It really is quite remarkable how much spontaneous celebration there was yesterday when the election was finally called, both here and overseas. I don’t recall anything quite like it. It doesn’t remind me of any election I have observed, but more like the celebration after a war has ended.
And in fairness, that does sort of describe how I have felt the last few years- under siege and at war. I am so damned glad he is going to be gone soon.
mvr
Hey and thanks to you and to everyone here for bucking us up when we needed it.
John Cole
@mvr: don’t thank me I was absolutely worthless. I was a god damned basket case the last two months. Thank the others.
Chetan Murthy
@John Cole: John, not only do you provide this place, but you’ve also been our spirit animal, eh? You vent, volubly, and we all feel like we’re not alone in our anguish.
Wag
I love the happy couple sharing their first dance with the world! Awesome!
mvr
@John Cole: I was going to follow up with something snarky, but I won’t. I’ve been here since Markos first highlighted you as a person with some critical faculties in the dark days of the early zeros. To me watching people respond to evidence is the thing that gives me some hope.
I completely get the bad moods and the feeling of dread. But you have created a space where more than that happens alongside the dread. And the dread is pretty real. And will be until I die. I won’t know how this comes out. But I appreciate the space to try and cope together.
But yes, you do get grouchy sometimes!
gsp
It’s interesting, last couple of days I’ve just felt lighter and that tightness in the chest has gone away. Bizarre.
Wag
@mvr: Grouchy, yes, but in a lovable, Oscar the Grouch kinda way. BJ is my home away from home, and I appreciate everyone here. Especially you, John.
Kay
Just once in this miserable last four years I want to see “an institution” actually work.
I’m pulling for you, Presidential Transition Center. Don’t let me down, like so many others have. Someone, for once, have some courage. Voters did their part. Now it’s time for these people to do theirs.
Kent
Trump is one hell of an obese blob for all of us to have been carrying around on our shoulders for the past four years. It gets damned exhausting.
My 17 year old LGBT daughter is smiling more than in months this week. Her and her friends are gleefully torturing Trump and the MAGA faithful on TikToc and twitter right now. I’m more happy for her than I am for me.
Yarrow
Definitely felt like the end of a war. And yeah, that’s how the last four years have felt – under siege at war. Neighbors were setting off fireworks, getting together for champagne toasts. Just incredible.
I’m so tired today I can hardly function. A different kind of tired. Like I’ve been clenching every muscle in my body for four years so I could keep going and I’m finally getting to relax a bit. It’s a good thing but I’m exhausted.
Suzanne
I felt like I lost interest in taking care of myself over the past few months. Neglecting my skincare routine, not getting enough sleep, eating too much snack food. Maybe it’s because of spending more time at home. But in the past two weeks, I’ve been doing better with it. Maybe that’s the way I handle the stress brought on by Orange.
Oh my God. He’s almost gone.
Kent
@Kay: If they want to keep their jobs in a Biden Admin they better fucking do them now.
Jeffro
@gsp: we need a name for it
Something that describes the unbelievable amount of weight off sane folks’ shoulders
The relief of just waking up in the morning and going about our day
A sense that karma really IS a thing, and it has come to erase all things orange
I dunno folks…thoughts?
LurkerNoLonger
If you saw this kind of thing in a movie (dancing in the streets, church bells ringing) you would think it was kind of corny, but in real life it’s actually really cool.
Baud
That’s a nice video compilation.
Eric S.
Agreed. I commented to a friend about the war ending similarities. I knew most of the rest of the world wanted Donnie gone but I didn’t expect ring the church bells in Paris level of celebrations.
dmsilev
@Kay: The House needs to drag the GSA head in and ask her, publicly, why she’s dragging her feet and what specifically she regards as necessary to start the official transition process. And they should do that soon, like in the next few days.
different-church-lady
I’ve been saying it feels more like he’s a strongman who’s been deposed than a president who’s been defeated.
Kay
@Kent:
Is there some meaningful difference between “not accepting the results of an election” and what these people are doing? They’re not accepting the results of an election. Their hinting that they may accept it at some undetermined future time doesn’t change that. Where we are right now is where we were assured repeatedly we would not be, which is “them not accepting the results of an election”.
piratedan
just to emphasize how the Trump team rolls… check this out… This is the person in the GSA who is refusing to release the federal funds that pay for the work that the federal transition team needs in order to do its work… true to form for the Trump team, she’s apparently not recognizing that Trump has lost the election…
link to said twitter thread…
https://twitter.com/justinhendrix/status/1325617594607558658
different-church-lady
@Kay: Trump keeps telling us exactly what he’s going to do, and people keep not believing it.
Suzanne
@different-church-lady: I predict that, within a year, no one who voted for him will admit it. The shame will be too great. I remember, though!
Capri
I went to sleep early on election night 2016, but checked my phone at 3 am to find out that Trump had won. At that exact moment something clamped my heart and a huge sense of dread and fear swept over me. It had gotten so I didn’t even notice it most days until the race was called for Biden. I swear I could feel my blood pressure go down 10 points. It is such a blessed relief. I think the entire world feels that.
Ken
It’s almost a shame Trump didn’t put up that statue garden he promised. The first one would surely have been of himself, and the cheering crowds could have pulled it down yesterday.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
Right. The facts are: as of today the Trump Administration and the Republican Party are not accepting the results of an election. That may change! I don’t know. But I think that fact should be recognized. This is no longer some future possibility. This is what they’re doing.
HumboldtBlue
In 2008 I hugged my gay friend, Ken, in my office on the day after the election and California had turned down gay marriage. I told him I was sorry, that we loved him and that it would happen. It finally did.
Today I got to spread some love to my transitioning neighbor, Charlie, and reminded her that we got her back and that we love her and the election results show that.
Elections matter.
We gotta fucking win in Georgia.
@Suzanne:
I don’t so I think he’s created a cult of personality, one that has assholes like Dan Crenshaw calling out the absurd QAnon woman from Georgia. The GOP is infested with Trumpism and its latest manifestation the QAnon bullshit.
These people love him and he’s gonna milk that train for as much grift as he can.
dmsilev
@Suzanne: I think it will take longer than that, sadly. His supporters are not at all ashamed of supporting him, far from it. There will be some who will try to quietly slink away, but a whole bunch who will be loud and proud for a long time.
Patricia Kayden
On Trump refusing to concede.
Geoduck
May actually cause problems for the GOP as well, if he feels they were insufficiently loyal, and he sics his followers on them.
And there was some similar celebrating when Obama won the first time, back in the day, but probably not as wide-spread.
Mike in NC
I keep saying that this is best day since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
O. Felix Culpa
@Suzanne: I hear you. My eating, exercise, and general housekeeping routines have been shot to hell. Partly because I’m a county party chair and have been putting in 12-14 hour days for weeks, but also because everything has felt so damn heavy. I am feeling so much lighter now and hope to establish a healthier routine soon.
Thank all the deities that he is gone.
West of the Rockies
@Jeffro:
Something German, a la schadenfreude, something multi syllabic and with gravity.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@different-church-lady:
That’s a good way to put it. I was terrified of what might happen if he had been re-elected. He was awful the first four years and getting progressively worse. Imagine how much worse he would been with another four years? I woke up Wednesday morning shaking in terror when I read how close the vote margins were. And I’m a white guy, not somebody who would suffer the most in a Trump dictatorship
Kay
@Patricia Kayden:
I don’t care if he concedes. At all. We just need to get the keys back. Which will be hard. I’m convinced we’re going to be dragging this family out the door in January. They’re not leaving unless it’s in handcuffs.
HumboldtBlue
@Mike in NC:
That was one of the best analogies I heard along with VT Day, Victory of Trump Day.
mvr
@Mike in NC: The comparisons are hard. In 2008 it had the hope in it that the Berlin Wall also had. Now it is more like averting immediate Armageddon, but not being sure we averted something still quite bad. But I’ll take it!
SiubhanDuinne
“The sun went down in honey and the moon came up in wine.”
What a beautiful lyric.
Baud
@mvr: 2008 will always be bittersweet because of how we dropped the ball politically afterwards. I hope this time we are able to build on our victory.
mvr
This.
Glyph2112
Cole’s earlier post was spot on. I was watching that documentary of the photographer during Obama’s administration and you just saw the amazing humanity he had. Whether talking with kids, fist bumping a custodian, or consoling disaster victims, you could see the connection. I have never seen trump ever display an ounce of empathy for anyone.
mvr
@Baud: The “we” here is complicated, as is personal history. I was able to do less this year. I spent money but not as much time. Social distancing plus what I’m good at vs. what I’m not makes me feel less like I “did” this. But I did what I could figure out to do.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
So be it. I’d love to see Trump being escorted out of the White House by the Secret Service/federal agents. I mean, I’d prefer it if he just realize he’s done and slink off, but that doesn’t look to be in the cards sadly
Jamie
@Capri: This is my experience exactly, right down to checking the phone at 3 AM. Tension has drained from my body in places I’d just gotten used to being perpetually tense.
Baud
@mvr: My “we” was intended to be a collective, national “we.”
mvr
@Baud: Yes, get that. But I worry about doing my bit.
Kent
I don’t think we all fully appreciate what a Herculean task Biden and Harris accomplished. He had one job and that was to get to 271 and he managed it with plenty of room to spare. In the past 50 years, only 3 others have done it. Jimmy Carter (only because of Watergate). Bill Clinton (with an assist by Ross Perot) and Barak Obama who was a singular talent and had the wreckage of the Bush Administration’s wars and economy to run against.
Humphrey failed, McGovern failed, Carter failed his second try, Dukakis failed, Gore failed, Kerry failed, and Hillary failed. Each one had different excuses. But it doesn’t matter. They all failed.
We are never going to have a permanent Democratic majority in this country. Never. Not when half the country and a majority of whites are revanchist racists and would rather see others suffer than their own lot improve. It’s always been like that and always will be.
That said, we never give up the fight and we take are wins when we get them. Because incremental change happens and progress is real. This was a good week. And every single day of the next four years will be better because Biden won than if he had lost. Every single one of them. No matter what else happens or doesn’t.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
They won’t go away. Most people hate election season. I mean, we don’t, but most people do. They’re relieved when it’s over and they move on to the next phase which in this country is “the holidays”
I wonder if anyone outside the Trump base will like an absolutely endless election that stretches thru Thanksgiving and Christmas. They may be able to make themselves even less popular.
Baud
I’m just gonna say this once: If SNL invites Trump to be a guest host, I will cut Lorne Michaels.
Yarrow
@Kay: I expect the traitor tots to leave the country. Not quite sure yet where they’ll go but they won’t be welcome here. It’ll dawn on them eventually.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: you’ll have to get to him before Cecily Strong and Kate McKinnon
HumboldtBlue
The loading of the site has really slowed down. Is it just me?
rk
The last four years have been awful. I had some hope in the beginning that he may recognize the importance of the job. But that went out of the window quickly. Power just made him worse. If he didn’t tweet so much awful garbage I think I’d hate him less. The last week just wore me down. It took a toll both physically and emotionally. I’m happy Biden won but I can’t celebrate. Because 70 million people who voted for him are still here. I don’t want to ever have anything to do with them and will never feel anything but contempt and hatred for them. My best friend, a person who l loved at one time voted for him again. Nothing that I or other friends said made a difference to her. So I finally cut her off. It wasn’t just Trump, it was 70 million garbage human beings. How to get over that?
Anne Laurie
Saw a tweet ‘congratulating’ Trump on having sparked bigger spontaneous street celebrations than Osama bin Laden did (by getting assassinated)…
Jean
@Kay: And why are they dragging their feet? What are they waiting for? Is the woman in charge an election denier? Is she a Trumpist? Just once, as you say, Kay, I’d like to see some institution do the job they are hired to do.
Gin & Tonic
@Kay: He’s shrinking by the hour. By January he will be completely irrelevant.
Kay
@Yarrow:
They’re never leaving. They’re not the kind of people who would recognize rejection. To recognize rejection other people would have to exist.
I took a class on stalkers once, for continuing legal education. Case study after case study- a whole day. They’re really terrifying because it isn’t about the stalked person at all. They simply don’t recognize that the other person is a person. It is 100% about the stalker. The people who are stalked eventually recognize this and they start to talk about the stalker like it’s a natural catastrophe- “I just happened to be there”. Like, “when it happened”.
Baud
@Jean:
Not to make excuses or defend or trust her, but the election was called yesterday. I would give her at least one work day before raising hell, although I’m glad some Congresscritters are on the ball.
Yarrow
@Baud: Every Trump family member and person involved in the criminal enterprise that has been their administration must be shunned from any sort of polite society or entertainment event. No guest appearances on awards shows. No invitations to the Met ball. No hosting SNL. None of it. There has to be a price paid for their treason. Of course there are also the indictments that are about to drop so they may be a tad bit busy with all that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Hmmm, sounds kind of Commie like.
divF
I experienced something like this the night Nixon announced his resignation. I watched his speech on TV (6 PM PT) and met my date to go to a play at the theater on campus – Michael McClure’s Gorf, a surreal Magic Theater piece. We exited the theater onto the southside of campus, where two of the main streets were blocked off and there was wild music, dancing, and general displays of joy, at least as weird as the play we had just seen.
Yarrow
@piratedan: If you read that Twitter thread, Mark Zaid has tweeted that he’ll take any case pro bono if anyone working there wants to FOIA the office. And then later says someone has done so. Tick tock…
Ksmiami
@different-church-lady: exactly- but if they want blood, then they will spill theirs
Jager
Our 11 (soon to be 12) year old German Shepherd Anze the Dog was bouncing around like a pup when we told him his cousins were going to be living in the Whitehouse. When we got the news out here on the Left Coast, cocktail hour started early. I had one stiff Johnny Walker Blue and hit the rack for a great 3-hour nap, the best sleep I’ve had for months. When we woke up my wife, snuggled up, and said, “I’m so happy.”
Ksmiami
@rk: hope many of them catch the virus and are brought low- a portion can recover/learn but yes. Trump and his supporters and enablers are garbage ppl
Yarrow
@Kay:
That’s Trump himself. The kids are different. Trump is about the purest example of a toxic narcissist you could ever have the misfortune of encountering. He will leave only if he somehow decides leaving is best for Trump. There are ways to talk him into this. You can see it start to happen as Murdoch speaks through the infotainment hosts on Fox News.
The kids are each different stories. I am not sure which of them will figure it out first but they’ve all got indictments awaiting them. These things are not going away and daddy won’t be in the presidency to protect them. At some point in the next 73 days it will dawn on them.
Gin & Tonic
@Yarrow: It took 17 minutes between Zaid making that offer, and then posting that somebody had taken him up on it.
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: Yep. People aren’t playing around.
Punchy
@Jager: my wife openly wept. I did not expect this, but apparently the horror of 4 more was so great that the election resolution and happy release of stress and dread involved voluminous salty discharges….myself….I drank scotch.
Kay
Good. It’s Bloomberg. For once we’re talking about the country instead of the Trump Family. More of this and less about their feelings. Move it along there, Ivanka. Get packing.
Kay
@Punchy:
I cried too and I’m not particularly emotional. I was dreading telling my daughter she had lost again. They just had a baby and she and her husband are both in health care and they’ve been working so hard, worrying constantly about getting covid. Just so relieved I didn’t have to.
I hope Biden draws some attention to health care workers. This has been a really long slog for them. They’re exhausted. There was a brief moment where people paid attention to them but then the big baby got jealous and drew it all back to himself.
Yarrow
Kay bait! How ’bout that epidemic of white collar crime?
Peale
So basically clerical errors that could happen in all 50 states are going to lead to recounts in the 4 states Trump needs? Why not sue in Idaho to make sure the count is accurate there?
Oklahomo
I’m not sure what is most ridiculous in this: Rudy, the Trump supporters, or the venue.
I saw Donald Trump’s presidency come crashing down at Four Seasons Total Landscaping
Mallard Filmore
@HumboldtBlue:
The way the GOP leadership handles this transition standoff will have a big impact on the Georgia outcome. I wonder how big a percentage of the Republicans will stay with Trump when his faction goes feral.
HumboldtBlue
The Aussies are pretty glad we got some semblance of our common sense back.
Jean
@Baud: Ok, then, by the end of Monday, tomorrow, she signs off on the transition.
Philbert
@HumboldtBlue: seems like this is VE Day, but VJ Day and the end will take some more.
mrmoshpotato
Well, we were at war with Putin’s bitch – a Soviet shitpile mobster conman.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
I can only hope Trump will piss off a hell of lot of people, especially soft supporters once it’s clear he’s got no chance
mrmoshpotato
Yup. The war with the Trump trash isn’t over.
Sebastian
@Yarrow:
Tax havens and shell companies are the biggest scourge of our time. It’s always follow the money and these constructs are the laundromat.
I see no reason why they should exist and why we should accept their existence.
We also need to change how we approach audits of the absurdly rich. Perhaps we should offer Letters of Marque to the Big Four? Along the lines “you keep 20% of every hidden dollar” and have them conduct forensic audits.
mrmoshpotato
What’ll be left after the cast, crew and studio audience are finished?
Glyph2112
@Punchy: on Tuesday I was freaking out and like most of us here, every little piece of possible bad news sent me into a tailspin because I couldn’t imagine another 4 years. Finally saw the daylight on Friday and felt so relieved on Saturday. I may be alone but must have some ptsd because every time I hear of the ratfvckery like not certifying the transition I have a small panic attack.
smike
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Unless you live in a blue state.
Pete Downunder
@HumboldtBlue: All my ex pat friends and every Aussie I know is very much relieved but many wonder what is wrong with America that like 70 million of its citizens saw what Trump was like and said yup, we want 4 more years of this. Bizarre.
Sasha
It’s nice to know that American color revolutions are mostly perfunctory affairs.
Brachiator
I was talking to my sister about this. I told her there were mornings when I would wake up and think to myself “I can’t believe this asshole Trump is president.”
Later it became “I can’t believe that Trump is president and we are alive during a goddam pandemic.”
Well, one big source of anxiety is gone, and maybe Biden will be able to tackle the pandemic.
I have definitely been sleeping better the last couple of days.
HumboldtBlue
@Pete Downunder:
Fuck, tell them we don’t even know outside of the racial resentment and Christian dominionist fever dreams.
Felanius Kootea
@Peale: A friend sent me a TED talk video that Van Jones (I know, I know) gave last month about how to prevent a coup if a president refuses to concede. The loopholes in the constitution are kind of scary – the degreee to which many things depend on norms and traditions. Part of the coup strategy is to delay election results beyond the required certification times by state law, so that state legislatures, rather than the popular vote, determine the electors. It won’t work because people are now wise to that strategy and guarding against it. Someone is going to have to make it clear to Trump that he’ll be worse off prolonging things, but with the GOP still backing him and this strategy, I don’t know who will.
Lyrebird
@Mallard Filmore:
Dems also need to resist fracturing. Seems like the GA results thus far say that both Stacy Abrams and Project Lincoln played a big role. Why do I say that? Because of the ticket splitters. Clearly Abrams has moved mountains, and clearly some people who are fine with Perdue’s racism and everything have had enough of Orange Menace and the Traitor Tots.
But YES this is in some ways the best day since 11/09/2016
HumboldtBlue
@Philbert:
I feel ya.
@Pete Downunder:
I just learned that was an American doing an Ozzie accent! That’s brilliant.
CaseyL
I wrote an email to Ms. Murphy, very politely telling her she has no legitimate reason to delay signing the transition authorization, and reminding her that Trump’s patronage is only good for as long as the patronee is useful to him, after which he abandons them.
It probably won’t make a bit of difference, though, so I’m glad an attorney is already on the job.
The lightness from the election result is gone for me. Trumpists are refusing to recognize the result, and the GOP will support them in that. They are absolutely going to try a coup. I’m back to being enraged.
mrmoshpotato
@Pete Downunder: Yup. And 8 million+ more people voted for the Soviet shitpile mobster conman this time – in the middle of a global pandemic!
Lots of us are truly “WTF?!”
Frankensteinbeck
The Republicans exactly thought of it as a war. That is why they turned out in such numbers. ‘Make liberals cry again’ was the sentiment. They saw this as their final battle to destroy everyone they hate forever, and that Trump had almost brought them to victory.
They lost.
@Kay:
As one of the people doing the assuring: No, we said this was entirely possible, even likely. What we assured you is that come January 20th, it won’t matter. I personally expected the transition to be a shit show of ‘Nuh UH.’ I suspect Biden did as well and has planned accordingly.
Besides, Trump surely has a lot of documents to try to destroy to cover up his crimes. I am grateful that he and his minions are so spectacularly incompetent, they’ll probably fail.
EDIT – @Peale:
Like the Wisconsin SoS said, recounts will not mean a damned thing. They budge final numbers by a few hundred, tops. Like the law suits, it’s just Trump whining.
Pete Downunder
@HumboldtBlue: I tell them that America has always been a deeply racist country built on white supremacy. Last Tuesday our time I was on local radio explaining how the electoral college was basically created to protect slavery. It’s obviously a bit more complicated than that but that was at the core. Then the Japanese internment in WWII, but no German internment. My mom was in NYC during the war and she told me that all the Germans there were suddenly Swiss.
Burnspbesq
@Yarrow:
There’s a must-read book about the decline in white-collar prosecutions. It’s aptly titled The Chickenshit Club.
HumboldtBlue
@Pete Downunder:
It’s all there.
And the clip of Bryan Jordan Alvarez should be described as Colombian/American does an Ozzie accent.
Mary G
Don Jr. is crashing and burning and is probably a suicide risk. I saw someone on Twitter tell Ivanka she’ll never be invited to the Met Gala again, and that will hurt. Jared is so stupid he’ll probably go to jail and/or have all his loans get called and lose his albatross of a building he bought for a world record price right before the Great Recession. Lara and Eric will probably skate, land a show on OANN, and write books about how they are persecuted Christians in the lion’s den. And none of them will be able to show their faces in public without jeering, I hope.
Pete Downunder
@HumboldtBlue: The true Aussie accent is very hard to imitate well. This is a good thing. I’ve been here 12 years and my native New York accent is alive and well.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mary G:
I’ve heard many jokes over the years about shitting on someone’s grave. Trump is the only person for whom I think it will actually happen. As the celebrations have demonstrated, he is hated like no other president in America’s history.
Burnspbesq
@Frankensteinbeck:
Document destruction can be a Federal crime under certain circumstances. It’s not sexy, and the sentences aren’t heavy, but it’s easy to prove.
HumboldtBlue
@Pete Downunder:
I really enjoyed the reaction from the locals, he obviously nailed it.
There’s one other hyphenated American I am sure could pull that off, Philadelphia 76er Ben Simmons.
NotMax
Still shaking head in exasperated astonishment at the one woman Dolt 45 supporter interviewed on the street just the other day carping about (her exact words) “all the votes that showed up at midnight from China.”
Frankensteinbeck
@Burnspbesq:
That fact won’t stop them or even slow them down, but I appreciate that it might be their individual undoings. As is often the case, it’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the coverup.
SFAW
@Kent:
I keep saying this, but apparently not loud/often enough: contemporaneous polling showed that Perot took as many votes from Clinton as from Bush. The “Perot helped Clinton win” is a zombie lie. [No, Kent, not calling you a liar, nor an intentional promulgator of a lie.
ETA:
“Failed” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Humphrey only “failed” because of Nixon’s treason in September/October of ’68; Gore “failed” because of FL Rethug fuckery (Katherine Harris, for one); Kerry “failed” because of Ken Blackwell’s voting machine fuckery in Cleveland and other Dem OH strongholds; Hillary “failed” because of the myriad methods of fuckery we’ve discussed here ad nauseam.
But I guess if you want to adhere to Murc’s Law, you’re going to.
Burnspbesq
BTW, Biden’s margins continue to grow. He’s doing it in slow motion, but he is, in fact, dunking on Trump’s head.
https://twitter.com/JesseLehrich/status/1325610449203769346?s=20
Redshift
I have a former acquaintance on Twitter who I used to think had gone Q, but now I think she just believes all the conspiracy theories. Anyway, I sometimes look at the accounts she echoes, for amusement.
One recently was some GOP elected official huffily saying that celebrating Trump losing like we had overthrown a dictator was offensive to people who live under real oppressive regimes.
Yeah, right. I bet, to the extent they get news of it, they would cheer along with us, arrive Trump’s attitude toward them was “you’re on your own, suckers!” and they’d be a lot more offended by a GOPer presuming to speak for them.
Redshift
@Burnspbesq:
And he is not in fact doing it in slow motion. All of the votes have already been cast, and the final count will be the amount he had always won by. We need to be careful about buying into the horserace narrative that he was behind and then squeaked by. It was never “close” anywhere, it just looked that way.
HumboldtBlue
OK, this site is officially stuck in the mud, so here’s a last gasp of outstanding humor born from the joy of the election results.
Call the election fraud hotline people!
bluehill
Saw snippets of the AOC article (but didn’t read) and saw some of the pushback. I thought this tweet thread was convincing , but don’t know if it’s fair.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Frankensteinbeck:
Granted, but 70 million people voted for him, even after the botched pandemic response. Even after “injecting disinfectant is a cure!”. Melania’s “Fuck Christmas!” had no effect. In my Ohio county, Clinton won by 3% in 2016. I figured Biden would easily win it. Nope. Trump won 50.27% to Biden’s 48.34%
Most of the conservadem county candidates were reelected/elected, but the state-level candidates, with the notable exception of Jennifer Brunner, were crushed. Some empty suit clown appointed by the nut jobs in Columbus was elected to state House rep for my district by a 20% margin. This asshole, Al Cutrona, worked for NE Ohio Infectious Disease Associates as their legal counsel. A relative apparently got him that job because there’s a Dr. Cutrona that works there. Al Cutrona has been on local news spreading bullshit about how we need to open up and how he was going to fight to lift pandemic restrictions in Columbus because he “understands small business”. He’s also spoken against the ban against bars serving alcohol after 10 pm to stop people congregating. He worked at an infectious disease practice. He should fucking know better.
I read in the paper last Wednesday a director at the county BOE said that the election showed a clear mandate “for the Democrats in Ohio to get their acts together” as if this was a normal election we could’ve won. I mean, WTF act are we supposed to get together?! A majority of Ohioan voters showed they like fascism just fine. How the fuck are you supposed to win against that without giving up your principles and becoming the GOP? I guess the Ohio GOP was right; voters didn’t care about the HB 6 debacle at all. It never hurt the GOP’s chances here
NotMax
OT.
Positively delicious six hour nap this afternoon, 12:30 to 6:30 p.m. Was much needed.
Frankensteinbeck
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Oh, yes. Like I mentioned, the Republicans also saw this as an existential war, and voted their virulent hatred as they saw the chance to permanently crush everyone different. They thought they could consign us to permanent suffering, misery, and even death. We saw the same thing. The results really highlighted where there are more vile bigots and where there are more decent people.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Shall admit to not quite getting the 10 o’clock stricture unless things have dramatically changed from my pub crawling years, when the congregating took place before that hour. 10 was about when clientele began thinning out.
Kent
@SFAW: Look, none of them took office. Biden faced equal hurdles and all manner of ratfuckery too from our own government, that even got Trump impeached but nearly never came to light absent one whistleblower. And probably took an assist from the worst pandemic in a century and the worst economy since the great depression to get him over the line. A lot of lefty Democrats in blue cities think logic dictates that progressive Dems should cruise to easy victory every time in this country. When really, it’s a damn brutal battle nearly every time.
Give credit where credit is due. Biden took the pulse of this country, he ran a damn fine and near errorless campaign, and he won. No thanks to the 57% of white America who thought after everything that happened in the past four years, that Trump was still the best choice to lead us through the next four.
And I have to deal with my idiot lefty brother on Facebook who thinks Bernie wuz robbed and could have taken the Senate too with a little more socialized medicine. That would have been just the ticket to assist our candidates in IA, ME, NC, and MT I’m sure.
Ruckus
@HumboldtBlue:
He gave them the OK to be the assholes that they really are, out in the open. IOW he said the quiet parts out loud. At least now the extent of the racism is in front of everyone, not just the victims. And possibly we can start finding a way to make the situation better. BTW I have no idea how, just that it is decades past time and it looks like a really possible point to make some progress and honor people like John Lewis and Maxine Waters and yes Kamala Harris and strip the racist fucks of their entire point of being.
Felanius Kootea
@bluehill: I don’t think what AOC is saying is wrong but the timing could have been better. I’m not sure the Twitter thread is really engaging with what she said.
When a state like South Dakota is legalizing marijuana, and Florida votes for a $15 minimum wage, it’s clear that red states are not against all that’s progressive. They may be open to some form of Medicare for All if it’s clear that the benefits will only accrue to people who either look like them or who share their political views.
Here’s an excerpt from her NYT interview on digital strategy:
NotMax
By plugging away, one vote — one issue if needs be — at a time. It will never become an outright all-encompassing (much less final) win, lurching forward is more the norm. The proverbial light bulb cannot be lit over their heads until the proper wiring is in place. The larger the tablecloth (us) the more the fringe (them) but that fringe is also moved further and further from the center. Put another way, slowing the spread of a toxic spill comes first, then reversing it, then mopping up.
NotMax
*sigh* #118 was @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka).
SFAW
@Kent:
Yes, and … ? Neither did Samuel Tilden. Doesn’t mean they “failed.” Each of them was ratfucked in new and different ways, right? And if the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers or External Death Peni$ Jerkoffs had appeared enough places, and scared off enough Biden voters, would Biden have “failed”?
Not being able to avert every possible mode of fuckery — especially those not seen previously — does not mean a candidate “failed.”
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
How about a stone to announce the acceptance of the possibility?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Felanius Kootea:
Three makes a hemorrhage?
She’s neither the base, nor the spokesperson for the base. If she represented the base, Bernie would have been the nominee, and trump would have won re-election. No one has said BLM is “the enemy”. And “Medicare for all”, the way she means it, is a losing policy proposal.
Kent
What’s it all about then if not winning? The book deals where you get to write about what went wrong?
My point isn’t to ding on Mondale or Hillary Clinton or John Kerry. My point is that winning the presidency in this country is always an enormously difficult task. Because half this country would rather pull others down than lift themselves up. And it will always be a relentless uphill paddle through a toxic sea of ratfuckery and voter suppression. Let’s appreciate what Biden and Harris have accomplished. Regardless of what ever else happens in the next four years. It will be a better world because they won.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Pay per view??
rikyrah
@Kent:
Amen???
Kent
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I agree with you Jim. But AOC didn’t make or break the candidacies of candidates in reddish districts who lost. They GOP turned on a firehose of toxic waste and lies about her, ANTIFA, Socialist BLM rioters burning down cities, LGBT cults molesting your children in school bathrooms, $15 a gallon gas, and taxing your jobs out of existence. They would have run the same exact campaign whether or not AOC even existed. The toxic sludge I saw here in the purplish WA-3rd for our GOP incumbent congresswoman had no passing resemblance to anything within 500 miles of the truth. And it didn’t matter. It’s what they do and how they win. Doesn’t mean it’s hopeless. It just means we need badass talented candidates who know and match their districts. And who know how to cut through the toxic sludge that they are going to face every day of their political lives.
Felanius Kootea
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I see some Republicans like Kasich, etc., essentially telling Democrats to cater to Republicans and try to soothe them in defeat. Some of that includes delegitimizing or deliberately misconstruing what BLM is fighting for. Accepting their advice would depress part of the Dem base.
I know that the battle is not ideological for many Republicans; they’ve shown that they’ll accept progressive policies if framed a certain way, but Dems adopting right wing framing would destroy the Democratic coalition.
I agree that AOC and others in D+15 or better districts are facing a different electorate, but it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing that can be learned from them about digital strategy.
We’ll figure it out eventually, but the focus right now should be on the senate (GA) and thwarting any Trump attempts at a coup, so I think her timing for the interview was really not ideal.
Sebastian
@Felanius Kootea:
Careful. AOC is intentionally muddying the waters.
The NYT article is great and I agree with a lot. But at the same time she attacked everyone on Twitter left and right and now she is conflating the sensible stuff in the article with people hitting back at her.
dc
AOC was talking more about hows than whats. That’s the criticism of the DCCC banning companies that worked against incumbents in primaries. She’s talking about badly run, lazy and outdated campaigns that did not know how to exploit digital platforms, that did not have a ground game, etc. For example, I’ve seen criticisms of people in Conner Lamb’s district that they never heard from or saw anyone from the campaign, yet there were people canvassing in their areas for the Republican candidates (Congress and state legislative) every week. There is no excuse for that. You are asking to loose (I saw that he won barely, called today). The same for using social media. Even with the pandemic, phone and text banking and using social media to reach voters and capture their imagination. These candidates were not doing that work. That was the criticism. Now they want to pick up Republican talking points and throw them at the left wing of the Party.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dc:
Looking for the word “digital”…
He barely won re-election to this Republican-leaning district. Fucking loser.
W. Kiernan
@Kent: Democrats may not get a permanent electoral college majority any time soon, but we have had a popular majority in Presidential races, with only one exception, since 1992. Yes, I know that a popular majority and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee. But the idea that, due to the inherent swinishness of the vast American public, Democrats are doomed to minority status forever and ever is somewhat exaggerated.
J R in WV
@Pete Downunder:
I was in NYC in fall of last year, and there were no Iranians left in New York — they were all Persians. Amazing how that can happen.
WaterGirl
@Glyph2112: Hang in there. Your brain knows it’s basically over, but it can take time for your body and emotions to catch up.
Your body will catch up with your brain soon, and then won’t be on such a hair trigger.
Skippy-san
On Saturday, I came to understand the joy my parents must have felt on VE and VJ day.