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

she get

Also people are just being dumb there because there are still millions of votes to be counted she is going to come in below Biden but the number will be way less than 15 million

flopson otm

MSNBC - 11/5/2024 - @chucktodd thinks @JohnFetterman could be the North Star for the Democratic party and play a role in its future

"Look where he was on Israel too" pic.twitter.com/gjbaFwDur9

— CaseStudyQB - #ArmsEmbargoNOW (@CaseStudyQB) November 6, 2024

https://bsky.app/profile/kasemenova.bsky.social/post/3lad4xiykuw2c

Via Gennady Rudkevich, economist:

List of Western national elections in 2024 (after global inflation crisis). Note what happened to incumbent popular support.

UK: Tories (-46%)
Belgium: Open Vld (-36%)
Croatia: HDZ (-8%)
France: LREM (-36%)
Lithuania: TS–LKD (-30%)
US: Harris (Democrats) (-7%)

(people in the replies mention the Netherlands as well, Canada next, and that even Modi is having trouble)

This clarifies some stuff for me - how'd he get so many votes with nobody at his rallies? Well, some of the were voting against Biden/Harris, not necessarily for Trump. This would also help explain why local races look so different than national races, votes don't blame their mayor for inflation.

By voting for him they said they were okay with racism, transphobia, mass deportations ... it's not good. And in terms of the impact on the country of four+ years of Trump, it might not matter. But I think it's important that we not buy into the story that >50% of the country loves Trump.

I'm possibly deranged lemme know if there's something useful in there.

🤮

was it something I said

The UK's position in that list is slightly misleading, as a rival party that sometimes stands and sometimes doesn't soaked up those votes. Otherwise the drop off would have been much less significant and the incumbents may have retained power - though is unknowable, and the anti-incumbency backlash had an indirect relationship to covid

(Perfect thread title, by the way. Better than we could've known a few days ago.)

This clarifies some stuff for me - how'd he get so many votes with nobody at his rallies?

I think this was a broader mistake though, equating Trump voters with MAGA. MAGA was shrinking therefore Trumps voters were shrinking, and Trump only appeals to MAGA types. But this is an assumption. Also even with the magas, just because someone stops going to a rally doesnt mean they also stop voting.

(I know both candidates got lower than last time but I believe this is because not everything counted yet? If not then the above is obviously also wrong)

People voting for left-wing policy after the centre loses.

BREAKING: Missourians have voted to raise the statewide minimum wage to $15 by 2026 and guarantee paid sick days to workers.

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) November 6, 2024

"it was a broad-based repudiation of similar nature to the anti-incumbent backlash that was seen in almost every other country that's had elections the last few years. australia, uk, new zealand, italy, poland, argentina, brasil, soon to be joined by canada and probably germany. also places like france spain, japan and netherlands where leading coalitions got badly reduced and leaders resigned"

Don't know enough about the local politics but Spain's Pedro Sanchez has been Spanish PM since 2018, before COVID. He is the only recognizable left-wing incumbent on the list I think.

What I am taking from anti-incumbent backlash discourse is not 'COVID has dealt a bad hand nothing that could be done' but politicians in general don't do enough for people. So when an event like COVID hits people struggle and are left to fend for themselves.

This reflects on the political class.

I think difference between Sanchez and Macron is the former can still enact party policy in a coalition whereas Macron looks like a sitting duck till he goes.

Heard about his migration policy, which is approaching the humane though the detail in this report is sketchy.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/09/pedro-sanchez-unveils-plans-to-make-it-easier-for-migrants-to-settle-in-spain

It’s hard to counter this with smart policy when, in our current historical moment, there aren’t easy answers for making life more affordable while protecting workers and the environment and also competently managing the empire.

― treeship 2, Thursday, 7 November 2024

Aren’t there though? Tax the rich.

The problem there is that it’s not just the machines of both parties being arrayed against getting this message out, but basically all media being controlled by those who would be hurt the most (as they SHOULD).

(Sorry just can’t let this pass — Moka love always and I appreciate Bernie’s candor there but you couldn’t find a better source hosting his remarks than fucking evil Nazi Reddit? Come now.)

I don't think anyone really thinks of it like that any more, that's like getting mad at the phone book because there's a bunch of racists in it (which, it turns out, there definitely are)

Piss off with your fascist apologia. It’s like getting mad at the phone book if it were owned by the KKK and actively promoting bigotry and right wing extremist propaganda at every turn. That’s enough about that trash platform for now though.

Although also worth noting this discussion’s overall blind spot for social media though. Really appreciated that perspective from Hawaii but no real mention of social media there. A discussion of Filipino media consumption omitting Facebook is necessarily limited I’m sorry.

*Filipino-American as if they shouldn’t be our 52nd state already.

If they so chose

Now the Rick Perlstein books I bought will remain unfinished on the shelf for a few more years…

the fact that the republicans nominated trump, a very weak candidate, gave democrats a better chance than most incumbents. but it wasn't enough

I’ve come to grudgingly admit that Trump was not a very weak candidate (obviously, he won bigly.) No other politician in my lifetime, saying and doing egregious and stupid shit every single day, the subject of endless mockery, could survive, and rally not only the MAGA faithful wearing “I’m voting for the felon” shirts but a plethora of others who overlooked his countless faults and still voted for him, because he stands for what they stand for. That’s not a weak candidate imo, it’s the perfect candidate for this perfectly fucked nation.

I told a friend last night how if at any point in the last month Harris had said, "When I am president, I will bring Hamas and Bibi Netanyahu to the negotiating table to end this horrible war" she would've been denounced by Netanyahu and it would've helped with the Dearborn voters instead of their having to swallow her watery bullshit.

That would’ve been nice.

The correct answer is ‘I will not be intimidated by a bunch of Meir Kahane wannabes because I can remember when his notions were illegal.’

But again she seemed groomed by the Dem donor class, who, I'm sure, didn't devise "weird" in the early July/August days as a strategy; it's so simple and effective it was beyond them.

read this morning that she was encouraged by a 71 year old Clinton campaign staffer to drop "we're not going back" and the "weird" thing and to start chumming up to Repbublicans. Good strategy!

But it was Bill who wondered why the hell they weren't responding to that anti-transad.

Ah yes, the wisdom from that family who last won a Presidential election in 1996.

One of my pet theories is that Hillary Clinton would have won if she had divorced Bill after 2001 (her generation of women being the ones in 9 to 5, and the phrase ‘male chauvinist pig’ is a bat signal). Because it’s hard to repudiate SA by powerful men if one of them is your husband.

Definitely. Trump used this in the 2016 campaign. He made Bill’s accusers sit in the front row of the second debate. I think this was the most disgusting political stunt I’ve ever seen in my life.

It was. Married men who abuse women outside a marriage, whether infidelity or SA, always like to blame wives for not having hubby under control, but scream the minute their own wives try to assert themselves on the topic.

I remember that moment so vividly. It was right after the access hollywood video. I hated him already, obviously, and thought he was a race baiting, right wing misogynisitic demagogue. But something about taunting Hillary with Bill’s accusers made my stomach sink. It was clarifying in terms of how sick Trump is.

And how thoroughly he planned to degrade American civic life.

People love this stuff though. They love Trump.

yeah kinda what gets me about this, we can go on all day about what the Dems should've done different but at the end of the day the country overwhelmingly voted for Jeff Epstein's best friend, whose only policy proposals involve hurting people. doesn't really make me comfortable to be around my fellow man.

What happened to Qanon btw? Seemingly kept quiet during the election.

my friend and I went out to cheer ourselves up last night and of course my first thought is how many smug pieces of shit are gonna be at this place 'celebrating'. fortunately, I couldn't see any outright, though the six dudebros outside totally smelled like young Trumpers

Yeah i am not comfortable blaming kamala for this. Whatever her faults, and there are plenty, at the end of the day she seem like a normal person who doesn’t wake up in the morning looking for ways to cause as much damage to america as possible. Not so her opponent! The fact that people chose him over her says more about them than her.

yeah... i mean people chose hate, let's call it what it is

The kind of people who respond happily to this shit have an obvious history of bullying - particularly a certain type of high school mean girl who seems otherwise reformed. Also DUI douchebags who find Jesus for a do-over, and the guys who troll right-wing talking points to provoke lefty FB friends (and secretly relish the smackdown).

people chose hate, let's call it what it is

sure some people do this with their eyes open but mainly i don't think it works that way. we live in different realities. if somebody read ilx and watched msnbc full time and then voted for trump i'd agree they chose hate, but that's not what happens. people either don't read anything at all or they watch stuff that turns him, in the words of that great post from hawaii, into a demi-god. is it choosing hate to vote for a decisive, charismatic demi-god? they either don't hear or ignore the stuff that we know is damning. i am really coming around to the idea that yes this result is partly about trump and his unique "qualities" but it is as much about the democrats if not more so

Idk. He isn’t just a close the borders, america first, antiwoke right wing populist. He is an obvious sadist and criminal and everyone in the country knows it.

There’s a political side to this, and then there is another side.

they do not know it imo. people barely pay attention. they decided to hold their nose and vote for the famous white business guy instead of the black woman they'd barely heard of. it's really not terribly complicated

yeah sorry if the only takeaway people have here is that “people are just hateful,” that is 100% kicking the can down the road and allowing for further failures of the Democratic party to capture any sort of popular progressive economic agenda, as it absolves the Dems of running a shitty campaign with a mediocre candidate that appeared optically good but did not resonate at all with a voting population that is struggling.

some D wins to contemplate

Bob Ferguson won the governorship of Washington state
Josh Stein won the governorship of North Carolina
Democratic winners in Senate races:
Ruben Gallego beat Kari Lake, and will replace the awful Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona
Adam Schiff in California
Chris Murphy in Connecticut
Lisa Blunt Rochester in Delaware
Mazie Hirono in Hawaii
Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts
Angela Alsobrooks in Maryland
Elissa Slotkin in Michigan
Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota
Andy Kim in New Jersey
Martin Heinrich in New Mexico
Kirsten Gillibrand in New York
Jacky Rosen in Nevada
Sheldon Whitehouse in Rhode Island
Timothy Kaine in Virginia
Bernie Sanders in Vermont (Independent who caucuses with Democrats)
Maria Cantwell in Washington
Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin
There are potential House Democratic gains in Arizona, Oregon, Iowa, and California, where outcomes are still pending
Delaware elected Sarah McBride, the first trans person to the U.S. House of Representatives
Democrats unseated two House Republicans in New York
Julie Johnson was elected to the House as the first openly LGBTQ+ member of Congress to represent Texas
Here in Oregon, Val Hoyle remained our U.S. Rep in the 4th District
Dems here also won several statewide offices:
Tobias Read was elected Secretary of State
Dan Rayfield was elected Attorney General
Elizabeth Steiner was elected State Treasurer
There was also a sneaky Republican gerrymandering measure here in Lane County. It was rejected by over 75% of voters.

yeah if it brings some comfort in the next 72 hours to call Trump voters stupid and hateful, be my guest. And we can work on winning the ones who peeled away from us or outright sat out the election -- and many did. We're no longer the party of minorities and trade unions.

looks like jackie rosen is gonna squeak it out in nevada

Bernie Sanders in Vermont (Independent who caucuses with Democrats)

sounds like one to watch :)

Bob Casey race probably heading for a recount.

just so nobody takes this as centrist Democratic party defending...

...we did this same debate in 2016, we gave lip service to Democrats having to do soul searching to win back those they alienated. although those criticisms weren't wrong on their face, it became evident after four years of his voters showing up with Tiki torches and screaming "Jews will not replace us", shooting protesters dead in the street with zero repercussion, participating in a coup, willfully spreading a novel virus when we were supposed to be isolating, committed 265 domestic attacks killing 91 people, plotted to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, bludgeoned Nancy Pelosi's 82 year old husband, occupied and desecrated the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, mailed IEDs to democratic politicians, killed 23 people in a Walmart while targeting Latinos, etc, maybe I'm just a little tired of pretending that we know exactly how to win these voters.

sure, you'll say, those were the most devoted of his followers, not the father of 4 who is struggling to get by and thinks things were better under Trump, but am I really to trust the decision-making faculties of someone who experiences everything above and says "I'll welcome him back"?

also think many itt and outside are really discounting how powerful the "I will carry out the largest mass deportation of immigrants" message won votes - 30% of Democratic voters and 58% of independent voters surveyed in October supported deporting "illegal immigrants". Half of voters surveyed in the same poll supported building a wall in Mexico, including 20% support from Democrats. In July, 55% of people surveyed supported a decrease in immigration (as opposed to only 28% in 2020).

now, I'm not going to pretend Democratic politicians have a good track record with immigration, and I remember Biden's awful attempt to appeal to anti-immigration voters, which still makes me choke back vomit. what I am saying, though, is Trump converted a significant number of voters by promising to mass deport immigrants.

so forgive me if I don't feel like some of the hyper-simplistic notions of how the Democratic party lost votes are accurate. Yes, as usual, they ran as a 'not the other guy' party and that's worth criticizing, but I draw the line at humanizing Trump voters...again....as if conventional means would have won their vote. a lot of D voters are mega shitty centrists and the single-issue many of them vote on changes now and then.

I ain't discounting Dem ineptitude as a causality, but feel like everybody's trying to blame specific individual choices made as if they were definitively the cause, because it gives us the illusion of control.