U.S. Politics, November 2024: GARBAGE DAY!!

what I've heard is it's once again the Olds that have let us down (nb none of the Olds on ILX)

cool woke young people may well be outnumbered by the kids of Trumpers, kids of old-fashioned Republicans, and junior fash young people radicalized by right-wing YouTube etc.

Exurb-dwellers (white flighters) are mostly quiet Republicans, with a few blowhards in the mix.

This has, so far, been a century of being disappointed periodically by half the country, but also recognizing in every case that I shouldn’t be surprised in the least.

In 2016 it was very much: I do not understand these people and am not of them.

Today it is very much am I even from this planet? I feel like a person completely out of time and history, as I imagine a lot of people opening this thread this morning will.

I went from dread to resignation real fast. Not sure how to feel right now— I have to go teach two classes and then work at my second job til 10pm.

Joe Rogan gets over 11 million listeners per episode. He (and the rest of them) has been shouting that Kamala wants to censor the internet for months now. They are also turning P Diddy's parties into Epstein-meets-pizzagate this week.

I went to sleep at 11 or so with things looking not great so I am not surprised she lost.

Dems absolutely need to go back to the drawing board because anti-Racism/anti-Fascism + country club Republicanism isn't a winning strategy.

Maybe they should try some strong left wing politics? We’ll never know

running in pure opposition to the republicans seems to work ok against an unpopular incumbent republican but works much less well when the dem candidate is closely associated with the unpopular incumbent dem and does nothing to distance themselves

there were glimpses at harris having an actual vision (legalising weed! expanding the child tax credit!) but it never seemed to be a focus of the campaign & she did nothing to escape biden's baggage

Eight years ago, I had the disposable income to denote to a bunch of organizations to mitigate the damage. Today I do not.

What orgs? Are they in the pocket of the Dem establishment?

Honestly, I think that the Dems need to completely rethink their strategy, run on popular progressive policies that many people agree on, and do it loudly. This centrist corporate shit, with no conception as of how normal peoples’ lives are on the ground, must fucking go.

Table: ALCU, SNCC, Planned Parenthood, the PA food bank (that’s where I lived at the time, as of right now I don’t know if I ever even wanna drive into that state ever again).

Ugh I can’t spell today it seems

This centrist corporate shit, with no conception as of how normal peoples’ lives are on the ground, must fucking go.

watch as most of them decide they didn't pivot to the right enough, it's going to be bleak

hi folks. i think this ends my relationship with the internet

I meant NAACP, not SNCC. My brain is fried.

Let’s all hang on today, alright?

it seemed like young folks were more mobilized than I've seen them in my lifetime.

i said this a couple of days ago but my 13-yo's tiktok feed was filled with pro-trump maga stuff with thousands of supportive comments and millions of likes, and he is not a maga dude at all. however he is "young" "white" and "male" so the algo appears to think this is what he wants

Gen Z is way more conservative than we thought I think

Somehow mine is too. So many MAGA TTs with literally THOUSANDS of supportive comments from young people. So many.

Random thought, but it feels like any kind of health is now nothing to play with: physical health, financial health, mental health.

i feel like my brain has been invaded by paranoid thoughts i don’t want to be in there, like, oh, idk, what if i’m forcibly detransitioned. probably won’t happen. but there it is in my head

anyway. i love you, whoever reads this

We love you too, Ivy.

yep

BBC exit polling seemed to show it was Gen X that really voted for Trump

Fucking hell.

Sorry, ivy, please take care of yourself.

Here's the demographic table, with all the exit poll caveats.

https://i.imgur.com/36KQSUi.jpeg

Sorry, xposted without seeing ivy's post ❤️

Gen Z is way more conservative than we thought I think

Yeah I knew I had seen the gender split written up. This is relatively recent but I’d be shocked if the actual breakdown was much different because this pattern was noticeable in the UK elections too.

Young women said they’ll vote for Harris over Trump by a 33-point margin. Young men were essentially even, with Harris having a 2-point lead.

My sister and her boyfriend are in Spain or Portugal right now. I wonder if they're looking into staying.

Love to ufo and ivy and everyone at the sharp end of this shit.

It sucks.

To even speculate about how much my family doesn't see me or my nieces just chills me.

100 per cent afraid that they’re coming for gay marriage, and know that the ACA is doomed, which means I will be without insurance, which is um… not great for a cancer survivor with a genetic cancer marker. also i am not just gay, but married to a non-white person.

but in the meantime, a poem from Assata:

AFFIRMATION
I believe in living.
I believe in the spectrum of Beta days and Gamma people.
I believe in sunshine.
In windmills and waterfalls, tricycles and rocking chairs.
And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.
And sprouts grow into trees.
I believe in the magic of the hands.
And in the wisdom of the eyes.
I believe in rain and tears.
And in the blood of infinity.
I believe in life.
And i have seen the death parade march through the torso of the earth, sculpting mud bodies in its path.
I have seen the destruction of the daylight, and seen bloodthirsty maggots prayed to and saluted.
I have seen the kind become the blind and the blind become the bind in one easy lesson.
I have walked on cut glass.
I have eaten crow and blunder bread and breathed the stench of indifference.
I have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if i know any thing at all, it's that a wall is just a wall and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.
I believe in living.
I believe in birth.
I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth.
And i believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, seasick sailors, can still be guided home to port.

Democratic centrism has helped make people so cynical about the power of the state and society to make anything better I don’t know that running a strong progressive campaign would have worked either. People will just say “Democrats/politicians won’t follow through.”

The killer this time seems to be the Latino vote, not great performance with Black voters and predictably Arab voters. Tailoring your platform to white suburbanites was bad enough when it cost working class votes, if you’re going to lose minority votes across the board yiiiiiiikes.

thank you for that table.

They failed to seize the initiative in 2021 when they had a unified government and citizenry still high on memories of the government giving them money and making life easier.

Thanks, President Manchin!

Yeah that exit poll is illuminating
- Misogyny
- Educated people flocking to the two coasts
- Non-black minorities only marginally voting Dem

Harris probably was seen as less legitimate due to being the default candidate, and having only a few months to present herself as the candidate, when Trump has somehow become this enduring familiar figure. At least from outside the US, there was a lot of fatalism about a Trump return.

I just hope he is too incompetent, egocentric, disinterested and petty to do much of his own, especially after he faces backlash when he inevitably tries to mess with rule of law and after he starts his game of constant staff turnover. But he is also so soft and influenceable that it opens the gates to the worst and it will also set back global agendas / stability. I'd say I hope for Republican dissensions even with the two houses, but that's probably wishful thinking. It's just a lot and four years is a long time. Good luck.

xps i'm not in the usa so i'm not at the sharp end of anything (yet, anyway, there was a rather bad election result here very recently too but it's not clear how bad it'll be on a personal level yet) but i wish everyone who is the best & hope that trump will lean into all his most incompetent tendencies and struggle to do anything

Democratic centrism has helped make people so cynical about the power of the state and society to make anything better I don’t know that running a strong progressive campaign would have worked either. People will just say “Democrats/politicians won’t follow through.”

i don't think it's even that they needed to run a progressive campaign (though i think that'd be better of course), they just needed to offer people a clear vision of change from both biden & trump and managed neither

Maybe they should try some strong left wing politics? We’ll never know

telling myself they will need to next time. if there's a next time. ha! ha! best from canada. maybe you will scare us off the track of the conservative majority in the election next October... that has been looking certain in the polls

Yes, the main thing that has characterized Trump's entire life (and definitely his first term) is extreme incompetence and that's the only thing I'm able to hang my hopes on right now.

him becoming best buds with musk, rfk, etc. and promising to give them a lot of influence is also a good sign for incompetence

Did the only actual checking I aim to do and at least Tlaib and Omar won.

Well, at least we won't have fluoride

My children weren't using their teeth anyway, no big

low level in the big picture but v depressing that musk and co cobbled together a successful GOTV

Probably less that Musk was effective and more that the ground game doesn’t matter that much in Presidential elections.

xpost yeah i read something this AM and how long do you think he's going to keep RFK around