in this thread, which was really well done, but when even objective observation provides no check, all bets are off.
Iowa Old Lady
@TriassicSands: Really? Wow. Not long ago, I was in a conversation about what I think is called clustering: the way people are moving to live with others who share their political opinions. Ds are largely in cities. I wondered if that might result in another popular vote-EC mismatch.
bemused
David Remnick pointed out the media commentators normalizing “The American Tragedy”. Hell, the normalizers didn’t even skip a beat last night on cnn and msnbc even as this debacle unfolded. I thought how can they chuckle or even smile. Contemptible.
Xenos
White poeople in America have jumped the shark. I say that as a guy who moved back to Europe after his ancestors settled in Virginia more than 300+ years ago. Things are fucked up here, too, but people have learned at least few lessons out of the last 100 years of tragedy.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: No doubt, but there seem to be a couple of competing theories about what went wrong. Some folks are saying it was more or less a regular election (aside from the spectacle of a Cheeto-faced, ferret-wearing shit-gibbon’s participation) and that the Democrats’ loss is due to a failure of turnout. Blame it on Clinton fatigue or whatever. In this scenario, we have an awful situation to endure for the next four years, but it’s fixable.
Another theory (the Sarah Kindzior pieces linked above are a good example) is that this wasn’t a regular election at all, that the US is sliding toward the kind of revanchist white nationalism that is rampant in Russia and gaining a foothold in other European countries. In this telling, the Democrats lost because of white identity politics.
To me, the latter is the much scarier scenario, not just because of the horrendous implications for nonwhites and other marginalized groups (though that is the immediate threat) but because it’ll be so much harder to fix. The neener-neener Bernie bros who showed up to taunt us last night (because they have ever so much class) say the answer is to appeal to economic solidarity, but we know there’s a heaping helping of bullshit in that because the employment rate is less than 5%, the average Trumper has a much higher income than the actual poor, who voted for Clinton.
I guess we’ll know more when the numbers come out. Maybe it’s a combination of both. But the integration of Breitbart’s Klan Circus into the Trump campaign — and next the motherfucking Trump admini-fucking-stration, suggests to me that Door #2 is more likely.
Kay
I did a conference call with my two older kids last night to talk about returns as they came in. It was horrible because they both followed the election, both voted, both volunteered. They’re adults and it’s not like they’re dependent on me to hold their hands but my daughter in particular was really upset and I think it’s because she’s a genuinely kind person- she doesn’t even gossip! Disapproves of gossip :)
I think she was rattled by how mean they are- the insults and targeting people and violent rallies. I didn’t know what to tell her. I felt I had let them down someway. Like the world is meaner than I let on. They know I’m an optimist by nature but maybe I didn’t prepare for them for this. I didn’t think people would do it.
Kurzleg
@NorthLeft12: My wife and I ran down the litany this morning while walking the dog. And let us not forget the USSC and probably replacement of Ginsburg sometime in the next four years.
WarMunchkin
I don’t know whose fault it is, and frankly I don’t particularly care right now. What I want is to feel loved and to be able to love other people, because right now it feels completely lonely, even in the heart of NYC.
raven
@Kay: this
Kay
@rikyrah:
Hey. You must be glad Illinois didn’t fall, right?
amk
tweet of the day.
one was terrorist attack. the other is self-inflicted with eyes wide open from both left and the right.
good luck, murkkka. ‘god’ has indeed ‘blessed’ ya.
enplaned
@Baud: Lack of enthusiasm. So many missed opportunities. Tim Kaine – nice guy, but so far as I can tell, didn’t move the needle at all, never heard about him in the news, he might as well not have been nominated for all the impact he made (perhaps he was super effective on the hustings?). But if you want to gin up some excitement it should have been a minority guy for choice, and if it really can’t be for some reason, then it should have been a white guy who can make shit happen, maybe Franken.
But more fundamentally, the poor turnout was likely a reflection of how people felt about Hillary.
albertZ
As Trump and his supporters will soon find out, leadership is not just about “winning”. Unless Trump and Congress suddenly embrace a progressive agenda (not likely) it’s going to be a rough 4 years. I hate to hope for failure when people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake, but I believe in progressive policy for a reason not because I’m a bigoted contrarian.
Gelfling 545
I don’t believe that Bernie or any other Democrate would have done better. None of them would have been offering what Trump did. Since Trump has no policies to speak of, hatred, bigotry, bullying and empty promises were what they wanted. They weren’t going to get that from us.
enplaned
@Kurzleg: I’m annoyed at RBG. The right time to leave was when Obama had the ability to replace her. RBG has also gambled with the future of the country, and she may also have lost.
Baud
@enplaned: I agree that it seems we lost the propaganda war.
amk
@enplaned: Oh, go take your fucking football and fuck yourself with it. Idiot.
enplaned
@Gelfling 545: But if the issue was getting our voters out, we didn’t need a candidate better at hate, but simply a candidate that was more interesting to people. In that respect, Hillary left a lot to be desired.
Shalimar
@Lit3Bolt: It won’t be 40 years. Long-term demographics are still against racist white people. Vote suppression works like a rubber-band effect, when it finally snaps and those 5% you were keeping from voting to get your 1% victory finally get to vote, you start losing big. It’s going to be a hell of a long 4-16 years though.
debbie
@Kay:
Yes. It’s the meanness that’s the worst.
debbie
@enplaned:
Wouldn’t have mattered a bit.
Botsplainer
@msdc:
Fuck Bernie Sanders. I’m donating to any opponent he has – his bullshit campaign fed a lot of the messaging and reinforced things in the minds of so many gullible, disgusting “hard working white people” that they accepted it.
MazeDancer
Maybe, ironically, States Rights is the answer. Like GOP has made fiefdoms. Dems have Sanctuary States and pass laws to reverse the craziest stuff. And go 10th Amendment on the alleged conservatives.
Baud
@Kay: I feel our side never takes the true nature of the GOP seriously enough.
ItinerantPedant
Bernie wouldn’t have won. Russ Feingold here in Wisconsin basically ran Bernie’s whole playbook and got his ass royally kicked.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Walker: Black Lives Matter just became a #1 priority for destruction just ahead of ISIS.
Andy
@Lit3Bolt: It’s the economy.
70% of Americans are not degreed.(Politifact-True).
Most older white males drive something somewhere.
(First Self Driving Trucks).
Yard signs matter.
Echo chambers, not so much.
Nobody likes the grownups(sic) talking about “their” future that doesn’t affect them.
Real unemployment U6 is 9.9%, not 4.9.
enplaned
@Betty Cracker: But white identity (at least according to pre-voting polls) skews heavily old, so that would also be something that would fix itself with the passage of time. Be interesting to see if that’s borne out by people looking at voting results. The younger generation doesn’t swing that way nearly as much — or at least that’s the understanding pre-voting.
Summer
I’m seeing a lot of brave tenure stream academics vowing on social media that today is a new day and they’re showing up for the fight. So brave! Perhaps they might start by actually working to improve the conditions of the contingent faculty members whose poorly compensated labor and demoralized lives both makes tenure-stream work possible and threatens the stability and meaning of university-level inquiry as much as rural poverty does the American system of governance.
Patricia Kayden
@Davebo: I think you’re missing the point. Doesn’t matter if Trump doesn’t personally care about LGBT issues. He will appoint Justices to SCOTUS that will overturn marriage equality and other pro-gay measures. Pence is very anti-LGBT as shown by the law he tried to pass in Indiana allowing anti-gay discrimination by the business community.
enplaned
@Baud: I think the true nature of the GOP has been largely suppressed in the media to date. In this election it started to become a lot more clear. But the GOP over the past decades has gotten credit for being a principled conservative and/or evangelical party, when that was just a thin veneer for the white nationalism below.
Anya
@Roger Moore: If there’s a bright spot in the election, I think Trump might’ve ended the culture wars that used LGBTQ as a weapon. He made teahadists cheer a gay man. He might not care about this. I don’t think he will actively seek to oppress LGBTQ and Trans-Americans. He might also veto any bill that overtly oppresses them. This is the only positive thing I see from this man.
Regarding the over all mood, my biggest fear, and I see some evidence of this on twitter and blogges, is that white progressives will draw the wrong lesson from her. They will focus on appealing to white working class at the expense of POC and women. This is my biggest fear.
Patricia Kayden
@Mr Stagger Lee: Planned Parenthood just got targeted for destruction, along with abortion rights and access to contraception.
debbie
@Baud:
I disagree.
Maybe this one will work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aItpjF5vXc
Baud
@enplaned: I agree. Again, I thought Dems had become savvy enough to see past the media. I was wrong.
Shalimar
@Botsplainer: I was a Sanders supporter when the campaign began. Those April-July months of “Clinton is corrupt, we need to keep fighting to the bitter end” cured me of that. I don’t care enough about him now to worry about his Senate seat, but I will actively oppose Sanders if he runs again in 2020.
enplaned
@Botsplainer: Yes, I was OK with his campaign (not that I thought he had a hope in hell in a general election in the unlikely event he won the primary) right up to the point he started regurgitating Trump lines and thereby legitimizing/normalizing them.
Whereas he never took a serious punch from Hillary, by design.
satby
@Baud: Lots of reflexive GOP voters don’t take the true nature of the GOP seriously.
Kurzleg
@enplaned: I am, too. So now we have the very real chance of a 6/3 conservative/liberal split on the USSC and the non-zero chance of the overturning of Roe as well as gay marriage.
Botsplainer
@Lit3Bolt:
I hope the TV execs hear their skin crackle and pop just before the overpressure wave shatters their bodies into constituent atoms….
Baud
@Kurzleg: To the victor go the spoils.
Shalimar
@Anya: Trump and Pence and the Republican Congress don’t have to be anti-gay. The Justices that Trump appoints to the Supreme Court are going to eliminate gay marriage along with who knows how much other cultural progress.
chopper
trump ended up with 2 million fewer votes than romney in ’12. unlike mittens he still won because democrats didn’t turn out.
The Nameless One
@Xenos: Totally respect her. Just don’t want to be any part of making things even minutely harder for anyone at the moment.
And wondering if there’s anything an outsider can do to help.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Minorities might be to blame a little as well though. ABC’s Good Morning America reported that Trump got 29% of Latino and Asian votes and 8% of Black votes which is up from Romney’s share. Also 3-4 million less Americans came out to vote this election which helped Trump win.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Kurzleg:
This is it.
On one hand I’m surprised that what Comey did is being so readily dismissed — she really was up more like 10% before that letter, one poll said 12%, but all had her up by quite a bit, and that’s even accounting for a tiny drop before the letter, and she dropped down to 3 to 4%, and it turns out that’s about how much the polls were off. With her numbers before that letter, having them be too high by 3 points would have been okay. And this really is close, she’s winning the popular vote for example.
Having said that, the reason it was so easy for them to engineer that was part of the problem. It doesn’t mean it was her fault, it means that it was too easy a path to take, they had everyone primed for decades to believe it.
C.V. Danes
If you are not white, not straight, and/or not christian, and you currently find yourself in a red state, I suggest you make immediate plans to leave. Move to a blue state where you will be safe. Because when things start to get really bad, and they will sooner than you think, then the ropes will be coming out from from the closet, the sheets off the bed, and the mobs will NOT be hanging white, straight christians from the trees. For your own safety, get out while you still can.
This may sound like hyperbole, but an electorate that just handed the keys to Trump just tossed hyperbole out the window.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Sounds like we had a very similar experience. I didn’t think this would happen either and did not prepare my kid for it. This is not the country I thought it was. I always knew part of it was mean — I grew up down the road from a little ghost town called Rosewood. But I vastly underestimated the scope of the meanness.
Hoodie
I’ve lived through a landslide for Nixon in ’72, Ronald Reagan over Carter in ’80, GW in ’00 and now this. It seems to get worse every time. Nixon presided over a GOP that had liberals like Jacob Javits; Reagan a little worse, but not a monster; GW has the blood of thousands on his hands. God knows what Trump and his basket of deplorables will bring.
Hillary ran a decent campaign but she had too many things stacked up against her. It wasn’t fair; it never is. Carter was about the most decent president we’ve ever had, and he was turned into a caricature. The reality is that you have to sell to a public that slurps up reality TV and is moved by pickup truck ads, and it goes without saying that the worst comes out in people when they feel they’re losing their status or never being allowed to have status. And it’s not limited to whites or lower levels of income and education. There’s plenty of stupid to go around, and it takes all forms. And it can lead to violence and a host of other maladies. My biggest fear is that we will further descend into tribalism. You look around the world and can see sectarian strife just about anywhere you look, but we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking that we’re immune from it. We aren’t.
My family will be immediately poorer in the next week thanks to the hole this will blow in the markets, and the future for my kids looks bleaker. The same thing happened to working and middle class people in places like Argentina and Venezuela. They had a nice life (it’s always relative), and gradually it disappeared because demagogues figured out the place to pull the thread and start the unraveling a delicate tapestry that took decades to create. Elites helped bring it on and did nothing to stop it because they were too busy stuffing their pockets and fluffing their egos.
ArchTeryx
For some of us, survival is far from guaranteed. Without health insurance, I die. And I’m on expanded Medicaid.
I’ve already put out letters to a close friend in Canada and my sister in France. If both of those fall through, the next move is my little stash of pills, kept specifically for this purpose. If I’m going to go out, I will go out on my own terms – not in theirs. Not dying slowly, in agony, over weeks or months.
I’ve known for a long time that my life was forfeit. This was just my personal chickens coming home to roost a little earlier then expected.
Patricia Kayden
@chopper: Exactly. You would think that given how uniquely dangerous and bigoted Trump has been during his campaign, more Democrats would sense the urgency and get off their butts to vote. But no. Alas, we have at least 4 years of a madman as our President.
I hope Secretary Clinton knows that she did the best she could do to win this and make history. Very sad that this is how she ends her political career.
PST
I just checked the 22nd Amendment. It says not more than twice. I was hoping maybe it said not more than twice consecutively.
Elizabelle
@Summer: I came to see “It Can’t Happen Here” at Chapel Hill. Thank you for telling me about it.
And that torrential rain outside, during. Memorable evening.
liberal
@Richard Mayhew: exactly right.
I’ve always thought there was some risk Trump would strike out on his own, but that the greatest (as in most likely, but most damaging) outcome would be him as an airhead, just signing whatever the Rs hands him.
In this regard, his outsourcing his shortlist for the USSC to Heritage was very instructive.
NorthLeft12
I know a lot smarter and more experienced and more American people than me will analyze this election to death, but here is my take;
The Repubs won this election. Not just Deadbeat Donald, but all Republicans won last night. Their implementation of a long game that included the following elements; voter suppression, Clinton [especially Hillary] smearing, [not so] subtle sabotage of government services, and exploiting divisive issues which include race/identity, immigration, and greed.
I would say they have been working away at these issues for going on thirty years in some cases, and have been aided and abetted by Dems for a lot of that time. They recognized Hillary Clinton as a threat when she was first lady of Arkansas, and many Dems have eagerly repeated the narrative they built for her. And it stuck to her.
I’ll give Trump credit for somehow galvanizing their base, pulling them all out to the polls and taking advantage of the general disaffection for the current status quo that somehow always gets hung around the sitting President’s neck…..no matter how popular he might be.
I don’t know that there was much more Hillary could do [I am sure many will disagree], although I would have liked to see the Dems make a concerted [and long term] effort to identify the Republican legislative stonewalling and somehow stick them with the blame for some of the dissatisfaction.
Well, good luck for the future.
Punchy
@Another Scott: Yup. One of the victims of this is Nate Silver and his ilk. Never again will anyone trust his numbers. Never again will anyone care what numbers he generates. Him and Sam Wang are done…toast
Patricia Kayden
@ArchTeryx: Not even sure how to respond to you except to ask if there are bluer states which would provide you with the healthcare insurance you need at more reasonable rates? Millions of Americans are going to be in your shoes once Orange Bigot repeals the ACA. This is the human cost of last night’s election.
hueyplong
My view of Bernie’s campaign is slightly different. I think he slid into a quasi-GOP mode because he found himself so tantalizingly close to winning, while realizing that if he didn’t hurt her badly he was going to come up just short.
I was very annoyed at him for that.
But it’s silly to say that cost Hillary in the general. The GOP has demonized her for upwards of 3 decades and that huge wave of negativity was coming regardless of what Bernie did or did not do. I know way too many hard core GOPers, and not one of them got the bright idea of ignoring Trump’s evil nature to go to full-on hatred of Hillary Clinton because of Bernie Sanders.
tobie
Saw a swastika spray-painted onto a billboard in the very red Eastern Shore of Maryland yesterday. It was’t there before. Maybe this is connected to the Trump movement, maybe not. Who knows? But like everyone else I feel pained and lost at the moment.
ArchTeryx
@Patricia Kayden: I *am* in a blue state – New York State – but once Obamacare falls, so will the exchanges and expanded Medicaid. The medicine I need to keep myself alive costs better then $2K/month, with my income maybe a tenth of that.
I’m an unemployed STEM PhD with absolutely no job prospects on the immediate horizon. I’ve done my best there, but 3 years of futility tell the tale. Medicaid was keeping me alive, and it won’t exist after January 2017. So now is the time to make my peace, one way or another.
Citizen Alan
@enplaned:
Why should we blame RGB for being blindsided exactly like everyone else? She thought she was going to be replaced by the first woman president. She also thought that by waiting for that woman president she would be replaced by someone actually to her left which hasn’t happened in decades. If she didn’t retire between 2009 and 2012 (when TWO other Justices did), what makes you think anyone halfway decent could have gotten confirmed in the last four years?
MomSense
@Baud:
But this was the first presidential election since the Voting Rights Act was gutted by the Supreme Court. Voter suppression is real. Let’s not blame Hillary for the actions of the deplorable justices and all the republican legislatures and governors who seized the opportunity to limit early voting and the number of polling locations, and place restrictions and ID requirements in order to prevent people from voting.
enplaned
She’s been in dicey health for a while. She has no business taking any kind of risks. Yes, she should have resigned while the Senate majority in the first two years could have dealt with her replacement. Yes, she should have known better. Betting on what came after an Obama administration was stupid — for all she knew, he could have been a one-termer.
enplaned
@MomSense: You need to prove that the reduction in turnout was solely due to suppression. Seriously doubt that’s true, but in any event, unproven at best. I’m sure it’s an effect, doubt that it’s the only effect.
Barbara
@Davebo: We have no idea what he will do because Trump plays to a stage and an audience and we don’t know which audience is going to hold him captive next. For all we know his daughter and her husband are going to call the shots.
But I only marginally care right this minute because one of my dearest friends died of cancer last night. It was a long time coming but it hurts a lot right now.
dogwood
I think the first thing Democrats need to do is face reality, and that reality is that we are powerless. The dems in Congress have no ability to set the agenda or protect the people who are about to get screwed. I am generally an optimist, but at 62 I do not expect to live to see a time when the great progress of the Obama years will be reborn. A political party can’t sustain power when it is too dependent upon charismatic leaders to save the day.
Patricia Kayden
@C.V. Danes: Good advice. I don’t see anything good happening in redder states now that bigots have a champion in the White House. I expect that racial and religious minorities will be under increasing threats of physical assaults. Affirmative action is done. Native American protests in North Dakota will get uglier. BLM will be under attack and Black men and women will face increasing sanctioned police brutality. Reproductive rights are done.
I don’t see any positives at all.
louc
There was a professor the Washington Post featured who predicted Donald Trump would win. Keep in mind that it’s incredibly rare for the party in the White House to retake it for a third term. That was one of his “five levers.” People made fun of him. but he was right.
Unfortunately, I don’t see how we come back from this because of the man just elected and the full control of Congress and 30 state legislatures. Republicans will up voter suppression laws. Sic Transit America.
hueyplong
@ArchTeryx:
I am very sorry to learn of your situation. It’s a crime that half the population thinks it’s weak or wrong to want government to help people who so clearly need help.
We’re about to sort out who we are as a people for the next few years, and it’s pretty easy right now to think we will not cover ourselves in glory.
Gimlet
Maybe the underlying theme is that the electorate voted for “change”, not any one particular Trump-GOP policy but change cause things were perceived as not going right.
Suzanne
All right, GOP, here we go: now you have to govern. I will enjoy watching you fall on your faces, as you don’t know how to do that.
Elizabelle
Hello buds. Gonna pretty much lurk, and not reading news sites. Don’t want to see the headlines.
I am shocked to my core. Hugs to you all, and a bracing cup of coffee or soothing tea, whichever.
Staying away from TV as much as possible. Don’t want to see anyone legitimizing this, or talking about the “message” or wisdom from the American people.
enplaned
@hueyplong: He didn’t cost her the general. He was mostly a canary in a coal-mine, warning of trouble to come. He did play a role in legitimizing some of Trump’s attacks, but hard to imagine that this was solely responsible for Hillary’s defeat.
Iowa Old Lady
@Barbara: I’m so sorry
Patricia Kayden
@Barbara: So sorry to hear of your friend’s passing. May she R.I.P. ((Barbara))
Suzanne
The only people to blame are uneducated whites. Fuck them.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Yeah. The post-factual world.
And I do think Trump and his crack administration will tank the economy. You’re welcome, Americans!
Let me know when President Obama says anything. He and Michelle likely got the shock of their lives last night.
Kurzleg
@Baud: Obviously. But it didn’t have to come to this.
Barbara
@Hal: It’s like with dying it’s hard to know what to wish for. Go now with a massive heart attack or die slowly but with plenty of time to say good-bye. Do we want Trump to be an epic disaster (as, apparently, Susan Sarandon wants) or do we want to muddle along until the next cycle burns itself out?
I don’t want Trump to be an epic disaster because some people will not survive the disaster. I grew up in the rust belt and part of me wonders what’s next — how will Trump actually help, because he has no clue about trade or manufacturing or anything that isn’t real estate and he barely gets his mind around that. I just can’t spend the mental energy right now. Our next election here is for governor and house seats. Next week, I will talk to someone from my local democratic committee and start — now — doing the work of turning at least one of our chambers blue.
Patricia Kayden
@Suzanne: And the 3-4 million people who stayed home and chose not to vote this time around.
JMG
I am less in shock than I was last night. We all have to keep on living as best we can, so here is my one, teeny, tiny, possibly mistaken bit of consolation. The second and third most depressing election nights of my life were Nixon in ’72 and Bush in ’04. All seemed lost each time, especially when Nixon started bombing again and Bush tried to privatize Social Security (the remake comes soon to your House Ways and Means Committee). But each man was in tremendous political trouble less than one year later.
Our country is too closely divided for either side to fully institute its policies without generating more opposition than it first had. I don’t believe most Trump voters really want to feel responsible for the TV stories they see about people with horrible illnesses losing their health insurance, or watching kids get yanked out of school by feds in riot gear to be put on buses for parts unknown.
I have to not believe it. Because if it’s true, then almost 50 percent of my fellow citizens are monsters. Not only does that not correlate with my experience, but if I believe that, where am I?
As for the pure politics, it was a low turnout election. Republicans always win those. For whatever reasons, Clinton could not convince enough of Obama’s voters to come to her side. Simple as that.
Baud
@dogwood:
Agree.
liberal
@liberal: sorry, likeliest albeit not most damaging possibility.
Patricia Kayden
@enplaned:
I kind of was hoping that Secretary Clinton would have chosen one of the Castro brothers out of Texas. But it is what it is and I doubt that would have made any difference given the type of voters who came out in droves to support Trump. They certainly wouldn’t have switched their votes to Clinton because she had a Latino VP.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: No shit..
What a fuckin bunch of dumbasses we have in this nation (who voted for that shitgibbon)
dww44
@Baud: I’m not surprised to read this. I canvassed some in this southern red state and the focus was, as it has always been, on getting out the African-American vote. While there are certainly way committed voters among them, far too many of them don’t vote for one reason or another. But, mostly, large segments of that local population is way poor and are in desperate need of jobs. Without an Obama to get them to the polls (and believe me, it was hard enough then) and with legal roadblocks in the way it’s doubly difficult for Democrats to get enough minorities out to the polls.
We have to figure a way to get more segments of the population to come over to our side and we have to be able to overcome the decades long GOP politics of personal and institutional destruction. In the short term we have to fight and we have to take back some ground in 2018, even though it is a mid term.
My husband just called in from a golfing trip with long time mostly Trump supporting college friends (we are among the “olds”) and opined that at least the GOP won’t be bashing Hillary for the next 8 years.
celticdragonchick
@ArchTeryx:
My God.
*hugs*
try to hang in there.
Suzanne
@Patricia Kayden: I think we really, really have to secede. If not in truth, at least in effect. We need to stop being friends with Trumpers. Stop doing business with them. Stop going to church or book club with them. We now need liberal and conservative bars, the way there are gay and straight bars. They want a country that is inhumane. They are not good people. They don’t deserve friendship or fellowship. Let them die of heroin overdoses and let their children die in wars he starts. I don’t see any way out of this.
Keith G
@ArchTeryx: Don’t pop the pills just yet. I also need Obamacare. The next 400 days will be okay. After that, It might likely be the case that things get worse for us. And yet, repealing Obamacare makes sense for some who never have to worry about the repeal becoming law. Now they do. They have to worry about markets, providers, state budgets that have to again shoulder a larger uninsured burden. I am not saying that this will persuade them to become humanitarian, but I think that there will be enough strife to change the trajectory of the plans of the hardcore..
Barbara
@Hal: As for commander in chief — maybe one thing however subconscious a lot of people are trying to say is that they are tired of the mammoth amount of U.S. economy devoted to the military. Because I guarantee you that our more reliable allies will not be viewing us as nearly reliable as they did. Germany, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the Philippines — they let us keep huge military installations on their soil. Today they start thinking about their Plan B. Turkey is the most likely to act soon, because of Trump’s Muslim animus and because Erdogan doesn’t really like us anyway. The others will be longer range and more thoughtful about their best interests going forward. It would be better for something like this to be the result of thoughtful and gradual change, but there is a very inflexible, rigid view of foreign policy that has been pushed onto every president since at least 1980, including the Dems. If you are in a state of grief, they are probably in a state of panic.
Bostondreams
My 8 year old daughter made me cry this morning. ‘Daddy, if they try to do anything bad, like take my friend Akrom from school, my friends and I will march up to Washton DC and tell them to stop.’
God, my little girl.
Patricia Kayden
@dww44:
And unfortunately those roadblocks will only become more numerous and will be sanctioned by SCOTUS. I guess if you can’t get Black votes, you will work hard to block Black votes. That should continue to work as long as Whites are the majority and keep voting for Republicans.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
Hi Elizabelle. I’m with you. Not sure what to do. I couldn’t sleep last night. My fucking trump coworker got panicked messages from her Somali clients this morning. She’s all smiles. She and her husband bought some more guns before the election. I feel anguished.
Frank Wilhoit
“…We have institutions, and even a sizable faction of the Republican party, that Trump can’t just order around….” He won’t have to. They’ll be trampling each other to bow down before him and beg his forgiveness.
“…move on to fight fascism….” You do realize that the ONLY possible way to do that is with overwhelming force, effectively deployed? Fascism cannot be “fought”. Fascist regimes decay from their own mistakes, or from age. The best thing about American rightists is that their nerve always fails them — yes, always; but often very late.
Barbara
@ArchTeryx: I could not sleep at all last night and compared to you I don’t have much to lose. So I think I have a glimmer of understanding of how you must be feeling this morning. But I add my voice to the chorus. Deep breaths. Keep posting here and make sure we know what’s happening with you. I will try to help you if I can.
Paul in KY
@Gelfling 545: I think that maybe a couple of other Democratic candidates might have done better. Not Bernie, though.
Crap!
liberal
@Citizen Alan: because there’s always a risk that the bad guys could win. You have to balance that against the upside. But any marginal benefit of having RGB instead of an Obama appointee is miniscule compared to the risk of the downside.
Come on, this is simple cost benefit analysis. RGB bet the way she because she’s a horrible, selfish human being. Ditto Breyer.
Another Scott
@Punchy: Nate and Sam aren’t pollsters – they just try to tease the best estimate from lots of polling. They can’t get good results if there are unknown systematic errors in the raw data.
They serve an important function – to try to reduce the noise and help pollsters get better. But I don’t see how polling can get better if people (for understandable reasons) refuse to participate.
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
@Bostondreams:
I love your little girl. She’s a helper. I guess we all stay close to the people we love, try to help and protect as many as we can and somehow try to organize.
Patricia Kayden
@Bostondreams: Awwww. Sam Seder of Majority Report has talked a lot about his daughter’s Muslim friend who has expressed concerns about Trump’s Islamophobic comments. This is a sad day for children who can sense that Trump is a hateful man.
enplaned
@Patricia Kayden: But the issue was with Democratic turnout. So maybe it would have gotten a few more people off their ass.
OGLiberal
Just read the Clinton underperformed Obama 2012 with blacks, Hispanics, youngs and woman. In these cases Trump won a bit more than Romney, or the same, or a bit less. In no case did the total for each add up to the Romney-Obama totals in 2012. So the rest went third party. That matters.
Barbara
@Iowa Old Lady: Thank you. When it rains it pours, except that I do know that whatever rain is falling on me there are other people — my friend’s family and marginalized people who are having a much tougher time. Must be there for them.
enplaned
@Another Scott: But equally, garbage in/garbage out. And if they can’t produce good answers from the data because the data sucks, then they’re no longer useful and may have to change careers (maybe 538 retreats to sports).
lamh36
i see i will have to stay off BJ and other sites for a while def the rest of the day maybe the rest of the week. today esp is too raw, and i’m not even as bad off as some folks will likely be.
but i’m pissed and i’m just not in the mood to smile and nod at some folks today.
just can’t do it.
Have a good one BJ
Paul in KY
@Baud: Agree, Baud. They are as serious as a heartattack in the evil things they want to do & I think we soft pedal that truth. Maybe with Trump there were so many ‘targets’ out there & Hillary & team picked the wrong ones.
I really didn’t hear much about Trump ‘University’ & I thought that was a very damning line of attack to be used.
Shalimar
@Barbara: I want Trump to be an epic disaster for the poor rural white people who think he is a magician who will solve all their problems instantly. And he will be a disaster for those people, because Ryan’s economic plans will hurt them badly. Unfortunately, they will hurt many others just as badly or worse, people who don’t deserve the karmic retribution. And this doesn’t even get into the pain when Trump nukes San Francisco for having the audacity to have a massive rally against him.
liberal
@Comrade Scrutinizer: agreed. Fascism is a real risk, but the likeliest bad outcome is Trump simply signing all the bills Congress sends him. And that’s pretty bad.
sherparick
@msdc: Yep, lots of “I told you so.” Of course Bernie’s long campaign, which where he and his surrogates sang in harmony with so many right-wing memes about Secretary Clinton did its job tearing her down, along with the NY Times who started the Hillary Hunt by joining with a right-wing hack to snark hunt on the Clinton Foundation and gave credibility to the whole “play for pay” thing.
I don’t think the racist thing completely fits what happened in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. People who voted for Obama twice, voted Democrat going back to 1992, did not all of the sudden become racists. Trump, to give him and his handler’s credit, pounded the trade issue and globalization the last three weeks. When you look at this map, you see the problem. http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/01/22/fewer-manufacturing-jobs-housing-bust-haunt-many-us-counties
2. But we are all fucked. Men, women, and children both in the U.S. and around the world who are alive right now will die over the next four years because of this election. Bernie bros, Green Party, whatever, your “I told you so” are all morally inane right now.
3. Things Trump can do without breaking any laws. He will probably lean on Jeff Sessions and Mike Pence to appoint some Federalist Society hack in similar to Janice Rogers Brown (but not Judge Brown who is now to old, three years short of seventy – these guys want someone who will be on the court for 30 years) to the Supreme Court. And that means eventually the end of Roe v. Wade and Griswald v. Conneticutt and resurrection of “Lochner.” For those not into U.S. legal history, basically this means “Humanae Vita” and John Galt’s speech are about to be read into the Constitution at the same time 15th, most of the 14th, the 13th, 1st, 4th, & 5th Amendments are about to be read out- also the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the rest of the Voting Rights act will be thrown on the ash heap of history. This is probably not what those people in the upper Midwest and Pennsylvania were voting for, but this is what they will get.
2. All of the EPA rules and regulations enacted by Obama will be reversed Frankly, with the help of the Tea Party Congress I could see 120 years of environmental and conservation laws repealed.
Besides the environmental rules EOs, the Trumpkins have a little list: along with all the Executive Orders he has issued such as the overtime rule and LBGT protections@Davebo: . Also, this: http://www.npr.org/2016/09/19/494619423/new-yorker-writer-imagines-donald-trump-as-president
OSNOS: Well, historically presidents, when they come into office, tend to do things right away. Barack Obama, for instance, issued nine executive orders in his first 10 days. But the Donald Trump campaign has taken this to a new level. They say that they plan to do 25 things on the first day or within the very first few days, including, for instance, perhaps withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement – president would have the ability to do that.
They could suspend the Syrian refugee program. That’s something else they’re considering. They are also of course talking about a rapid and immediate expansion in the pace and scale of deportations, and that has been at the center of Donald Trump’s campaign.” For more see: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/26/president-trumps-first-term (also, would it not have been nice if the New York Times and Washington Post had run stories every day about this as much as they ran stories on Hillary’s e-mail and donations to the Clinton Foundation – but I digress.)
3. Things Trump and Republican Congress can agree on with no problem on the following:
a. The biggie: a massive tax cut for the rich and business, which will include lowering the top rate to 25% and the corporate tax to 15%. The only thing I can see these guys agreeing in regard to raising revenue to offset is the abolition of the Earned Income Tax credit and the Child Care Tax Credit. The beltway media will raise a hue and cry about “the deficit,” but the old Cheney rule will apply: “Deficits don’t matter if you are a Republican Administration and cutting taxes.”
b. Increase Defense Spending and spending on Homeland Security/Border Control. I could see ICE expanded to become a kind of National Police Force, perhaps 200 thousand strong, employees, and contractors, empowered to go everywhere and “stop and frisk” anyone to check their immigration status (and if they find a little weed on an American citizen or legal resident alien, turn him or her over to the locals as part of a renewed “War on (People of Color and Young Hippies) Drugs”.)
c. Cuts in non-law enforcement domestic programs, including block granting Medicaid, SNAP, etc. to the states leaving the poor and working poor to the tender mercies of Sam Brownbacks and Scott Walkers of the world.
Where he and Republicans will run at cross purposes is of course on trade and the two entitlement programs beloved by the white working class as much as they hate the rest of Government as give aways to “those people,” e.g. Social Security and Medicare. Some Republican ideologues may want to gut them as well (see Paul Ryan), but the majority of members have no stomach for a fight with Trump on this right now. Again, deficits and debt ceilings don’t matter if a Republican is in charge. On trade, again Trump can do a lot simply using executive orders. I really think he will pull the plug on NAFTA (in someways because TPP supersedes NAFTA – Trump can enter into renegotiation, put the protections back in for tobacco to use ISDS that Mitch McConnell holds dear and announce that because he is such a nifty negotiator TPP is a big, big, win. He expects to be well through his second term and grooming is son to replace him before the suckers find out the dodge and the business community may not be to upset with him, at least until he starts messing with China.)
For minority communities and civil rights the next 4 – 8 years or more will be a disaster. Instead of a Justice Department vigorously defending Voting Rights and prosecuting Civil Rights violations by local police forces, you are going to get a Justice Department bent in eviscerating minority voting rights and giving license to local police departments to do their worst.
Now about the depressed communities in the Midwest and Upper Midwest that gave Trump this election. The little boom of 2017, triggered by Reagan Keynesian policies of tax cuts and military/security spending I expect to come to an end in late 2017 because the economic cranks and charlatans who surround Trump are going to put a high interest rate/gold bug in charge of the Fed next summer to replace Janet Yellen. I would expect these fellows to raise interest rates quite high and that will trigger a recession at the end of 2017 early 2018. The thing about this recession is that I expect the Fed to keep interest rates high until at least wage deflation starts to bite, when unemployment gets to 15% or so. A recession will also explode the deficit more, but the doctrinaires in the Tea Party Congress will want to impose austerity on the non-Defense, non-law enforcement side of Government, keeping unemployment to a minimum and no aide to states or local governments. So this could be a long recession that Trump will want to blame on someone who is not him. This is when he may start a war or wars.
Organize, organize, organize. But realize there may be real danger down the road.
Finally, Trump’s victory speech this morning was very close to what this side said about “bringing Americans together” https://www.nixonfoundation.org/1968/11/victory-speech-1968/ Trump really models himself on Nixon and believes completely in Nixon’s doctrine of the Presidency: “If the President does it, it must be legal.”
I
MazeDancer
Obamacare will be replaced. It won’t be nothing. Too many people like the benefits. Just naming it something else is all the GOP wants. Take away the black guy’s name.
The GOP wants the insurance, they just don’t want it to be Obama’s.
Patricia Kayden
@OGLiberal: From what I heard on GMA, less voters came out this time than in 2012 which helped Trump. Not sure why so many people decided to sit out such an important election. I would have thought that Trump’s craziness would have brought out more voters than ever before.
enplaned
@Barbara: At least most of those are not under immediate threat — unlike the Baltic states, where Russia is encroaching. If Russia comes to the conclusion it can take them without consequence in a Trump world… they likely will, if only to prove how studly is Russia to its own citizens. Kinda like us grabbing Greneda and throwing it around back in the Reagan administration.
MomSense
@ArchTeryx:
Oh ArchTeryx. Please just hold on a bit longer. We are here with you.
vtr
How long will it take Congress to hand the entire Social Security trust fund over to Wall Street? I would say February, but that would require to many work days. It may be safe til April.
In one of his GQ commentary videos recently, Olbermann declared everyone voting for Trump is deplorable, whether because of or despite Trump’s serious character flaws.
dlm
@ArchTeryx: I was forced into the Medicaid expansion. Was not allowed to get healthcare through the exchange and could no longer afford to private pay for my premiums. I was diagnosed with liver disease this year. Now what?
JMG
For those of you personally affected by this, my deepest sympathies and best wishes. It’s all very bleak. One half of the country wishes to do the other half, my half, harm. The only question is, it is just a wish, or an actual conviction?
bemused
@MomSense:
I don’t know what or remember what profession you and co-worker work in but your co-worker sounds absolutely horrifying. It must be beyond awful working with someone this mean and hateful.
dlm
@vtr: I’m worried about this too. I was going to sign up in March of 2017.
Villago Delenda Est
Let’s see now.
Florida. Shitstain GOP governor.
NC. Shitstain GOP governor.
Wisconsin. Shitstain GOP governor.
Michigan. Shiststain GOP governor.
There’s a pattern here.
vtr
It might have helped a little bit if opinion writers, especially liberal ones, would have stopped repeatedly referring to Hillary as “a deeply flawed candidate.”
Paul in KY
@Bostondreams: You have a fine one there!
Lit3Bolt
My advice to all families with a PoC.
Go.
Go now.
This country hates you. It has given up on you. So give up on America. Think of it as a bad Civ.
No one’s life is worth the shit that’s about to come down.
Matt McIrvin
@Shalimar: The demographics were against the whites in South Africa (and in antebellum South Carolina), and they ruled for a pretty long time anyway. I’ve been thinking of that as one of the possibilities for quite a while.
sherparick
@Steeplejack (phone): I am afraid you can. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/26/president-trumps-first-term
Alesis
White Americans. Including Liberals. HATE talking about racism. They hate it even more when the topic is the centrality of racism to American politics. It usually good for no more than a dozen exasperated posts and the occasional wish that Texas would just secede already. Even here threads on race are always the first to change topic midstream. Its just a bloody depressing topic.
Whelp we’d better buck up and get over it because racism is large and in charge and until we confront that the nation is going to lurch further and further right.
WereBear
@Keith G: While all of us are in danger, some have far more immediate, and deep, concerns. Like you, sadly.
We’ll all see what we can do.
Shalimar
@Hal: Trump can’t deliver what he promised. He promised to magically beat ISIS because he knows better than generals. That is not going to go well. He also promised to make each individual supporter’s life significantly better. Republican policy will make most of their lives worse. They may be too indoctrinated to notice. But they will be worse off financially.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Shalimar: We will see but people are already saying Ryan is Trump’s first target for Ryan’s lack of a loyalty and the Tea Party hates him.
JMG
They can’t leave and shouldn’t. If we give up on the belief we are all Americans equal under law, all of us might as well leave.
Kathleen
@Kay: This. This disconnect from reality is the culprit. also what baud said about underestimating how awful gop is. also underestimating hatred of african ameticans. white people have been in denial about depth of this. rikyrah was right. we have a huge problem and we need to first acknowledge it then deal with it.
sherparick
@MazeDancer: That 10th Amendment stuff only applies to liberal laws and when the Democrats hold national Government.
Barbara
@Shalimar: My husband thinks the true disaster (as in, nearly everyone in the world will see it as a disaster) is when Trump decides to show he’s boss on the Korean peninsula. I hope not. The thing about poor rural white people is that life is already a disaster. I am not sure how much more disastrous it can get, but yeah, they’ll find a way. The one thing about Paul Ryan that white/red America has not been allowed to appreciate because of Democratic opposition is that he is an equal opportunity asshole. He really is not concerned about people he sees as losers regardless of race, color or creed. My guess is that the first true program to get the axe will be SSDI. That was certainly the case with Reagan. In some communities, SSDI has been turned into a kind of dole. I saw these cases when I worked for a judge, and it’s not that it is a scam, but it’s easy to focus on physical disabilities when you literally have no income coming in.
Jack the Second
@Barbara: I want Trump to be a shameful, scandalous President who refuses to work with Congress and, though utterly de-legitimized by convictions and personal betrayals, refuses to step aside in favor of Pence. I want his base utterly disgusted and embarrassed by him, and his accomplishments, positive or negative, zero.
Iowa Old Lady
One comforting thought: Jason Chaffetz’s life has lost part of its meaning. His plans to spend years dragging Clinton before congress will look far less compelling now.
Weaselone
@Lit3Bolt:
Exactly where do you think they’re going to go?
Dog Dawg Damn
My 7 year old niece called this morning before school, crying and inconsolable.
This is what Trump has wrought.
For this family, we are going to save our nuts, hunker down, boycott red states.
My husband, in his infinite wisdom, picked us up and moved us back to California after a 3 year absence. He knew this was coming in March and wanted us to be here.
For those LGBTQ who don’t think Trump is bad for gay people, please remember that Pence attempted to hinge AIDS program money on gay conversion therapy and anti-gay bigotry propaganda. This is the devil behind the curtain we have to contend with. Thank God we aren’t in a red state anymore.
DCF
When this article in Current Affairs was first published in February 2016, I emailed Cole with the link (http://static.currentaffairs.org/2016/02/unless-the-democrats-nominate-sanders-a-trump-nomination-means-a-trump-presidency). I didn’t expect a reply, as his antipathy (animosity?) toward Sanders was steadily escalating….
Read the article. It’s prescient – and in retrospect, tragically accurate. Of necessity, there will need to be a thorough and unrelenting examination of the Democratic Party establishment – a realignment, if you will – enabling the Party to rebound from this event and reinvigorate both its commitment to democratic goals and the candidates who will lead us into the future.
Unless the Democrats Run Sanders, A Trump Nomination Means a Trump Presidency
Democrats need to seriously and pragmatically assess their strategy for defeating Trump. A Clinton run would be disastrous; Bernie Sanders is their only hope.
by Nathan J. Robinson
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@enplaned:
Except Trump has to be the Reptile King. He can’t play Reptile King and just let Americas Enemies do what they want. How does that make America Great Again?
Jack the Second
You know, it’s a good day for GW Bush. He’s about to move up a slot in the Presidential rankings, and stop being “the worst President in living memory”.
RK
I had a bad feeling about this election from the beginning and history was on the Republican side but let’s hope Trump shows some balls and governs as the socially liberal, Democrat leaning guy he really is. (Don’t hold your breath.) Yes, his Birtherism and most of his white nationalistic campaign has been a giant reprehensible con.
Kathleen
@lamh36: This.
Matt McIrvin
@louc: Actually, Lichtman wasn’t right, not quite. He says his model predicts the popular-vote winner. That was Hillary Clinton.
It was close, though.
sherparick
@Another Scott: No, they and Right Wing Media Infotainment Industrial complex will blame every set back, every blow up on 1) Obama, 2) George Soros, 3) hippies and “lazy, criminal minorities,” and 4) foreigners of shapes and sizes.
sherparick
@RK: No, it wasn’t. Its his character (or what passes for character with Trump).,
Gin & Tonic
@Jack the Second:
The results of yesterday prove that this is impossible.
p.a.
Beyond numerous other issues in our recent losses (to mee, 2000 is recent), the electoral college seems to have become our ‘rotten bououghs’.
bnmng
@Davebo:
I actually find that the most comforting part.
Gin & Tonic
All of the friends and associates I’ve heard from in Ukraine are horrified and scared witless.
NotMax
Wrong hue. Brownshirts.
D58826
@debbie: Well educated white men and women voted for a man who:
1. bragged about sexual assault
2. walked into the dressing room of beauty pageant contestants in various states of undress, some as yuoung as 14
3. 3 wives and heaven knows how many mistress’s
4. made lewd comments to 14 year old girls about wanting to date them in a couple of years
5. made lewd comments about his daughter and
6. may well have raped a 13 year old girl.
I have one question for these voters – would you allow this man unsupervised access to your teenage daughter?
If the answer is NO then why the H+++LL did you vote for him
If the answer is YES than as a society we are even sicker than I thought.
There are a lot of reasons floating around as to why Hillary lost. Many of them may be valid in one part or another. Would a male democrat have won? I don’t know. If supposedly well educated people were willing to vote for a sexual predator then I’m not sure any democrat could have won last night.
One of the reasons I’ve seen is that the voters were tired of the Washington grid lock. So they handed the keys to the government to the party that created that grid lock. I hope they enjoy the results because the rest of the world will not. While the Koch Brothers did not support Trump they must be very happy today. Their goal of owning the country is one step closer to being achieved. They might not have supported Trump but their boy Paul Ryan will get his ‘Return to the 17th century’ agenda passed.
The stability of the American political system has been the bedrock of the post war world. While we have made more than our share of mistakes the PAX Americana of the past 70 years has seen the world more at peace and more prosperous than anytime since the era of Pax Roma. All of that is now called into question. Instead of looking to the US to mediate disputes it will be every nation for itself. We saw where that lead in 1914 and 1939. Will it happen again? Who Knows but it introduces a large dose of instability. Even Dubya/Chaney were within the broad (albeit right right lane) post way foreign policy consensus.
They would not have been Putin’s buddy
mai naem mobile
@Iowa Old Lady: why do you think he won’t continue? Perhaps he will be busy with Trumps ethical issues? I don’t think so either.
Barbara
@p.a.: The number of “very small” population states states is not that misaligned — Delaware, Hawaii, Vermont, the District of Columbia, and Rhode Island are matched by the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, and Alaska. Dems probably have the edge in population, but it’s not extreme. New Hampshire is still a swing state and Nevada seems to have become one that is trending blue. I am probably missing a few low population states, but those 12 are all among the smallest. In the mid-range, it’s worse, but come on, Trump didn’t win because of those states. He won because of larger, traditionally blue states like Wisconsin.
JMG
I look for Putin to propose a summit conference right away and offer Trump some “deal” that makes Trump feel like a statesman while abandoning the former Soviet republics to their fate. I also don’t see how Germany doesn’t begin a major remilitarization. France and England probably will, too. That should go well.
If Trump considers himself bound by the Constitution, or at least by the will of the courts, we will survive domestically, poorer and more awful but still there. But the President’s powers in foreign affairs are almost limitless.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Ryan’s position as Speaker may be gone (probably is), but Ryan and his plan are still there, and it’s attractive to a certain number of Republicans. Even if it isn’t adopted as is, you can bet something as bad or worse will take its place. The first hundred days of Trump is going to be like FDR’s in reverse, on overdrive.
Fuck. I’m taking a break from this site and Twitter for a couple of days. Hopefully I’ll come back with a more productive way of dealing with this disaster. Be good to each other. This is the wrong time for blaming and shaming. o7
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Shalimar:
And that’s Syria, Trump bromance Putin’s turf.
NotMax
When Trump repeated daily that the votes were “rigged,” was that scare tactic or bald-faced bragging?
gogol's wife
Everyone’s going to jump on me for this. But indoctrinated by Dostoevsky, I try to look for how I, and my in-group, bear some responsibility for what happened. I worry that our hipper-than-thou-sarcastic-humor has played a role here, starting right with Trump’s initial impulse to run for president after being mocked by Obama at the WHCD. The pictures that float through my mind are things I snickered at too, like the “Holy s–t” video (that tune was running tormentingly through my head all night). And Lin-Manuel Miranda singing “Never gon’ be president now” to Trump’s picture on SNL. I snickered at that too. We were snickering while Rome burned. I don’t have an answer to what we should have done differently, but I’m feeling guilt over this particular thing. We should have been serious and stayed serious. For some reason I feel that might have helped. We always said “when they go low, we go high,” but we didn’t really do that.
The stories of panicked children are getting to me. Maybe we adults need to dial down our rhetoric and try to at least seem as if we don’t think Trump is the devil incarnate. But just among us adults — other than deaths of loved ones, this feels worse than anything in my life other than 9/11.
japa21
Our DIL is in tears this morning. She is Filipino and has a green card. They are going to see if she can become a citizen before January 20 so she has Obama’s name on her naturalization certificate, otherwise she will wait at east 4 years.
This is what he texted me this morning:
Honestly, we feel betrayed by fellow Americans…We are an immigrant family, a mixed race family, an urban and educated family, committed to social justice—and somehow, as so many trumpers have said, they need to “take back our country” from us as if we aren’t fellow Americans.
geg6
Ummmm, based on the evidence provided by my local news’ political reporter (who has very good sources), it is definite that a large part of the blame here in PA goes to third party voters. The margin here would be more than covered by a majority or possibly even just a plurality of the Johnson and Stein votes in the state.
Yes, there was a large increase in rural voters, too. But I knew that would happen because the rural voters in PA are KKK or KKK-friendly. Westmoreland County, which had a huge increase in voting last night, is one of the state’s ground zeros for white power groups. But without Johnson and Stein in the mix, she could have won the state even with that increase. So fuck those third party voters right in the ass sideways. Of course, Trump and the GOP will do that anyway, but I’d prefer that innocent bystanders not have to get the same treatment.
I am truly in despair. I seriously thought about just giving up and ending it all last night. I felt so alone and inconsolable. It didn’t help that there was a network and data network outage last night, so I had no internet (and like-minded people to prop me up) and was stuck with tv to know anything. Horrific day. Just horrific. I truly believe this is the end of the country. It may technically still exist, but it won’t be the country I loved. I don’t love it any more. I can’t. It died, a suicide.
Omnes Omnibus
In 2010, I didn’t believe the polls and distrusted 538 because my gut said everything was going to be okay. Since then, I have relied on the poll aggregators. I expected good news in 2012 and bad in in 2014. Something went weird this time around. I have no idea what it was, and, at the moment, I am too numb from shock to try to figure it out. Also, sleep deprived as hell.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
That kind of demand a man who is both notoriously lazy and narcissistic to come up with a plan to present to congress in the next three months. Trump’s plan so far seems to be something out of The Apprentice – looks at Hillary and says your fired.
gogol's wife
@D58826:
On the rare occasions when those voters saw someone bring up Trump’s sexual predation on television (most of them don’t read political blogs, remember), it was always immediately countered with the charge that Bill Clinton’s a sexual predator too. That’s how they explain it to themselves. Both sides do it. They were brainwashed.
Slappy Kincaid
I expect that Trump will basically be Nixon without the competence.
Baud
@geg6: Hang in there. You are valued here.
Darkrose
@Barbara: That’s what terrifies me. My wife is on SSDI. She cannot work because of a combination of anxiety, bipolar disorder, and migraines. I don’t know what we’re going to do.
gogol's wife
I’m looking to see if he really moves to jail Hillary early on. That for me will be the signal that we’re dealing with true fascism here. Putinism if not Hitler
japa21
@Gin & Tonic: With good reason, I’m afraid.
Elizabelle
@japa21:
She cannot do that. She needs the protections of citizenship. Unless she and your son want to move elsewhere. But I hope she gets her certificate before January 20.
FlipYrWhig
My HOT TAKE: if you stack up 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, it certainly seems like there’s a significant group of voters who really like Barack Obama… and really don’t care about anything or anyone else in politics. That’s bad news for anyone who’s counting on a progressive Obama-less future.
And in another data point: Russ Feingold losing in WI _while doing marginally worse than Hillary Clinton_ should send shivers down liberal/left/progressive spines.
D58826
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: He will sign whatever set of plans Ryan and the Freedom Caucus send over., Trump may not have a concrete plan but the Congressional GOP sure does. It’s back to the 17th century.
BretH
@NorthLeft12:
Couldn’t agree more.
geg6
@bemused:
I am done with those people. I will never speak civilly to any one of them ever again as long as I live. I’m at war with them. They are my mortal enemies and I won’t ever forgive or forget. Ever.
Barbara
@gogol’s wife: I am not jumping on you but I think you are misidentifying the problem. There is an epic divide between rural and urban/suburban America and it exists in other countries as well, but other countries have a social safety net that soothes the dislocation much more effectively. The very fact that we live the way we do seems to be taken by many people as a rebuke. That we made it through college, live in places with jobs, travel now and again, and so on. But try to remember: low turnout explains a lot, but still, the polarization is real and not getting better.
JPL
@lamh36: I’m just the opposite, because I feel like this is a safe blog. We can’t cheer each other up, but we can stay together as a community.
hueyplong
@geg6: Hang in there. If nothing else, we need you to vote in 2018 (I’d put an emoji here if I were willing to use them).
D58826
@FlipYrWhig:
Kind of proves it was more than just flawed Hillary. Even Minnesota nice is still to close to call. The bones of HHH and Paul Wellstone must be rolling over in their graves.
gene108
@Keith G:
The core of Trump supporters do not care about policy or policy outcomes.
Maybe some independents may care, but they may not, as they would get a tax cut from Trump and if their 401k’s do not tank, everything else will be OK.
MomSense
@bemused:
Fortunately another woman put homemade donuts on our desks this morning–but only for the non trumpers. We work in social services but there are a lot of people in our area who are gun people and her husband is in the National Guard.
FlipYrWhig
@gogol’s wife:
If so, it’s on a pretty untenable basis: it’s basically “It pisses me off that those limp-wristed skinny-jeans-wearing vegan social justice warriors are always stereotyping us.” And the right has been systematically demeaning the left since Reagan’s crack about Tarzan, Jane, and Cheetah.
NotMax
@gogol’s wife
Coupled with the “my church preaches forgiveness” malarkey. Except for anyone whose last name begins with a C and ends with an n.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: You really don’t think those plans aren’t already lined up? Jesus, Better Way alone… It’s not about Trump. It’s about the people who will be swept into power with Trump. Go read about Hitler’s government. He basically did nothing while his ministers ran the government according to what they thought he wanted. Read Kershaw’s “Working Toward the Fuhrer.”
Barbara
DCF: Whether that article is right or not, and in retrospect it looks like it is, I don’t think Sanders would have made a difference. I can’t say that for sure, of course, but for every voter turned off by Clinton there were others turned off by Sanders. I think there is probably a Democrat who could have appealed to a wider base, but as with George H. W. Bush in 1992, it wasn’t someone whose basic message was to carry on.
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G:
Eh, they’ll blame Obama for it, and stick with their guy, in this case their bullying orange standard-bearer. That’s what happened with governors in Kansas, Wisconsin, and Florida.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Barbara: yes, and last night’s vote is all about that. So those people are demanding the GOP fix rural poverty, do you think the GOP is going to do that or just try the same old shit and try to end social security, which the rural white poor are on?
hueyplong
Hey, sarcastic hipper-than-thou humor won’t be allowed anywhere else for a while, so this place has to be a spot where it’s ok. It’s not like we’re about to cheer on some really cool political developments.
Keith G
@Slappy Kincaid: I think you may be right. I imagine that one of the many voices in Trump’s head is one that wants him to assume the mantle of noble statesman capable of historic accomplishments. I do not think that this voice wants him to enter the Oval Office with the intent of burning it and the nation down.
I just do not think that it is possible that this voice will win the competition and gain purchase over Trump’s other impulses.
Gvg
Sigh, we’ll remember when Trump clinched the nomination he spent awhile going after GOP who didn’t support him enough. He is going to make enemies and the party people will be around him a lot more so more chances of them getting his attention. He is also a control freak and that is impossible at this level so legislation will crawl to a near stop maybe, remember he had to personally approve every ad. He may say he’ll turn it over to someone else but I don’t think he will. He also doesn’t actually like Pence and will under cut him on a regular basis as he already has. What are the rules on replacing a Vp? Trumps brand has tanked personally and I don’t know that winning will change that, look at the stock market. I expect him to try to monetize the Presidency and get caught in all kinds of illegal financial stuff quickly. He’ll think he can get away with it. He will get away with more than we think but he is a type that can’t stop. Maybe we can get rid of him. Quickly.
vtr
It’s commonly thought that when leadership becomes ineffective, corrupt, and cruel enough, citizens will rise and demand change. You know, like Russia in 1917.
Bailey
@FlipYrWhig:
I’d say that calling an entire segment of voters “basket of deplorables” probably produced more anger and resentment than any ironic comedy.
D58826
Dick Polman’s take : http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/national-interest/item/98752-the-primal-scream-and-what-it-means
Comrade Scrutinizer
So-should we all go out and buy a buncha guns?
gogol's wife
@hueyplong:
You’re right there. I’m just grasping at straws! I just wish I hadn’t watched that damn video so many times, so the tune wouldn’t be still going through my head.
Dog Dawg Damn
BLM is the only group on the left organized and ready to mobilize to resist.
Process that.
White liberals, once again, are caught with our pants down. Occupy fizzled, and the only people we can count on to actually organize are PoC.
Barbara
@geg6: Hey, you have my sympathies and I hope you gain some equilibrium. I wonder how many people voted third party thinking it would be inconsequential. For too many people, it’s a game when it’s not just about how they’re feeling that day.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Comrade Scrutinizer: I made that point last night that for Trump to deliver to the white rage voters Trump would need to go full Nazi and take stuff from minorities and give it to whites. Those white rage voters love their socialism, they just hate the people with the wrong skin color get it too.
FlipYrWhig
@Bailey: Right, because until that moment, they were totally just about to vote for Hillary Clinton and other Democrats.
NotMax
Bet your bottom dollar that when the battle for Mosul is declared a success, DT will claim credit.
geg6
@Suzanne:
Completely with you. They are dead to me. Every single one of them. No exceptions.
gene108
@Slappy Kincaid:
Nixon’s criminality was not aided and abetted by Congress.
I see nothing that would indicate any Republican would question Trump and many would partake in the plunder.
@D58826:
I will be fascinated to see how that trial plays out now and if the media, will bother to cover it.
Barbara
@FlipYrWhig: The common theme between Russ and Hillary is the notion that they represent the old guard. Life through the rear view mirror may look good to older people but it just looks like the future being narrowed to anyone who is young.
Ruckus
I was up till around 2 this morning, my time. I woke up at 5 can couldn’t go back to sleep.
I don’t know what the future holds, any more than anyone else but this is the worst public day of my 60+ yrs.
Hate won.
You can distill it down all you want, who did what to whom, why we lost, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. The party of hate won everything yesterday. Everyone is going to find out what that means in their lives. My prediction is that it isn’t good for anyone. People were saying that CA will be OK, we have the worlds 5th largest economy. Do you really think it will stay that way for long? Do you see any agency of the federal government not being affected in a negative monetary way? How many of the states are net takers from the federal government? Do you think that will last? Dare we discuss foreign policy or is that too scary?
Our system of checks and balances is gone. As poorly as it worked many days, it did somewhat work. Gone. And is hasn’t been replaced by those who want to do good in the world.
You want me to take a breath and hope for not the worst? Please explain how to do that in an unprecedented loss of governing ability. Please explain how our states, like CA are going to work in this atmosphere in any way as good as it has been over the last 8, let alone places like Kansas. How many generations did it take to make some places acceptable, and from a starting point not really any different than what happens in 2 months? Please explain how that will be any different now.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Gvg:
God lord, you’re right but the mind does boggle.
japa21
I was an election judge yesterday and this is the first time we have had election day registration in Illinois. In our precinct we registered about 20 new voters, of which 17 were women (of all ages) and two of the men were Hispanic, one born in Mexico and the other in Puerto Rico. Several of the women had their children with them and it was obvious who they planned to vote for. There was one elderly AA woman who first registered in 2008 (wonder why) and appeared as happy to vote for the first woman president as she undoubtedly was to vote for the first AA president.
This morning they must all be devastated. Their only solace is that Illinois held.
geg6
@Lit3Bolt:
I agree. If I was a person of color, I’d be packing today.
JMG
I am too depressed and frightened for post-mortems. We need to stick together with the kindness that makes this place so special and accept the reality of the situation — as soon as we see what that is. It’s “where do we go from here” from now on. Beats me. But we must remember, our side got the most votes, just not in the right places. The decisive bloc of voters chose not to show up. We have to re-engage them somehow. Let’s put our thinking caps on, not just wait for the horrors to come next Jan. 20.
I agree with the poster who said a prosecution of Clinton would mean there’s a true crisis where electoral politics might not answer. But I don’t think that’ll happen. Trump is so outrageous, just not becoming an authoritarian leader would make him more popular.
Dog Dawg Damn
Ludendorff to Hindenburg …
Can we have any doubt that this is just what happened.
What will he do after the first terrorist attack? Mandatory registration of Muslim-Americans?
gene108
@vtr:
When the Czar was deposed in February, the revolutionaries tried to install a democratic government.
They did not have the institutions to run a country, so the Bolsheviks took over.
I hope American institutions are strong enough to hold up for another four years.
Keith G
@FlipYrWhig: Some will.
(Not to go all Tom Friedman) I was in a cab yesterday and the white male cabbie was for Trump. He listed all the “popular” charges against Hillary and seem to be attracted to what Trump was saying about trade and rebuilding industry. Not once did he mention Muslims or a wall. I was gobsmacked by the naivete of this driver. He swallowed the list of promises. He will be disappointed.
D58826
@gene108: It was a civil suit and the woman has dropped the case out of fear. So there will be no trial which will spare the media the inconvenience of figuring out a way to say both sides do it.
p.a.
Yesterday afternoon at the Y CNN had up (I couldn’t hear commentary) 70% of voters white. IIRC Obama’s elections were 67-68%. And biggest issue plurality, was: ‘change’. I started getting nervous. I’m right so seldom. Why now…
Chris
@narya:
I moved from Florida to Maryland less than a year ago after having experienced firsthand the shittiness of a state with no safety net at a time when I was going through a ton of medical problems. Now I’m terrified that even that state-specific assistance I could count on in Maryland is going to be taken away and that the shittiness that was Floridian health care is going to become the norm everywhere. (Again).
And that’s only the beginning of the things I’m terrified of.
Ruckus
@gene108:
There is no trial. It was a civil trial and the victim pulled the it.
Chris
@dlm:
Ditto. There is no silver lining here.
p.a.
I’ve heard opined that this will really be a Pence Regency. Given tRump’s psych issues, I don’t see it, unless he can be satisfied designing uniforms.
D58826
@JMG:
Nightmare last night when I final got to sleep of Obama flying off into exile in Switzerland. Can see the Clintons and Bidens having to do the same thing.
Eric U.
I have a couple of things that concern me. One is mobs hurting PoC. Hopefully that’s an exaggerated concern. The other is the final destruction of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. I knew I couldn’t really afford another republican presidency.
Mary G
I’ve been up all night, too afraid of what I might dream. This is all due to racism, like lamh36 and Van Jones said. I am ashamed to be white.
danielx
@Davebo:
You’re correct about how he could care less about issues like gay marriage and LGBTQ rights, but I’d edit to “could care less one way or the other”. He’s already indicated that his focus will be to Make America Great Again, while his vice president does the, you know, boring parts. His vice president, of course, being none other than Mike Pence. You want to maybe think that through a little bit more?
Chris
@Steeplejack (phone):
“Secretary of State Gingrich.” Christ. A man who still believes Belgian colonization was a gift to the Congo. Even if there were no other causes for concern, that alone would be worth vomiting over.
Dog Dawg Damn
So gridlock produces authoritarianism. Who would have known?
Mike in NC
Want to see the fat, elderly racist neighbors who voted for this piece of shit suffer and die under his mismanagement.
gene108
@Gvg:
But who is going to stop him? FBI Director Comey? The Republican Congress?
The media does not have the resources to unearth all the dirt on Trump, even if they had the desire (which they do not).
Trump is going to loot this country’s Treasury in a way never before seen here, but is common elsewhere in the world.
But I fail to see how that brings him down.
Rural white America has found their man, and do not see how they abandon him.
Shalimar
@gene108: I read last week that she had dropped the lawsuit. There won’t be a Trump rape trial, not even an initial hearing where it will be thrown out.
geg6
@geg6:
Hell, I’m trying to figure if I can find a way out of this hellhole of a country. I can’t imagine how a person of color feels today.
The Truffle
@Slappy Kincaid: That sounds like one of the less bad options.
Another less-bad option: the GOP spend the next couple of years ripping into each other and never get anything done. You know it’s coming.
The Democrats won big in 2008 and 2012 with a message that resonated. What happened?
geg6
@D58826:
That’s not a nightmare. It’s exactly what I hope they do. We don’t deserve them. This country does not deserve them.
D58826
There are just so many dangers here . The most obvious are to POC, LGBTQ, Muslims, etc. But there is the independence of the FED. Consumer protection. wall street/big bank regulation. the environment. global warming. ‘religious freedom laws’ that allow people to opt out of obeying the law. SCOTUS. the various regulatory agencies. A rogue FBI that may serve as Trumps Gestapo. GITMO.
I’m sure I missed a few
Chris
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
This. All of this.
I’m scared of the Obama era, which many of us had hoped would be, if not another New Deal or Great Society at least another Progressive Era, will instead end up being more like Reconstruction, a handful of years in which the country seemed to be headed the right way before the plunge into decades of awfulness.
D58826
Wall street opens in a few minutes. Probably a blood bath
gene108
@Eric U.:
Unless Trump defaults on the debt, the dollar will still be the reserve currency. The world is not going to abandon America because Republicans gave rich people a huge tax cut, or Social Security and Medicare are gutted. They did not abandon us after the second Iraq war.
But Trump has talked about defaulting on the debt.
At which point Americans will be greatful to our Chinese corporate bosses to be able to work from 9 pm to 5 am, so our Chinese bosses can make it home in time for dinner and 6:30 evening news.
FlipYrWhig
@The Truffle:
It wasn’t a message, it was a symbolic person. The other side stumbled into running a symbolic person of their own.
gene108
@Chris:
I agree.
If the media holds Reoublicans accountable, which they rarely do, I think there is a chance to reverse some of the damage.
Headlines matter because that is where most folks get their news and a steady drum beat of “Trump bad” will hurt Republicans.
This happened to Bush & Co after Katrina and the Iraq war seemed to be a quagmire.
But I am not holding my breath expecting the media to do the right thing.
Greg
My sister, who has rheumatoid arthritis, voted for Trump because her insurance costs too much. I don’t think she realizes she just voted to not have insurance coverage.
The Truffle
I don’t want another Clintonite neoliberal. That isn’t going to win elections–not anymore.
Let’s gear up for the midterms so we can have another 2006 in Congress. And then…Bernie again in 2020? Elizabeth Warren?
henqiguai
@Barbara(#161):
You haven’t been paying attention to the Philippines and its new president, have you.
Jinchi
@Davebo: @Punchy:
To be fair, they aren’t his numbers. The polls were way off. He relied on bad data.
TheronWare
Damn, Michael Moore was right. I thought he was needlessly concern trolling on Real Time last week but no, he knew.
Chris
@Hal:
I’ve seen a lot of people say that in this election cycle, but for once I can’t say I relate. My equivalent to this was 2009/2010, and the utter derangement that poured out of so many people towards Obama and subsequently liberals.
Back then, there were a ton of people I never saw the same way again. I’m talking about the uncle whose reaction to police abuses during the OWS crackdown was to snigger that anarchists don’t believe in rules anyway and whose reaction to the forced repatriation of some Syrian refugees was to retweet with the comment “grab the popcorn!” I’m talking about the (up to that point) “moderate” Republican friend who started passing around jokes based on how working class people were all lazy and leeches, to working class friends. I’m talking about the cousin (ten years younger than me, how’s that for millennial open-mindedness) who passed me racist jokes like a picture of a black man who has a manual in front of him that read “how to get welfare: 1) be black, 2) apply” and says “damn I wish I could read.” I could go on.
I’m as disgusted by my country as I ever was, but I can’t say I’m surprised by any individual person in my circle of acquaintances. All of them are exactly the racist and social darwinist sociopaths that I’ve spent the last eight years learning they were. There are just even more of them than I could imagine, and I could imagine quite a lot.
hueyplong
“I expect him to try to monetize the Presidency and get caught in all kinds of illegal financial stuff quickly.” So who’s going to “catch” him? The FBI actively campaigned for him. He just got a Get Out Of Jail Free card for all prior transgressions. And if you think Qusay and Uday were entitled fks before….
@ Chris: Hadn’t thought of the Reconstruction analogy. I hope days beyond this one make that seem like a less perfect analogy than it appears to be right now.
@ The Truffle: Well, we have certainly won’t have to endure the administration of a neo-liberal. So we’ve got that going for us.
Jinchi
@The Truffle:
I love Warren, but she’s found her place as a Senator. She could easily sit there for 20 years, hopefully most of it in the majority. And Bernie Sanders is already 75 years old. Democrats need to start seriously focusing building up some young blood contenders at all levels of government.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@lamh36: Take care of yourself. Like they say on airplanes, secure your own oxygen mask first.
The Truffle
Markos over at DailyKos wants Bernie Sanders to lead the DNC. I would prefer Howard Dean came back.
Chris
@gene108:
Think just how far Bush had to sink before the media started consistently being on this.
msdc
@TriassicSands: This very blog has two FPers who decided the most important takeaway from yesterday’s debacle is to tell everyone what a terrible candidate Clinton was (and, at the top of this post, to deny the role played by third-party voters), so if I erred it was in limiting it to the comments.
I’m glad your social circle is keeping things in perspective.
dogwood
@Ruckus:
We’re just about the same age and I hear you. I think everyone who is shocked and discouraged today needs to handle it in his or her own way. I wish the Clintons well; they have been great public servants. But I don’t want to talk about them anymore. I am heartbroken for Robbie Mook who ran an excellent campaign. As for Barack Obama, I don’t have words to express how I feel. I know right now I don’t have the desire to rehash all of this online, and don’t know if I ever will. I get over political losses much easier than most around here, and I’ve never wasted energy hating presidents. But this one is different, and I hate this con man and the vulgarity he imposed on my country. Blogs like this will be a great place for many people, but for me I think they will become toxic. I’m going to have to keep this horrible man away from my world as much as humanly possible.
msdc
@Jinchi: And he was more right than any of the other poll-watchers about the uncertainty, I’m sorry to say.
Barbara
@henqiguai: Why yes, I have. He is already threatening to kick us out.
LurkerExtraordinaire
My daughter’s passport is due to expire in March. I’ll be updating is as soon as possible, in case we have to make a break for Canada.. People think I’m joking.
Chris
@dogwood:
I was saying for most of the Obama presidency that as much as I liked the guy, I was really concerned by the lack of Democratic institutions at the levels below his campaign, the kind that could continue to sustain the party beyond any individual candidate (and that can allow you to weather the blow of losing the presidency from time to time). I just didn’t expect to see my fears confirmed so soon or so badly.
LurkerExtraordinaire
@Dog Dawg Damn: Too bad the people who have caused the gridlock were voted back into power.
henqiguai
@geg6(#276):
Y’all say this like, to us, it’s news. Millennials (e.g. my daughters’ cohorts) may find this newsy, but not the rest of us.
Dave in Dallas
@gene108: It, or any one of the other scandals (bribing AGs comes to mind) will provide the lever to move Trump aside for Pence.
Chris
@henqiguai:
Yes, unfortunately. The reality is that black people, American Indians, and a number of others have always known that most of their fellow countrymen considered them enemy combatants, and elections to be an opportunity to screw them as hard as possible.
The feeling of, say, me going to bed knowing that half my countrymen just voted to destroy my health care is only a taste of what millions of Americans have felt all along. It’s a sick feeling to know just how much you can’t rely on your country to have your back, but, alas, not a new one.
NorthLeft12
@Kathleen: About that racism problem you think that you need to deal with? By voting for Trump and the Republicans, your fellow Americans, ahem, white fellow Americans, have dealt with it. This election was their response to BLM, affirmative action, voter suppression, and all those policing and criminal justice concerns.
It was also a definitive response to climate change and immigration and women’s issues too.
SC54HI
@japa21: Having just gone through this with my green card spouse, I’m sorry to tell you that if you filed the N400 today, it will likely be at least 5-6 months before an interview, followed by the oath ceremony, maybe a month later. USCIS is backed up to the hilt due to both a surge in naturalization applications and a dysfunctional software system — ELIS — that doesn’t work well yet and is difficult for immigration officers to use.
henqiguai
@dogwood (#317):
Nope, not gonna happen. In this intimately connected world, and with the ongoing, pending, and increasing in severity of national and worldwide crises we’re facing, the US and its leadership, including Trump, will be front-and-center in virtually all media. For the foreseeable future.
Villago Delenda Est
@msdc: We’ve seen this before.
“Nach Hitler, Uns.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Greg: These people NEVER think this shit through. EVER.
sunny raines
excuse me, Clinton won the popular vote.
The Electroal College is a fatally flawed system that needs to be eliminated.
Barry
@Davebo: @Davebo: “Trump could care less about issues like gay marriage and LGBTQ rights. I don’t think they need to be concerned.”
Except for the entire rest of the right……..
Barry
@Another Scott: “The GOP has it all for the next 2 years. They can’t run from the responsibility any more. Maybe Trump is the nation’s Jesse Ventura – a 4 year experiment never to be repeated. We need to keep working, for 2018 and beyond.”
Why do people keep saying this?
Do you not remember 2010?
sukabi
@Davebo: while drumpf might not care about it, pence absolutely does and so do half of the dicks in congress.
Barry
@albertZ: @albertZ: “As Trump and his supporters will soon find out, leadership is not just about “winning”. Unless Trump and Congress suddenly embrace a progressive agenda (not likely) it’s going to be a rough 4 years. I hate to hope for failure when people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake, but I believe in progressive policy for a reason not because I’m a bigoted contrarian.”
Actually, to the right leadership is just about winning.