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

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

fwiw "our" Portuguese Trump just catapulted his party from a fringe concern to the third biggest in parliament. not in govt yet but I wouldn't bet against it.

"and know that the ACA is doomed"

If Dems keep the house then not so?

Portugal no longer has a “golden visa”. Seriously, good luck emigrating. The monolingualism in America didn’t help any of you, either

yeah the margins will be tight they might not have the votes to do jack shit

xpost re ACA

I don’t look forward to articles about why people voted to reinstate him. They can keep their words.

more important is the perception of being an outsider of the system, basically every president since poppy bush has rightly or wrongly had some kind of system bucking angle (except biden but covid caveats apply), which means the dems can’t be the party of technocratic competence anymore, especially since voters don’t perceive that the supposed competence of democrats hasn’t improved their lives

― hott ogo (voodoo chili), Wednesday, November 6, 2024

This is my thinking (at the moment).

I look forward to phony optimism from Harris, Walz, and others. Go take your olive branches to the GOP and fuck yourselves with them

i'm going to ignore all media. no matter what it is. can't take any sadsack shit either. no weeping lady liberty on the cover of the new yorker. none of it. no handwringing. no cable t.v. for the immediate future. none of that matters. i will help people if they need help. that's about all i can do. i don't have any money and i don't have much free time. but i will do what i can do. that will definitely be the last time that i go through an entire political campaign again. no more rallies for me. i only did it because i hate trump so much. now i need to focus on real life in my town. we have haitian immigrants here. we have people who are vulnerable here. not talking about trump for another four years either. fuck that.

Word

don't know what to say here. I'm utterly shattered. already spent 3 weeks barely sleeping out of nervousness and now I'm just physically and emotionally wrecked.

obviously the bulk of the blame has to lie with Republican voters, who have revealed themselves to be hateful monsters time and time again, but at least have a party who matches them emotionally, who accepts them for the spineless trash they are and enables their worst impulses.

Dems do not have this. We have said time and time again how we feel about Gaza, how we feel about taking back power from the GOP, how we feel about people like Liz Cheney, and how we feel about immigration, and the party has time and time tacked right, talked about building bipartisan coalitions, made it clear that better things aren't possible, etc.

I thought this was fine because it was at least a viable electoral strategy. turns out it very much was not! Trump got about the same # of votes, Harris underperformed Biden by a lot. That's the part I really did not see coming. Apparently the threat of Trump and all the horribleness that it incurs was not enough to get people out. It's wild because it seems all yesterday morning we were hearing about turnout, how every metro area seemed primed to exceed 2020, and now it turns out...that wasn't actually true? What exactly happened here?

Don’t forget Medicare for All and Kamala gaslighting us about her support. Assholes like Newsom run on it and then do next to nothing as well.

Progressives need to take control of the party. Let the Clintons and their ilk be cast into exile

I don’t think there is anything fundamentally wrong in expressing my desire to see Trump’s supporters die horrible, painful, expensive deaths

there is but I'm not gonna argue with you right now

Scott otm

I’m about where Scott is.

Yeah, please don’t argue with me. I’m already spiraling and don’t need additional bullshit

the country is too big. the math doesn’t work. the most trash human being in history can just cobble together the railroad and utility squares on the monopoly board and win pretty much every time. the people who elected him are never going to vote for a progressive. they already think harris and biden are too liberal! idk what the answer is.

The country has moved to the right because Republicans offer a muscular theory of leadership and governance, even when it's stupid, dangerous and unrealistic. Americans love the aggressiveness. There is a total vacuum on the left, filled with meekness, apologies and fearfulness. https://t.co/YO6fGF8xci

— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) November 6, 2024

I don’t see any rating sunshine, no matter how hard I squint. These numbers are pointing to some severely depressing demographic shifts that aren’t going away. We seem to be cranking out racist hateful young men at a record pace.

Right now, I have no hope. My strategy is going to be - cling to my loved ones, do my damn best to make sure my son stays the loving, inclusive and caring, and squeeze what we joy I can out of the rest of my years in this flaming hellhole.

Last night ripped apart any remaining shred of hope I had for a better future.

“Ray of sunshine”, thanks autocorrect.

Obama is the very picture of cowardice. He defined the image and softness of the Democratic Party. The GOP knows that they can cheat, obstruct, and steal with little more than shrugged shoulders and tsk-tsking from Democrats

I think the main thing is that misinformation networks work. FOX News knows what they're doing. Elon Musk buying Twitter and turning it into a right-wing cesspool worked. We do not really share a reality with these folks. They do not think rationally, they do not know how to separate fact from fiction, they have been conditioned for decades to see human interaction as a zero sum game. They win when we are unhappy. That is 90% what this is about. How to combat these disinformation networks is another issue entirely. I really did think that COVID would see the scales falling from their eyes. How can you remain a truther on this issue when 3,000 Americans were dying every single day? Yet they found a way.

actually, part of why Obama won easily twice, to jaymc's point, was presenting himself as a singular entity and force.

Obama was great as a figurehead, but not as a strong force for immense positive social change that benefited everyone. A man in the Nelson Mandela mold

x-post - They think it's the vaccines that killed ppl rather than the virus. Literally saw a person say that almost everyone they know who got vaccinated is dead now.

Yeah, please don’t argue with me. I’m already spiraling and don’t need additional bullshit

Here's some additional bullshit: your nonstop stream of projectile-vomited bile is dragging other posters down with you

A thread. It tracks with my experiences with Cubans:

Final notes from my reporting in Latino communities during the election:

80% of Latinos are working class. Their experience of the economy the past four years—Covid shutdowns, inflation, gas prices, housing costs—was rough. That puts the incumbent Dems at a disadvantage. 🧵1/9 pic.twitter.com/ptJctche8i

— Jack Herrera (@jherrerx) November 5, 2024

x-post - They think it's the vaccines that killed ppl rather than the virus. Literally saw a person say that almost everyone they know who got vaccinated is dead now.

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Wednesday, November 6, 2024 8:36 AM (forty-eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

so what's the cure for things like this? I know several people who think the same way. I was talking with someone last weekend who says getting the COVID vax was one of the greatest regrets of his life. I'm like...uh you know the number of COVID deaths in this country went down by some 70% almost immediately after the vaccine was released. what else do you need to know?

Fuck off. I’ll stick with the music on IXL, as they’re actually interesting

None of you matter one iota. Asshole

now there's a communitarian attitude!

Dems aren't meek and fearful, exactly,

idk what do you call it when biden constantly sets red lines for israel with no consequence when they break them, or when the dems pre-emptively concede ground on immigration or lgbt issues or anything else

sure, I was thinking more in terms of presentation, tho

I had to call a college friend a “fucking moron” and unfollow her this morning because of an anti vax post.

xposts - FBS - I wish I knew. I honestly don't know that there is one. They aren't able to think critically and just believe this complete bullshit.

Yeah I'm about there with a childhood friend who has lost her mind. Her twitter account is insnae. She keeps sending me articles by Naomi Wolf. I haven't actually blocked because I'm trying to understand even though I know that's probably pointless.

John Ganz also zeroing in on the lack of coherent message/narrative (which tbf some of us did talk about as the Dems' biggest liability):

having a clear vision of things, even if it is unpleasant or dark, beats no vision or an unclear one. Trump’s campaigns had a clear mythos: a story about what America is and was and where it is going. No Democratic candidate that’s run against him has been able to articulate an opposing vision. This is not particular to this or that candidate, although all of them had individual weaknesses. We can litigate that forever. But it’s really a problem of American liberalism: liberalism is unsure of itself and ameliorative, it’s not a bold vision of the future as it once was in its heyday under LBJ or FDR. Trumpism may be reactionary, but liberalism too, has become too backward-looking—look at my references in the previous sentence. It longs for an old age of consensus instead of gamely going to war to win a new one. American liberalism has also become a land of smug statisticians and wonks who want to test every proposition and shrink from striking out in a new direction, from testing rhetorical appeals in the public arena rather than the statistical survey. Trump and his campaigns were willing to venture boldly and that’s part of what appealed to people. He said, “Follow me and make history,” a dubious claim made by others before him, but it excites people.

https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/i-hope-im-wrong

what’s IXL

I just checked and the only president until now to be in office for two non-consecutive terms was Grover Cleveland (1885-89 / 93-97).

― Nabozo, Wednesday, November 6, 2024 8:54 AM (fifty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've seen "Groper Cleveland" on another site. SMDH.

xp it's like ILX but slightly bigger

Presumably, some other messageboard where beamish can shine a light through the darkness -- they won't be doing it here for a while. xxp

I don’t FP much, but that post brought it out of me.

"best hope for dems going forward is that trump does step aside in 2028 and the gop can’t recapture his grotesque appeal"

After the Madison sq garden rally I thought there would be a Trumpism after Trump.

Biggest problem for the governing class is that they aren't interested in making people's lives better in any meaningful sense. Harris was hostile on migration, didn't say anything on climate, did not distance herself from Biden on a livevstreamed genocide, etc.

Nor is Trump, which means Republicans are more than vulnerable if their tariffs and cuts leave the economy in a recession.

If you still think "Trump is more than capable of winning," despite his loss in 2020 and the Republican Party being punished in every national election since 2018, it's because you've been conditioned to think so by a media that was utterly broken by the 2016 election. Trump is not a mythic monster or some kind of political savant. He got lucky once, and he's actually so bad at politics (never mind leadership) that he completely squandered his incumbency advantage (hence "he got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016" and still lost, badly) four years ago. He's got loser stink on him so bad you can smell it through your laptop. They should literally throw him in the back of that garbage truck he was riding around in, come Wednesday morning.

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Sunday, November 3, 2024 1:33 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

posts that haven't aged well

I don’t FP much, but that post brought it out of me.

same.

Just can't believe on some level this sundowning chump who danced onstage for 40 minutes and sleepwalked through his last rallies (as did the attendees) won the popular vote. it doesn't add up, though no doubt it's true.

it just all feels so much worse than 2016, which in itself gave me a mental breakdown. but I learned to make peace with it. it really seemed like people just did not understand how unserious, how stupid, how hateful Donald Trump was. they weren't following it the way I was. but I figured, well he'll be in office, he'll fuck everything up, there will be new controversies and disasters every week, and the Dems will come back stronger. this sort of happened too! 2018 went well, we got a bunch of bona fide progressives in office, 2020 we won the Presidency and a tied Senate, 2022 went surprisingly well...but now? people know who Trump is. he is, by all measures, a much much worse version of himself. he is out there saying Hitler shit on a daily basis, he has nothing nice to say about anyone, he has no actual policies, he is visibly sundowning at a rapid rate. we had the chance to be rid of him once and for all and...we just punted it. I don't understand it. it does not square at all with what we've seen the last two weeks.

Its terrible really. World economy going down the shitter means Germany will move closer to the far-right, it's already looking bad for their tame centre left coalition. Le Pen could become president of France as left have good support but are currently blocked by Macron.

And if these happen the EU could also break. But this is all for another thread.

beamish is she not he just ftr

thanks, noted

posts that haven't aged well

also see: all of his other posts on this thread in the past year