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

Xxxp to frogbs Exactly. People calling for the Dems to throw trans people under the bus as cold-blooded political analysis are exposing their “vibes” and personal hobbyhorses, not following the facts.

And, as someone in college at the time, literally NO ONE (maybe apart from her friends and family) knew who Sister Souljah was. It wasn’t like an existing controversy he waded into, Clinton *created* the controversy.

The difference now is that Fox News, Libs of TikTok, and others make a routine practice out of elevating the views of randos on the left in order to discredit Democrats as a whole. Democratic politicians who want to distance themselves from the randos are always doing so from a defensive posture, and the right will always find more randos to elevate.

a large mass of voters are entirely focused on whatever outcome they desire and consider the process by which their desires are realized to be irrelevant

Are there a lot of voters whose primary interest is in abstract concepts (“democracy,” “rule of law”) regardless of outcome?

milo, milo….. it’s Aimlesstown

Are there a lot of voters whose primary interest is in abstract concepts (“democracy,” “rule of law”) regardless of outcome?

No. That's just silly. But the fact that you can make a silly statement out of standing what I said on its head doesn't say anything relevant about my statement. I would say that there are many voters who appreciate that the democratic process is a necessary part of distributing power in a way that creates more broadly accepted outcomes, which in turn helps to stabilize society.

I realize there are plenty of ilxors who consider democracy irrelevant and are focused entirely on getting the outcome they desire by any means, but from the left not the right, who also consider it intolerable that the system allows others to exert control over government. Even among people who are in fact living relatively safe, secure, prosperous lives there is an incredible amount of fear, anger and insecurity about (to coin a phrase) the enemy within. From my point of view the relentless othering of the opposition isn't helping, because neither side will feel secure until the opposition is extinguished. Democracy, for all its faults, allows a process that is better than that, even if we've forgotten how to use that potential.

a glimmer of good news from the golden state

Democrat Derek Tran has won election to the US House of Representatives in California’s 45th congressional district, beating incumbent Michelle Steel.

The AP has called the race for Tran after a weeks-long count. Republicans already control the US House, as well as the Senate, but picking up the seat is a big win for Democrats, who lost it to Steel in 2020.

Finally!

ironically it's California that seems the most careful in their counting, it takes forever

sounds like the Democrats also flipped the California 13th District

I got my taste of Trump's American two hours ago. Taking me to my destination my Uber driver, a Peruvian (in Miami we identify ourselves thusly), spoke in calm reasonable terms how he had pulled his kids out of public schools because, as he said in Spanish, the "LGBTQ agenda" and thank god for Trump who was going to castrate these men teaching their kids. I said, "Hi, well, your passenger is gay," he immediately apologized and said, "Well, no, you look like a good person." He panicked over the possibility of a bad Uber rating. I politely asked him t drop me at the nearest corner and reported him.

Ugh. Good going.

I'm still shaking.

(not)funny, my buddy reported a similar story about an east african uber driver who was rambling on about forced gender changes in public schools, perhaps that BS did have an effect on a certain demographic, despite polling saying it was a totally losing issue

Sorry that shit come your way, Alfred. I’ll never get it, I’ve got a relative in Chitown PD who is a right wing gay dude married to a Mexican immigrant and he’s fully onboard with Trump and it’s just insane to me, on multiple levels. The brainwashing runs deep and into the minds of some of those who have the biggest targets on their backs in some cases.

people keep reflexively saying "the anti-trans ads polled poorly" but they certainly seem to have worked well enough on enough people.

which just reinforces the 'cruel attacks against a marginalized minority = SUCCESS!', I'm sure we'll see even more as we slouch forward

no surprise at all, americans are, after all, americans

I’m sorry about your situation, Alfred. The next four years and probably beyond are going to be hell. I’ve already overheard such heinous conversations, I’m really seriously considering identifying as gay, although I’m not, to fuck with people’s pronouncements about the gay agenda.

All election postmortems are fanfic, confirmation bias (Dems lost because of my particular hobbyhorse), and “vibes”.

― The Whimsical Muse (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, 27 November 2024 17:51 (yesterday) link

Yep. I get so annoyed with people (including my partner) condescendingly explaining to me "what the democrats should have done", which explanations somehow always seem to magically/coincidentally align with their pre-existing politics (which is not me saying I think they did nothing wrong) that I've fallen into the habit of asking people to explain why the lesson from the election isn't just for the democrats to be more like trump and lie shamelessly (I also don't actually think that)

I am wondering if the Peruvian and East African were evangelicals? They could have absorbed the anti trans stuff from there, not ads.

I'm sorry Alfred, what an asshole. Glad you reported him.

which just reinforces the 'cruel attacks against a marginalized minority = SUCCESS!', I'm sure we'll see even more as we slouch forward

Yeah, it just keeps working. There's a lot of juice in the old scapegoat game. The refocusing on trans people once it became politically less tenable to bash gays and lesbians was predictable and depressingly effective. And that's so much of what the right-wing information sphere is dedicated to, constantly identifying and demonizing new enemies to scare people with.

So sorry, Alfred. I hate that people are emboldened to say these things out loud.

A former President won a small margin over a deeply unpopular incumbent party that had to change candidates late because the President was sundowning at noon. 57% of Floridians turned out to defend abortion and minimum wage increases passed in Missouri and Alaska.

I don’t know that I’d read the election as saying anything in particular about Americans ideological views.

I'm not sure about the role of those ads specifically, but FWIW “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class” polled highest (above inflation or immigration) in this survey among "swing" voters who broke for Trump as their reason for not voting for Harris:

https://blueprint2024.com/polling/why-trump-reasons-11-8/

The above framing is interesting though. It's not the same as "I don't like trans people", it's really more this notion that politicians can care about cultural issues for specific interest groups or they can focus on broad-based economic issues, but they can't do both effectively.

Of course there is the ever-present irony that the party that is really focused on transgender issues is... not the Democrats. But maybe that's the point: that a portion of the electorate are more apt to believe that democrats can be "captured" by special interests and will more readily apply that framework.

It chimes in with some of the discussion in this piece (which is more focused on migration) about voters in parts of NYC who flipped to Trump this time:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-new-york-election-results-turning-red.html

But it's all pretty speculative.

There are a shit ton of adjectives describing Trump besides former President, and I think Americans voting for him regardless says a lot about their ideological views.

80 million voted for him out of an adult population of 260 million

Racist
Rapist
Felon
WINNER

as in “shut up losers.”

80 million voted for him out of an adult population of 260 million

So what? He still won. 80 million actively wanted him too, another 100 million couldn't be bothered to do the smallest thing to stop him. That really does say something about the views of most Americans.

This is exactly what I started typing James, thank you

So what? So it wasn’t 1984 or 1972, was it? It was a squeaker.

Deciding that Americans are inherently bad and hopeless and anti-trans ads were definitely super effective and that speaks to a national character are pretty bad takeaways.

If Democrats hadn’t spent years gaslighting voters about the great economy, if Biden doesn’t go balls out on genocide when he’s actually awake, if Democrats hadn’t bent the knee to Manchin and Sinema derailing their actually popular 2020 agenda, etc. maybe 1.7% of the electorate goes the other way.

As ever the Democratic Party cannot fail, it can only be failed, of course.

I think it's undeniable that the democratic party failed. This is really an argument over whose pre-existing diagnosis was correct.

(I tend to think the answer is "kind of all of them and none of them" is most likely to be correct, but it's also the least satisfying if the objective is to win the argument)

It was a squeaker because 100 million people didn't vote. Not voting is a meaningful choice, it has consequences.

i feel like it was death by a million cuts and it worked just enough for her to lose. she didn't lose the popular vote catastrophically, just enough.

I dunno if it was any one particular thing, maybe just a reminder of how differently people can process politics. I mean I think we are in our own little information bubble sometimes. But what's clear to me is that the things the Democratic campaign think are important are probably not important at all. All those ad spends, buying the Las Vegas Sphere, Ricky Martin and Oprah, perhaps even the campaign rallies themselves, it might be that none of that really matters. everyone hated the GOP's ads but maybe that didn't matter at all either. but manipulating Twitter to boost rightwing content maybe does, perhaps just lying about everything nonstop really is a fine political strategy since most people just hear what they want to hear. Americans don't really get a lot of free time these days, to spend it following this circus is uh...well, I'm regretting it myself

maybe it really is difficult to get people who don't engage with politics to understand the President of the United States does not set the cost of bananas. Or that there really aren't "two sides" to 99% of of the Trump stuff. He absolutely is the monster the woke mob says he is, and probably worse. some of the biggest chuds I know got really excited about Trump winning because it meant the Epstein list might become unsealed, like they don't know who's very very very likely to be all over it. they think it's all just a smear, because if their political enemies had photos with child traffickers they know exactly how they'd use them. the criminal stuff doesn't phase 'em either because if they were in charge they might be tempted to become a little fascist themselves, hell you'd be downright stupid to think it's not what those crooks are doing already, nobody knows this but me, I'm a smart guy in a world of morons

I'm so sorry Alfred. Fuck that asshole driver

Alfred, I’m so sorry you had to deal with that.

So sorry, Alfred.

---

I think it's undeniable that the democratic party failed. This is really an argument over whose pre-existing diagnosis was correct.

― Tim F, Thursday, 28 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Not hearing of any consequences for people who ran Harris' campaign, or major figures in the Democratic party.

It was a squeaker because 100 million people didn't vote. Not voting is a meaningful choice, it has consequences.

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, 28 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

A lot of people in the UK and US just don't engage at all in the process. In Romania there was only a 50% turnout.

It strikes me as so weird that people don’t vote - I grew up in a first-tier suburb where electoral participation is something like 90 per cent, in a state where 75 per cent participation is a ‘low’ turnout.

Oh I totally get it - I am unlikely to ever vote again myself. There are lots of people where they see nothing changing in any way whatsoever.

So you get politicians and strategists chasing swing voters in marginal regions, with this mass of people just sitting there.

While thats true to a degree, voting was comparatively popular in the US this year, with the second highest percentage turnout of voter age population turnout since 1968. 2020 being the highest voter percentage turnout since 1932

I think voting is probably becoming more popular not less, at the presidential level at least. Local election turnouts tend to be lower I believe, though thats the case in most countries

In the US at least, its something of a different story in parts of Europe. Romania a good example of one where participation is declining not increasing

re: post-mortems, here’s Bernie with a pre-mortem on this election, back in 2003:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGd2o4Uka/

Democrats have lost no time making nice with Trump II: Let's Get Trumpier - Polis and RFK, Khanna and DOGE, Schumer's appellate court deal, all of them giving Rubio a pass, all of the centrists eagerly turning the racism dial. After running a campaign entirely about Trump being a threat to the existence of the United States as we know it, maybe those non-voters were a little right to be cynical about Democrats?

Yep. I get so annoyed with people (including my partner) condescendingly explaining to me "what the democrats should have done", which explanations somehow always seem to magically/coincidentally align with their pre-existing politics

Yes seeing the centrist op eds come pouring in, seemingly totally oblivious to the fact that the campaign that everything they wanted, I did have a moment of thinking "am I like this but with the left?". But when Corbyn lost I didn't go "he should have gone further left to win!", so afaict I'm not there yet.