This starts right the fuck now and let me be clear about this. We are not going to spend the next couple days lashing out at each other in the comments. It accomplishes fucking nothing and no one needs it right now. There will be plenty of time for post-mortems and accountability when the data has been analyzed, and we can fucking wait until then and look at things with clear eyes and try to find a way forward.
I am hurt, sad, depressed, and angry. I’m scared. I have been shot at and been and been through catastrophic explosions, through two car windshields, fallen off a roof, fought alcoholism and anxiety and depression and had multiple life changing injuries. I have been through a lot of shit, and this is the scariest thing I have ever encountered. My head is spinning and I am dizzy and in disbelief. I don’t need a bunch of people in here attacking other people because Biden should have stepped down earlier or should not have stepped down or whatever your deep thoughts are. I don’t need or want your bullshit half-baked analysis. I don’t need or want you attacking other people. And I am a white man who can blend in and not at all the target of what is about to come.
People are hurting, vulnerable, and scared. We have a lot of people who do not have the privilege of being able to blend in like I do- they are exposed, defenseless, and have targets on their backs. If what you are about to spew in the comments isn’t a constructive way to move forward, just shut your rancid piehole for a couple days. We don’t need immediate internecine warfare. Coming on here and shitting all over people to make yourself feel better is not the winning play you think it is.
We are all in this together, and there is a lot of ugliness about to come down the pike and there is a very real potential the America we know and love may be gone for quite some time. So if you are not about helping those around you and lifting people up instead of pushing people down or attacking people who are in the middle of a traumatic nightmare, you are not fucking welcome.
I don’t need a bunch of edgelord douchebags reciting “hard truths” to people. I need people looking out for each other.
Do you motherfuckers understand me? Don’t say things you regret, and let’s try to be the helpers, not the haters. We have many immigrants here, people of color, gay/trans people, a lot of women. It is our job to protect them. Do not let me down.
Starfish
I really appreciate the lurkers who came out in the past few threads to just let us know that they are here and enjoy the community.
Brent
Well placed typo.
cain
Thanks Cole, it’s important that we hold on to each other and deal with the next 4 years.
I did not sleep well and I am feeling listless.
Our country has chosen a bad path. We will have to deal with it.
Freemark
Agreed! I will say we should try to give everyone as much of a pass as we can on their comments the next day or two. It’s hard to react well to this kind of trauma.
Lapassionara
Thank you for saying this and thank you for hosting this space. It can be a refruge from the hatred and spitefulness, if we help make it so.
cain
@Brent: ha I noticed that.
lollipopguild
God love you, John. Thanks for the well spoken rant.
Lapassionara
Did we win the house? I think Missouri’s amendment 3 (restoring abortion) passed. At least I hope so.
rusty
Sending out love to everyone here. If you need someone to pray for you, I will add you to my prayer list and keep you there. You are not alone.
FDRLincoln
No recriminations from me, no attacks on the Dems or anyone here from me. Kamala ran a great campaign. What happened had nothing to do with her or the Democratic party.
This is on the voters deliberately and consciously choosing fascism.
Everyone here is an anti-fascist. I love you all.
Just Some Fuckhead
How much longer can the fat fucker live?
ETA: Sorry, meant Agent Orange, not John.
Ramona
@Lapassionara: i think Missouri voted for reproductive rights too!
dexwood
@Just Some Fuckhead: That’s what Vance wants to know.
Jackie
Thanks, John. We’re all scared and for good reason.
Mel
Linda Binda, if you are reading this, I just replied to you in Betty Cracker’s Wee Hours Election Open Thread, from early this morning (comment 357, at the bottom of the comments).
Hang in there. I am sending you an enormous hug.
Nina
Thank you. I’ve spent the last hour listening to my husband’s plans for what country to move to and when because he doesn’t feel safe any more. I know it’s fear talking, I let it run through and make encouraging noises from time to time. But it’s amplifying my own fear. I just want to live in a better world than where I was born. I want civilization to go forward, not back. But we don’t get to choose the times we live in, only what we do with those times.
wu ming
amen.
Soprano2
Thanks for this. I had a panic attack pretty much all night, and I didn’t even know the result until this morning, I just knew it didn’t appear to be going well when I went to bed at midnight. One thing we have to remember is that Harris winning would have been an outlier for many reasons, but one in particular is that incumbent governments around the world are being tossed out right now. Whether it’s a backlash from all the things caused by Covid like inflation and shortages, or fear of so much immigration, or just a yearning to go back to the time before Covid and thinking that putting that president back in office would make that happen, it’s happening everywhere. I’ve heard several interviews with many TCFG supporters, and they truly don’t believe he’s going to do all the terrible things he’s going to do (except the deportation, they want that). I think they’re going to be surprised, prices aren’t going to go back to 2019 levels and gas isn’t going to get cheaper (they’ll try to tell you those things are better, though). I’m still pretty much in shock, because I was optimistic about Harris’ chances. FWIW, from what I’ve heard about the voting results I don’t think Biden could have won either. Fear and anger are powerful motivators, and a lot of people are angry and afraid right now and think they voted to make that stop
ETA – at the doctor’s office my BP was 156/80. I told her she could try again, but today it won’t be better. She didn’t ask me why. LOL
Ole Lurky
I am thinking of all you guys. Especially, Betty. I have been here as long as I’ve been following politics and I love you all and bleed with you here today.
My wife is apoplectic and I had to lie to my 7 year old and tell him that everything was fine and its no big deal. He is so curious and empathetic and sensitive and innocent, its just too much to bear.
kalakal
Well said. Thank you
Johannes
@wu ming:Well said, and well said John. Hang in there!
Soprano2
@Lapassionara: Yes, that amendment passed.
espierce
Hate won, but we don’t have to give in.
Now is the time to stand tall and stay strong, Jackals!
arrieve
Thank you, John. It is hard not to feel despair this morning. And my instinct is to curl inside myself, retreat, lick my wounds. But I’m terrified for my immigrant students. I’m terrified for the millions who will now have targets on their backs. And so while I might have the luxury of retreating, or even of leaving the country (going to get that Irish passport now, just in case…) I’m going to give myself a day or two of responding to the shock and anger, and then I’m going to come out fighting.
I don’t know what form that will take yet. I don’t know what horrors are in our immediate future. But I am not going to fucking take this lying down and moaning about it.
TBone
Here’s looking at you, BJ
✊🎶
m.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeFhSzoTuc
This goes with my everloving I DISSENT and coffee.
JMG
Thank you, John.
Rose Judson
Hear hear, John Cole. We’re gonna need to hoard every scrap of joy and support we can get to endure what’s ahead. Community is all we have left after this coming January 20; let’s not tear this one apart.
@FDRLincoln: This is where I’m at. Well said.
schrodingers_cat
This blog doesn’t have a stellar record of protecting minorities and the marginalized, even frontpagers, ask ABL and Planet Eddie. Protect yourselves.
TBone
@arrieve: come sit by me, comrade.
terraformer
Thank you, John. This place has helped me through the BushCo years and the first Orange administration – and it’ll help me through this one.
trollhattan
Mood.
youtu.be/tUXpYMV17fw?si=PxCLkcdjN4_qD5OC
Steve LaBonne
@Soprano2: And there actually were quite a few other downballot bright spots in a number of states (sadly very much not including mine, Ohio.) We’re fighting a huge cultural blind spot that disconnects presidential races from everything else, and voters generally are nothing if not bizarrely inconsistent, but there are things to build on.
Barbara
Thanks for this. I have my hot takes but I am happy to let others navel gaze for the time being.
I value this site so much and I hope it can remain a safe space from which we can continue contributing to progressive political outcomes however fitful progress might seem.
MCat
John, I have been a lurker here for many years. I love this community with all my heart. Just want you all to know that. I am also stunned. I will be here lurking for a long time to come. I wish us all peace.
la caterina
Thanks for that, Cole. As an (invisible) old white woman, I hope I can be one of the helpers. We jackals stick together.
Belafon
I’m angry and frustrated at my fellow whites, and wondering what Latinos were thinking, but I’ll return to “there’s a whole lot of people that are going to need help and protection” soon enough and I’ll continue annoying the crap out of my facebook followers with “Why do you think it’s a good thing if ______ dies because of Republicans?”
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I keep telling myself this to get through the day:
We lost an important battle yesterday. But the war is not over.
My mom lived through Nazi occupation of her home. It was awful. Horrifying. A lot of people didn’t survive it.
But five years later, the Nazis were gone.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@FDRLincoln:
This.
I think it’s good to examine things (what mistermix has started to do) to see what we might learn from post-mortem analysis but blame? Nope, none of that.
People here who try to connect dots on how election season played out (and their dissatisfaction with that) in order to “blame” really should give it a rest. Those dots aren’t connectable and the Democratic Party doesn’t need that shit right now.
Misogyny and racism won out. Everything else we discern over time is simply in the noise.
Sun Girl on Skates
Long-time Lurker, First-time Commenter. I’m grateful to y’all for being a place of reason, common sense, and comfort to many. I’ve been reading for about a year and as the election grew closer, BJ became my first site to check before other sources. Now, after the results of an election I still have no solid words for, I find this is the place I will check into until the tumult fades. Thanks for your kindness, knowledge, and community spirit – this is what I hope I can provide to those who need it now.
Zzyzx
I definitely feel defeated today. I’m 2500 miles from home helping my mom for a month in a way where I can’t really leave her house and I figured that maybe at least I’d be able to celebrate?
sigh.
karen gail
How ever I feel about the election, I have low level of fear for myself since am an “old” white woman so can blend. Though I do feel about the same as when I broke my back in auto accident; “say what?” am more thankful to be alive than aware of level of pain.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@MCat:
Thanks for popping up and sharing. And not leaving. It’s great to know we have people here like you.
Rose Judson
@Sun Girl on Skates: Welcome! Please stick around.
humanadverb
Thanks for saying that, John.
I brought in donuts to the office this morning, cuz I needed donuts so I figured someone else might, too. The lady who does our mail was the first face I saw this morning and she was happy about donuts. First good feeling I’ve had today.
We get through this by taking care of each other, in big ways and small.
karen gail
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: As my grandpa used to say, “when push comes to shove, people will vote emotions over logic.”
Rose Judson
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: That is both hopeful and yet also grim as fuck.
Theflippsyd
@schrodingers_cat: I have appreciated your comments for many years. I admit I haven’t always agreed with them. But I also was a true blue Biden supporter and incredibly angry with what happened. I did fall for Kamala though, and did allow myself to hope because she ran such a joyful and hopeful campaign.
I see (read) that you are in great pain and are incredibly angry and fearful of becoming more of a target. A sincere question — what do you need from BJ — posters and lurkers like me — at this time. I get that as a white woman I have a lot of privilege. So, what can I do to help you and others who are feeling the same as you?
Yarrow
@rusty:
That is very kind of you.
Sister Golden Bear
@Lapassionara: Abortion protections passed in AZ and MT.
I take cold comfort that CA repealed Prop Hate (8), which was overruled by never taken off the book, and voted to protect marriage equality. We’ll see if it actually matters when the SCOTUS bans it.
elboku
Long time lurker.
There is no blame.
Hate won. Too many Americans hate. I would never have thought she would lose the popular vote.
She ran a decent campaign but the majority of our fellow Americans, sadly, are not good people.
A Ghost to Most
We saw this coming 20 years, and moved 15 years ago in anticipation of this day. We would be shitting bricks if we still lived in rural Maryland. At least here, we have options.
Best of luck. Being nice to fascists never works out well.
la caterina
@Sun Girl on Skates: Welcome, and please do stick around! Love your nym.
different-church-lady
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Me, I look forward to being liberated by Korea.
GregB
Thanks John. It’s good to see you are still chock full righteous goodness.
I’ve missed this place.
Be good to each other.
BretH
Thank you, John, for the request and for the site. I need a place like this now and while I don’t need a bubble, I do need a place to regroup with others.
just another boomer
Just a lurker here, but thanks for this reminder that this community is a community with standards that you are prepared to enforce. As the Army slogan says “this we’ll defend.” Stay strong.
trollhattan
@different-church-lady: Any particular Korea?
Asking for a friend.
mvr
What you say sounds really sane.
There was a lot of leaving talk on here last night and I think much of it is a way of expressing anger and feelings of great loss. So it is probably not getting to the heart of things to argue with it right now. Even if in reality leaving would not eliminate the loss, partly because of this country’s reach, but also because a lot of what we have lost, at least for now, is hope for something good here.
schrodingers_cat
@Theflippsyd: Listen to what we have to say without dissolving in paroxysms of self righteous anger.
I don’t fear for myself personally but for this country and the world.
Mr. Prosser
Great rant.
UncleEbeneezer
@Soprano2: Thank you for making me laugh with the blood pressure story. Virtual hug to you.
Sister Golden Bear
Thank you for saying it John. I’m more terrified than I’ve ever been in my life. Especially because it’s likely one take away among the cultists will be that their massive anti-trans demonization “worked” and we’ll be seeing it amped up to 11.
Karen
What hurts the most is knowing more than half the country is so racist, sexist and anti-liberal. I thought we were the winning side. Sucks to know better now.
mvr
@terraformer: Yes. This place was a refuge in the early aughts, when I lurked. So thanks for that and let’s do it again.
BretH
One thing we can do, those of us with the resources, is to toss a few coins John’s way. There’s a donate link with Venmo and Zelle instructions as well a PayPal (although a last resort). I just did.
Hildebrand
Thank you, John, and the whole BJ community – you are a bright spot in a very troubled world.
This morning was exceptionally tough – my 22 year old daughter, who is gay, emerged from her bedroom just sobbing – distraught about the direction the country has taken, fearful of her place in it, and gutted that her grandmother’s medical care and insurance may be endangered. She trudged off to work with resilience and determination, but in no mood for some of her maga co-workers bullshit.
My hope is that we will be able to find the ways to protect the most vulnerable people in our country. I’ve also wished fervently for trump’s diet to catch up with him.
I am grateful for this place – now more than ever.
Ohio Mom
@Nina: I hear you. Very early this morning my husband was going through the details of the conversation to bitcoin. I told him I didn’t think the big bankers would stand for having their entire business model upended.
It’s something, the many shapes and forms terror can take. People can be so creative.
Thanks for the rant, Cole. You are right.
Raoul Paste
Well said, John. What I can’t get over is radiant decency of Harris and Walz being rejected for the malice and ignorance of Trump
Sister Golden Bear
@mvr:
For some of us, talk of leaving the country is about actual survival. Republicans have been in years-long effort to eradicate (a word I don’t use lightly) trans people from public life. It’s going to get worse for us. Far worse.
Just sayin’.
SC54HI
Well said, John. I am heartsick and terrified, especially for our kids & grandkids.
ETA: Pee2025 is for real. As Walz said, no one makes a plan without intending to use it. Old whites like the spouse & me are ancillary targets but they intend for all of us to suffer.
This is one of the few remaining spaces where I trust the people and the information. Thank you all.
acallidryas
As I told my husband and friends this morning, there may or may not be things Dems could have done differently. But the blame for this is squarely on the millions and millions of people who voted for a fascist, the institutions who supported him, and the Republicans who were too cowardly or objectively pro-Nazi to hold Trump accountable and stop him when they had a chance. Full stop.
mvr
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Yeah, that family having lived under occupation background somehow makes this harder for me. My folks were in Europe as well during the war. They taught me not to think it won’t happen here. So it makes it easier to image how bad things might get, but also especially the risks we may have to take to keep them from getting that bad. I’m not sure how much risk I am up to as an old man. But then, OTOH, the risks are less consequential as an old man.
Melancholy Jaques
@elboku:
You are correct. The choice was very clear and the majority chose evil. The political media, rich people, and institutions all played their part, but what it comes down to is that the majority of people who vote in this country are ignorant, hateful bigots.
mvr
@Zzyzx: Shit, that’s hard. Helping an aging parent is a lot of work.
spoot
Long time lurker here.
I read this blog everyday, it’s the first place I look. Just needed to post today for therapy because my head is spinning and I can’t even face the day. I suddenly feel like a stranger in a strange land.
First, Kamala was a magnificent campaigner and it was awesome the miracle she pull off, energizing the party and mobilizing the shit out of us, that’s why it’s so tough to take the beating we suffered last night.
But I’m thinking hard about the reality of our country at this time.
Since Reagan we have been shifting slowly away from true representative democracy. First the unions started to fade, then distrust in government starting growing and the idealization of the Market took it’s place. This was the mantra of conservatism.
Then Citizens United changed the First Amendment so that free speech and expression could be bought. So politicians became money junkies , forced to buy their campaign fixes from rich donors. And the rich bought media companies, radio conglomerants, and created social media platforms, all of whom were money making enterprises.
Rich men got richer, then even more rich, until we had a class of billionaires who thought of politics and government as assets to be owned or nuisances to be controlled. And the thing is, the more they got, the more they want.
It’s the age of the Oligarchs.
We Democrats still think of politics and government as instruments of the People. And we do what we can to serve our constituents.
But the rules of the game are set by the Oligarchs and their servants. We live under those rules along with everyone else in the world.
My fear is that having lost our democracy to Trump/Musk/the Koch bros et all, we Democrats will slowly lose our will and morph into the Russian citizenry under Putin. Electing him year after year with ever larger majorities until all dissenting thought is crushed.
Can it happen here?
EireIAm
Thank you, john. I’ve been mostly avoiding all my news / political sites today (after an emergency appointment at the dr to get some anti-anxiety drugs to stop the panic attack that hit when I woke up). But I can’t cope with the level of fighting that was here in the ‘should biden step down’ and I am glad it’s unacceptable.
Ann McClenahan
evinfuilt
I was here through the Bush years, more offline during the Obama years, where I didn’t feel I needed as much coping. Then here heavily during T1, less time during Biden (except for reading Covid updates regularly), I don’t feel safer in any other online community as I do here. I feel sorry for those who do not live in safe states that will fight to protect them.
I’m still hopeful for Jefferies and Congress to come through, and put some balance… but if he follows the 2025 rule book, he’s just going to ignore them and do everything via fiat. Though I doubt he’ll be doing anything, it’ll all be President JD Vance.
rodwell
Do not comment a lot, but I feel I am part of the Ballon Juice community. I am very upset. Worked the polls in NJ yesterday. Very high turnout, so I thought things would go our way. Signing up for shifts at the Food Bank outreach organization that I volunteer at to rescue supermarket food and distribute it. Winter is coming and they will need help.
ThaBuhJaysus
It’s been a long time since I’ve come in and commented. Just keep thinking I gotta use this as motivation to get my own self as healthy as possible — diet, exercise, meditation whatever…We are part of millions of like minded people and we should continue to draw some reassurance from that. Yes, the ramifications of this election are dire, but we can’t change it. We can prepare for a day when a window of opportunity opens (unfortunately probably due to some sort of catastrophe) and we can push back in earnest on fear, small mindednesses and selfishness that has swept across this country.
Fair Economist
Thanks, John.
Moving wouldn’t help me, because my true fear is not that my 60yo upper middle class white self (albeit gay) is likely to suffer directly, but that this great human experiment, so hopeful looking just 30 years ago, looks likely to lapse into a dystopic ruin.
My mother tells me that when I was a young boy I learned the Earth would be destroyed in about 4 billion years, and I came to her distraught and in tears that in the end it was all hopeless. She could think of nothing to say as she, like most people, wasn’t concerned with such an incredibly remote event, and couldn’t understand why I would be.
That’s kind of how I feel now.
Josie
Thanks for addressing this, John. I agreed with every word.
Another Scott
Thanks John, and everyone.
One day at a time…
Hang in there,
Scott.
mvr
@spoot: This may sound cynical or defeatist but it is meant in the opposite spirit. It certainly can happen here. The thing I don’t know is will it. And what do we do to keep if from happening?
The Truffle
@Nina: I hear people talking about how it’s time for a national divorce. I just don’t know how that happens. But the right wing seems to want it.
I just don’t believe we’re all in this together. We live in the same national borders but we’re not fellow citizens.
West of the Rockies
Not USMC, but semper fi.
I had a catastrophic eye injury at age four that required multiple surgeries (mid 1960″s medical standards) and wore a patch until 6th grade. The kindergarten told my parents I was “retarded” and needed special education. They fought that battle for me. The solution was Catholic school (not fabulous).
Had my heart broken a few times. Went through divorce and far worse had to give up seeing my amazing kid every day when they were in junior high and being bullied for being lesbian. I ended up on the receiving end of a BPD rebound relationship. Suffered a TBI from a high speed freeway collision with a drunk driver in an F150. PTSD and a stressful lawsuit (i won) followed. Lost both parents 48 hours apart. Was homeless for 6 weeks.
Then I met a wonderful woman and got married. Things got so much better.
Been through a lot just like every one of you.
John is right. The day may come when we break all bonds of fellowship, blah-blah.
Bur I is not this day.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@mvr: Sorry, I wasn’t intending to make things worse, and I’ve got to apologize for that. I was hoping to emphasize the fact that the Nazis were ultimately defeated. (And there’s also the example of capture from within, the Greek colonels’ coup of 1967. They were gone within seven years, too.)
No doubt, we’ve got some ugly, hard years ahead of us. And there’s no guarantee that America will make it out of the darkness. But it was also supposed to be hopeless in Greece … until it wasn’t.
I’m just saying that this war isn’t over. And that we can still win this war, based on the fact that wars like we’re facing have been won.
We just need to figure out how. And hold on to a little hope along the way, that it’s been done before, so it can be done.
Bupalos
heed this post y’all. It will make things better.
Everyone should have the bravery and self knowledge of Cole here. Let’s understand and admit that we’re afraid. We have reason to be. I’m not even sure some of the cold comfort here (I’m a white male, so I’ll be fine) is as solid as we’re used to thinking.
mvr
I hung out at Dem party headquarters in Omaha and drove a couple of people to vote. The second ride was an older African American woman in frail health and using a wheelchair, accompanied by her sister who was helping her get there. It was a long ride from the nursing home to her home precinct. She did in fact help win that blue dot for Harris, but it would have been better yet for that to have helped win the country.
Joy in FL
I haven’t read all the comments yet. But I just want to make a post.
I am in a state of disbelief and fear. I am afraid for myself in this red state. I am afraid for anyone who doesn’t or won’t fit in. There’s more, but I’ll leave it unexpressed.
I don’t have people to talk to in regular life, so I’m posting here.
If I can help, I want to help. Like many of us, I avoid asking for help, but I’m taking it by making this post where I say how I feel at this time.
I am afraid for myself and horrified about the future.
John, you probably won’t see this. I want to thank you for your unambiguous statement above and for this place.
MUL98
America is a child that absolutely must touch the stove in order to learn it’s hot. I don’t see that we have much choice but to let it at this point. Nothing seems to get through.
She ran a near perfect campaign, and his was a shit show. This isn’t about the Democratic party/messaging. A majority of the American people want what he’s selling, and we are all about to get a huge helping.
I feel like protecting the people I love the best I can is all that’s left.
mvr
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Oh, I got your point and don’t disagree with it at all. I’m glad you made it.
Really no need to apologize.
jackmac
I woke up this morning with a feeling of dread over what’s to come. Then I walked downstairs and my dog, Bailey, greeted me by excitedly shaking his butt (he’s an Aussie with no tail) and rolled over for a belly rub.
I obliged, scratched his ears and called him a good boy. He was happy and I also started to feel a little better, reminded of the most important things like family, friends and even fur buddies.
kindness
Yup. Thank you John.
bluefoot
Thanks, John. I am trying to keep the terror at bay. For myself, for my loved ones, for the country, for people younger than I, for the future.
I know I have a target on my back, and I have loved ones even more of a target, like my nibling who is a PoC like me and lives in a red area.
i need to find ways to fight and not despair.
Rachel Bakes
Thanks John.
Queer daughter (in college so we can’t hug her); special needs son, 54 yo friend who just came out to us as trans 3 days ago, pregnant cousin, husband working for a former president’s foundation and likely to be targeted, 12 year old niece being raised by a Trumper, elderly mother and in-laws, gay nephew and his partner in CO. So many worries on top of the general despair of having to deal with All Of It again. Safe in CT but damn, why do they hate so much?!
CliosFanBoy
It may feel safe here in deepest blue northern Virginia, but when they start gutting the federal workforce this area will be HURTING. And you know it’s the federal workers who are not white, straight males that will get hit first. POC, GLBLT+, etc. are first on the list.
Chat Noir
Thank you for that, John. I feel the same way you do.
rodwell
@mvr:
I did that for the local Democratic organization when I lived in NH. I always found it a rewarding experience helping someone to vote that did not have or could not drive a car to the polls. This was before mail in voting was as prevalent as it is today. Working the polls, the workers in my district process 450 voters out of 1100 registered. The proudest one was a young woman who registration was messed up. She only votes in Presidential years (it is a long story why there was an issue). However, after me being on the phone with the county for fifteen minutes. The registration issue was resolved and she cast her ballot. She was very upset when she feared she could vote, but she was happy she got to vote.
zhena gogolia
@Just Some Fuckhead: This is the only thought left in my head. No fighting, no resistance, just what you said.
suzanne
I am shrinking my circle of influence and protection to my family and friends only “Friends” includes this cohort. No more political donations for a while. We need our resources to protect our families and one another.
Redshift
Preach, John! And thanks. I am pretty much avoiding dealing with anyone today, because if I have to listen to people who have Opinions, I may say something I’ll regret.
Like you, I am relatively safe, but I have so many people in my life who aren’t, and I’m sick about it.
seefleur
Delurking to say that without this place, I’d be a basket case. In spite of living in a relatively “safe” state, I work with law enforcement and the amount of support for authoritarian behavior and mindset is rampant. (I had to take today off – I know my limits of being able to maintain a civil tone when dealing with certain types.)
As an Asian, naturalized citizen (why yes, I DO have my papers to prove it) who is a Mom to 4 bi-racial adult kids, and mother-in-law of my oldest daughter’s lovely also bi-racial wife, the world sure feels a lot less safe than it did two days ago. I’m so tired of having to go through figuring out how to keep fighting the assholes – they seem to be growing in numbers, like a mold. Once it takes hold, it’s hard to completely remove it. If anyone has ideas on substantive things that can be done to stop the decay of America, I’m still up for working/fighting to accomplish that. I’m about to retire. While that will put me on a fixed income, it will free up time – and maybe that will be of more use in this situation?
Balloon Juice and Jeff Tiedrich are the only reading that I’ve felt that I could check in on today – haven’t even looked at The Guardian or Charlie Pierce. And absolutely NO msm, TV or written.
Bless all of the jackals – good people are getting harder and harder to find. And thanks Mr. Cole for being the mensch that you are and providing a safe space.
mvr
@rodwell: That’s a good thing to have done. I suppose we can hang onto that even when it doesn’t change the outcome.
No One of Consequence
I am not going to play nice.
I appreciate the BlogFather’s intent and declaration here, and I will abide by it.
But this country is going to become meaner. Much meaner. Mathematically meaner.
Stand anywhere with people around, look to your left, look to your right. Odds are, one of those two people is a Trump supporter, or can’t be bothered to be informed about the vote they cast, or couldn’t be bothered to lever their ass off the couch to vote, or is a committed racist/misogynist, or is a chaos-worshipper, or is an Oompa-Loompa fancier, or just flat-out loves them some evil if they can get it.
Odds MAY be: both of those two.
You’ve heard it said: ‘Trump gives people permission to be their worst selves.’
Well, enough of our fellow citizens said: ‘Fuck yeah!’, and ‘Fuck you!’ without finishing the logic, without finishing the math. What we will ALL get with this equation is: ‘Fuck America.’
This fucking country. Goddamn United States.
Goddamn.
-NOoC
La Nonna
Just gutted about these results, terrified almost touches how I feel. As a child of concentration camp survivors, and wondering if my grandparents missed the GET OUT signal through bad luck or belief in their fellow man … now feeling that my children and grandchildren are at higher risk than we ever imagined. Thank you again jackals for this caring community.
ronno2018
great post and message! i think we will feel better and stronger as the days go by and ready to fight back
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: you son of a bitch
rodwell
@mvr: Thanks, we got to hang onto every bit of kindness and goodness we can find. We cannot become a*sholes like they are.
Wapiti
Thanks for the guidance, Blogfather. Haven’t ready through the other comments, so I guess I’ll start that.
Not happy, but I need to put on my oxygen mask before helping others.
Kosh III
Fuck decorum.
I won’t and don’t criticize the D’s, they did a good job overall.
In Tn it remains solidly theocratic/fascist. The Felon carried 92 of 95 counties. Only Memphis and Nashville and one other suburban county voted for Harris. I am certain that since the Regressive party kept an absolute majority of the Legislature that more retaliation will happen. At least the tiny of number of Ds did not shrink.
Marshafuckingmarsha easily won sadly as did every other Regressive running.
I purged my FB friends list of as many as I was certain, leaving a friend one Kurdish friend as they will probably need support. They aren’t citizens yet and now may never be.
I wanted to call my vile R Congresscritter and say something…..but it may get me on another shit list for retaliation.
We fear that our marriage will be nullified and we will suffer losses in Medicare and Social Security.
Fuck them ALL with a rusty anchor.
Whereaway
I am devastated and scared. We seem to be a nation that does not place any value on those things that matter to me; Compassion, social justice, equal opportunity, recognizing everyone as a person. I’m an old white man with very little debt, decent social security, and some small savings. I will have better odds as an individual of surviving than many. But there are people I love who will not be able to ‘pass’.
I’m also a massive introvert, and that’s not helpful. I will try and participate in this community more (I’ve been reading John for 22 years).
And is there the opportunity for this community to network more and support each other more. I think the need is there for all of us.
Norm
Been lurking here for several years but have never saw fit to post until today. It was John’s most excellent words that compelled me to step out of the shadows and offer up a heartfelt ‘Huzzah!’
I have no brilliant insights into why Harris lost. Even if I did, I’m not sure if I could articulate them absent any rancor or churlishness. My emotions are just too fucking raw right now, as are everyone else’s here. This is not a good time for pedantry.
I wish I had some clarity as to the best way for us to move forward. I’m sure that in the days and weeks ahead, brighter minds than my own will come up with some effective strategies to counter a federal government that’s soon to be in the hands of a shower of sadistic scumbags. Probably the best we can do at this moment, collectively, is to lean into the one power that we have and they do not: Kindness. That is the foundation of our strength and will help us navigate the difficult times ahead.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: Don’t try to sweet talk me. I’m hurtin right now.
LAC
@schrodingers_cat: I value your opinion and thank you for saying out loud what we feel at times on this blog. I am just glad that John Cole put this post up. The pain of this failure by voters is visceral, and having some of the self appointed gate keepers here punching down is like a punch on a bruise.
I am trying to function today and it ain’t working as well. But as Pac sang “Keep Ya Head Up” if you know, you know…
RaflW
@Sister Golden Bear: Yes. I don’t think the danger is as immediate for L, G and B folks on the rainbow, but it could get grim pretty fast.
I know my partner and I have a lot of cishet friends who love us and who want good things for us, but authoritarian regimes have ways of enforcing compliance that I think this country’s citizens are not well prepared for (getting up to speed on resisting compliance is something the BJ community might undertake, y’know?).
We’re not leaving now, but we’ll try our damndest to try not to stay if we’re lurching towards detentions and disappearances (I’ve been to Buenos Aires. I’ve walked the sidewalks and seen the small memorials to the disappeared. A country can loose its fucking mind with shocking speed).
In the meantime, I’ll be working on how to help fund travel & safety for trans+ communities.
I’m still gutted and in shock. Even as what’s going on is more akin to “being revealed” than “damn, what changed so fast.” Hurt people hurt people. I think that’s the lesson from this election. And I will do what I can to reduce the hurt going forward, on the most vulnerable.
Chet Murthy
I’m closing all my news tabs, and while I might be reading/commenting here, I kinda doubt it. There’s nothing left to say, nothing left to discuss. I know that emigration is an off-limits topic here, so there’s nothing more for me to either offer or take away from this place.
We all did what we could, when the time was needful, and we shouldn’t feel regrets about it. America is just a much worse place than we’d hoped, is all.
Time to become a refugee.
schrodingers_cat
@Chet Murthy: Do you have your OCI card?
Piety, keep me strong
Earth will persevere, Someday we will just be an interesting inclusion in a sedimentary rock.
Be well, try not to cause any additional pain.
Gregory
Thank you, John. Well said.
Tim C.
@rodwell: So say we all.
Chris Johnson
@Chet Murthy: Heh, fuck that. I’m an old, but I can outlast THIS nonsense.
The rebuild’s gonna need some strong backs and people who know and understand things. It’s just on a way way way larger scale than it might have been.
All the shit’s gonna go sideways WAY before 2028.
Anyway
I wish posters that constantly threaten to leave or quit posting would just do it already. The passive-aggressive threats are so annoying. YMMV.
me
@Chris Johnson:
It went sideways in 2020 yet it all got memory holed/blamed on Biden. It feels very hopeless that we make no progress because everything is one step forward two steps back.
VeniceRiley
A certain Jackal who wishes us all a good morning every day is missing. Someone who knows her deets please check in on her.
Please! Take heed. Protect our fam and friends.
Thanks Cole. It’s not your fault you couldn’t defeat reconstruction, your former party, and your whole gender and ethnicity with your awesome top 10K blog. It’s been a refuge for us future refugees
wmd
Right on.
We’ve got a couple of months to figure out how to be effective Schlindlers. But right now we need to care for each other and recharge.
Steppin Out
Thank’s John. Long time lurker and I couldn’t agree more with the sentiments. Post-mortems are a good idea, but a circular firing squad just leaves casualties and not much else. With all of the suck I have to deal with, it’s nice not to see infighting among allies.
Captain C
@FDRLincoln:
Amen
Central Planning
I feel like I should go take a gun safety/training class so I know how to properly shoot/clean/maintain pistols/rifles/shotguns, and I hate myself for feeling that way.
However, it’s better to know that before you need it :(
p.a.
@VeniceRiley: So many posts up, I was about to say I’ve seen her comment today, but maybe it was in yesterday’s posts.
The Thin Black Duke
@Anyway: More to the point, some of us can’t leave. Everytime I see someone talking about leaving, it feels like the lucky survivors in the lifeboats waving goodbye to the people trapped on the Titanic.
MisterForkbeard
@Captain C: Yep. Entirely on board with this approach.
Mcat
@Rose Judson: Exactly. Well said. Thanks.
Bupalos
This is unequivocally true, but one mistake we tend to make here is to over characterize what that is- he’s selling a nebulous and personally-interpretable image of going back to an imaginary past. We make a mistake when we concretize that to our own negative vision of the past (say slavery, or women not being able to vote, or gays getting murdered) and insist that is specifically what appeals. In doing so we make cartoons of our opponents and are left unable and unwilling to try and influence them.
Increasing numbers of people of an increasingly diverse background are attracted to the “flee to the past” imagery he conjures from them. This is because an increasing number of people fear the future, in diverse ways.
pajaro
John,
Thank you for the post. I don’t post here that often, but I want to commend the rest of you. This place was almost entirely constructive over the last few months, and the fundraising was commendable.
It’s way too early for me to attempt to explain why all of this happened or know how bad the fallout is going to be. We do have some time before they return to power to think those things through, and act on some of them if we need to.
Elizabelle
@Raoul Paste:
Red America Goddam.
Hugs to jackals and our fellow Harris Walz supporters. Be kind to yourselves. You did all that you could.
Bupalos
@The Thin Black Duke: Don’t worry, they can’t really leave. I mean, they can’t actually outrun the thing, most are just taking their strength and turning it into weakness. “I’ll become an immigrant/refugee” is one hell of a plan for the world we’re moving towards.
p.a.
Fred Clark is on it. Worth reading the whole thing.
patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2024/11/06/if-destruction-be-our-lot/
Msb
@Bupalos: thank you.
Chet Murthy
@schrodingers_cat: I do not, but I plan to apply for one. The problem is that India is far more of a foreign country to me that Europe. At least I speak French (and could do so fluently in a month). But yeah, I’ll be applying for one.
Bupalos
@Elizabelle: Well, be gentler with them too. They weren’t specifically rejecting decency for degeneracy. Most were probably saying that having a morally decent or degenerate leader doesn’t actually affect them. Not like the price of eggs.
I mean, it’s stupid and fairly amoral. But you can rest easy that as long as the price of eggs is the same under Hitler or Lincoln, they’ll probably prefer Lincoln.
CarolM
I’m just de-lurking to say how grateful I am to John, the front-pagers, and this whole community.
zhena gogolia
@VeniceRiley: If you mean rikyrah, she was here earlier.
different-church-lady
@Bupalos:
You’re sure about that, are you.
zhena gogolia
@The Thin Black Duke: Right.
sixthdoctor
@Central Planning: Since I take krav maga and a lot of it is weapon defenses, I did the same (an intro and safety course at a range) and I would recommend it. If nothing else it demystifies firearms and makes them a little less of this huge bogeyman in my head. I would never own a gun and really don’t have interest in gun culture at all, but knowing the basics, unfortunately, doesn’t hurt.
Msb
Thank you, John. Amen.
This community has been as oasis of sanity and (in general) kindness for me – a life-giving necessity. Thanks to all.
wjca
For many, possibly even most, of them, what he’s selling isn’t hate so much as a reality TV show that they can watch from their comfortable couch. If they tire of it, they can just turn off the TV and it’s gone. I expect they will be as horrified as we already are when the reality hits them, as it will.
BellaPea
I went to bed at midnight, and things were looking bad. Woke up to the NYT text saying he had won. I am in a state of disbelief, anger, and have been in tears all morning. I would never in a million years have believed that such a terrible man would win the popular vote; that Repubs would take the Senate; and that we have four years of hell to face. I’ve heard from a good friend, whose husband is Jewish, and my therapist (now a friend) who is also Jewish; they are in despair. We’re all grieving. I’m grateful to this community (although no one seems to respond to me much any more…oh well) and hope we can lean on each other to get through this nightmare.
OId Man Shadow
@wjca: Both sides were perfectly clear about who they were and what they stood for, and a majority of voters told us to take our empathy, decency, compassion, equal rights, and freedom and go fuck ourselves.
Quinerly
Trump beat Harris in Dearborn (large Arab population) with the help of Jill Stein at 18%
freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/06/trump-wins-dearborn-and-makes-gains-in-hamtramck/…
Archon
@Belafon:
I work with alot of latinos. None of them think Trump is going to do what he says regarding deportation. One said to me, “He couldn’t even build a wall, how is he gonna deport everyone”.
I think this is much bigger than Democratic Party messaging but I do wonder if more energy needed to be spent explaining how and why Trumps first term will be vastly different than his 2nd.
Bupalos
@different-church-lady: we’ll I did say “probably.”
I stick to my guns here, even as my guts spill out on the floor. People are people. This is happening globally. It’s because we’re entering a socially destabilized age where climate change, technological disruption, and spiraling inequality are interacting with all the old problems we never sufficiently addressed.
we had an absolutely unprecedented period of stability and prosperity for half a century… and just learned to have no urgency about preparing for the future.
BethanyAnne
I really, really thought she had this. I keep trying to say something more in this comment, but that’s all I’ve got. I thought we’d pull this out. Fuck.
Kent
Waking up this morning to the realization that here in Washington I live in one of the only two states in the country that didn’t shift towards Trump in a measurable way in this election. Utah is the only other one. That is shocking to me.
At least here in the WA 3rd, Marie Glusenkamp Perez seems to be winning. She is up about 4 points or 11,800 votes with about 56% of the vote counted so far. We are all mail-in so it takes time.
Down in OR in the OR-5th it looks like the Democrat Janelle Bynum is leading by about 3 points with about 70% of the vote counted so that could be a blue flip.
Anyone have any sense about how possible it is for the Dems to still take the House? I can’t stomach trying to sort that out on the NYT web site at the moment. But that would be huge to put the brakes on a Trump agenda.
jonas
Hugs to everyone here. We’re going to need each other now more than ever. Kudos to JC for making this space/community what it is and keeping it safe. Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy came to mind this morning as I brewed some coffee and absorbed the news. There has to be a place where truth and reality matter and that’s here. Because, and it may not seem like it now, those things will ultimately prevail. I don’t know at what cost right now. But they will.
The Truffle
You are a good man, Mr. Cole. I’m glad I found your blog years ago.
OId Man Shadow
@Quinerly: Okay. I hope they enjoy what they voted for.
Especially when they find themselves stateless once again stuck permanently in a camp because there is no Gaza to go home to, just an Israel that has annexed it and doesn’t want them, and an America that has voted to expel them for being the “wrong” color and religion.
the pollyanna from hell
I walk towards trouble, not away. That’s why I’m in GA instead of CO. Some of us have a chance at a personal revolution that can help change the facts on the ground. No blame to any who lack the power or freedom at the moment. But mobilization may not look like an ordinary life any more.
Alice
@Archon: “I work with alot of latinos. None of them think Trump is going to do what he says regarding deportation. One said to me, “He couldn’t even build a wall, how is he gonna deport everyone”.
Part of me really wants them to find out. I’m trying to fight that part, and eventually I will win. But not today.
jonas
And the worst part is, in supposedly free Western societies, large blocks of citizens simply refuse to admit any of these problems exist. They live and vote on the basis of magical thinking and blinkered ignorance (as well as a whole panoply of bigotries).
different-church-lady
I keep trying to game out in my head what could have been done differently that would have changed the result, and I keep coming up empty.
dc
@Archon:
@Archon:
So why did they vote for him. Yay for incompetence? Or, Yay for hate (homophobia, transphobia, racism), pulling up the ladder behind you, and misogyny?
Bill Arnold
@p.a.:
Thanks for linking that, and thanks to Fred Clark for writing it.
OId Man Shadow
@dc: “Women belong in the kitchen, the price of eggs are high, and I don’t want men going into women’s bathrooms!”
Kent
My wife is Hispanic and runs a Hispanic health clinic. I’m a HS science teacher and about 50% of my students Hispanic.
I think the proper way to understand this election is to view Latinos as the new “white working class” of America. Most are not particularly motived by immigration as a political issue and, in fact, see Trump’s proposed crackdowns as helping them by cutting the labor supply and making their labor in more demand. For the most part they have never gotten shit from the government and don’t expect much either.
White liberals have an insane tendency to see Hispanics a monolithic. They are no more monolithic than White people are. Your typical Hispanic small business owner in Texas of Mexican roots has no more in common with a Venezuelan or Guatemalan asylum seeker than a liberal White person in suburban CT has with rural White rednecks in West Virginia or evangelical Southern Baptists in Alabama.
ArchTeryx
@Alice: The leopard face-eating queue is to the left, gents. Let them find out for themselves. Not your job to educate them.
CaseyL
I avoided all news yesterday, and all blogs, including this one. I knew things weren’t going well when went to bed about midnight (and didn’t fall asleep until about 3:00 AM). I still haven’t watched the news, but the silence on the train, at the Medical Center, and everywhere I’ve gone told me all I needed to know.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I’m going to withdraw from politics completely, or from the online world completely.
John’s feelings sum up mine as well. We, and the Democratic Party, and the activists, and the volunteers, and everyone who worked on this campaign did everything we possibly could.
It wasn’t enough because too many USians just plain want fascism, and that is all there is to it.
me
@Archon: He may not succeed be he will try and a lot of people will get hurt in the process. Not that he really gives a fuck, he’ll just let Miller do it. After all, there’s golf to be played.
Bupalos
@Archon: To be honest I think they’re right. I think Trump is going to do a lot more lasting damage here in round 2, but we’ve made the mistake of pretending he’s ideological. He isn’t. He’ll do some spectacular stunts in the immigration space, but I very much doubt anything that requires effort and only do what is necessary for branding. The real erosion is going to happen largely out of sight and out of mind at a pace that doesn’t interfere with his power and image.
mvr
I keep coming back to the fact that 72 million people did this opposed by 67 million people in a nation of 346 million citizens. And that the D turnout was pretty depressed from last time, though Trump seems to have lost a few voters as well.
So a good part of what happened is that some folks did not care enough to try stop this or were perhaps pissedly not trying to stop it. Some probably just felt impotent.
I don’t know exactly what this means . . .
laura
@wjca: I expect they will be as horrified as we already are when the reality hits them, as it will.
I expect that they will be polishing their rage boners and will only be satisfied with more cruelty and the lust for even more ratcheting the gears that grind down on the ‘not thems.’
Lily
Been trying to find words adequate to thank everyone here for what was done together these months—still lacking words, except powerful. Transforming the blog into a friendly machine. Big thanks to WG for directing me toward impressive orgs whose work I’m grateful to even know about, and intend to stick with. (From 2022 too.) Every election I’ve learned a lot here, from mmix too. Haven’t slept at all yet so these words seem weird.
Lobo
I am reminded of this quote, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves.” As a way of dealing with this in a dark manner, I am now referring to myself as a recovering American going through the 12 step process. First is the acceptance of who half Americans are. As one person stated,”Shattering the illusion that most people are inherently good has been the toughest.” Next steps to come later.
Thank you everyone. You are the bright bits of hope in the darkness.
Quinerly
@MUL98: I’ll take it a step further….a majority of this country thinks it’s acceptable to smear shit on the Capitol walls, store classified documents in a bathroom at a resort, call women bitches, low IQ, stupid. A majority of the country thinks it’s acceptable to mock the disabled and talk about grabbing women by the pus*y. A majority of the country ignored what nat security folks have said about his fascist tendencies. A majority of the country think it was OK for a fellow supporter to beat Paul Pelosi almost to death. And, a majority of this country like the idea of a convicted felon running the country.
zhena gogolia
@BellaPea: I’ll respond to you! We’re all in a lot of pain right now.
Peke Daddy
Too many people chose not to vote for Harris to live to fight another day. Don’t understand that.
ArchTeryx
I gave my pillar of hope speech to my Flock (found family), many of which are LBGTQ+. I will be doing what I can to protect them, though geographic scattering makes that much more difficult. But I refused to give in and just pour out doom and gloom to my family. They needed someone willing to show strength and courage, so that is what they got.
I’ll crumble to bits quietly in places like this, where nobody knows about me, nor cares. I do not expect to survive the next four years. But they don’t need to know that, and I will save as many as I can before I go.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: Me too. Warnock said it best, “We know who Donald Trump is. The question is, who are we?” Now we know.
ArchTeryx
@Quinerly: The real problem is, I think a majority of the country’s voters do not care. They see the price of stuff they buy every day going up, get told the economy sucks day in and day out, and between the “throw the bums out” mentality and their own personal bigotries, they voted to throw the bums out.
And here we are.
Anyway
@Quinerly:
Fuck Hamas. Fuck Bibi. And the perennial FTFNYT
Princess
Thanks, John. I’m avoiding the comments but just popped in here to say that, and that I appreciate this community.
Kosh III
@wjca:I expect they will be as horrified as we already are when the reality hits them, as it will.
Yeah, well fuck them and the horse they rode in on. May they be high on the hit list.
Quinerly
@ArchTeryx: totally agree. This election was a lot about the price of a bag fast food being $13 instead of $9.
Joy in FL
I’m here to post something obvious:
After 2020, the people who voted for T did not go away. They held their beliefs and did not give up.
In 2024, the people who voted for Kamala will not go away. We will hold our beliefs and we will not give up, although how we “don’t give up” will surely vary.
In an email earlier today, Amanda Litman (Run For Something) said they are working on candidates for 2025. I’m holding every bit of encouragement that helps me, and that helped a bit.
I appreciate everyone who is being strong today and everyone who is sharing their pain, and everyone who is alternating between those poles.
Posting about my horror at the election results and what is likely to come — I appreciate being able to do that here. I never want to add to anyone else’s pain or fear (etc.), but today on Balloon Juice, I think it is the place to share those things.
mvr
@ArchTeryx: US voting age population is 262 million, give or take. To underline your point. Your point also extends to Trump voters who thought there self interest was served and just didn’t care about the consequences for others.
Geminid
My contribution to post-loss decorum is to revise my opinion of Rachel Vindman.
That pushy Podcaster pissed me off a year ago, when she dissed Delegate Joshua Cole. Cole had questioned the ties Vindman’s brother-in-law, Eugene Vindman, had to the Virginia 7th CD after the Vindman and his allies staged their “shock and awe” campaign launch. This district resident wanted to tell Rachel Vindman and her buddies Adam Schiff and Rick Wilson to “Get of my lawn!”
But if Joshua Cole could get over it– at least I think he did– so can I. And Eugene Vindman turned out to be a good candidate and not just some entitled, nationally-networked big shot. So now that Eugene Vindman is my new Congressman, I’m calling his acerbic sister-in-law, “Good Ol’ Rachel.”
A Librarian
Thank you, John, for saying all this.
I’m still processing. So many people in all of our lives — including some of us who comment and post — are at such risk now, and the shock of it is still a lot to handle.
I keep flipping theough Snyder’s On Tyranny while at work, and I think that it may become an important book for the coming . . . years? Era? It’s hard to say at this point. But one of the key points is this: human connection is invaluable. I’ve been thinking about that with all the messages sent to loved ones across the country, and how vital that love for others will be in living through whatever comes next.
I am also amazed that my students here in NYC are responding so differently to this than the ones I had back in 2016. Back then, there were so many tears and fears about deportation and worse, but now? Only a handful even seem to want to talk about the election at all, and most are just going about their day. I forget where, but someone online posited why: the kids back then grew up knowing President Obama. The kids now . . . Trump is their normal, whether as President or as the leader of the GOP. And I don’t know how to process that, especially when constantly checking texts throughout the day to see how someone else close to me — immigrant, black, brown, LGBTQ, Jewish — is terrified.
Sorry for the rambling, but it’s a lot for a lurker to handle on their own, so again: thank you, John, for making this space possible.
Bupalos
@mvr: It’s an election about the intolerably high price of eggs at a time when the price of eggs isn’t very high. Of course turnout is low. But what, you expect people in 2024 to just close their eyes to 2022 egg prices?
sorry, I’m getting a little punchy. Couldn’t sleep.
Kosh III
@OId Man Shadow:
There are very few Palestinians in Dearborn, most are Iraqi.
different-church-lady
@Joy in FL:
I’m not going away, but I do want to know where the fuck some other people were yesterday.
xephyr
Thanks John. Much appreciated. As much as it sucks (not looking forward to seeing the full extent) I plan on keeping my shit together. The elections of 2000 and 2016 left me physically ill and depressed, I refuse to let that happen this time, both for my health, and because I don’t want to give the more vile elements any satisfaction. Is it a vain hope to wonder if a few Republicans of conscience will join with Democrats in the House and Senate to block the most radical attempts to subvert our democracy and visit misery on innocents? I guess we’ll find out. In the meantime, I’ll vent as necessary and do whatever I need to do to preserve my sanity so I won’t be useless to the people in my life who I care about.
dww44
@Just Some Fuckhead: The scuttlebut here in my community ahead of yesterday while we were canvassing is that the GOP plan all along was/is for Trump to die in office or be 25th’d out and for Vance to take over and execute Project 2025
FDRLincoln
Well I’m doing the bare minimum at work today.
I’m having trouble coming to grips with the country CHOOSING fascism. You could write off 2016 as an
electoral college fluke. But yesterday was no fluke. The majority WANTS this.
How do we cope with that psychologically? How do we avoid becoming one of the “good Germans” who didn’t necessarily vote for Hitler but went along with things until it was too late?
i have a therapy appointment tomorrow.
Do we protest in the streets in January and wait for Trump to send the Army to gun us down, like
he wanted to before? There won’t be any General Milley’s to stop him this time.
Quinerly
Bibi on the election “Trump Win History’s Greatest Comeback.”
Dearborn are you listening?
Quinerly
@dww44: oh….there will be a Pres Vance. The stars have aligned.
xephyr
@Quinerly: Dearborn… no kidding.
Elizabelle
@BellaPea: Hugs, BellaPea.
I think I am still in the shock stage. Take care of ourselves; look for the helpers.
Funny, but I think this might motivate me to get my house really clean and squared away. Just use energy on that for now, and be ready for whatever comes.
About to unsubscribe from a boatload of publications. Just do not care to marinate in whatever follows.
Books and friends and connections in real life for me.
RaflW
Rebecca Solnit (via Anand Giridharadas) is providing some balm. Read the whole thing over at his place if it’s of interest.
“The Wobblies used to say don’t mourn, organize, but you can do both at once, and you don’t have to organize right away in this moment of furious mourning. You can be heartbroken or furious or both at once; you can scream in your car or on a cliff; you can also get up tomorrow and water the flowerpots and call someone who’s upset and check your equipment for going onward.”
jonas
@ArchTeryx: Pretty much. At some point we stopped being a nation of serious people. “Not giving a shit about anything” became an acceptable pose in civic life and the only thing that matters is what gas costs. For far too long people have been able to coast along on their ignorance, unaware that it was the rule of law and liberal constitutional order defended by others that provided them the privilege of not having to care about history, civics, or economics.
Well, by the time the Finding Out stage is over for most of these folks, the question is will there be a way to fix it again?
Bupalos
@Elizabelle: I think this is super healthy.
RaflW
@FDRLincoln: I’ll be interested in what the seasoned thinkers on authoritarianism say, but my gut says don’t protest right away at the inaugural time.
Wait for some of his sh*t to start happening. Use protest then to start seeding the idea in (fucking) swing voters minds that it’s what he & Republicans are doing that is causing the harms they see.
Protest when they announce ’emergency’ cuts to Social Security. Protest when tariffs bite and prices surge. Protest when a forest fire rages and Trump won’t send resources to a ‘blue’ fire.
Just raging at the handover will re-enforce that the left are pissy complainers (I say what with all the love I can. I’ve been a pissy complainer!)
zhena gogolia
Did anyone watch any remarks Harris made? I haven’t had the heart.
RaflW
@Joy in FL: Thank you.
The Truffle
@Geminid: I love the Vindmans.
BeautifulPlumage
@Just Some Fuckhead: , @dexwood: Should we start the “which lasts longer: head of lettuce or trump? countdown? He has not looked well.
Westyny
Thinking of you all today, and grateful for this place. I’m class and faculty meetings all day at the state university where I teach (and am retiring from), so I won’t be commenting much further today. But I’m sending love and care.
NutmegAgain
Thank you for this. I’m an aging (aged? like cheese, or wine…) white straight woman. And I’m here to be the best ally and supportive person I can to folks who will likely be at the top of the list for whatever comes. Here’s a helpful hint, that is working for me today. I’m listening to classical music radio, and they have a sub-channel for early music. channel here. It helps for me to turn off as much chatter as I can right now.
VeniceRiley
@Elizabelle: going to library books is wise. Cancel cable. Cancel subscriptions. Teach them what cancel culture really means.
ECONOMIC TEACHING IS ALL THEY WILL EVER UNDERSTAND
NaijaGal
This was my greatest fear. Now that it has come to pass, I feel numb. I am grateful for this community as we try to make our way forward.
Quinerly
MI just called for Trump.
sxjames
Just adding my voice to those thanking John (and the commenters) for building this community.
Don’t know what else to say. As a white cishet male in a blue city in a blue state I’m not in the direct line of fire, but I do fear (long term) for my youngest son and his non-binary partner. A society in which a majority of folks do not care to defend a pluralist, rule-of-law, functioning democracy is well….not a good place for them and their safety (nor their dreams).
Best we can do I guess is hold on fast to what is good, and each other.
Ohio Mom
@ArchTeryx: We know you, you’ve been here on and off for years. And in our anonymous nym ways, we care about you.
Thats not to say you can’t crumble here, we will help you pick up the pieces.
Franklin E
I’ve been lurking here for about 20 years, and today, this site is the only place on the internet that I want to visit. Thank you for creating this space, John.
TBone
@RaflW: thank you.
Ohio Mom
@A Librarian: Don’t apologize, that was interesting though alarming in ways. I hope your students aren’t going to grow up finding Trump-type politicians familiar and comfortable.
TBone
@RaflW:
That is the best gatdamned thing and Wins The Internet today 🏆
Trivia Man
Carry water
Chop wood
cmorenc
@Just Some Fuckhead:
The looming presence of JD Vance as VP has me conflicted about my answer to that question.
Ohio Mom
@dww44: I don’t think they have to wait for Trump to die or 25th Admendment him. They can go on their merry way implementing Project 25 while Trump golfs.
The analogy I’m thinking of is teenage house party while parents are out for the evening.
Heidi Mom
Thanks, John. My thoughts exactly (and my fears).
Trivia Man
@Elizabelle: and my CD, DVD Collection means no ads
Warren Senders
@wjca: I’ve been saying for years that our presidential elections are basically a giant national struggle to grab the remote control.
Far too many of us are just voting for whichever TV show we want to watch, policies be damned.
Joy in FL
@RaflW: Oh, thank you again for that. I had read the quote on another website I frequent, and also seeing it here is so refuge-like. Thank you (comment #199)
Mai Naem mobile
@Archon: they don’t care. I’ve lost count of the number of Hispanics who’ve told me they don’t care for TFG but that he’s good for business. Also, the cost of food and other daily needs was lower under TFG. You can’t bumper sticker a response to that. I am not trying to be negative but add on top that that english is not their first language so it’s even harder to message. A lot of them didn’t even attend school here so their understanding of American civics is negligible. Also all that makes them easier to manipulate. Finally, people are living their lives trying to get by. The vast majority of them are not political junkies or even interested in politics.
chrisanthemama
A hard rain’s gonna fall.
Villago Delenda Est
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
Czar Chasm
John, thank you for the words of encouragement and solidarity!
We had to explain to our little ones (9 and 5), this morning, the election results, to be kind to friends they see suffering today, and to stand up to anyone they see being bullied. This was the first year both were aware of the drama around a presidential election, so having them understand the potential ramifications of the election are part of the deal. I have friends & family who kept kids home from school today because their kids are pretty shook.
The post-mortems from this are gonna be very interesting. I’m waiting until the data is analyzed before saying anything.
Mai Naem mobile
@wjca: I give TFG nine months before the wheels start coming off. The subjects are going to get bigly upset. Then it’ll come down to whether Putin decides to have a meeting with him on some balcony that just happens to have a couple of weak columns that TFG just happens to lean against.
sab
My husband has had a best friend since they were both ten years old. He also rents from us. He is an apolitical Republican, so we have always made it a point to avoid politics with him. He called up this morning about scheduling some repair work at the rental and my husband just lit into him. Screamed at him that he was tired of dealing with Trumpies and fuck off and no more repairs and please don’t call back for at least a few months because we are done with tolerance. Then he (husband) hung up. I found him a couple of minutes later sobbing in the kitchen. “I just lost my best friend of 62 years!” Another old friend of the both of them called a few minutes later and they talked it through. A half hour later the original friend called back, also in tears, and explained ( I believe him) that he has never been a Trumper and that he remembers being just as scared as we were doing early Covid and that he is also terrified of Social Security and Medicare cuts. So the friendship is back on.
What a weird fucking morning this has been.
I have mixed race grandchildren, a trans niece who has fled her birth state, and immigrant in-laws with green cards. I am white but I grew up in the South when it was Jim Crow.
I am horrified but not completely shocked. I believed the Harris people when they said it would be close. My husband expected a landslide on our side.
ETA : Time to start plugging away yet again to try to get back what we have gradually lost since Reagan won in 1980. We are better off than we were in 1964. American politics has always been a swinging pendulum.
Villago Delenda Est
This is precisely what terrifies me. They have no problem with a fucking traitor being President. A criminal. A rapist. A racist. A con man. A pedophile.
No problems at all.
geg6
@p.a.:
Great piece.
p.a.
Everything sucks and it’s not your fault is always a potential winner electorally, especially when supposed good faith actors won’t point out “things don’t suck” and bad faith actors amplify the sucky mcsuckface stuff. In point of fact, (I forget who said this) for all intents and purposes, what is believed to be true is in effect true. (Until you get to the “Army Group Steiner” state of things.)
And pointing out “things may suck and it is your fault” is never a winner.
zhena gogolia
@sab: I’m so sorry for your husband. I’m numb, but I never really believed in the landslide.
But I did think we’d win the popular vote. That’s what really hurts the most.
A Librarian
@Ohio Mom:
My biggest fear is this: we have had young men in our school come out and loudly state how they don’t care if they or their families get deported — and some of them say that they should be — because Trump’s leadership is worth it.
Our student body is vastly first- and second-generation kids from Latin America, Bangladesh, and the Caribbean (and especially Guyana).
We’re all still trying to figure out what to even do with that, let alone the toxic masculinity that’s really taken root with our young men. (Andrew Tate is a favorite.)
This is in NYC, so make of that what you will…
zhena gogolia
@A Librarian: Ugh.
ArchTeryx
@jonas: There always is for the survivors. Take a look at how many died in WWII to stop fascism. Now take a look around you today. The question isn’t whether the Fourth Reich will collapse. The question is how many will they murder before it does.
FDRLincoln
@Villago Delenda Est:
Exactly. 2016 was a fluke due to the Electoral College.
This is no fluke.
The majority of Americans WANT this. They want the Constitution torched, they want a rapist traitor felon president.
This is WHAT THEY WANT.
Fuck them. Every Single Trump Voter deserves every bad thing that come down the pike from now on.
I don’t deserve it. None of the people here at Balloon Juice deserve it. My wife and child don’t deserve it. The many millions who voted for Harris don’t deserve it.
So we band together and try to help and protect each other during the dark times to come.
But America itself, the flawed-but-trying-to-improve country, that died last night.
The majority of white Americans and according to last night an increasing number of minority Americans want fascism. And they are going to get it, good and hard
I’m breaking contact with any Trumpy conservatives in my personal life, not that there are many left. At work I still have to deal with them, but it will be in the most coldly impersonal way possible. They’ve shown me what they are.
Trump ran as a fascist. Anyone who voted for him is a fascist.
p.a.
@A Librarian: This I find horrifying: if that human piece of garbage connects to a new generation as Reagan did.
Kent
I’m currently sitting in a HS science classroom here in Vancouver WA with a class composition that is about 50% Hispanic (mix of immigrant and native born) and a few other middle eastern and African immigrant kids.
Mostly it is just a normal day. Kids just want to be on their phones and such. Maybe the AP classes with smarter kids will have more with angst. I think Hispanics have been taught to have low expectations of government and so they don’t have much. I also think racism among Hispanics is hugely understated. Harris as a Black woman was starting with a huge handicap with Hispanic voters. Many of whom see themselves more as “white working class” than some sort of minority like Blacks.
FDRLincoln
You know what you call someone who votes for a fascist because the price of eggs was too high?
You call them a fascist.
Fair Economist
@A Librarian:
No wonder the birth rate is plummeting. Who wants to marry that?
Mai Naem mobile
@A Librarian: there are the same young men who will start crying like little girls when their mommies are deported. I am saying it snarkily but I’m serious. Things get real real quick when the parent actually gets deported. I know a few Dreamers who have parents who’ve been deported back to Mexico.
thruppence
I don’t know what to believe. I believe I’ll have another drink. I don’t believe it will help. I’ve been disappointed before. I’ve disappointed other people. This is a black hole of disappointment I didn’t think possible. Still, we must move forward.
geg6
@Villago Delenda Est:
Same. I have no faith left. None. Just terrified and angry and sad.
Betty Cracker
@sab: Whoa — that story about your husband and his friend! I’m glad it had a happy ending and that the friend turned out not to be a Trumpy shithead.
different-church-lady
Shit, I just cannot figure out how to get on with my life.
Archon
@ArchTeryx: My friend said we will be ok because, “history says fascism only lasts 10 years at most, people get tired of it”. I couldn’t help to respond, “when all your cities are in ashes it’s easy to disabuse yourself of the benefits of fascism”.
michaeljvwhite
Long time lurker, and I’m so glad this community exists. I’m going to make an effort to comment more. I wrote postcards for Sherrod Brown, and I’m not giving up yet. I lived through Bush, I lived through Trump I. Let’s try to make it 4 more years together.
different-church-lady
@Archon:
“Greetings from Dresen!“
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: We are doing a Zoom this evening at 8pm if you would like to join send me an email
I will send you link, also mention your BJ nym.
If anyone else wants to vent do the same. Thanks
suzanne
This exit poll data from NBC News is bonkers.
American Indians — while only 1% of the electorate — went 64/35 for Trump?! Even more of a split than white people?!
The older half of the Gen X cohort seems to have fucked us over. People age 50-64 were 27% of the electorate and they want for TFG 55/44. People age 65 and older were 28% of the electorate and they went for Harris 50/49.
Latino men were more for Trump than white women.
JiveTurkin
Rashida Tlaib’s calls to any Democrat should not be returned for a long fucking time. Maybe never. Let her caucus with the Republicans, she must not think there is any difference between the two parties regarding Muslims.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
Same. My former students are still messaging me. I wish I could say something comforting but I don’t have anything. And my brain is not working correctly for some reason, so I can’t even cough up some pablum for them.
WaterGirl
@Franklin E: Welcome!
Starfish
@ArchTeryx: Thank you for commenting. You are one of the commenters I was most concerned about. Thank you for holding your community together too.
Elizabelle
@VeniceRiley: Libraries rock! And now we know about ProQuest (database with some national newspapers/pubs that some libraries have). We have Kanopy via the Richmond Public Library. Going to explore it.
@Trivia Man: You both got it. Pull back from subscriptions; use what we have.
I recently bought some books by Irmgard Keun; young German woman novelist who (I am told) brilliantly described what she saw in waning days of Weimar Republic; coming of Nazi fascism. Its effects on young people and the culture. The Nazis confiscated and banned her books at the time, but they’re still in print.
WaterGirl
@MCat:
@just another boomer:
@spoot:
@elboku:
@Sun Girl on Skates:
Warm welcome to all of you!
WaterGirl
.
Juju
@Mai Naem mobile: Given his fear of stairs, I think he may have an unfortunate “accident “. Falling out of a window would be a bit too obvious.
WaterGirl
.
WaterGirl
.
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat: I appreciate the offer, but I am quite resolute about my online anonymity.
Please hang in there and resist lashing out for a bit. I don’t want to lose you around here.
WaterGirl
.
p.a.
@different-church-lady: When one has bills, one has incentive. Do what keeps a roof over your head(s) and food in the pantry. That’s the minimum. More will follow as the shock wears away.
Kosh III
@sab: A half hour later the original friend called back, also in tears, and explained ( I believe him) that he has never been a Trumper
Did he vote for Harris? Makes a difference.
different-church-lady
@p.a.: Oh so it is about economic anxiety! ;-p
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: What you see as lashing out is what I see as speaking my truth. Anyway I don’t want to hurt people so I should shut these tabs and do something else.
Ms. Deranged in AZ
@geg6:
@Villago Delenda Est:
Same here. What little faith I had is gone now. If they win the House, my fear level is going to skyrocket.
JiveTurkin
@A Librarian: We’re all still trying to figure out what to even do with that, let alone the toxic masculinity that’s really taken root with our young men. (Andrew Tate is a favorite.)
My wife was a teacher for thirty years, I showed her this and after she read Tate’s Wikipedia page, she was stunned. He might actually be a worse person than Trump. Do these young men know of Tate’s legal “issues”, especially the human trafficking allegations?
p.a.
@different-church-lady: 😂😂😂😂
Kosh III
@JiveTurkin: Do these young men know of Tate’s legal “issues”, especially the human trafficking allegations?
Some probably want to make a purchase.
tobie
@Elizabelle: Kanopy is great for foreign movies. Take advantage of your library’s subscription.
Elizabelle
This is not a problem with Kamala Harris.
This is a problem with the electorate, and with the MSM media environment which cannot report accurately on topics of importance. Look over there — egg prices!
And all the ugliness and ignorance of many in that electorate. They know stuff! How true is it, though?
Anyway. Fuck ’em. We have a soft warm day in central VA.
Elizabelle
@tobie: Absolutely. And hugs to you too.
satby first recommended Kanopy, and I have meant to start watching, for months.
Geo Wilcox
@rodwell: We were all told there was high voter turnout, we all saw it. If so then why are there 18 MILLION Less votes than in 2020?
Straythoughts
I’ve mainly been a lurker of the blog since Bush II. It was a great resource for letting me know that I wasn’t the only one upset by what was happening. Forward a couple of decades, and I still feel that way. Life isn’t fair and sometimes it absolutely sucks. Today is one of those days. I’m fearful, I’m mad, sad, and generally grieving over the loss and what might happen to the country and the people of the country. Eventually, each of us will eventually figure out what to do. Regardless of what people chose to do, lashing out at those who want the same as us, is counterproductive.
Do I think the Trump voters will ever regret their vote? Most of them won’t. They’ll complain about how things are, feign helplessness and claim it’s not their fault or Trump’s fault. They’ll rationalize. They’ll say it would have been worse under a Democrat. I don’t have the answer as to how to handle people like that. They’re like cockroaches: they’ve been around forever and will be among the last to die out.
I’ve discovered time and time again that people have short memories, but vivid imaginations of the way things used to be. When people around me have complained about how high prices are now, I always ask them what a gallon of milk cost four years ago, or how much hamburger was per pound a year ago, and they always stumble and mumble that it was less than it is today. Ever since people have been around, I think their natural tendency has been to think that life was always better “before.” This time, the people will probably be right. Things will have been better before Trump.
I don’t know what I’m going to do. Take it one step at a time. I’ve been politically active for over fifty years, and I don’t think that I can just step back, but maybe I need to. When looking at U.S. history, there have been multiple times when we’ve been closer to an oligarchy or a plutocracy than a democracy. While I don’t think we’ve been this close to fascism before, it’s not the first time democracy has been threatened. Each time the people have gradually wrested control back from the few. Each time it’s a step forward. So while I’m depressed today, I think that in the coming weeks and months, people will devise strategies to fight back and to keep their sanity. Sites like this, keep that spirit alive.
Now you see why I usually lurk instead of contributing. I just don’t know when to shut the fuck up.
CaseyL
@Archon:
Ahem. Fascism didn’t fall on its own in Germany: it took a global war to get rid of it, and this time the US is Germany.
Franco had to die first (36 years in power). Ditto Pinochet (17 years in power).
Trivia Man
@geg6:
Carry water
Chop wood
The Audacity of Krope
Time to donate my balls to a wizard and join his sex cult.
tobie
@Elizabelle: Hugs back to you. Spending some time outdoors today is probably the most sensible thing to do.
burritoboy
John shows us the diplomacy and class required. (Even if he is sometimes performatively unclassy at times when it doesn’t matter – largely to entertain us!) There is no one here who did anything unacceptably and majorly wrong in the campaign. If there are any severe recriminations to be made down the line, those should be handled at a different level and in a different way.
I’m ultimately a Jew from Eastern Europe – we’ve seen a lot of bad regimes come and a lot go. Most of them very loudly declared they were going to be around forever. The one in Poland just got booted recently. There’s still a massive number of bad regimes kicking around in the region. The leaders of these aren’t people who will last forever, though. That this is the US, one of the biggest regimes around, is problematic and people are naturally correctly worried…..but we’ve seen the backs of these people any number of cycles. (As others have pointed out, sometimes these regimes can only be removed through massive amounts of destruction – but they all always fall apart, and this one is no different.)
Tim C.
@Straythoughts: You are doing just fine.
p.a.
@Geo Wilcox: Last I saw tRump down 3M from 2020, Harris down 15M from Biden 2020. Since tRump went ^ among Biden voters, I assume (no evidence yet) his leakage was Never tRumpers sitting out. Hers, losses to tRump 🤢 and sitting out but sitting out why!? Russian internet influence?
$1B war chest, awesome (so we’ve been told) GOTV. Will this failure hurt donations next cycle? Especially among young, who generally have less $ to spare. “Not throwing my money away again…”
ArchTeryx
@Archon: It also lasted a whole lot longer in Spain, because it directly aligned with the Catholic Church there. The death toll in Spain wasn’t as eye-popping as Russia, Germany or Poland, but a lot of people died well before Generalissimo Francisco Franco did.
mapanghimagsik
@Archon:
So democrats have been fighting deportation left and right, are they sure, with as much power that they have, they *won’t*?
Linda Binda
@Mel: Thank you. I saw your post around 11 am EST. I didn’t sleep at all last night, and finally dozed off around 8, so I’m sorry that I missed it. Thank you very much for your encouragement and for your anecdote about sanctimonious people (is that a good word?). Thank you all for your kindness and patience with my ramblings. Too much elsewhere, I’d get “TL;DR” or “it’s not that deep..”, so thank you all for reading my posts.
I was wary of committing necromancy in the last thread, so thank you for remembering me. :)
wenchacha
@Nina: A better world is what I have always hoped for, too. This is not that, is it?
Ivan X
This echoes my own feelings. Thanks for saying it, John.
ArchTeryx
@WaterGirl: I know it’s hard to be the blog cheerleader at times like this, but don’t pie yourself.
Sister Golden Bear
@suzanne:
In mild defense of Gen X, the 50-64 segment actually includes five years of late Boomers. (Gen Xers are currently 40-59. So the surveys 50-64 cohorts also routinely cut off multiple years of the late Gen Xers, who get lumped in with the more liberal Millenials.)
Yeah, I suspect my Gen X peers did lean more conservative — and I hate them for it — but I’m not sure we’re as much of an outlier as we’ve been repeatedly (not by you) castigated for. Assuming we have elections in four years, we’ll get a more accurate read, when the survey cohorts actually line up with the Gen X demographics.
Dman
Damn Cole, I love the way you get your point across.
Bravo
On another note, this AM I deleted X and have vowed to stop the politics and try to keep my depression under control and my sanity intact.
This comes from a Canadian, I cannot fathom the fear, loathing and such from those actually in the middle of this horrible mess
dww44
@Elizabelle: I do think we have to figure out a way to build a powerful not for profit media outlet that can compete with Fox News and others. We lost in part because we don’t have parity in the media space.
Forget the broadcast and cable news outlets. On MSNBC just now Katy Tur and Andrea Mitchell were having a discussion with a smiling Republican lite reporter about which GOP’er was gonna be Senate Majority leader
dmckwski
Thank you, John, for that post. I woke this morning in a state of complete election outcome ignorance, having cut all information streams by late yesterday afternoon. Fixed a cup of coffee and opened up this blog and found out about the state of our nation. Perhaps a lot of us feel as if we have been living in a bubble for the past few months – a bubble of our “nauseous optimism” – but I hope we can all find the strength and resolve to continue with our struggle towards a better future. I so admire this entire community, and we will need our mutual support now more than ever. May peace be with all of you!
ArchTeryx
@Sister Golden Bear: I’m one of the GenX demographic that went hard for Trump and I was never on board with Reagan or his right wing project. Nor with Trump. Period. I have a target on my back too, and I’m not even Hispanic or LBGTQ+. That argument I had on BlueSky with a bunch of trans folks being convinced to stay home rather than vote for Harris turned out to be prophetic.
cmorenc
In Missouri, how can Trump and Hawley win the state by such huge margins, and yet pass a constitutional amendment (albeit by 51.7-48.3% margin) containing such straightforward evasion-resistant language protecting the rights to abortion and contraception:
burritoboy
“Fascism didn’t fall on its own in Germany: it took a global war to get rid of it, and this time the US is Germany.
Franco had to die first (36 years in power). Ditto Pinochet (17 years in power).”
And, yet, those regimes are gone. None of them exist, and they all ended in failure. Admittedly, one doesn’t want that failure to happen within one’s own borders and people are scared about that (understandably!) These are not things that last forever – even the most careful and best organized one (Spain) could not withstand the death of its major figure, something that real democracies and republics handle frequently. I think I can guarantee you this one does not have 36 or 17 years in it.
A Librarian
@JiveTurkin: Some take it as a feature, not a bug. Others have gotten pretty nihilistic about the way things are going in general — something they’re called “blackpilled.”
One of my colleagues is trying to actively plan lessons calling toxic masculinity into question — for him, it’s personal, as he’s a young, white, straight guy who has lost a lot of friends himself to Joe Rogan / Andrew Tate / blackpiled culture. I haven’t checked in with him yet about what his plans are now that yesterday happened.
zhena gogolia
@Straythoughts: Great comment.
VeniceRiley
@Fair Economist: FAFoyour friends there when mommy gets deported before them and they don’t have a job, and education, or know how to clean, cook, and do laundry. I’m not around to dry their tears. They’re not for me. I’m not for them. Consequences suck. Bye boys.
different-church-lady
I swear 100 years from now people are going to read about this shit and they are simply not going to believe it happened.
InternetDragons
Much love, John. In the spirit of offering SOMETHING that isn’t scary or negative – Indivisible is back.
If you are interested in learning about peaceful, practical steps you can take to prevent some of the damage inflicted by a Trump administration, check out the national phone calls that Indivisible is putting on – the first calls are tonight and tomorrow, but there is a whole series scheduled at the link below. Don’t hesitate to participate even if all you want right now is support.
If you are not familiar with them, Indivisible was initiated in 2016 as a reaction to the election of Trump. Their goal is to educate people about practical actions that can be taken to save democracy, and they started with the online publication of a handbook written by Congressional staffers with suggestions for peacefully but effectively resisting the move to the right in the executive branch of the government. These are good and effective people with real world experience in navigating our current challenges.
indivisible.org/indivisible-trainings?fbclid=IwY2xjawGYogNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHVl51_zanUZBRlWR-ZcR2Xvu0…
Quinerly
Exit polling…economy #1 issue. Abortion #3 issue
Oops looks like economy #2. Democracy #1
Immigration #4
MSNBC reporting
different-church-lady
@cmorenc: I am hearing a theory that a lot of MAGA turned out, voted for Trump and left the rest of the ballot empty. Dunno if true, but it would explain that kind of discrepancy.
Seanly
I don’t see any point in circular firing squads.
My wife and I are both scared. We’re mid-50’s with pre-existing conditions. I have one co-worker who has 2 trans children and was already worried about raising them in Idaho (Boise’s a bit more progressive than the rest of Idaho but that’s not saying a lot). I have another coworker who’s Iranian and has been trying to get her parents here – she was worried being deported even though she probably has a green card (she has a brother who is a professor here in Idaho).
I think Harris & Walz ran a good campaign. We lost and the next 4 years are going to be shit.
Like our host, I am a white cis-het male so chances are that I will be okay but that doesn’t lesson my disappointment & fear for myself and others (friends, coworkers, & even strangers).
Archon
@CaseyL: In terms of relative economic and military power America makes Nazi Germany look like Portugal.
VeniceRiley
It’s going to be great when the Xbox basement starts to smell and the dishes pile in the sink. Progress can be snatched away in a whim and a heartbeat. Stop loving them. You’re not a fucking pet! Or are you?
Mai Naem mobile
@Sister Golden Bear: I’m a Gen Xr. All I can tell you is that more of the Gen Xrs I know tend to be more conservative as compared to Boomers or Millenials. It may be that I’m in Arizona but in my experience it’s not even a 60/40. It’s more like 75/25. I’ve always assumed it was because we came of voting age during Reagan/Bush 1, the Berlin Wall coming down, Desert Storm(successful American military operations) etc.
Kent
We have a Hispanic housekeeper who cleans our house once a week. Her son went to school with my daughter (they graduated last year). My daughter is a freshman at WSU. Her son barely scraped through school and is now working in some factory job except that he just destroyed his car and got arrested for drunk driving (thank God he just ran off the road and didn’t hurt anyone else. Had a long conversation with her last week about the legal system and such. She is at her wits end.
He is basically one of these kids suffering from toxic masculinity and raging at the world. I guess consequences will start hitting fast and furious. He was born here so won’t be deported or anything. But it is all part of testosterone poisoning ruining lives I guess.
CaseyL
@Archon: Yeah. I can’t think of any alliance that could challenge us, militarily.
A Librarian
@Kent: I have only had one student approach me to talk about it, and he only wanted to get into the data — almost like he was focused more on exploring and trying to explain what happened than really make any claim about what the outcome would mean.
Only one of my colleagues has mentioned anything at all about students asking her about the election, or sharing any fears or feelings, but she’s also from a country that underwent a coup and years of violence after — she has authority that most of us here lack.
We might see more coming down the pike in the months to come, once things really get underway. Even then, knowing that these kids became aware when Trump was president the first time, I’m not sure if there will be a bigger reaction.
(To be fair: these are also the first few cohort that went remote during COVID-19 in middle school and late elementary — who knows what effects that is having on them now…)
Warren Senders
@schrodingers_cat: I’d like to be on that zoom call. I’m teaching till about 8:10 but will be glad to join.
I tried sending you an email with your link, but it delivered a 404.
Lily
The bar graphs (race, gender and age) I saw this a.m. (from exit polling) showed the groups w the highest % of Tr-voters were 1st ‘white men’ and 2nd ‘white wm’ (in 2 age groups). After that, the % of ‘Latino men’ who voted for Tr was 3rd.
——
edit: re @suzanne:’s data above from NBÇ: looks like the %’s have shifted a bit from what I saw this a.m.,so that L men are now 1% higher than “w wm” voters for Tr, if I read it right
——
I honestly thought the u.s. might finally, for this particular exceptional woman (vs that rotting multi-criminal), be capable of moving past a little bit of our racism and misogyny and ultra violent history. It’s clear I was naive. The roots are deep and shallow, spread everywhere, underground and surface. Today in my mind what I see is: above that ground, the 80+ years of increasing, then active awareness of all us nonconforming ppl, still can’t hold upright against the density of u.s. willful murderousness.
(However I’m still in awe of our courage, path making, transformative power…)
schrodingers_cat
@Warren Senders: Sorry IDK what went wrong, try
[email protected]
RaflW
@A Librarian: “these are also the first few cohort that went remote during COVID-19”
As Chris Hayes pointed out early this morning — and I’m expanding on his brief skeet — the country went into “la la la traveling, shopping, dining out, being all normal again!” as soon as possible and did f*ck all to process the grief of a million deaths, two lost years of school community for kids, and community in general for all of us.
Just a huge, rotting pile of unprocessed emotions barely under the surface. That’s gonna come out in really messed up ways in this and several future elections, IMO.
Captain C
@cmorenc: A bunch of ppl with IGMFY syndrome, perhaps?
Ramalama
I was going to let the fallen leaves in my yard just collect and look like crap till spring time but today in my little cubby of the Laurentian woods, it’s, like 65 degrees F. I am going to get active I think.
Watched some Jessica Kirson (comedian) do crowd work in Germany (she’s American), and it made me feel normal for ten minutes, laughing. A gift.
Subsole
@Archon:
They wouldn’t have believed you.
Our issue, dear friends, is we are speaking to the minds of people who think with their feelings. It all just bounces off.
They will be standing there, slack-jawed, as it all falls on them. And they still won’t believe you. Or their lying eyes.
Geminid
@Kent: Anthony Villenueva of the Northwest Progressive Policy Institute wrote this morning that he thought both Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Janelle Bynum were likely to win their Congressional races. Have you seen anything more on Rep. Perez’s race?
Villeneuve also said that Democrats were doing well generally in Oregon and Washington this year.
Subsole
@OId Man Shadow:
Enjoy? Oh good heavens, no.
They’ll just blame us for not stopping them from killing themselves.
Citizen Alan
@sxjames: My greatest fear is for my niece back in Mississippi. She’s a 24 yo school teacher who just bought a house and is apparently getting serious with her boyfriend. She also weights about 108 pounds soaking wet. And I am afraid the first time she tries to have a child, something will go wrong, and the people who her mother and father proudly voted for will murder her in Jesus’ Name.
burritoboy
“In terms of relative economic and military power America makes Nazi Germany look like Portugal.”
That (seeming) military power makes fascist regimes last shorter amounts of time, not longer. The stronger they seem to be militarily (often superficially), the more it pushes them to do more and more stupid stuff more rapidly. The inner dialectic always pushes the big, strong ones to always try to top what they did last. The core of fascism is the will to power, and you must show the supporters of the regime that you can top what you did last. The fascist regimes that lasted the very longest were (comparatively small) regimes that were largely geographically out of the way and knew that they had to carefully control themselves. (So they did stuff like stay out of WWII, avoid pissing off the USA too much after WWII, etc.) That’s simply not going to be the Trump II regime, even if the future regime did really understand that Spain should be their model.
VeniceRiley
@Kent: I don’t care about him now, Kent. They’ve put themselves beyond my care.
RaflW
@Seanly: Maybe you already know about this, but if you, or the parent of the two trans kids or anyone else is needing to boost their sense of community in Boise, I wholeheartedly and even joyfully commend the Boise UU Fellowship.
Even if one isn’t religious, or typically a ‘joiner’ of places like that. Drop-ins always welcome. I’m personal friends with the minister, Sara. She is just a wonderful person and amazing presence. And she is open about parenting a trans kid.
They are having a post-election event tonight at 7pm.
Sunday services are at 10am.
To all: Just about every UU congregation in the US is probably having some sort of post-election event this evening (some of the really small fellowships, maybe not. But take a look). If anyone is needing a sense of refuge tonight, GO. Look up your closest options here.
taumaturgo
@Quinerly: Keeping it real, it was Kamala unwillingness to break from Biden’s 100% support of Netanyahu genocidal campaign against Hamas. The votes for the 3rd party candidates records the community discontent.
zhena gogolia
@taumaturgo: They will just love what Trump does to the Palestinians!!!
Subsole
@Alice:
I have heard it said that those who do not see reality, will eventually be made to feel it.
And I also am having a very, very hard time marshalling my empathy this day.
wenchacha
@Quinerly: Fuck Jill Stein, pawn of Putin.
taumaturgo
@zhena gogolia:
This: Dr. Gassan Abu Sitta: “Gone is a genocidal president too hypocritical to admit it. And in comes a genocidal president who wears it as a badge of honor.”
Citizen Alan
@different-church-lady: Bold of you to assume anyone will be left to read anything about anything in the 22nd century.
xephyr
I wish we’d stop calling them conservatives. That ship sailed years ago. Also I suspect that half the low and damaged information voters don’t have the first clue about what they’ve unleased. Yet.
Steve LaBonne
@RaflW: My church has one on Zoom this evening. But I think I’ve done enough wallowing for today.
different-church-lady
@Citizen Alan: I dunno, maybe they’ll be aliens.
Steve LaBonne
@xephyr: Within about a year they’re going to find out right in the wallet. But of course it will somehow be the Democrats’ fault.
zhena gogolia
@taumaturgo: Well, isn’t that special. He’ll find out.
Subsole
@Kent:
You know that.
And I know that.
Just like I know that the folks they are so gloriously unconcerned about don’t care and aren’t gonna let those factual nuances stop them.
Like I said. I am having a very, very hard time feeling bad for anybody that voted for what’s coming.
Citizen Alan
I wouldn’t bet the farm on that. They’re gonna go after birthright citizenship hard.
John S.
@taumaturgo:
That’s absolutely fucking stupid.
The Muslim American community doesn’t deserve what’s coming to them, but too many of them sure seem to have voted for it.
Quinerly
different-church-lady
@Kent:
Blacks were born here and it didn’t stop the south from beating the shit out of them.
Kosh III
@ArchTeryx: but a lot of people died well before Generalissimo Francisco Franco did.
Breaking news: Francisco Franco is STILL dead.
Subsole
@dww44: Nah.
They don’t need to push him aside.Just feed his ego and stick a camera in front of him while they work in the background. Guy’s brain is already Hindenberged, so using him as a puppet shouldn’t be too hard.
taumaturgo
@John S.:
Stupid or not, Kamala had the opportunity to change course even so slightly, but she didn’t, and it cost her dearly.
zhena gogolia
@taumaturgo: It’s going to cost the Palestinians dearly. But you don’t really give a shit about that, do you?
The Thin Black Duke
Please don’t feed the troll.
Kosh III
@xephyr:I wish we’d stop calling them conservatives.
I usually say Regressives, or Theocrats or dickwads.
John S.
@taumaturgo:
Sure, Jan.
Kosh III
@Kent: Was the mother an immigrant? Hasta la vista baby.
different-church-lady
Come to think of it, we never needed that.
Prairielogic
John, er al,
I’ve been a lurker, once in a blue moon commenter probably Close to 20 years, watched you transform from a winger to a compassionate D. I have probably visited the page every day during this time. I appreciate you all.
We are in NYC; drove down from VT this am to meet/celebrate my sister in-law’s birthday (was yesterday) for a couple of days. Hard time getting up this am.
After watching Steve Karnacki one too many times elaborate how the Beast was improving his margins from the 2020 tally in various counties in the swing states last night, I decided I had seen this movie before and wasn’t going to sit through it again, so I went to bed.
As I was trying to go into a fitful sleep, a voice inside me kept asking, “what’s wrong with you?!?”
“I’m a sane person.”, I finally thought back, “trying to determine how to survive in an insane world…”
And so we are all now about to begin living in the Twilight Zone… I hope our fellow misguided citizens enjoy their journey. I know I will not.
UncleEbeneezer
@different-church-lady: Also, mass deportations that included people born here have happened before.
John S.
NYT Pitchbot:
QFT
cain
@Quinerly: Why is Democracy #1 when they voted against it?
ArchTeryx
@cain: Because they were convinced that Harris was the imminent threat to democracy, not Trump. And too damn many people agreed with them.
cain
@Mai Naem mobile:
None of which is happening these days. What has GOP done that aligns with all that foreign policy stuff exactly?
In any case, all the Gen Xers I know tend to be liberal/centrists with a number of conservatives but more of the fiscal type.
cain
@cmorenc: Something is not adding up with all these split ballot stuff.
Ruckus
John
I am a bit older than you and was in the military during Vietnam. I learned early on not to drink to excess because of experience and people I’ve known and because I spent 3 yrs and 6 months in the military (the war was over – early out!) and watched a lot of men ruin their lives drinking. I see some of the same type at the VA. Or actually anywhere if you look. Also experience didn’t hurt. I’ve been shot at, not during war or in battle, thankfully they missed. Not by much but a miss by any amount is OK. Life is funny some days, life is shit some days, the trick is to understand that it can be both on the same day and most often you have close to zero control. Some say that’s what makes it life, and sometimes interesting. In my senior years I appreciate funny far more than I used to and shit even less. But that’s OK because getting senioritis means you made it to the last chapter. We always hope that this is a long and slow going chapter – the relaxation is nice, and for some it is slowish and appreciable. If you are there appreciate it because it doesn’t last forever.
Keith P.
Trump has to always run for office (that’s how the money comes in), so I’m curious what route he goes with to attempt a third term – Does he claim the US “owes” him a term? Does the GOP try for a fast amendment? Does he claim he just has an absolute right to run again?
2liberal
this was the only place I wanted to go online about the election results. thanks for running this place john and I feel exactly the same as you do. For everyone here, I wish everyone the best, let’s hang in there for another 4 years of Trump, and hope we keep the House. After him, will any republican have the same kind of appeal? Several have tried but it hasn’t clicked and hopefully it won’t in the future. trump won’t respond well to anyone trying to take some of his right-wing glamour.
Sister Golden Bear
@Keith P.: Yes to all three.
tobie
@cain: I’m thinking back to this video of Pete Buttigieg talking to undecided Gen Z voters in Michigan. (See from 35 second mark)
youtube.com/watch?v=1Bn7uouDV_A
One voter had concerns about Dems limiting free speech based on info like the Twitter files. When I saw democracy was the #1 issue cited by voters, I was reminded of her. One piece of disinfo that likely flew under the radar is screen that Dems have curtailed speech on media and have policed language with their pronoun fixation. It’s so absurd that it’s hard to take seriously, but a lot of voters did, I guess.
Ruckus
@Mai Naem mobile:
After all my years I’ve come to the conclusion that your political bent is settled early on for most people. Almost baked in is another way to look at it. It’s how you look at the world, how the world has looked at you, how and where you were raised and did you hate or like those years, do you think one way or the other will make a more significant difference in your life for the better.
jonas
@cain: It’s people voting for Trump because they think he will make the migrants and higher prices magically disappear, but also wanting to protect abortion rights. Unfortunately they’re going to find out that the opposite will happen — he’s not going to solve inflation or the migration crisis and will no doubt compliantly sign a national abortion ban if a GOP Congress passes one.
me
@jonas:
He’ll force the FDA to ban Mifepristone. Don’t need Congress for that. (or again he won’t as he doesn’t give a shit, some religious fascist flunkie will do it in his name)
Kent
Here in WA they usually release updated vote counts once a day at the end of the day’s counting. So probably won’t get any updates on any races until tonight. Last time in 2022 it took several days to count all the ballots. I don’t know how much more they have to go. And whether they are more from red or blue areas.
Kent
Newsflash. The red wave towards Trump across the entire country (in all but 2 states) had fuck-all to do with Gaza. The fact that Harris was a Black woman probably was.
The biggest shift was blue collar Hispanic voters. I doubt Gaza was even in their top-100 list of issues.
TooManyJens
@cain:
Because the real threat to democracy was Dems cheating, of course. All those millions of illegal immigrants voting, huge threat.
Kosh III
@UncleEbeneezer: Or concentration camps; right George Takei?
Mel
@ArchTeryx: You made me smile for the first time in three days. Thank you.
JiveTurkin
@Keith P.: Trump will be drooling into is oatmeal in four years. They can only prop him up for so long, eventually he’ll eat a dead rat or something in public and Vance will be president.
cain
@Kent:
The northwest is going to become a place for people to find shelter.
Ruckus
@jonas:
I used to be a mental health counselor and I believe that this country needs mental heath a hell of a lot more than it used to.
Maybe it’s because I used to be an employer or because I was that mental health counselor but I’ve long held the idea that most people live a long time with their heads firmly planted in their exhaust port. That would explain why so many people can’t really see the world around them and that there is no pole up their backside, which is supposedly raising them above everyone else.
Quinerly
@TooManyJens: nailed it.
No Nym
@me: Will there be an FDA? From what I gather from articles on Project 2025/GOP platform, I don’t think so. Their wish list:
This is on the list, but I don’t believe it for a minute in our culture of toxic masculinity:
gene108
@JiveTurkin:
I think after #MeToo blew up around 2018, much needed corrections about sexual harassment in the workplace came about.
A lot of “men are pigs” sentiment and “toxic masculinity” started circulating on the internet, especially in liberal spaces.
The young are much more online than I think I am capable of.
There was no real online replacement of what positive masculinity should be. There was men suck, and Andrew Tate.
Sphex
I am so grateful to you, John, and to everyone here, for creating refuge that feels like a safe space to be today.
Ruckus
OK I’ve had 2 comments just disappear on me on BJ today as I was typing them.
Is there some magic phrase that causes complete erasure?
Have I reached the age where NO ONE wants to see or hear from me ever again?
Kent
It already is. There is already a reverse migration of people from Idaho moving back to WA and OR because they are LGBT or have trans kids or whatever.
Sphex
Quinerly
@Ruckus:
I have mentioned several times being originally from Eastern NC. Fun story about my dad….a WW2 veteran. He told me for years about how proud he was that he and my mother voted for the war hero in 1972. I was 11 at the time. He would joke and say “your parents are the only 2 votes George McGovern got in NC. It’s documented.” Well, of course, I believed him…right down to the only 2 votes part. Repeated the story proudly. And was laughed at by my classmates whose parents loved Nixon and Jesse Helms. For the most part we truly are the products of our upbringing.
burritoboy
“but a lot of people died well before Generalissimo Francisco Franco did.
Breaking news: Francisco Franco is STILL dead.”
His regime (one of the longest and perhaps the very best-run of all these regimes) couldn’t outlast his death – a thing that most republics and democracies do frequently. Portugal’s thing couldn’t outlast their strongman for very long either, though that took some years to work itself out. That is, these regimes can’t survive one single leadership change. (I believe some of the South American juntas could survive some leadership changes, but even with those – few of them lasted for immense lengths of time. But we can debate how fascist those regimes were. One of them fell apart because they lost a war with the UK over the ……Falklands.)
Oh yeah, for the history buffs: Nazi Germany would have collapsed just from fighting the Soviet Union. The Red Army’s Operation Bagration destroyed the Nazi Army Group Centre by the end of June 1944 and early August 1944, and after Bagration, the Nazis could not keep the Red Army from Berlin (Bagration meant that the Red Army was already next to Eastern Poland by it’s end). D Day was June 4 – i.e. the Red Army had already been positioning for Bagration for months by that point. To give you an idea of what Bagration did: over 700,000 German soldiers were killed or captured in Bagration, and Nazi Army Group Centre in effect WAS the primary German army by that point, period. Yes, there were numbers of German forces in lots of other places, but……they were not going to be able to save Berlin, even IF the regime could have grabbed all of them and return them to Berlin – which it couldn’t do. (In addition to losing over 700,000 soldiers, Bagration also took out huge percentages of ALL their remaining equipment.) In most ways for several months after that, the Red Army was waiting in Eastern Poland for several months so that the Nazis could destroy the Polish resistance for them in Warsaw. But they could have taken Warsaw and Central Poland easily after early August 1944. (The Nazis were trying to go up against somewhere around 3 million Red Army forces with around 600,000 Nazi troops by that point – that wasn’t going to work. The Red Army after waiting did easily take all of Poland in early 1945, and Berlin is roughly 60 miles from their location by then. It was absolutely over by that point.)
To give additional context, D-Day’s Allied forces took out less than 10,000 German combatants on D Day. Before that, the Western Allies were important in providing equipment / food, and mostly keeping various comparatively small numbers of German forces tied up in places like Italy (earlier North Africa, etc.) This helped the Red Army, of course, but the war against Germany really was fought and won by the Red Army and the Red Army had in essence destroyed (or was on the brink of destroying within literally days) the core of the German armed forces by June 1944, when the Western Allies only were beginning to put serious forces in France. Nazi Germany couldn’t recover from that point onwards from the Red Army’s victories, and the Western Allies really didn’t do that (the equipment, of course, was very helpful, but the USSR would have likely manufactured enough on it’s own.)
Quinerly
@cain: I have been harping on it all day. Very strange imo.
geg6
@John S.:
Then they deserve it.
lowtechcyclist
Apparently Harris is about to give her concession speech:
Kamala Harris Concession Speech 2024: Livestream & How To Watch
Nelle
Build your community. Make it beloved.
Steve LaBonne
@No Nym: I love the gold standard thing. That’ll lower prices all right! Great Depression II Electric Boogaloo.
Elizabelle
I think it’s going to be interesting to see us go through the five stages of grief, and then some.
Geminid
@cain: One possible explaination: there are a lot of Independents out there, and some Indies will split tickets on principle.
Steve LaBonne
@Nelle: These are the times when I am grateful to have my beloved UU community.
Steve LaBonne
@Geminid: Because otherwise you’re just, like, a shill, man.
geg6
@lowtechcyclist:
No thanks. Not because I blame her for anything but because I can’t listen to any sort of conversation about how it will be okay. It’s not going to be okay and I don’t want to be pissed that she’s lying to me or being too gracious to him. I’m going to go binge a bunch of House Hunters episodes because it’s mindless.
CaseyL
@geg6:
Agree.
Had a similar chat with a friend. I said the time to say “I didn’t know,” or “I wasn’t aware,” or “I didn’t think they meant it,” is long, long gone.
‘Course, I said that after 2004 and 2016, too. Sigh.
Mai Naem mobile
@cain: i think people tend to stick with the party they started with which is why I think Gen> Xrs vote more GOP. Remember back then the GOP was known for being rah rah strong military and the Dems were considered effete commie pinkos. It’s hard for somebody to admit they’re wrong so they’ll just keep.on voting R.
Ruckus
@Seanly:
I’m 75 and have been a democrat since before I could vote.
The reason I wrote the above is that I’ve seen conservative politics for a long time and they have always been about the wrong things. Always. They seem to live life in reverse, never wanting to move forward, and actually saving democracy. I’d bet they don’t understand what life was like not all that long ago, that freedom isn’t free at all and if you squander it, it ALWAYS BLOWS UP IN YOUR FACE. Always. They squandered it massively this time. Maybe I should be glad I’m old, that my time spent protecting democracy was seemingly a waste of time and effort but I know my life and this means I’ll live a long time – to get to experience worse than complete and utterly shitty politics for a long time.
The only positive thing I have to say is work hard to insure that this shit doesn’t last forever.
Maybe you noticed that I’m not really happy with the election results, because complete and utter shit starts soon.
Geminid
@Ruckus: Keep on typing. Your comments are valuable.
Ramalama
@Geminid: Agree!
I’ve come across a couple of Quebecois people in my town who remember Viet Nam. One lady housed an American fleeing the draft. A man, one of my Covid Lockdown buddies, serving in Viet Nam because he was 18, drunk (NY state), and (as he says) ‘stupid.’ He did not know that it was illegal for a ‘white guy’ to go on a black bus.
They are feeling for us.
Mai Naem mobile
@Ruckus: i read your comments. Maybe WP is overworking and screwing up.
Quinerly
Harris speaking.
ColoradoGuy
Thank you, John. You’ve created a good space for all of us.
Barbara
@Alice: He won’t deport everyone. But he will deport enough people randomly enough that no one will feel safe.
burritoboy
There has been considerable polling of college students (for example) about what issues were most important to them. Maybe that polling was complete nonsense, possibly, but Gaza/Palestine didn’t break into the top 10 issues. My recall is that it was 13th most important. I dropped by UC Berkeley’s campus for one of the Gaza Protests and there were less than 100 people protesting in one of the very largest university campuses in the country, and one of the most left-leaning ones. There is simply not much evidence anyone has shown me – and I’m in organizations that have almost entirely focused since October 7 on Gaza – that it is a major motivating issue. (The organizations by the way have not picked up many members or much support because of their focus – so I can literally see that’s it was not driving much enthusiasm – at least in my locality.)
lowtechcyclist
@geg6:
I’m not saying you should have watched this; I was just making it available. But I just want to say she’s not saying that.
Barbara
@mvr:
Here is my snap reaction, for what it’s worth, and it doesn’t presume that Biden would have won in an alternate universe. The first is, unquestionably, misogyny. We understate it at our peril.
The second is more speculative — many people who were loyal to Joe Biden were discomfited enough with the process by which he was replaced that they voted for no one. In fact, the depressed turnout might be seen as many deciding to vote for “neither of the above.” This is not a knock on Harris or her campaign — Like I said, I don’t know we would have won with Biden, but as in 2016, with Clinton, there should never be a coronation in democratic but especially Democratic contests. People need to be invested in both the candidate and the perceived fairness of the process.
I don’t want to rehash this fight, but I think people discounted the downside of switching midstream.
Quinerly
@lowtechcyclist: it’s a great speech. I can’t stop crying. First tears since the nightmare started yesterday. Not here to be analyzed but I think I have been in some sort of denial all night and day. Or some sort of weird coping.
“Light of a billion stars……..”
Mai Naem mobile
Ugh. The flipping the House isn’t looking all that certain either. I was feeling awful last night about tfg but feeling pretty good about the House because we had already picked up 3 seats. I don’t understand what happened and I don’t want to know. It’s too depressing.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Straythoughts:
Thanks for sharing. And keep sharing. We need more voices in here.
Ohio Mom
@A Librarian: Does anyone have more bravado than a teenage boy? What an adventure it would be to be deported — probably rid of school forever. What’s not like about that?
Andrew Tate, Qanon, all of that is a terrible cancer on young men. Ohio Son was briefly under their spell. Shudder.
When I was growing up in NYC, the immigrants were mostly older folks, from Europe. I’m so old it was before the 1965 Immigration Act, and all the changes that brought. Calvin Trillin credits that law with bringing ethnic food to the U.S.
Archon
Democrats pretty much lost ground everywhere compared to 2020. Catastrophe doesn’t begin to describe what happened last night.
Lyrebird
Thank you for adding that detail. I am mostly numb and tired enough not to do too much of this, but I sometimes wonder, “what if I had given up my professional chances and kept the family in Pennsyltucky somehow?” I was feeling guilty – we couldnt do enough in 2016, should I have stayed to vote there now?
But no I am so grateful to be in one of the states that just voted to protect more people. Wondering about asking Sister Golden Bear if there’s going to be an increase of families needing to find a spot to stay because they have a trans kiddo, maybe I could clean out our guest room.
But for today – thank you John,
wish I could send you and Joelle some good soup, and there’s not enough soup in the world to match what WaterGirl deserves.
Oof.
Kent
I think Biden would have lost too. He was polling worse than Harris and the polls turned out to be pretty accurate.
I think Democrats underestimated the headwinds that a Black woman candidate would face with this electorate. Misogyny and racism are not White-only diseases. As we found out with the exit polls showing that Trump made big gains with Hispanics and I think Harris’ race and gender was a contributing factor.
I’m 60 and after Clinton and Harris losing in 2016 and 2024 I’m not sure we are going to see another woman on the top of the ticket in my lifetime. I think that is going to be a big lesson that Democratic power brokers take from this. Sorry to say.
dc
@Geo Wilcox:
I think (with no data, just feeling) that those of us who were excited to vote, voted early or by mail. Then election day voting, at least for the Dems taking the number nationwide was a washout.
Mai Naem mobile
@Straythoughts: you should stop lurking more and contribute more. You write well.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Kent:
Exactly. I’ve been thinking that we could have had a candidate that had one of the two elements in Harris, black, woman, but not both. Pick one or the other.
I actually think the woman part, as you noted, was the biggest hurdle which cut across racial, cultural and probably political lines sad to say.
Pete Downunder
I was interviewed on our local public radio station (ABC 610 in Brisbane) last night our time. If anyone is interested a recording can be found at:
abc.net.au/listen/programs/brisbane-evenings/evenings/104547228
My bit starts at 19:45 or so. Stay strong everyone.
Kent
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: It doesn’t even matter if it is true. Although I do think being a black women gave her enormously underestimated headwinds with Hispanic voters and especially Hispanic men.
But I do think is the lesson that Democratic insiders will take out of all this. Twice burned and so forth. The next 3 years they will be busy looking for the young Biden and maybe the young Hispanic Biden. Someone who can project machismo and at least fake working class roots.
TBone
Rumpy neighbor decorum: now that mofo has TWO gas powered leaf blowers in the public street, one in each hand!
🤦🤦♀️🤦♂️ All the facepalms
I need to text him that action clip of Donold and his microphone.
RevRick
@Archon: Right! Trump didn’t so much beat us, but millions of Democrats abandoned the field. Which hurts even more in some ways.
One of the things I did do was text my neighbor across the street. She and her husband have four adorable kids, and I’m mindful of the world they will get stuck with. It felt good to reach out.
Earlier, I had taken a walk in our nearby park, and usually I greet people as I meet them, but a cloud of suspicion hung over me, only adding to my foul mood.
I think I am a bit more fortunate than most in this community, because I have regular face-to-face interactions at my progressive leaning church, together with gatherings of fellow clergy. One of the things many Democrats have lost is that third community outside of family and work where there can be mutual support and care, even if it’s just to be bathed in some smiles, hugs or handshakes. Singing also helps… immensely. Occasionally, we do organize for the common good.
Genine
Yeah, I’ve been lurking here for years. I was really active on this site during the end of Bush II and Obama administrations then just… fell off. I need community and this place is a haven. I appreciate all the people here and hope we can come together.
TBone
@RevRick: I am considering joining this congregation nearby. Inclusive.
standrewslewisburg.com/about-us
I need the community and connection with good people.
Steve LaBonne
@Kent: Ruben Gallego? Let’s see if he can make a name for himself during this shitshow.
Steve LaBonne
@TBone: I really encourage you to visit and see if it may be right for you. Liberal churches are going to be important centers of support, resistance, and organizing, as they were last time.
RevRick
@TBone: I hope you find a home there.
prostratedragon
@CaseyL:
Pinochet did not die in power, but was ousted in 1990 after 17 years. He died in 2006.
There’s a good movie called No that dramatizes the election that ousted him.
zhena gogolia
@Ruckus: We always want to hear from you!
JML
It’s too soon for me to try and do any real post-game analysis (part of me keeps trying, but I know I’m not in a good space for it, and I also know that we don’t have good data yet).
I’m very much wondering where the House lands. Have to say, I’m wondering if the smarter/saner members of the GOP (especially in the Senate) are hoping the Dems do take the House to play adult in the room. We know the House GOP can’t/won’t. And the Senate GOP is going to be a knife fight for power, and will struggle to pass fuck and all, since they’ll have a tiny majority and bomb-throwers like Cruz that they’ll actually have to appease.
While they’ll have limited ability to curb the insane excesses of The Orange Asshole and the grifters and morons that will populate the executive branch, it would be something. The idea of them running unfettered, only blocked by the remnants of the filibuster (which will get eliminated quickly, I presume. Susan Collins will be “very concerned” as she votes to eliminate it) is pretty terrifying.
I guess then we’d find out if the backlash certain folks are convinced would happen if the right-wing gets total control would actually happen. I’d be more afraid they’ll rig rules to ensure they stick in power for decades…
SpaceUnit
I’ve been lurking here all afternoon because I can’t think of anything else to do. I’m not coping well. I am a void.
I appreciate this community of kindred souls though. Best wishes to you all.
Subsole
@cmorenc:
Easy.
“Fuck your right to an abortion, but let me keep mine.”
p.a
Fun fact: HS detention was run by the Latin teacher (last living direct relative of Roger Williams). Detention consisted of being given a word & definition from the dictionary, memorizing it and repeating it accurately. Had to stay until regurgitated to his satisfaction. He was an elderly (to HS kids) bachelor, didn’t mind staying, correcting papers etc. Repeat offenders tended to be given the same word. Mine was decorum. Got pretty good with it by junior year.
zhena gogolia
@SpaceUnit: I keep coming back here too. Can’t think of anything else to do. I didn’t sleep most of the night, so I could only work for a couple of hours.
Llelldorin
@Subsole: Easier: “What does the one have to do with the other???”
For a lot of Republicans, policy and politics are entirely disconnected in their minds. They’ve been working to achieve that decoupling for decades. For them, Republican politics isn’t about policy at all—it’s something closer to a lifestyle brand.
SpaceUnit
@zhena gogolia:
I haven’t eaten today. Got a lump in my throat the size of a tennis ball that won’t go away. I’m more inclined to throw up.
I might try to get some exercise, Maybe that will help. It’s good to see you here.
Steve LaBonne
@JML: From a totally cynical political point of view as opposed to a good of the country point of view I think a 1 or 2 seat House Republican majority would be ideal. Completely non-functional unless the less crazy Republicans would finally be willing to work with Democrats.
Miki
@zhena gogolia: facebook.com/share/v/15SvC7qFKH/
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: I popped an Ambien at 4:43 am.
Have not looked at one single news site since 10:30 last night. Getting some news from here.
Ruckus
@burritoboy:
It is a local war. Half way round the world.
Is it important? Of course it is, it’s a fucking war.
However.
We are looking at a complete fucking disaster here at home.
Almost a war here, between the greedy, stupid people that do not want change, better, or anything else other than power. They do not want equality of the people in this country, that is all about that, they want the country they think they had 100 or so years ago, where white was right and everyone else was in bondage. However a lot of the white side doesn’t like their shit any better than they like shitforbrains. Which is measured with all zeros.
I have zero idea how this could get better, at least in any rational way. They want a complete and utter buffoon running the country, is it because they think he has a clue or that he’s a buffoon and one of them?
I’m too old to move to another country and don’t speak their language in any event. I have zero idea what to do here, other than breathe in and out and eat regularly.
Subsole
@Keith P.: He refuses to leave, puts his little white supremacist vigilante freikorps militia on the Capitol steps, and dares the plebes to do something about it.
Or, more likely, he just up and runs a third time.
Most of the dumbfuck, dipshit cocksuckers in this sorry-ass shithole country probably won’t even realize he’s not allowed to do so. And half of the ones who do will clap like circus seals.
SpaceUnit
@Elizabelle:
I can’t watch the news either.
Elizabelle
I am just devastated for Ukraine.
The US has some resilience, and margin for error. Ukraine, not, although they are a braver populace, and that counts for much. 💕💕💕🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦💕💕💕
Yarrow
@Kent:
Yep. Youngish. Good looking. Someone who looks like he might be okay in a fight. Straight, male, married, Christian. Latino would be good.
Mai Naem mobile
@Steve LaBonne: the dysfunctional House was under Biden. Under TFG they’ll pass stuff easily. They’re not stupid. My guess is the Senate will get rid of the filibuster and pass everything which means the ACA is on the chopping block. I don’t care how popular it is. The cruelty is the point with the GOP.
Steve LaBonne
@Mai Naem mobile: They’re not all stupid but some of the Freikorps Caucus members are very stupid.
Hungry Joe
Last night I learned that I know and understand NOTHING. Or, as Firesign Theater put it, “Everything you know is wrong.”
I need to hire a Walter Slobcek-like guy to follow me around, and every time I start to offer an opinion on some current topic he says “Shut the fuck up, Hungry Joe, you’re out of your element.”
Elizabelle
@SpaceUnit: Amuses me that liberals are probably the majority of subscribers to major newspapers and magazines. You think we want to pay for the privilege of reading about The Felon?
Hard nope. They helped bring this upon us through bothsidesing and ignoring Biden’s very real accomplishments, not to mention his mere presence.
They are going to get hit w cancellations and less page clicks, across the board. They made news into entertainment and sensationalism. They helped build this.
Prometheus Shrugged
I was planning to read John’s post more or less verbatim as a preamble to my lectures this morning (minus the curse words, though this was a mixed undergraduate/graduate course climate science course, so they could have handled the language without me being reported to the dean). But half the students were openly sobbing before I even began, which made it tough for me to keep it together myself. So instead I just made some lame remark about how we need to respect everyone’s various ways of coping–like my wife’s mechanism of coping this morning was to yell at me for not ironing my shirt (which is true). This didn’t help the collective mood much, but once I got going and the sobbing subsided, I at least tried to leave them with a specific (apolitical) statement of “this is what we need to fight for; and this is why”. That was about all I could muster today–too much of a gut punch for me to process.
Subsole
@Ruckus:
It dawned on me one day, long, long ago, that if you listen to a Conservative talk politics long enough, you will have a pretty solid idea of who they hate, who they fear, and who they think they are superior to.
If you listen to a Liberal, you will have a pretty solid idea of who they think has ruined the world, how to balance things out, and who they want to help and protect – even if it’s just themselves.
That was my political awakening. Been a Dem ever since.
Always appreciate your perspective. Thanks for commenting.
SpaceUnit
@Elizabelle:
What’s going to be entertaining will be watching how those editors and publishers react when trump comes for them.
BellyCat
(Late to the funeral).
FUCK YEAH! PREACH IT COLE!!!
zhena gogolia
@SpaceUnit: For some reason, eating is the one thing I can do.
Subsole
@Llelldorin: That is a very good point, and a worldview I often overlook, because it is just so alien to me. Everything is connected, folks. How do they not see it??
zhena gogolia
@Miki: Thanks, but I’m not on Facebook.
SpaceUnit
There’s about a foot of fresh snow on the ground here. It’s been eerily quiet. At the top of every hour I can hear the bells ringing at the church nearby. It sounds like they’re tolling for the country.
PsiFighter37
I certainly haven’t been as present here as I was 10-15 years ago. A lot of that has to do with life changes – getting married, having a kid, and work becoming a bigger part of life as I have moved a little up the ladder. But it is crazy to think that for my entire 30s, into my early 40s, for all the professional and personal occurrences that should have made this the happiest of times, it will forever be stained by the presence of a someone who, at his core, is simply a con man and has conned enough people in this country to turn it into a terrible, terrible place. I cant even contemplate going to parts of this country that I’d love to visit, because I have no idea if the (mainly white) racists decide that this half-Asian and his Asian wife and Asian-looking kid are in the wrong part of town.
i think the most heartbreaking part of it all is that everything I learned in elementary school in the early 1990s, about American exceptionalism and assimilation and national unity – all of it has proven to be revealed as more and more a lie the older I have gotten. Having a core principle like that ripped out from under you is hard to keep coming back from, especially because America is my only home – I may have been born in Japan, but I sure as hell ain’t Japanese enough to pass for one in their insular society. So it’s feeling homeless in the only country I’ve ever considered home. I just hope my daughter gets back some of her rights before I’m dead.
Subsole
@SpaceUnit:
“Bonesaws ain’t just for Saudi Arabia anymore, chum.”
Again. Not finding a whole lot of fucks left in the strategic reserve.
Llelldorin
@Subsole: Oh, they’re not “just missing” it — the Republican Party has put a LOT of effort into burying the connection as much as possible. Republican policies were last popular in the early 1990s. That’s why they focus so much on who they hate — that’s their unifying point, not “stuff they want to get done” the way it is for us.
I think that’s why we keep missing Republican electoral power — the parties are so very very asymmetric that we keep thinking about how dead we’d be if our policies were as unpopular as theirs.
SpaceUnit
@Subsole:
Yeah, I won’t be shedding a lot of tears when those assholes end up in the camps. Screw ’em.
TBone
@RevRick: thank you v.m. It can’t hurt to try!
Geminid
@Kent: I don’t know if Senator-elect Ruben Gallego projects machismo, but he did lead a platoon of Marines in Iraq during Bush’s stupid war. And Gallego raised by a single, immigrant mother, and he doesn’t have to fake working class roots.
But it’s not really fair for me to project him as a 2028 Presidential candidate. For one thing, it will attract animus from some of the people who already have their own favorites. And the way I see it, there will be plenty of opportunities to hash out the 2028 Presidential field after the 2026 midterms pass.
That said, Ruben Gallego is a dynamic, 39 year old politician and I hope he accomplishes a lot in his career.
Elizabelle
@SpaceUnit: Where are you? I am sitting out, sleeveless, on my 71 degree patio in central VA, with the pup and a red wine spritzer.
Raven
@Geminid: He was a Lance Corporal, he may have “led” his squad.
SpaceUnit
@Elizabelle:
Colorado. The foothills a little west of Denver.
We had a few flakes a couple of days ago, but this is our first significant snowfall. I guess autumn is over.
Steve LaBonne
@Llelldorin: They are in an awkward position. Their paymasters are going to expect them to put a lot more effort into passing those unpopular policies than they did with their 2017-18 trifecta. When I can briefly work my way into a sufficiently cynical mood (I’m not evil enough for it to last long), I am fascinated by contemplating the total shitshow we’re going to see (the foreign policy shitshow will be another aspect of that- children playing with matches in a room full of powder kegs). Be there, will be wild!
Miki
@zhena gogolia: Try this? youtu.be/-Oliy2ZGdNY?si=t1pxdL3-3RSsnfoG
Elizabelle
@PsiFighter37: Well said, Psi. You are not wrong. Albeit, part of our “American exceptionalism” might be having a nation w too many adult adolescents, and with never having dealt with slavery and its role in development of the economy and culture.
Elizabelle
@SpaceUnit: Colorado, right. And then warmer weather again before long? Love your state.
Mai Naem mobile
@Geminid: you’re going to have plenty of good candidates to run in 2028. At least 5 male governors. I don’t think the Dems will nominate a woman for at least 2 cycles. Maybe in the Veep slot but no way for the top of the ticket. This is assuming we have any kind of free election and not some Russian/Hungarian kind of election.
TooManyJens
Or as the Right would put it, an invader and her anchor baby.
God, I’m tired.
Gallego should run if he wants, he seems good, I’m just disgusted by this country.
Llelldorin
@Steve LaBonne: I hope you’re right, and I fear that you’re wrong—that Republicans have so separated “elect Republicans” from “Republican policies pass” that they won’t pay any price for the latter.
Steve LaBonne
@Llelldorin: Quite possible, alas. Even a deep Trump recession will somehow be the fault of Democrats. I mean, there’s only so much we can do with our dumb as rocks electorate.
SpaceUnit
@Elizabelle:
We basically have two seasons here. We have summer, which can sometimes drag out for five months. And then we have not summer, in which any given day could bring a foot of snow or seventy degrees and sunshine. Sometime we’ll get a week or two of spring or fall in between.
Yeah, it’s kinda bonkers.
Ivan X
I just thought I’d drop by to say that I’m a mess, big surprise. I might need to check out from news for a while. I might need to take a break from here too, though I don’t really want to, because I like it here, but it also effectively is a reminder or what I’m trying to forget. I have friends who just are totally oblivious to what is going on in the world and the country and they seem pretty happy that way. I don’t know if that’s something I can really pull off, but I envy them right now.
I think what I’m struggling with most is the sense of powerlessness and alienation — like, I really don’t think there’s more that anyone could have done. The choice was as clear and stark as night from day. And this is what a majority of Americans apparently wanted. I don’t know what to make of it, what it means for my identity as an American. It’s all very upsetting.
zhena gogolia
@Miki: Thanks — I can’t seem to listen to music today.
wenchacha
This still going? I’ll kill the thread.
I am goddammotherfuckingpissed that Jimmy Carter didn’t get to see her win.
Hoodie
Absofuckinglutely, John. There really is no room for recriminations, the Harris campaign execution was basically flawless. The thing that has to be done is re-examine the game plan and figure out how to bring about a more satisfying result now that we have a better idea of where the electorate is evolving. I’d imagine that you’re a fan of after-action analysis and know that it is not the same thing as finger pointing. You need data, but it’s probably better to do it sooner than later while the information is fresh so we can get to protecting those you’re talking about.
cain
@wenchacha: on the other hand, our honored commentators who have passed on are spared this.
Llelldorin
@Steve LaBonne: I tend towards “evil” more than “dumb.” They know what they want, and what they want is for the people they hate to not have the curtain rod or the rat. (Probably a misquote of the best description of these guys that I’ve ever read.)
Archon
@Mai Naem mobile: Dems running a woman again in THIS America would be a dereliction of duty to Democratic party voters and the country writ large.
zhena gogolia
@Hoodie: Tell Bernie Sanders about that.
Steve LaBonne
@Llelldorin: I live in Ohio and not too far from Gym Jordan’s district. Trust me, he’s such a moron that it’s a wonder he can feed and dress himself without assistance.
Archon
@Llelldorin: I’ve been saying this for years. This is not stupidity, this is malice. Feigning stupidity is just more socially acceptable
Ohio Mom
@PsiFighter37: I d wondered where you went. The last I remember, your daughter was teething and unhappy about it and you were too.
For what it’s worth, teething was not happy time in this household either. I considered teething something of a design flaw in human development.
NoraLenderbee
@VeniceRiley:
Yup. Fuckem.
Hoodie
@Steve LaBonne: Treat them like children; that’s what Trump does. Except he’s the shitty divorced father that makes all sorts of promises to them and doesn’t show up for his visitation weekend.
Ohio Mom
@Ivan X: I wish I knew what to tell you. I’m too exhausted to think of anything profound.
I know what you mean about people who are oblivious and how much easier their lives seem. But once you are aware, there’s no going back to being oblivious. As we learn from the myth, Pandora’s Box, and the Bible story, Genesis. Those old guys didn’t have good answers but they knew how to ask good questions.
You won’t be the first or last person to take a media/Balloon Juice break. Cut yourself some slack and make sure to take good care of yourself.
Then come back, we’ll be glad to see you again. Or just stay, that will work too.
Starfish
@TBone: Did various municipal efforts to nudge people to use electric leaf blowers just drive him over the edge?
Llelldorin
@Steve LaBonne: Fair. Jordan settled the “evil or stupid” debate by ordering a double helping of both.
FDRLincoln
I work for a law enforcement agency.
Half the people at work were very upset, some crying today.
Half the people were happy.
How does the country stay together under these conditions?
gene108
@Hoodie:
There were cracks in the Obama coalition in 2020. Hispanics started becoming more Republican.
It worked three times. Should’ve worked in 2016, but for the EC.
Democrats need to figure out how to attract a new coalition. I’m not sure how they do this or who is out there to pickup relative to the 2024 electorate.
citizen dave
@Raoul Paste:
Simply and well-stated. At a very basic level, the choice is so fucking obvious. I will never understand these last 10 years.
Harris/Walz ran a spectacular campaign in a time-constrained window. Was stewing on this the whole day at a stakeholder meeting. This is on the 10+ million people who didn’t show up to vote for them. For decency. For a woman. For competence. And we all know–against the thousands of negatives of the other one, from minimal to possibly traitorous.
Love this place and everyone here.
Mcat
@Yarrow: Ruben Gallego perhaps.
Glidwrith
@Lily: One thing I noticed, the blue states truly have grown up: Harris won by a clear margin, no nail biters. The red states are still slave states.
Steve LaBonne
@Glidwrith: Red areas are getting redder, blue areas bluer. Not really a recipe for stability.
Ivan X
@Ohio Mom: Thank you. You’ve always been one of my favorite people here, Ohio Mom.
citizen dave
@Ivan X: Same–all of that. What is America. One thing to remember is a shitload of people don’t vote at all. And it seems 10+ million voted Biden and didn’t show up this year. WTF?
I used to think the answer was to greatly increase voting participation, but lately thinking, are they all a bunch of morons, even more so than the voters?
ArchTeryx
@Ohio Mom: Apropos of nothing you always were the one around here that actually cared about me. I appreciate that. I am in much better shape economically than in 2016, but I absolutely am a member of multiple target groups. I don’t expect to survive the next four years. But I will go down fighting for my Flock. Pay it forward the best… and last… way I can.
Bill Arnold
@citizen dave:
Yup. I’m waiting for proper data-based analyses; intuition at the moment is that this election loss was mainly about misogyny and racism, with a side of gullibility about false narratives pushed very hard by the GOP, about e.g. the economy. With some smaller effects mixed in.
WeWantPie
@Starfish:
I have lurked here for even longer than I’ve been on LGM, but I never signed up to comment here — can’t even remember if there was a reason, but I just didn’t.
Now I really do want to join in here, and express my gratitude to all of you guys for being here.
The last 24 hours were brutal beyond words, but we will live to fight another day, and let’s take care of ourselves and each other in the meantime. Thanks, and glad to join you, if you’ll have me.
PsiFighter37
@Ohio Mom: she’s now 5 years old and just started kindergarten last month. Time flies so fast.
Nukular Biskits
Muchly late to the thread (hey, some of us actually have to work for a living! LOL!) but my GBCW rant on Twitter (no, I will not be returning there):
x.com/BoAlawine/status/1854317020675772801
TBone
@Starfish: nope. This is his pathetic dominance display effort, repeated daily even in windy and rainy/gusty conditions. He tries to blow the leaves from the public street on to my front lawn until I catch him at it and put my hands on my hips, staring him down with my best stinkeye.
Oddly enough, when President Obama mentioned how exhausting this leaf blowing behavior can be during his Convention speech, the blowjobs ceased. He is making up for lost time now. 🙄🤐
Hoodie
@gene108: One thing is that Dems have to quit thinking demographics alone will save them, even though the GOP is racist and misogynist as hell.
TBone
@Steve LaBonne: that’s exactly why I am considering it! ✊
SomeRandomGuy
@Bupalos: Honestly, I think that the big problem is, Republicans really do live in another world, because they’ve been lied to for so long. Republicans won’t even admit it’s wrong to steal the nation’s crown-jewels secrets, and retain them in contempt of a court order.
We don’t have sane discussions in this nation, because one side will haul out ridiculous lies, and won’t get called out for it. So we end up with irrational results. It takes a real pro to sort truth from lies, even some hobbyists can’t keep up, not when so many people make the same, poll-tested statement, that’s completely unrelated to the truth, other than accidentally.
Aziz, light!
My final words to a majority of American voters before I sign off from here indefinitely because I need a break from this nightmare:
“You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!”
Peace out, jackals. Be excellent to each other.
SomeRandomGuy
Um. 500 posts means something, right?
Elizabelle
@Ivan X: Hugs. I am gonna take a news break too, and less BJ. Just not into toxic politics. A friend marveled that USA had elected a Dark Triad type. Make that re-elected.
Ah well. Fuck ‘em.
Elizabelle
@SomeRandomGuy: T. Bogg unit achieved. Would prefer it were a celebratory thread. But not the country we live in.
Villago Delenda Est
Someone may have mentioned this before, but I can’t understand why the turnout in 2024 was millions short of 2020. This does not compute.
Lolis
@xephyr:
Same. I’m willfully not giving Trump and Republicans my mental and physical health. I’m reminding everyone I know to do the same.
Villago Delenda Est
Helped along with glee by the MSM minions of the billionaire parasite oligarchs.
suffragette city
Just remembered I need to buy more onions….
I’ve mostly lurked here since almost the beginning of this blog. Still proud of being a very small part of this community.
Thank you John for allowing all of us this space. And to the rest of us..keep on keepin on. We so need it right now.
citizen dave
@Nukular Biskits: I read them all, and thoroughly enjoyed them. That’s a righteous rant!
Steve LaBonne
@Villago Delenda Est: “They both suck. I’m too cool to throw my vote away on either one.”
Steve LaBonne
@SomeRandomGuy: “The agreement was there would be no fact checking.”
citizen dave
@Villago Delenda Est: I learned the basic numbers and the scale of the “missing voter problem” here this morning. Seems to me THE story. I mean, WTF? How are so many people that fucking lame? In a sane nation, yadda yadda yadda.
The Red Pen
@Chris Johnson:
Probably. I think the first year, particularly, will be a stunning display of Dunning-Kruger effect as the new Trump regime discovers their insane plans are actually pretty hard to execute.
ssdd
@Villago Delenda Est:
Covid. It was a lot easier to vote by mail and people had plenty of extra time on their hands in lockdown.
dww44
Where is a new thread? I need a fresh one to commiserate with folks. Where are all the front pagers?
Quinerly
I can’t figure out where to put this. So going on 3 threads. Newsflash…. Old White Man feels disrespected by Black Woman.
“Philadelphia Democratic Chair Bob Brady blamed Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for what looked like the lowest performance by a Democratic presidential candidate in the city in the last two decades and said he felt no responsibility for the red wave that descended on the state.
‘They never dealt with us. They didn’t show us any respect. I never talked to the lady, and she’s the candidate,’Brady said of Harris.
He said he thought President Joe Biden should probably have remained the candidate.
He argued Gov. Josh Shapiro should have been Harris’ vice presidential pick. He said Democrats needed a “better candidate,” referencing Harris.
And he said ward leaders in the city felt disrespected, implying that could have impacted how hard they worked for her in the city.”
inquirer.com/politics/election/live/2024-election-pennsylvania-results-updates-news-20241106.html/ca…
SomeRandomGuy
@FDRLincoln: I’m not sure it will. We don’t have any sort of shared truth or values right now. That said, if we make it through this, it will be because of shared truth and values, and trying to evoke goodness, you know, the basic “shared value” might help.
Think of your fellow man, lend him a helping hand, and put a little love in your heart, as the song goes.
Past that? I’m a fucking gimp with little I can do to fight back. I’ve never hated that more. But I do know, when I stretch out my body to do something good, kindly, loving, what-have-you, at least it feels a little bit worth it, rather than being just another timespan spent writhing in pain. So, you see it’s getting late, please don’t hesitate, and put a bit of love in your heart, it’s better than simply writhing in pain.
I don’t think that last part was in the original *cover* of the song, but I do feel it’s established without need for lyrical proof.
Nukular Biskits
@citizen dave:
I’m done being nice.
Quinerly
@dww44: tons of new threads. For some reason this one is pinned to the top of the page.
Go below this one.
Chris Johnson
@Villago Delenda Est: Likewise. It’s frustrating but unsurprising to me that this becomes a thing that Must Not Be Observed. Sure didn’t look to me like that was going to be a thing.
Quinerly
@ssdd: still amazing that the # was over 15 million more in 2020.
Ohio Mom
@dww44: There are new threads below. Cole pinned this one to the top.
burritoboy
Obviously, I don’t want to come in with my “I’m from a Jew from Eastern Europe” as any sort of superiority. (Trust me, my native country has ……..ahem, had lots of immensely shitty governments, including, reasonably far in the past, a proto-fascist one.) And while it’s (possibly? probably?) in a better place now (sort-of), that hurts – (at least) some of my people have done some things that are basically indescribably evil. Mass murders, pogroms, assassinations, political prisons, sticking our own people in various camps, allying with some (most?) of the world’s most horrific regimes in various ways, corruption on an industrial scale. Voting for a long list of tyrants and demagogues and criminals. And yeah, we did that (and a lot of us did them, too.) We can tell ourselves that it wasn’t me, it wasn’t my family, it wasn’t my friends – and that’s true! (My family tended to be more victims than victimizers, yes, but we didn’t do much to positively help either.) I’ve got to deal with that history, and now Americans have more of their own foulness to deal with. It’s tragic and enraging but that’s what happens when you mature as a nation – you’ll mess up, and there’s not that much excuse, and you have to deal with that. And you have to deal with needing to deal with your mistakes. And that doesn’t negate putting the blame on the right people either. But, yeah, your country is diminished, my (home) country is diminished and that sadness must be acknowledged.
Brant Lamb
@schrodingers_cat: Oh, for the love of dog, GIVE IT A REST. JFCOAC!
Nukular Biskits
John, I got you. And I’m not saying that I’ll never say things I won’t (will?) regret.
But the time for making nice with assholes is over. I’m not advocating for looking for a fight. But, I’m sick and fucking tired of trying to keep the peace when these assholes start making excuses for, promoting or defending Trump.
Quinerly
@Brant Lamb: were you around when we had to hear about “the generals” at a minimum of 4-5 times on every thread? Fun times. Pre pie filter. If I am not mistaken, we lost at least 2 knowledgeable commenters during that period.
One More Red Nightmare
Longtime lurker. Thank you to this entire community. I’m still in shock.
dr. luba
@Quinerly:
I hope these folks enjoy watching Gaza be leveled by Bibi with Trump’s permission, the remaining Palestinians expelled, and everything replaced by new Jewish settlements.
I mean, that’s what they voted for.
YY_Sima Qian
If I may put forward a slightly different spin:
Now, recriminations, score settling & blaming (such as whether Biden should have exited the race, who should have been VP, which demographic should have been pandered to) are in fact uncalled for at this (or any) moment, & deeply unproductive. However, now is the time for conversations & arguments to get real (& necessarily uncomfortable), but hopefully in a productive way.
Clearly, the Dem (& by extension the anti-Fascist coalition’s) strategy is not working, at least some of the fundamental assumptions were wrong (as in the self-conceptions & self-deception in how Liberals/Progressive/Leftists related to ourselves, other people in the US, & the rest of the world). We need challenges our conceptions and assumptions, reassess our understanding of reality & the socio-politico-economic dynamics, and reformulate strategy. The issues are foundational, far beyond the points of contention I mentioned above. & we should not expect the Dem institutionalist to lead this process.
In the spirit of challenging our self-comforting self-delusions, here is a snippet from Adam Tooze (click through the link for the video):
Neutron Flux
Excellent. Well said.
Brant Lamb
@No One of Consequence: “Mathematically meaner.” Perhaps you mean exponentially meaner? Because mathemathically meaner doesn’t mean anything.
Ruviana
@Steve LaBonne: maybe that’s why he never wears a jacket?
SpaceUnit
@YY_Sima Qian:
Who is Adam Tooze? Are you endorsing this statement?
YY_Sima Qian
As satisfying as the schadenfreude of seeing people “reap what they sow” may be, & none of us are immune to the pull, it is utterly nihilistic in face of the coming Fascist onslaught. Yes, Muslim & Arab Americans who voted for Trump or Stein (or more likely, did not vote at all) due to their justified rage at the Biden Administration’s indefensible policy toward Israel-Palestine were in fact acting to the detriment of their self-professed interests. So are the Jewish Americans who vote R to “support” Israel, & the Hispanic Americans who gravitated to Trump due to their misogyny & transphobia, & the Chinese Americans who have been brainwashed by the Falun Gong & Miles Guo, or all of the White working class voting for Rs since Reagan. There have been plenty of schadenfreude to be had all through history, but it does not solve or alleviate a damned thing. Indeed no one will have time for schadenfreude because we will be suffering along w/ them.
I think the more productive discussion is why did the Biden Administration & the Dem establishment largely failed to distance from an Israel under the most ultra-right wing ethno-/religio-nationalist government ever (increasingly illiberal & indeed Fascistic), insisted on being complicit in Israel atrocities in Gaza & the WB, all the while w/ Bibi being opening hostile to Dems’ interests. There is some deep seated pathologies there. Distancing from Israel & conditioning support for its self-defense on adherence to 2SS & IHL/LOAC, even if they failed to moderate Israeli behavior, would have at least reduced US complicity in the war crimes & crimes against humanity being carried out on a daily basis. It should have been good policy, possibly good politics (since all the polling showed low support across the political spectrum in the US for Israel’s war of vengeance), & certainly the morally upright thing to do.
So, if distancing from Israel would have been “pandering” to the Muslim/Arab American vote, who was the Dem establishment pandering to w/ its insistence of hugging Israel tight? The few Jewish mega donors who are single issue on Israel (even if Israel itself is become increasingly fascistic)? That kind of people do not belong in the anti-Fascist coalition. Or is it fear of Rs wedging the Dems on the issue? That kind of timidity is not what we need at this moment of national peril.
Eric S.
I’m more lurker than commenter and I’m coming late to this thread….
I’ve been traveling / at a conference all day. I’m just now really processing what happened. It’s bad.
I’m depressed. I’m furious. I’m despondent. I’m at a loss.
Like JC I’m a 50s white man. I have some money and some skills and maybe some connections. Fight or flight???
I’ve been in the shadows here since Cole was a winger. For a long time now B-J has been a refuge for me. I know there are people who agree with me outside my bubble.
Whether individually we run, hide, or fight we need to stay intellectually and emotionally one team. I think I’m going to fight. I don’t know in what form but it’ll be in the way I can contribute best and protect my loved ones.
We have to stand together.
Dan B
@Central Planning: Be very careful of letting people know you’re a progressive, or Democrat, with guns. The right are itching for a shooting war with “dangerous dems”. It’s most important to know who’s your team and how to protect everyone. Learn from black activists. If they all get guns then it’s time but nit until then.
SpaceUnit
@Eric S.:
Very glad to have you with us. And I’ve felt the same way all day.
Seanly
@RaflW:
Wife & I had belonged to UU church in Harrisburg PA & went a handful of times to the Columbia SC one. (Yeah, I can’t stop getting jobs in red areas)
Maybe we should give the Boise UU church again… went about 10 years ago and it didn’t grab us.
Ivan X
@WeWantPie: We’ll have you! Thanks for posting!
Kent
Or, you know, Hamas could just surrender like any normal defeated army and end it all tomorrow.
West of the Rockies
@WeWantPie:
Welcome aboard!
YY_Sima Qian
@SpaceUnit: Adam Tooze is a renounced Columbia academic on economic history. He is somewhat left wing in his politics & economic analysis, but many Leftists would consider him “captured by the Establishment”. And yes, I think his comment contains some truth wrt many American liberals (particularly at the establishment/institutional level), & indeed establishment/institutional liberals in general across the world. Of course, capacity for self-delusion is a human condition, hardly limited to liberals.
If we are to defeat the oncoming Fascist onslaught, we must 1st discard any delusions we have hold about ourselves (as liberals, progressives, or Leftists). A persistent Left critique of liberalism (both classical & modern) is that, in practice “liberal internationalism” translates to “liberal hegemony” backed by militarism & economic/financial coercion, to maintain a world order that perpetually advantages the industrialized West over the developing world. This at a moment when the American electorate across the political spectrum is clearly averse to foreign military intervention & foreign entanglements. Domestically, liberal economic policies still tended to prioritize the interests of capital owners (at least take great care not to undermine their interests), propping up asset bubbles, & equates capital accumulations w/ economic growth. This at a moment when the American electorate across the political spectrum is deeply skeptical of capital.
Leftists have their own blind spots, such as the over focus on socio-economic forces over cultural-religious ones.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: i was raised in the episcopal church. They’ve gotten more inclusive, but never said the sorts of divisive and judgemental things we hear coming out of the evangelicals and far right. A lot of the teachings of Jesus that I learned there have stayed, as clear internalized values.
The sermons were great about explaining the deeper meanings of the verse readings of the day. Respectful and eclectic. I hope you will feel nourished there.
im looking into attending more often at the Unitarian Universalist church near me, if I can get my upside down sleep schedule righted back to daytime hours. I like their activism and social Justice angle, and it’s way less about the religion part of Christianity, which isn’t a good fit for me.
Any place you go, there are good people and bad people. No matter what the stated “values are” it’s humans everywhere.
SpaceUnit
@YY_Sima Qian:
I asked because he sounds more like Jordan Peterson.
Narcissism. Christ.
Lily
@Quinerly: What a gem. Wanted Biden, didn’t want Walz, and she wasn’t “good enough.” But then she didn’t come
kiss his ringshow respect, so why work hard for her.In Philly she was focused on young people, prob for bigger turnout and street work.
p.a.
First woman president will be a Republican Stepford Wife type blonde Faux talking head spouting the chosen bigotries of the moment because their fucking voters will do what they need to to win no matter what they actually feel about women.
YY_Sima Qian
@SpaceUnit: Well, Adam Tooze himself can be pretty arrogant, as Ivy League academics could be. However, I find his multi-discipline, comparative & historical approach to analyses often perspicacious.
Ariobarzanes
I mostly just lurk. But I’ve been reading this site since probably the Bush administration. Thanks to all here.
Gloria DryGarden
@Seanly: in Denver we also have first spiritual science church. New thought, woo woo stuff. I kind of like it. There are people, so politics happen, interactions if every kind, but also uplifting, and community.. don’t know if your town g
has any such thing. Community seems important now, and places to speak without electronic listening..
different-church-lady
@YY_Sima Qian: If people vote for naked fascism, what is there to do? Somehow lie better than them?
YY_Sima Qian
@different-church-lady: Like the Germans of the late Weimar Republic, people who feel insecure & have lost faith in the establishment elites will gravitate toward the extremes. Unfortunately, the Left is pretty marginal in the US (after decades of suppression through the Cold War & the post-Cold War neoliberal reign), so the more obvious & vocal insurgents are on the right.
Maybe 20% of Americans, as elsewhere, are committed authoritarians. There are at least 10% of Americans who are protest voting against their perceived establishment, rather than for Fascism per se. There are also ~ 40% of Americans who are disaffected from politics, disillusions w/ the establishment. Instead of despairing about the rightward turn of the US polity (which seems to be the lazy MSM take), I think it is more instructional to try to understand why Harris underperformed Biden by millions of votes. Trump did not add supporters this time around. Why were millions of Biden voters disillusioned w/ the Dems this time, & how to get some of the ~ 40% of non-voters engaged w/ politics again.
Yes, low voter participation in elections is pervasive across liberal democracies, that suggests some deep seated pathology in liberal democracy as a system of government, at least as currently constructed.
SomeRandomGuy
@Brant Lamb: “Exponentially” is often misused, too. Technically, it should only be used when the rate of growth of something is determined by its current value.
Mathematically meaner, if intended to mean “statistically significant more mean-ness, by objective measures,” would make a kind of sense. Granted, I’m reading a lot into the expression :-) but, I was a math teacher – I’m used to making people feel brilliant when they can finally state the obvious.
Ohio Mom
A big sign of relief, just got an email from the county board of disability services, their levy passed. Ohio Son gets to keep his services. Whew!
YY_Sima Qian
@different-church-lady: Don’t let the MSM make you believe that the US is a right wing country.
But maybe the Dem Party should stop running to the center.
SpaceUnit
@YY_Sima Qian:
Gee, it’s so hard to imagine he’s been renounced.
YY_Sima Qian
@SpaceUnit: Sorry, meant to write renowned. Damned autocorrect.
SpaceUnit
@YY_Sima Qian:
Maybe sometimes autocorrect gets it right.
YY_Sima Qian
@SpaceUnit: Take a long hard look at how the Biden Administration (& Dem Administrations past) related to the world (especially the developing world), rhetorically & in policy, and tell me where Tooze is wrong.
CliosFanboy
Just had to write off an old friend who called me a liar for accurately describing TFG. I always new he had a strong authoritarian streak, so I expected it. Still hurts. And I know more is to come
RaflW
@Seanly: FWIW Sara started at Boise UU in the fall of 2015. No pressure of course.
I’m really glad BF & I, and another friend, went to our local Minneapolis UU congregation this evening. Just being in a space with other people having some feels was helpful, and the messages and singing were real, not some polyanna “its gonna be ok.” More like, here’s how we grieve, and later (but soon) we’ll talk about the work of safety and community.
SpaceUnit
@YY_Sima Qian:
The foundations of liberalism are humanitarianism and empiricism, the stuff of enlightenment.
There might be a few roosters like your pal Tooze strutting around campus completely full of themselves, but his sad projection is very much irrelevant. Liberals just want a good society.
ETA: Again, narcissism? Christ.
Sister Golden Bear
@Quinerly: I’m sure the record of voters in Philly share his concern. Asshole.
Lily
@Ohio Mom: wonderful !
CliosFanboy
@Nukular Biskits:
i am totally out of nice.
Monty
Hi I know its late in the thread but ive been a lurker here for a long while. I think I started reading shortly after the 04 election. Many times Ive been disappointed on election nights but I gotta say 16 was really hard and last night just knocked the wind out of me. Its been a hard day to focus and just try to understand what the heck happened. Anyway I know its late in the thread but I just had to get a few words out before I go insane. Gads I just don’t know where we go from here.
Monty
Torrey
@NutmegAgain:
Thank you for this classical music streaming option. It is what I needed right now.
And speaking of things I needed right now,
@RaflW:
Thank you for the link to Giridharadas and Solnit. Nobody really knows exactly the reason for what happened or how we’ll manage, but the dose of perspective is much appreciated
SpaceUnit
@Monty:
Good to see you, Monty. Hang around. Engage. It will do you good in this perilous time.
YY_Sima Qian
@SpaceUnit:
In theory, sure. In practice, in the real world?
SpaceUnit
@YY_Sima Qian:
These things have no place in the real world???
Irony Abounds
It isn’t easy stifling the anger I feel now, but it isn’t anger at Biden, or Harris or Democrats in general. I’m just angry at how fucked up the country is going to be in a very short period of time, and unlike prior fucked up periods of time in the past, this one isn’t going to be easy to get out of. Hungary and India made pretty easy transitions to authoritarian states and they haven’t been able to get back. With the Presidency, the Senate, very likely the House and the Supreme Court you can bank on the GOP instituting whatever it takes to ensure future elections are for appearance sake only. Sorry if I’m so pessimistic, but logically it only makes sense.
YY_Sima Qian
@SpaceUnit: The liberalism people in the US & around the world engage w/ in is not that of the idealized political theory, but a world that is [partly] product of policies implemented by self-proclaimed liberal politicians, and [partly] product of foreign policies of self-proclaimed Western liberal democracies. The realities produced by those policies often belie & contradict the idealized mantle they wrap themselves in, & yet a lot of liberal politicians & leaders are completely blind to the hypocrisy & the contradiction.
The Biden team truly believe they are “organizing world” to defend a “rules based international order”, even as their actually policies often undermined the very foundations of any semblance of international order. Economically, it was economic nationalism & industrial policy for me, but neoliberalism & austerity for thee.
Russia, the PRC, & India are not the only revisionist powers in the world; the US one, too, a fact that few in the US seem to realize or want to acknowledge. That is Tooze’s point.
VeniceRiley
@YY_Sima Qian: Someone doesn’t realize what cohort does all the work in the entire democratic party. It’s the one every other group just didn’t show up for and, indeed, kicked in the junk.
They’re not going to make that mistake again. I’m not either. Y’all can shove around your various groups that you think are more important and sort it. Wrap a bow on it. Get a single job done without black women or gays. Just get it done. Then, maybe, eventually, what remains of us might feel …. Nah, we won’t. Not even going to watch the shit show.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: That’s really interesting. I am noticing that in very red Ohio our local levies for schools and disability services etc do seem to keep passing.
YY_Sima Qian
@VeniceRiley: Every part of the anti-Fascist coalition is needed, & need to stand united: Liberals, Progressives, Leftists, minorities (those who aren’t pro-authoritarian), LGBTQ (again, those who aren’t pro-authoritarian), even Centrists who prioritize anti-Fascism over protection of capital owners.
Keith P.
Good lord, I thought this post was old 4 hours ago! Close to 600 comments…
SpaceUnit
@YY_Sima Qian:
You’re really overthinking this.
Liberals just want a better world. There’s no idealized political theory. You need to get off campus more.
df
Kate McKinnon’s “Hallelujah” on SNL in 2016 still makes me a little verklempt, especially watching it now. It was also the week Leonard Cohen passed away.
I’m not giving up, and neither should you.
YY_Sima Qian
@SpaceUnit: I expected Tooze’s choice of words will prove provocative, but I think you really need to engage w/ the consequences of policies implemented by liberal politicians in the US, & foreign policies of Western liberal democracies in the developing world.
“Meaning well” is not worth much. Have liberal politicians in Western liberal democracies made progress toward a better (more equal, more just, more peaceful) world? In some ways, yes. In many important ways, no. Time grapple w/ the latter.
SpaceUnit
@YY_Sima Qian:
You’re arguing that improvement is the enemy of the perfect. Okay. Got it.
NickM
Hi! Kind-of delurking to thank everyone here starting with John for making this site the one I screen a lot of my news through. I am here for what lies ahead. Solidarity and community is essential.
YY_Sima Qian
@SpaceUnit: If you insist on putting words in my mouth, I am not going to engage further.
VeniceRiley
@YY_Sima Qian: I’m just saying it’s unrealistic to expect black people, black women especially, and, to a lesser extent, liberal women in general to just “get over it.”
We have been utterly betrayed. There is not a scintilla of trust left. Not a single glimmer. Guys think they’re so smart and important, then they can sort it. Fucking put that misogynistic piece of shit Bernie Sanders in charge. I do not care. I’m sure he’ll have plenty of Squeaky Fromme white ladies to help. I am telling you that black women are saying they are done. Finished. Best make a plan for how you’ll fill that effort gaping black hole their rage is going to leave in the party.
SpaceUnit
@YY_Sima Qian:
I was spoiling for a fight tonight because I have all this horrible negative energy inside me. Apologies. I am a mess right now.
I went at you because you are a formidable opponent and I needed a good fight.
Respect.
Melancholy Jaques
@Brant Lamb:
What is JFCOAC? I think I get the first three but after that . . .
Gretchen
@Melancholy Jaques: on a cracker
Melancholy Jaques
@YY_Sima Qian:
The question is, for me anyway, why are they feeling so insecure? Why have they lost faith in establishment elites?
Life is pretty fucking good here in the USA. Not sure why white people with jobs and money are so fucking angry.
Also, why do they think a billionaire backed by other billionaire is not an establishment elite?
YY_Sima Qian
@VeniceRiley: I don’t think anyone is asking anyone to “get over it”. There is no “getting over” the election outcome or the inevitably terrible consequences short & long term, in the US & around the world.
However, I think all of us have to stop thinking that any part of the anti-Fascist coalition is dispensable, or that only “our” part of the coalition is indispensable, or that any one part of the coalition has sole access to “truth & wisdom”. As the Founding Fathers of the US said, we can hang together, or we can hang separately.
Some of us, myself included, can & have mitigated the worst impacts by living overseas, but none of us can truly escape.
Melancholy Jaques
@Gretchen:
Thank you.
YY_Sima Qian
@Melancholy Jaques: I think New Deal Dem might put something up at his blog, & possibly here, that could speak to the issue.
My WAG is sky high prices of housing & autos are not reflected in the inflation indices, & high interest rates on mortgages & auto loans compound the issue. Both hit new entrants in the job market very hard, but not so much the college goers. There is the fact that much of the added jobs in the US are less secure service industry jobs (& why should service industry jobs be insecure is another issue altogether). Then there is the issue of massive over-financialization of the US economy creating a lot of fluff in GDP figures that do not translate to standard of living or even quality of life for average Americans. The asset bubbles inflated by monetary easing for the COVID crises also did not benefit most Americans. (Dems should really stop bragging about stock market indices, driven by the “Magnificent Seven” of tech stocks benefiting from the AI craze, it is divorced from the real economy.)
However, yes, at least the Germans of the late Weimar Republic can point to total collapse of the economy & social order. That’s not the US today. I had to chuckle when one IR scholar I follow on Twitter said he would forever stop ragging on the Germans of the late Weimar for going with Hitler
As to your last question, Trump was the only candidate w/ a populist message, to an electorate very amenable to populist messaging. He is not the 1st, nor will be the last, charlatan from elite background to take on the populist mantle.
YY_Sima Qian
@SpaceUnit: Hey, no problem. I understand.
I have tried to distract myself through work con calls. Which is pretty pathetic, to be honest.
But discussions here have helped, too!
Mai Naem mobile
@Melancholy Jaques: because they see these influencers on Instagram and tiktok supposedly living lives of luxury going on exotic vacations on private planes and their pretty good lives don’t stack up to those people. Pre-social media you could be envious of some glamorous lives showed on some fictional TV show or some celebrity home pics in People magazine or whatever. But the stuff wasn’t right in front of you 24/7. It just builds up envy and FOMO.
YY_Sima Qian
@Mai Naem mobile: The dropping life expectancy (& many other developmental indices) & the opioid crisis in the US, alone among developed countries, are evidence of some deep socio-economic issues, stand in sharp contrast to the rip-roaring nominal GDP growth. It is not just envy.
Straythoughts
@Mai Naem mobile: Thank you.
xephyr
@citizen dave: I think you’re right. I’ve been using the word, “morons” a lot lately. Pretty sure I’ve almost worn it out.
Gretchen
@YY_Sima Qian: Harris’s plans for housing affordability, college loan forgiveness, minimum wage increase, support for unions and reducing grocery prices is “ no populist message”, while Trump’s “trust me, I’ll make it better” with no explanation about how he’s going to do it is a strong populist message?
Darkrose
I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. I have always known this because I have lived in this country for 54 years as a Black woman, and I suspected but hoped that finally, perhaps, we wouldn’t be seen as dispensible. The majority of voters, plus the 15 million who couldn’t be arsed to vote for the intelligent, competent, Black woman over the convicted felon with mush for brains, clearly disagree.
I’m grieving that so many people in this country hate me and people like me. Please don’t lecture me on what I should be doing right now.
Msb
@Mai Naem mobile: or his dementia can no longer be concealed.
YY_Sima Qian
@Gretchen: Bullet points in policy papers versus feels & vibes, yes. I think there is a pent up rage to upend the socio-economic status quo (although different groups might have different reasons for wanting to do so), & Dems tinkering at edges of the political economy in the technocratic “good governance” way that Dems do best is not up to the task.
I had always been very skeptical of strategies that play to populist passions, which itself can be a slippery slope to reactionary hell. However, it seems that populist discontent is out of the cages in the US (& everywhere else). We can try to channel it left, or leave it to gravitate to the right. The center has not held, and will not hold.
YY_Sima Qian
@Darkrose: I was not speaking to you or anyone specifically.
I don’t have your background, upbringing & life experience, so I won’t pretend to know how you feel.
However, at the end of the day, we all still face the same choice. Hang together, or hang separately. I do not believe any individual or any group is going to be able to stem the coming Fascist tide in the US. We still need as broad a coalition as we can muster, whether at the ballot box, on the streets & in the communities, or heaven forbid on the battlefield.
columbusqueen
@taumaturgo: Stow it, please.
Msb
@VeniceRiley:
I absolutely understand this view. When I saw the result, I thought what I thought in ‘16: “now I know how much Americans, including some women, hate women.” A very bitter pill to swallow.
Women and African Americans, especially people who are both, are the spine of the Democratic Party. Sadly, the bad guys would be delighted if that spine just quit.
BethanyAnne
@Darkrose: She is amazing. She is, simply, the best of us. I hope she runs for governor of California. I’m bewildered and enraged that America chose that turd over her. I truly thought it would go differently.
YY_Sima Qian
Speaking of people voting against their economic interest, & possible problems w/ the Dem’s messaging & rhetorical emphasis:
Comment from Isabella M. Weber:
Before anyone piles on against Weber for talking like Bernie Sanders, it was she (along w/ Stephanie Kelton & Claudia Sahm) who popularized the concept of “sellers’ inflation” to policymakers across the West to describe the inflation caused by COVID induced supply shock, & that this should be managed differently than inflation caused by overheating demand. Icons of econ orthodoxy such as Larry Summers asserted that inflation could only be brought under control by raising interest rate & cutting spending, necessarily resulting in a recession w/ the working class bearing the brunt. The Fed had to raise rates, but the Biden Administration listened to voices such as Weber’s and did not go for austerity. Now inflation has fallen w/o the US getting into a recession (as Europe has). For her troubles, Weber (& Kelton & Sahm) caught lots of misogynist flak from the male dominated econ establishment.
Some segment of the population is protest voting for the reactionaries in hope of solutions to their anxieties & insecurities (which they will not find). The question is do we try to convince them that illiberalism & authoritarianism is evil, or try to convince them that the anti-Fascist coalition has actual solutions to their anxieties & insecurities, or do we write them off?
Aussie sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Successful politicians are able to make their affect their message. The Dem coalition is too broad and inchoate imo for any one national figure to be able to successfully accomplish this. Harris is a political athlete and Walz was great. It’s just that the affect didn’t really convey the message needed. There should be no blame for this other than for cynical nihilists who exploit gaps like this.
That would be right wing arseholes and the people that fund them.
Elizabelle
@NutmegAgain: Thank you! Listening to Schubert piano sonata right now. If they have NPR at the hour, muting it immediately.
WCRB out of Boston. W-Crab? Easy to remember.
Elizabelle
@Darkrose: Hugs, Darkrose. Awful results.
Totally a surprise to me; still gravitating between numb and anger.
This is on them, not us. Are we responsible for their pathologies? Really? (That one not directed at your comment.)
burritoboy
The problem with this one of Tooze’s quips is multi-fold:
Most important to my mind is that Tooze is being disdainful of his only real potential actual allies while he doesn’t do his own job. What we need from Tooze is (very broadly) a convincing foundational economic text of the same stature of Kenyes’ General Theory that does the work of interpreting the economy. There are not too many potential people who might be able to do that, Tooze is one of them, and he hasn’t done it. Quips about centrist liberals is not going to replace that work which is his to do.
Secondly, and this is also important, Tooze is projecting a massive international left that does not really exist – AND he is going to do nothing to bring it into existence (little bits and pieces do exist that do not form much of a single thing.) Again, he’s chosen to primarily be a theorist – and that’s great! Standing on the sidelines and telling the ONLY massive, actually organized groups of people that they are all doing it wrong in disdainful tones is not really productive when Tooze himself can’t manage to do much that moves the needle.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie sheila: No, I think the issues are much deeper than who were on the ticket.
I am encouraged by some progress at state & local levels. This is where the reactionary counter-revolution started. The Repubs will also present opportunities through their misrule, & misrule they will, & the anti-Fascist coalition w/ the Dem Party as the main vessel has to be ready to pounce when they do. However, Dem leaders have to stop thinking of themselves as institutionalists defending an Establishment status quo. The status quo is gone, the institutions too (or have been seized/cooped by the reactionaries). They have to think of themselves as insurgents, as the Repubs did for so long.
On the other hand, we will have to face the reactionaries wielding the full power of the national security state & the corporate/financial establishment to oppress opposition. You know most of the corporate/financial interests & the capital owners will ultimately make accommodations w/ the powers that be to ensure their own survival & prosperity.
burritoboy
And, before you jump on me, Tooze’s books are good. But they are not (generally) the foundational works of economic theory of the stature we need. Of course, that’s an extraordinarily high bar that almost nobody can achieve (these appear only a few times a century.) But that’s what Tooze has chosen to do, and not to be an actual political actor himself. (And I think he’s chosen rightly: to run around after a big loss and call people narcissistic is not diplomatic or considerate – that’s why he is a theorist and he should continue to work on that!)
YY_Sima Qian
@burritoboy: Right on w/ your criticism of Tooze and similar Left Wing/pseudo-Left intellectuals! I think both his & your criticisms are valid.
I think we all have roles to play in the anti-Fascist coalition, and we should have roles in the coalition for anyone interested. No one has a monopoly on truth and wisdom but we need everyone committed to anti-Fascism to pull together.
Bernie Sanders stopping coordination w/ the Dem Party & forming a 3rd party? Terrible, narcissistic play, because the US does not have a parliamentary system. That just throws elections to the reactionaries w/o them having to resort to heavily manipulated elections.
burritoboy
“However, Dem leaders have to stop thinking of themselves as institutionalists defending an Establishment status quo. The status quo is gone, the institutions too (or have been seized/cooped by the reactionaries). They have to think of themselves as insurgents, as the Repubs did for so long.”
I don’t think too many here would – if you had started with this – have that much core disagreement with this. The difficulty – and people are going to quite reasonably ask you immediately – how anyone should go about doing this in concrete terms. And they won’t be satisfied with these generalities, and rightly so.
YY_Sima Qian
@burritoboy: I think Adam L. Silverman has written quite a bit about this.
There were things Dems could have done while still in power: such as start packing the courts, ending filibuster, scrapping all of these Senate rules & norms that Repub use to ensure “gridlock”. Now that the Dems will soon be out of power, I think it has to be formulating & confidently promoting economic policies that explicitly advantage the working & middle class, necessarily at the expense of capital owners (although that is not the point in & of itself). Continue the vocal defense of minority rights & permissive social values. Don’t do any deals w/ the Repubs in the name of bipartisanship, not on the economy, not on trade, not on taxation/regulation, not on national security, not on immigration. Don’t give them that bipartisan cover & become complicit in the reactionaries’ crimes, the reactionaries are not acting in good faith on any of those subjects, will just be leveraging them to advance their reactionary goals. Utilize every tool at their disposal, in Congress, in state houses, in governor’s mansions, city councils & mayor’s offices, to gum up and slow down the implementation of reactionary policies. Scorched earth all the way as Repubs had done since the 90s at least. Enforce party discipline.
Believe me, as late as 2022 I would not have written these words.
I don’t claim to have all or any of the answers, I am happy to hear everyone else’ thoughts, but conversations/arguments need to start on what the answers might be.
Ruckus
@BethanyAnne:
I don’t think it’s her, I think it’s because she is a her. For some people this is a big change. It shouldn’t be, she is a politician and has been for some time. But some just aren’t ready for a woman to be president. I mean they chose shitforbrains over someone actually human, smart and far more than capable, while he is a male, he is barely human, and he fails every other measure of doing the job.
Gretchen
@YY_Sima Qian: I’m puzzled why Sanders et al have chosen this moment to say that Dems didn’t reach out to the working class. Biden has been the most pro-labor president since FDR. He is the only president and Harris the only VP in history to join a picket line. They saved the Teamster’s pensions. They are in favor of raising the minimum wage and have fixed the dysfunctional public service student loan forgiveness program that only forgave a handful of student loans, and has forgiven millions since they fixed it. Harris has proposals for housing affordability, prosecuting price-gouging corporations who cause high food prices, fixing the immigration system so the people who work in agriculture, construction and restaurants can stay. Trump’s only proposal is to kick all those people out so food and constructions prices go up, and raise tariffs so the price of everything else goes up. Yet Bernie says Trump speaks to working class voters more than Harris?
Gretchen
@Ruckus: Yes, this. Unfortunately I think that having two women lose to the manifestly unqualified Donald Trump, the Democrats won’t dare to nominate another woman for a generation. If we get a woman president before then, it will be a Republican. Liz Cheney and Nikki Haley are both hoping it’s them.
YY_Sima Qian
@Gretchen: The Biden team actually incorporated parts of Sanders’ platform in their economic program, which is why many progressives were pleasantly surprised by Biden. There is a lot of room to criticize in Dem’s economic program for not going nearly far enough given the gravity of the challenges, & maintaining Trump’s tariffs raised the cost of living for the lower income classes (sure didn’t help the inflation that added to working/middle class sense of precarity & scarcity).
However, Bernie Sanders seems to care more about being seen leading a movement to effect fundamental change, than actually working to effect change. Sometimes he says things that needs to be said, but he is not an effective leader for any movement.
Gretchen
When I see people say Harris lost because Gaza, I have some thoughts. I’m just a few years younger than Biden. Growing up, I personally knew people who were in Nazi slave labor/POW/death camps. When I saw an injured, disabled adult, I assumed it was a result of Nazi torture, because I knew people who had experienced that. When my son was young, his friend’s dad had a limp, and my immediate thought was “the Nazis did that”. Then I realized he was too young for that – he’d been injured in a motorcycle accident. I thought how lovely it was that my kids would grow up in a world where their friend’s parents hadn’t been tortured by the Nazis, and that injuries were due to ordinary causes. I knew that the Jews had been turned away by everyone who could have saved them, and felt passionately that they needed a place that had to accept them. We also remember the 6 day war, when their neighbors invaded them, confident that they could be wiped out, and the underdog fought back and, against all odds, prevailed and remained free. I think Biden shares that experience and that’s why it took both of us longer than younger people who didn’t experience that history to feel that Israel had gone too far.
The Woodward book says that Biden has spent hours on the phone with Netanyahu trying to convince him to stop, and Bibi has said FU. The ceasefire agreement he negotiated involved 15 countries. That tells you how complicated this is. Pull Israel’s arms, invite Iran to bomb them, start a regional war. That was all in the calculus, and the folks who say Biden should “just pick up the phone’” (he has) or “just cancel arms shipments” (maybe more complicated than you think) should consider that the Middle East has been a mess for the last century and there is no “just do this” solution to the problem. And voting for Jill Stein because she will “just do this” is exactly why we’re where we are.
Warblewarble
Taking care of each other , is taking care of ourselves. We will not be the ones to exacerbate any ones hurt.
YY_Sima Qian
@burritoboy: On the international Left, there are still sizable Left Wing parties in most parts of the world, but there is no cohesive international Left movement (just like there is no cohesive international labor movement), it is fragmented, & it is fragmented partly because the US (including successive Dem administrations) worked to keep it that way, seeing it as threat to US primacy. See how comfortably Dem presidents (Clinton, Obama & Biden) hobnobbed w/ right wing figures such as Abe of Japan, Yoon of SK, Modi of India, Meloni of Italy (as soon as she established her anti-Russia credentials), successive leaders of Poland, & the hagiographic praise they heaped on reactionary leaders in US allies as long as they aligned w/ the US’ geopolitical interests. Indeed, Dem presidents post-Carter often seemed more comfortable w/ right wing & centrist leader from around the world than left wing ones, because the Left tend to be much more skeptical of US militarism, hegemony & the domination of global financial system.
This is core to Tooze’s (& others on the Left) critique. Part of the effort to turn back the global rise of reactionary forces is to forge solidarity across global progressive forces.
Gretchen
@YY_Sima Qian: US presidents have to “hobnob” with the leaders of other countries, whether they like them or align with their policies or not, because they have to get the best policy outcomes possible. Did you see President Zelinskyy’s congratulation on Trump’s win? Do you think that’s because he’s happy Trump won? It’s because he knows he needs Trump’s help and is going to do his best to get along with him as best he can.
YY_Sima Qian
@Gretchen: It’s not just hobnobbing, but deliberately avoiding critique of right wing reactionary policies promoted by these leaders in their respective countries, putting them up for hagiographic praise, beyond the necessities of diplomatic niceties, but are in line w/ advancing U.S. interests in geopolitical competition. Dem presidents do not have to do any of this beyond what is required for alliance management, they are not in Zelenskyy’s position.
Alternatively, they can do what ever is necessary to advance U.S. geopolitical interests, ends justifying the means, but that makes any rhetoric of values based diplomacy ring hollow.
BethanyAnne
@Ruckus: I think that’s what I was trying to say, but it’s easily possible that I’m unclear. I don’t think I’m communicating at my best right now :)
YY_Sima Qian
@Gretchen: I don’t think there is a single factor leading to the loss, but a confluence of many factors, of which Gaza is one.
Voting for Trump or Stein (or not voting) out of frustration/rage/spite is indeed a willful act of self-harm, but so was the Biden Administration’s (or specifically, McGurk’s & Hochstein’s) strategy of hugging Bibi tight. That was a policy choice. There is a wide range of options between expediting everything Israel asked for, & cutting Israel off. The U.S. could have continued to provide air defense missiles to Israel to shoot down Hezbollah rockets and Iranian missiles, while withholding the 2000 lb dumb bombs that the IDF has dropped on densely packed civilian populations. Blinken also could have chosen not to circuit the internal process that would have identified IDF units committing war crimes so that U.S. supplied weapons would not directly go to them. These were all options that the Biden Administration chose not to explore.
I don’t think anyone expected Biden to “solve” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it was well w/in his power to reduce U.S. complicity in Israeli war crimes.
The point here is not to rehash all of the arguments that had gone on for months, but come to a common understanding of what it might take to hold an effective anti-Fascist coalition together. Perhaps we should dispense w/ unconditional support of an Israel that is itself becoming increasingly Fascistic?
Betty Cracker
@YY_Sima Qian: Just wanted to say it’s good to see you commenting more outside the Ukraine threads. I don’t always agree or have anything worthwhile to share in response, but your comments are always thoughtful. I hope you stick around.
YY_Sima Qian
@Betty Cracker: Thank you and I intend to. Of course, the Ukraine posts are those most friendly to my time zone. By the time I wake up, most of the non-Ukraine threads are dead. Being across the Pacific in China means I don’t have much constructive to say on granular US politics, anyway.
However, the latest catastrophe had concentrated my mind, you might say, & I have thoughts I wanted to share. Distance means my perspective is inevitably different. Being ethnically Han Chinese in China (even as a U.S. citizen), & harboring no ambition to challenge the rule of the CPC regime in China, my family & I are not at immediate risk as many here, although any further escalation of Sino-US tensions & we will be among those caught in the middle.
So, my perspective may come off as detached. As I said before, all views & sources of information should be critically interrogated. My perspective could be valuable, or out of touch, & only the community here can tell me that.
Sourmash
Lurker here and I have to say this place keeps me sane. Thanks to John for hosting, it really is a great place and the FPs are the very best. I don’t have the time to comment often, but now I need the team here. Thanks to everyone on here for your contributions.
David_C
@Gretchen: A little younger, but I grew up with people whose parents had numbers tattooed on their arms.
And this is a long thread.
tobie
@Gretchen: @YY_Sima Qian: I missed Sanders’ comments but am not surprised he took the opportunity to stab Dems in the back when they’re down. He’s a narcissist. Biden defended rail workers, auto workers, teamsters and dock workers and got nothing for it. He did it because it was the right thing to do. Plant construction for manufacturing is through the roof and it got him nothing. Manufacturing jobs have grown at an unprecedented rate during his term and it got him nothing.
He did everything he could for labor and forgotten Americans in his first two years with a slim majority in the House and a Senate majority with turncoats like Sinema and Manchin. Then we lost the House in 2022 and SCOTUS made sure to limit whatever the President did through executive actions because the President was a Dem. (Remember how SCOTUS limited his student loan forgiveness program? I do.)
Re interest rates: I guess Biden could have fired Powell since it’s the Fed that sets the interest rates. It would have been an autocratic move, and now we will have to steel ourselves for tons of autocratic moves because the idea of reasoned, deliberative govt is dead.
The dirty little secret that old school leftists like Sanders ignore is that most trades people in the US these days are not union members and don’t identify as labor. They run or work for a small business and think of themselves as entrepreneurs. They hate the govt, which they think of exclusively as red tape. They’re convinced that if they ran the show, all would be well. Trump exemplifies what they want to be.
This is the group that swung hard for Trump: non-college educated white, black and Hispanic men.
Sherrod Brown walked the walk and talked the talk in a state where manufacturing has been revived and was defeated by a small business man. This tweet from Julia Claire reveals some painful truths.
Radio Dave
Thanks for the great and groovy ref! There is a lot to be said for pleasant dreams in unpleasant time.
Lily
@Gretchen: Thanks