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

Stevie, good point.

I started reading Reaganland soon after it came out and after 20-30 pages realized it was too raw to continue, in that moment.

Murphy has been talking about the failures of neoliberalism for a while. See, e.g., thus from 2022: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/democrats-should-reject-neoliberalism/671850/

See your first mistake was thinking I’d read the fucking Atlantic

the key to that dissent paragraph is "de facto" - even if the end of a benefit isn't "Biden's fault" it happened on his watch and that is the only thing that matters. Arguments like "well see we had to appease two Democratic Senators (who are no longer Senators)(and maybe were acting as cover for a half dozen more Democratic Senators) and structurally it's impossible to do the things that we said we'd do" fall on deaf ears.

yep, but also it is their fault because they make political decisions and trying to pretend shit is out of your control is transparently dishonest, which is why people stop voting for you

Exactly— this is why all arguments about Biden’s “hands being tied” regarding Gaza are utter bullshit, he could stop sending weapons and likely affect a real slowdown and ceasefire if he wanted to, but he obviously doesn’t want to because he is a fucking pig who should be on trial for war crimes

“oh the most powerful person in the world has his hands tied” like please, this is not actually nuanced thinking but apologia

There used to be much more cynicism directed over "survival" decisions, aka moves made that don't help anybody but help you keep your job.

Once we started framing every election as a fight for the soul of the nation, it became easier for voters to excuse it. And that didn't start with Trump - the "now is not the time" shit also occurred in 2012.

For people like us, we know the work doesn't stop even when "our guy" is in office. I didn't become politically motivated w/ Trump, I already was for years, which is why I was so scared of him. But even with Kamala, there would have been a huge cesspool of issues to clean up.

Lesser engaged voters, many would have started disengaging the moment Trump lost and likely ended any chance of him returning. These are often the voters who make the excuses.

We failed Gaza, the world failed Gaza, and that should be how the history books portray it...but they won't

I posted about the soccer incident because I was hopeful that if people couldn't recognize the bias in Western reporting and the nonsense rhetoric blaming every Palestinian civilian death on Hamas (as if even that would make that ok), they could perhaps much more easily recognize it in a video of Maccabi fans that directly contradicts what the mainstream press have reported.

But nope. Fell on Deaf ears

(Posted to my friends, not here obv)

Thought this was very good - https://defector.com/beyond-belief

We failed Gaza, the world failed Gaza, and that should be how the history books portray it...but they won't

France and Germany as well, no? Australia stopped funding UNRWA for a time at least. It’s more of a NATO/western bloc choice than just the US/UK.

Well Macron has called for an arms embargo. It’s true the government of Germany has cracked down on dissent.

Nate Silver is estimating the final vote total as:

Trump 78.5M (49.9%) (margin: +1.5)
Harris 76.2M (48.4%)
other 2.6M (1.5%)
(total: 157.3M)

For comparison, 2020:

Biden 81.3M (51.3%) (margin: +4.5)
Trump 74.2M (46.8%)
other 2.9M (1.9%)
(total: 158.4M)

They need to count the absentee ballots in PA.

I really wish some journalist who talks to these economically scared people who voted Trump would counter the "eggs used to be 99cents and now cost up to $5" line every single one of them parrots. When the fuck were eggs 99cents a dozen? 1994? They have been at around $3 for almost as long as I can remember except during the last avian flu thing or whatever a few years back. Prices on lots of things have risen but not 3x from a base of almost nothing.

xp Yeah, that wasn't meant to suggest that it is final yet. I assume Silver is taking into account what is still left to count.

$1.99 to $5-6 was my egg experience. Tripling down on "economic fears are fake" is maybe not a genius move now that the other party is going to bear the weight of the economy.

so we elected a horrible person because eggs were too expensive

I don't know where you get your numbers milo, but a dozen eggs at my Trader Joe's are $3.99 as of yesterday

and I live in one of the most expensive places in the country

yeah I live in the bay area. I think the lowest TJs price is $3.19.

you can def buy $6 eggs, they are bougie expensive ones and do not taste appreciably different IME.

my god yall are so good at absolutely ignoring any criticism and instead rallying around these dismissive talking points.

Too bad I don't live within half an hour of a Trader Joe's, but I do live 5 minutes from Tom Thumb... where the eggs that were $1.99 were $4.99 last time I bought I any!

I agree with you about the economy table, but just saying that I don't think the election was really about the economy for most people

I mean, that sort of flies in the face of everything we're reading and hearing, but okay.

Here's Toscano:

In the United States and elsewhere (think of French President Emmanuel Macron’s disastrous electoral machinations), the liberal centrism or ​“progressive neoliberalism” that casts itself as the bulwark against fascism is proving to be anything but. Not only has it contributed to the social miseries upon which reactionary politics feeds — mass incarceration, predatory finance, imperialist war and the rollback of social welfare have all been bipartisan projects in the past half-century — but it stands revealed as a failed brand, kept alive primarily by the investments of party elites and donors, but also by what historian Adam Tooze calls its profound narcissism. This delusional conviction that it is a historical force for progress, sanity and the good makes elite liberal politicians slip easily into paternalism and condescension—something many voters find more offensive than direct insults.

While presenting itself as the antidote to a rising fascist tide, establishment liberalism is in denial about the many ways it has been the cause or enabler of that tide. Its role in seeding the conditions for far-right ascendancies is an old tale, but it is playing out yet again, as ​“talking tough” on the border or catering to war hawks erodes the Democratic electorate while utterly failing to win over Republicans or independents, who are far more at ease wielding weaponized inconsistency. As Mussolini declaimed shortly before seizing power, fascists had ​“the courage of breaking into smithereens all the traditional political categories and calling ourselves, depending on the moment, aristocrats and democrats, revolutionaries and reactionaries, proletarian and anti-proletarian, pacifists and anti-pacifists.”

Trump — as the anti-war/pro-genocide candidate, who can praise Musk’s layoffs while posturing as a friend of the worker — is happy to revive that ​“relativism” which the Italian dictator claimed as one of fascism’s hallmarks.

An anti-fascist politics does not require constantly decrying the fascism of your opponent (which may prove numbing or alienating) but it certainly has to cleave to a different logic than that which ​“depends on the moment” or on electoral calculus alone. It needs to discover ways to not just make emancipatory ideas popular — fortunately, many of them already are — but to weave them into a project rooted in everyday needs. To this end, liberal centrism is not just useless, it is an obstacle. It demands endless moral and political sacrifices from leftists and progressives, while not even serving as a decent vehicle for the kind of reformist compromises we might expect from representative politics. When existential issues are on the agenda, from genocide to the mounting climate catastrophe and the manifold crises it will bring, betting on liberalism is a fool’s errand.

(No surprise, but I think he's right)

I agree with you about the economy table, but just saying that I don't think the election was really about the economy for most people

I don't think you can dismiss inflation quite as easily as that, though I agree it is one of many factors. But I don't think its a coincidence that almost every government that was in power during covid/post-covid has been removed (even in Japan the government party didn't get an overall majority which has only ever happened a couple of times before since WW2). It doesn't have to be a shift to the right either, in Poland the right populists were voted out

At least 100 million chickens have been deliberately destroyed due to the avian flu since 2021. Considering that a single chicken can easily produce dozens of eggs, it's a pretty safe bet that overall egg production was reduced by a couple billion eggs. Gee, I wonder why eggs in particular got so expensive so fast. Must be Biden's fault.

Must be Biden's fault.

When things that happen under a party/leader, that party and leader carries the can regardless, thats just how it works

itt we find the Stancilite wing of the party

The archetypal example of this is how Democrats keep talking about “the very real economic pain suffered by workers.” There’s no actual empirical evidence that workers suffered greatly in the last few years, and a ton of evidence workers prospered. Sorry if that’s inconvenient.

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) November 10, 2024

how is it that black women (93%), and to a lesser extent black men, who are completely disrespected in this country and are not favored by the economy at all, could understand the assignment and vote accordingly?

while white women and men were so aggrieved that they just couldn’t, because “price of eggs” and “illegals are taking our benefits”, and “minorities are taking our jobs”

Black voters shifted toward the openly racist candidate by 10 points.

If its 90 degrees and a room full of people tell you the room is cold and they're going to put the heating on, then the room is cold and the heating is going on

My sense with groceries (haven't googled to verify) is that food prices shot up during that 2020-21 supply-chain crisis, and that publicly held companies kept prices high after that issue was resolved, leading to record earnings.

2022 saw a bigger grocery price increase than 2020-21 I believe

what should Biden have done to reduce or prevent inflation?

Although it didn't prove to be a factor in the midterms, which is why I think the issues here are multifaceted and not just one thing

At least 100 million chickens have been deliberately destroyed due to the avian flu since 2021. Considering that a single chicken can easily produce dozens of eggs, it's a pretty safe bet that overall egg production was reduced by a couple billion eggs. Gee, I wonder why eggs in particular got so expensive so fast. Must be Biden's fault.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Sunday, November 10, 2024 7:37 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

as someone that raises chickens, I can assure the number of eggs a chicken in its prime laying years is more than “dozens of eggs”

I would have started with not renominating the Fed Chair who was actively trying to tank the Biden economy and punish workers with interest rate hikes.

Well, they may get rid of the Fed altogether, so that would solve that.

You guys keep excusing the two most salient facts about this election: 1) racism 2) misogyny

not necessarily in that order, maybe both equally

I think the conventional wisdom would be cutting the interest rates reduces inflation, but then you get higher unemployment, which can cause a recession or depression - which is also bad and blamed on the government.

Adam Tooze had a piece in the Guardian about how close the global markets came to total collapse in April 2020. This would have been disastrous for countries with more precarious economies.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/14/how-coronavirus-almost-brought-down-the-global-financial-system

The collapse was averted but the pandemic was a very unusual event that hurt lots of people everywhere.

Someone said Harris should have blamed the economy on Fed Chair Jerome Powell when she was asked about it at the debate. I thought it was weird that they continued Powell but I guess he keeps the stock market high.

Cutting interest rates won't reduce inflation!

I would have started with not renominating the Fed Chair who was actively trying to tank the Biden economy and punish workers with interest rate hikes.

Fwiw I think racism, misogyny, and inflation all influenced the vote just enough to tip it to trump. Of inflation hadn’t been an issue she may have eeked out a win.

Here’s and enraging article:

https://www.thetimes.com/world/us-world/article/white-women-donald-trump-democratic-party-8jv628b38

Dan S, no one is excusing racism or misogyny. The latter seems particularly salient.

But this stubborn attachment to identity as a way of deflecting actual salient criticism of policy and the way it was poorly communicated by the Dems is not helpful,
imo.

Now we have the Dem establishment blaming Muslims and trans people for losses instead of owning up to the fact that they ran a bad campaign that was completely detached from or actively hostile to the needs of the demographics they needed

Interest rate increases made housing, vehicles and consumer debt (non-housing consumer debt rose almost a trillion - 25% - post pandemic) all much less affordable and had a significant impact on economic attitudes.

I didn't say "firing" Powell I said I wouldn't have renominated - nominating a new Fed chair who's not a Republican/Trump appointee/person dedicated to undermining your supposed political project would have been completely normal and above board. Didn't say it was one weird trick to solve the economy, either - but it's a start and failure to do so an indication that Biden's team were either full of shit or generally stupid.