Wow. Whoa. That is some group of people. Thousands. - US Election Day 2016

& if Trump doesn't take office does that not mean that Pence does?
Quixotically hoping that the apparent results of this election might just be held totally invalid. But don't see that as likely.

Hoping this is a bad dream and I wake up later. But think I woke up at 6 am and checked result sto find out taht they were like totally wrong.

As politician, Pence is worse for America than Trump.

soref, he still has 75 pending lawsuits. The Trump U. racketeering trial will proceed.

Ultimately, though, the GOP won't impeach him until his popularity falls to the 20% range. I believe that will happen, he's demonstrably inept, the financial markets are terrified he might speak on renegotiating the national debt, there's going to be a oil supply crunch in 3 or so years. But he's going to set us back a decade on the SC and climate action in his brief term, and that's best case. The foundations of democracy are threatened with his authoritarian tendencies.

maybe Trump and Pence will both have heart attacks and die at some point between now and January 20th, I suppose that's our best bet now

I'm part of me is still clinging to the hope that he doesn't actually take office (or is forced to resign pretty much straight away), realise that this is probably wishful thinking though

The first presidential election I remember was the 1972 Nixon landslide. Didn't last long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqMhx6vh0VY

So I actually went to bed at 12:30. I slept two hours, then tossed and turned as my heart couldn't stop beating. I refused to check my phone or turn on the TV. I just learned the news half an hour ago.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, November 9, 2016 6:08 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I had a panic attack kinda thing at around 10:30 - 11pm EST last night when swing states were not looking so hot. Learning the results after waking up at 4am- somehow my cynicism softened what otherwise would be a huge blow. Now I've got the mindset to be numb to it all going forward and hope the country doesn't completely implode for any number of hypothetical events as a result.

After last night, how can you continue to think Trump is inept?

Xpost I'm hoping that Trump realises in the next two months what a job he's got coming up and decides that he wants an easy life instead.

I don't think I can ever comment on what is or is not likely about anything anymore. So, maybe that will happen. Who knows? Nobody. Ever.

Trump has already suggested Pence was going to run the day to day affairs of president xp

Trump promised a lot of things he can never hope to achieve, which honestly should turn him into a one-term president. But I have no idea what his followers want. There are of course NO manufacturing jobs coming to the midwest, no reversals of trade deals, a lot of them just lost their health care deals. But do they even care?

^^ Which isn't in the least reassuring tbh xp

Trump promised a lot of things he can never hope to achieve, which honestly should turn him into a one-term president. But I have no idea what his followers want. There are of course NO manufacturing jobs coming to the midwest, no reversals of trade deals, a lot of them just lost their health care deals. But do they even care?

― Frederik B, Wednesday, November 9, 2016 7:50 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

At this point it seems like even if no wall is there, Trump can say there is one and his followers will defend that claim to the death.

I don't think I can ever comment on what is or is not likely about anything anymore.

Well put. I get a lot out of the political threads here, but the one thing that has always bothered me are posts that are expressed with 100% certainty, along with the underlying implication that I understand this and you don't. Such posts often begin with an "Um" or some other similarly dismissive tic.

Sincerely disappointed and stunned by the results.

https://twitter.com/DaviSusan/status/796252205804351488

With 97% reporting, about 112 million Americans voted. Lowest turnout since 2000, when 107 mil voted. And 18 mil fewer votes cast than '12.

https://twitter.com/KSoltisAnderson/status/796319426190647296

For what it's worth, given the very low turnout it's not that there was a secret Trump vote so much as a phony mirage of a Clinton vote.

Trump has fewer votes than either McCain or Romney.

i woke up early with a booming headache and empty dread.

what's the exact lowdown on pence again

Former right-wing radio talker who did a few years in Congress and then was governor of Indiana. VERY regressive views on pretty much everything.

dems should have gone w Sanders, a candidate people actively wanted for vote for

124m votes in, including third-party candidates, so not far short of 2012.

Some exit polls misery:
White non-college graduate women voted Trump 64-32.
60% of people made up their mind how to vote before September, and that broke down 52-45 for Clinton. But the 40% who were undecided (40%!!) until two months ago heavily favoured Trump, including a 6% segment who went 50-38 for Trump "last week".

So Access Hollywood tape / Gold Star insult << pneumonia / deplorables / FBI emails. FFS.

Nobody wanted to vote for Trump, yet he won anyway. But yeah, they should have gone with the white man.

When Trump fails the people who voted for him, many of them will probably not blame him. They will blame the people they are blaming now. And, they may not even really care. This election was a way for them to express their hostility.

Where's Iago to gloat

I have never felt this much despair in my entire life. Not after the deaths of all of my grandparents. Not on 9/11. Not when I had to hold two of my cats as they were euthanized. Not when I found out there was no Santa. Never.

One of my earliest maternal ancestors that I know of fought to preserve the Union. My grandfather took bullets to defeat the Axis. My father gave 25 years of his life and took bullets, to serve a country that I naively believed and then fervently hoped would always at least pay lip service to if not honor certain values. For this.

Time for a new thread, or we gonna keep this one going?

Not yet. We're not even through the denial stage, really.

I've said for years that Clinton was going to win this year. When she won Iowa and the GOP shitfest rambled on, I was certain. This is the third of three shocks this fall.

First was how the media played the 'deplorable' comment, that proved that this would never be a referendum on racism and white supremacy, that shit would be swept under the carpet just as much as always. At that point the picture was also pretty clear that Trump would outperform Romney in the Midwest, though I never for a second thought it would be as bad as it was.

Second was Comey letter. That dysfunction had gotten so bad now the FBI would interfere in the election out of fear of the response from the extreme far right media. The horror that the media allowed the email scandal to be dominant towards the end, the collapse in the polls, the pretty obvious inference that the senate could well be lost, meaning Clinton wouldn't even get to nominate an sc judge.

And this third one is the worst one yet. Clinton won the vote. She got more votes than Trump. The majority of America wanted the woman and for the conman to go away. But it doesn't matter. It's so painfully apt that the conman crying the game was rigged, the populist claiming to be the voice of the people, would of course win through a rigged election method in spite of the will of the people. This is horrifying, and good for no one. The white working class is dead. It might not seem so like this, but they'll get NOTHING from Trump, except the good feeling that comes from watching other people hurting. They're still going to lose their electoral power soon, and when that happens, nobody will feel any sympathy from them. They've lost that right now, they've doubled down on idiocy, and nobody is going to save them from themselves. The left is dead. Trump didn't win more votes than Romney, the democratic coalition just didn't pull together. How the fuck was the GOP primary less harmful to Trump than the Dem primary was to Hilary? But there were bigger boos in Philadelphia than in Cleveland. Anyone think the dems will move in the direction of single-payer health-care, free college, less hawkish foreign policy? After they've been burned by Obamacare and Obama seeming weak in Syria? Nah.

Man, in eight years, perhaps Florida, Georgia, Arizona, at some point even Texas, will make up for this disaster. And the chickens will come home to roost. I don't believe for a second Trump got more Latinx votes than Romney, Latinx exit polls has been off this entire season. They just were in the wrong states, plus couldn't make up for the surge in the panhandle in Florida.

20% of people who don't think trump has the temperament to serve effectively as prez voted for him anyway, mb a strong nihilist demographic

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw0v-k1XgAAX95H.jpg:large

Nobody wanted to vote for Trump, yet he won anyway.

Strongly disagree with the first part of this

re: low turnout, was that true in battleground states or just overall?

x-post: It was a response to Adam saying that people only wanted to vote for Sanders.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Cuyahoga County, OH -3% in turnout from 2012 to yesterday (70.09% vs. 67.02%)

Here's 2016:

UNITED STATES PRESIDENT/VICE PRESIDENT
          (VOTE FOR)  1
           Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine (DEM).  .   383,974   65.16
           Richard Duncan and Ricky Johnson.  .  .     1,810     .31
           Gary Johnson and William Weld.  .  .  .    12,526    2.13
           Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka (GRE)  .  .     5,026     .85
           Donald J. Trump and Michael R. Pen (REP)  179,894   30.53
           WRITE-IN.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     6,091    1.03
              Over Votes .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     1,603
             Under Votes .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     6,561

Here's 2012:

          UNITED STATES PRESIDENT/VICE PRESIDENT
          Vote for not more than  1
              (WITH 1077 OF 1077 PRECINCTS COUNTED)
           Stewart Alexander/Alex Mendoza (SOC)  .       220     .03
           Richard Duncan/Ricky Johnson .  .  .  .       621     .10
           Virgil Goode/Jim Clymer (CON).  .  .  .       534     .08
           Gary Johnson/James P. Gray (LIB).  .  .     3,448     .53
           Barack Obama/Joe Biden (DEM) .  .  .  .   447,273   69.32
           Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan (REP)  .  .  .  .   190,660   29.55
           Jill Stein/Cheri Honkala (GRE)  .  .  .     1,564     .24
           WRITE IN.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .       942     .15
              Over Votes .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     1,772
             Under Votes .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     3,403

Clinton/Kaine received nearly 67,000 fewer votes. Twice as many people either didn't know how to fill out the ballot or didn't GAF enough to vote for president.

dems should have gone w Sanders, a candidate people actively wanted for vote for

I'll say here what I said on FB: Sanders wouldn't have made it to Election Day alive. Trump brought a whole lot of very scary voters out of the darkness, and if you think those folks were gonna let a Jew get anywhere near the White House, you're a fucking idiot.

I barely slept last night, and what little sleep I did get was burdened with nightmares. Burned out ruins of buildings, no life in sight. Deep dread and despair, and I half sincerely wished that I wouldn't wake up this morning.

But I woke up, and life seems (temporarily, at least) to be going on as usual. I didn't see any crestfallen faces on the way to work, but my workplace has been fairly abuzz with people who have no idea how this happened or what happens next.

I hit some kind of wall in the midst my despair this morning, after feeling steadily pummeled by the certainty that things will only get worse from here and that nothing has any point anymore. It's a familiar wall, similar to one I hit a number of years ago while in the midst of the most severe bout of depression I've ever experienced. I was fixated on the idea that nothing had any point or purpose and ultimately pulled myself back from the abyss by deciding that points and purposes are subjective and intentional and entirely dictated by me.

The point (and purpose) of what I'm saying is that I now fully realize what I sorta knew all along. Voting and trying to stay informed and shooting my mouth off about things I half understand just isn't enough. I need to get involved, and I'm going to get involved. What form that will take, I don't yet know. Maybe I'll go to the local Democratic headquarters and see what they need from me. Maybe I'll go back to school and get a teaching degree, or start volunteering in my community on the regular. All I know is that, for better or worse, life is going to go on until it doesn't, and wallowing in despair for the next 4-? years is untenable and unacceptable. I'm deeply ashamed of being a white American right now, and I have to do something to shore things up and feel like I'm making some sort of measurable positive impact in lieu of lapsing into self-loathing.

Above all else, I'm trying to appreciate all of my fellow non-lunatics, because we're all in this together and we need to stand together to make it through. Feeling very thankful for the community here right now.

xpost I'm kind of sick of all this "so-and-so would be assassinated" stuff

But Sanders would not have pulled in any of these missing white voters--they are allergic to the word socialism if not to socialistic programs. He also had even less support from voters of color than Hillary did.

x=post

i echo all your feelings. i didn't do enough. i must do more.

It's interesting that the losing candidate winning the popular vote is something that is fretted about before an election, but is not cared about after it happens.

But I woke up, and life seems (temporarily, at least) to be going on as usual. I didn't see any crestfallen faces on the way to work, but my workplace has been fairly abuzz with people who have no idea how this happened or what happens next.

The people I've encountered out in the world (cashiers, bus drivers, colleagues outside of my department) have all kept smiling faces and kind words, even though I haven't been able to muster anything past "eeyore".

damn guys just damn

Klonopin is the greatest

I want to spend today at home in tears but we have 720 students, overwhelmingly from New American/immigrant families, who need to be educated and fed and counseled, and whose parents want to learn English and get better jobs and raise their children for greatness. So it looks like I'll be crying in my office instead.

Klonopin is the greatest

― blonde redheads have more fun (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

ask Stevie Nicks

I'm not sure any professional politician, Democrat or otherwise, would have beaten Trump. This thing just has a life of its own. Leaving aside the obvious racism, paranoia and misogyny, the big reason he won was because he wasn't one. Appeal of Farage is exactly the same.

That would be an easier argument to make had Trump received more votes than Romney.

Xpost i sincerely wish I had a Klonopin I have no idea how I'm going to survive the near future from a mental health standpoint

I have no fucking idea who the Dems will put up against Trump in four years. Or how anyone will ever trust a poll again.

I took off work today. Saw some half-filled beers laying around after the "party". Unashamedly put a few down.

I can't process it. How can we make it through and come back from this? Four years...