Summary
Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 election leaves no room for ambiguity or an “asterisk” in his legitimacy, as he won both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
This outcome represents a clear mandate from American voters, who knowingly chose Trump’s policies and approach.
The anticipated results include pardons for January 6 participants, attacks on the press, and an administration filled with controversial figures.
By voting for Trump, Americans prioritized divisive rhetoric over democratic values, accepting the resulting turmoil.
In a sane world this would make the Democrats turn to introspecting and move leftward. In our billionaires world they’re just going to keep pursuing the “moderate” and move more and more right…
Something to keep in mind.
Trump didn’t win a significant number of new voters. He kept his base, which is roughly the size of what it was in 2020.
The problem was that Harris lost voters. In droves. Nationwide. And she took a lot of winnable downballot candidates with her. And I’m not even saying that to blame her. She ran a magnificent campaign while Trump was most noted for saying “They’re eating the dogs!”. So why did she still lose, and lose so hard? Because Democrats stayed home. Roughly about 10% of them overall, nationwide. Sure, some of them stayed home or voted 3rd party to protest Gaza, especially in Michigan. But the real story is that she underperformed so badly nationwide. I mean, for the love of God, New Jersey was competitive. That call about Iowa possibly going blue is going to be up there with “Dewey defeats Truman” in terms of political misfires. She severely underperformed with men and Latinos, especially Latino men. Which means this: 8-10 million people couldn’t stomach voting for Trump, but they’d rather passively hand over the country to Trump vs. voting for a black woman. Whether the problem they have is the fact that she’s black, female, or both is irrelevant. But the message they sent was clear. “We don’t want Trump, but we’d rather step back and just let Trump take the country rather than vote for her.”
The problems with bigotry in this country go much deeper than some people are willing to admit, and Harris just found that out the hard way. As far as the voting base is concerned, voting for Obama was a mistake that they will not repeat again, and they just proved that by handing Trump everything he wanted on a silver platter instead.
We can’t even say that it’s an outsized minority any more. A majority of the people in this country just spoke up and said that they either want the racism and bigotry or are at least willing to put up with it.
Trump won the election not because Democrat voters said “Trump!”, but because they said “Not Harris.”
She ran a magnificent campaign
The entire point of a campaign is to attract voters…
Because Democrats stayed home. Roughly about 10% of them overall, nationwide.
So I don’t see how both statement can be true…
Her campaign did a shit job at getting people to vote for her, how do you consider it magnificent?
- She absolutely crushed Trump at the debate
- Her rallies were drawing far more people than Trump’s
- She had A-list star power (Beyonce, Julia Roberts, Taylor Swift, etc.) actively endorsing her
- She took over a race where Biden was down by 5%+ and losing ground daily to at least making it competitive
- She only had 107 days to work with.
It proved to not be enough. The people who were coming to her rallies were apparently all people who were going to vote for her anyway; the size of the rallies only gave the illusion that her campaign was attracting more voters. And with so many Democrats actively choosing to stay home rather than vote at all, it seems like nothing she did would have mattered anyway. But given the crap she had to work with, she ran a near-flawless campaign. She had no way of knowing that it just didn’t matter.
You listed things they tried, but didn’t work
The entire point of a campaign is to attract voters…
Literally the only metric that matters for how good a campaign was, is how many votes they got.
And Kamala drastically underperformed.
So her campaign wasn’t “magnificent” it was a spectacular disaster that couldn’t beat trump with everything you listed and a billion dollars
Yeah but if you start to poke fingers at the Democratic Party, you might start to realize that most of their corporate donors are fine with a Trump presidency. Almost like they were fine with Harris campaigning on keeping the status quo, because they’d win either way. Better to start blaming voters now!
Considering where Biden’s polling was this summer, the fact that the Dems held onto New York is impressive.
This is the danger of lowering our bar to Trump’s level as “good enough”
Biden could be better than trump.
Kamala could be better than Biden.
But if Kamala isn’t good enough, trump would win.
Because as multiple people have been shouting for 8 years:
Being better than trump isn’t good enough to get enough votes to beat trump
All of this could be avoided by running decent candidates who won a fair primary. But the DNC won’t give that as an option because they want to use the threat of trump to push thru as “moderate” of a Dem as they can to maximize corporate donations.
Beating trump wasn’t the DNC’s goal, it was raising as much money as possible
Trump won because the DNC underestimated the sexists, racists and the idiot woke who think they somehow did something with this for palestine.
Editorial note:
i know woke is a poisoned word but I like to use to describe idiots who think they are so smart and better than others that they would rather let trump elected than admit that voting for the lesser evil is the right thing to do
And Trump didn’t? It’s always very telling when you all love shouting BOTH SIDES from the mountain tops, but when it comes to blame-
Well that’s different.
Trump had nothing to campaign on. He insulted and threw temper tantrums. Yet…. Harris Rand a dog shit campaign…
Got it.
Trump won because Harris was a shitty candidate who never won a primary for the president.
I was hoping she’d pull off a victory anyways but the lesson we should take away is that if a sitting president needs to step down from running for another term we need to have a snap election.
This all went to hell when Harris was appointed as our candidate.
Nailed it. People are still mad that Obama made it into the White House and we’re forever going to pay for it. And a black woman running for president? Americans all saw Trump’s serious cognitive decline — I don’t doubt that any outside of a hardcore few didn’t — but America made for damn sure it wouldn’t be Kamala.
This honestly cements my view that America is a racist nation, no question.
You don’t get 15 million missing votes without a solid chunk of those being Democrats, bog standard Democrats, that didn’t want to vote for a black woman.
that didn’t want to vote for a black woman.
If you ignore the multitude of policy issues she was to the right of the Dem voter base on, I guess you could blame it on that…
But that would just mean we’d repeat the mistake again…
Can we just stop running candidates who are to the right of the voter base?
We tried your strategy the last three elections and Trump has won 2 of them. It doesn’t seem to be working
Oh please. You all, and let’s face it at 15 million, it’s not progressives that didn’t vote here, but honestly if you didn’t vote because of some pithy bullshit about having not progressive policies vs policies farther than the far right and into fascist policies, well you’re definitely part of that problem and thanks for condoning racism you racist.
On one hand, it’s going to be funny watching them cry about it once the consequences of their actions start to impact their lives negatively.
On the other hand, I live in Canada, so it’s going to fuck us over too.
Remember, with doublespeak they’ll continue* to blame the democrats while their Republican leaders dismantle their rights, the economy, and the government right in front of their eyes.
It will be a repeat of 2020. They’ll leave the country in shambles and then people will vote Democrat to fix everything.
it’s going to be funny watching them cry about it once the consequences of their actions start to impact their lives negatively.
Never going to happen. Or at least they will never admit it’s a consequence of the way they voted. Either Democrats are Rino’s will be blamed.
Do not underestimate the allure of a man who offers you a boogeyman to blame all your problems on, while promising you that only he can stop it. That allure is very difficult for many people to overcome. One of the other problems with it is that even if they do see the consequences of their choices, it’s just as easy for Trump to convince them that those problems are the boogeyman’s fault too. It doesn’t have to make sense, and Trump doesn’t care if it does as long as it keeps the rubes in line and focusing their anger on anyone else but him.
This is a cult following. Any attempt to show them that their problems were caused by Trump will only cause them to MAGA harder.
As a fellow Canafian, I think we will have our own issues soon/currently, so I’m not going to have time for schadenfreude. Granted I live in Ontario and a folksy goon has been in power with no plans for so long that maybe I’ve lost my sense of humor.
Hopefully this election interference situation blows up in PPs face and the cons collapse.
I feel dirty hoping for such an outcome but it feels hopeless when someone like PP, who is obviously making a cynical power grab, has so much popularity. Canada is infested with fascists just like the US and I’m getting pretty worried about the future of humanity.
Unless Petey gets caught being boring or balls deep in a hog, I doubt it’ll move the needle. I hate to say that, there’s a lot I’d hope would move the needle at all, but in my own family it’s mask off, fuck “minorites”, give me more, so… yeah.
I am American, and I have always loved my country. Until now, I’ve never been ashamed to call myself patriotic. My thought has always been than there will always be uninformed, uneducated assholes that vote against their own self-interests and the interests of their own country.
This election is different, though. We knew exactly what we were getting if we re-elected Trump. We responded by not only electing him in a landslide election, but handing the House and the Senate over to the Republicans, too. It was a clear message. America is not a nation of mostly good people with a few vocal “bad apples.” We are a nation of hateful, scared bigots, and we proved it in a big way.
This was a turning point in American history, and the majority of us sent a clear message to their fellow citizens and to the world. America is not a nation of mostly good people being overshadowed by a media that covers the loudest assholes in the room. America is a nation of people who by a majority support exactly what the “crazy” Republicans are saying. I would feel better if Trump lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote, but that’s not what happened.
This isn’t an election where I’ve lost only lost faith in the democratic process or my fellow citizens, although both are true. This is an election where I’ve lost faith in my country as a whole. I have never been proudly Republican or proudly Democrat, but I’ve always been proudly American. Now I’m just… sad. I don’t expect I’ll see a day any time soon where I can honestly say I’m proud of my country. The best I can do is retreat into my own personal bubble, live my life, and watch the world burn around me until the flames consume everything I care about.
Take heart. Our fellow citizens are slow learners, and few of them have paid close attention to Trump and his shit forsaken privilege in escaping consequences since he left office.
It will be a long wait, but four years of unbridled trump will open a lot of eyes. Let them get a healthy, sustained dose of exactly what they didn’t realize they asked for and then we rebuild.
And don’t give away the House like that. It’s not over yet, and with any luck that guardrail will remain.
Because while we were all shut inside during the pandemic, that he exacerbated no less, with nothing to do but watch screens, enough of us didn’t get a good idea of what Trump was?
We know. We just don’t care.
All people care about is that life is more expensive, everybody’s doing worse and no one is doing anything about it. But Trump, somehow after 4 years in office, is still seen as NOT a politician and Trump says he’ll fix it and bring them along. Democrats are milquetoast corporate shills. Which means they’re all PC, HR doublespeak. They’re liars. Or ineffective, and what’s the difference in the end? Republicans might be draconian, but they tell you what they want and they’ll twist every rule to get there. They’re predictable. That’s the known evil.
These voters don’t care if everyone else suffers, as long as their group does better. It’s literally us vs them, come fuck-all. It’s not complex. Their survival comes first, then their prospects, then their comfort. And they’ll sell everything out to get those 3; the climate, our allies, the rule of law, even family that isn’t with the program…
Honestly yeah. My hopes are at this point our electoral process does exactly what it just did. It’s clear a lot of people went out and voted for him. Not a small group but a ton. And my resignment has just been “Okay, this is what you asked for, buckle up”.
It’s gonna suck ass and I really hope they don’t start some bullshit that makes them squeak out of the mess they’re about to step in. (They’ll definitely try to) But let’s give the American people exactly what they asked for and just try to stop the house from catching on fire while they realize what a bad idea it was.
How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking? I’m 40, started paying attention to politics in the Clinton years and then really paying attention with Bush v Gore in 2000. America was full on neolib vs neocon bullshit back then, a quarter of a century ago. The 2nd Iraq War was a big moment for me of realizing that the only thing America stands for is corporate hegemony. Project 25 is no different than the Project for a New American Century, and the “opposition” from the “left” isn’t fundamentally against any of it, they just pay a bit more lip service to culture issues (which are of course important if you aren’t a cis white christian male, but they are clearly not enough).
Tl;dr
I second this. Same story. I’ve been up on politics since I was 16, so mid 90s.
This is the death of Neoliberalism. That’s what we’re witnessing, it’s just the corporate financiers don’t realize they aren’t going to weather it very well yet.
The Make America Great Depression Again will kick off before midterms, right before we invade Mexico. Expect the military to be used against us on our soil 3rd or 4th year and then we’ll enter our troubles.
It’s all so super predictable. I fucking hate it.
Just remember, when the lights go out, point your guns at the only ones who still have theirs on cuz they did this.
I am close to the same age and something feels different now. The Trump administration is many levels of degenerate beyond the Bush administration. Even Dick fucking Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris FFS. I think Trump is pretty far beyond neocon, unfortunately. Just straight up Fascist.
The Neocons may have started rolling this snowball back then, but it is an avalanche now.
I’m with you. It was absolutely soul crushing to watch the worst person to run for president get elected on no qualifications and give us reasons to despise him deeply every day for 8 years. But even worse was that people cheered him the fuck on. Then demanded more. This country is lost. We have no reason to hope anymore. Everything good is in danger and everything dangerous is a possibility. We’re fucked. I’ll never have another warm and fuzzy feeling about this country or its institutions.
For me, it was the days and weeks after Jan 6th, when it became clear that outright insurrection, a violent coup, was not going to spark a course correct.
The republican party should have shattered. The non-fascists should have woken up, and fought with MAGA, and years later, a viable political party rise from the ashes.
But that didn’t happen. A few conscientious dissenters fell on their swords, most at retirement age anyway. Fascism took over completely. And the American people ate it up.
Weeks after Jan 6th, it was clear that consequences were not coming. They took their mask off, and no one cared, or couldn’t stop them.
And here we are. Convicted felon with absolute power on his way to the Whitehouse, who owns the SCOTUS, Senate, and likely the House.
Trump will have unchecked power to do whatever he damn well pleases.
Way to fucking go, America. I fucking hate my countrymen.
Thanks for writing this for me.
I’m in the same boat. I’m a white straight guy. So, I guess I’m not in immediate danger, although I am an academic. So, I guess my choices are: fight, flee or essentially hide.
Fighting seems infeasible although I think violence is justifiable.
Fleeing would require leaving the country. I dunno if I can swing that.
So…I guess I just live my life and hope it’s not quite as bad as I fear? I dunno. I’m open to advice.
I do now hate this country and the bulk of the people who live here. Fuck them.
You think the Supreme Court and court system as a whole is bad now? Just wait.
