IGT Election 11/5/24 Harris vs Trump

[metsmarathon]

Wow, ‘merica.

Just, wow.

Y’all are gonna get the country you fucking deserve now. Shame you’re taking the rest of us along for the ride.

[Centerfield]

Anyway. I hope Merrick Garland enjoys jail.

[metsmarathon]

By this time everyone knows exactly what Trump is. That’s why some fight him as bitterly as they’ve fought anyone in their lives.

But that’s also why some love him. They see what he is. And he allows them to be just like him.

^^^ ALL OF THIS

[Fman99]

I'm beyond words. Truly.

[metirish]

It wasn't even close

[MFS62]

My wife quoted Winston Churchill - "Be strong and carry on".
I'm thinking more like Winston Smith in Gorge Orwell's 1984 - "We are the dead".

Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

Popular vote and electoral one.
House and Senate.
Presidency and SCOTUS.

This is as strong a mandate as any I can remember.

Control of the House is still up for grabs. I'm guessing it was the economy. Its doing very well, so they say, but what regular Americans see is a meal at McDonald's that used to cost nine or ten bucks just before Covid, now costing 15 or 16 bucks. A big bag of potato chips now costs one or two dollars more and is filled with mostly air. A hundred dollars worth of groceries is now about $140 ,or $150. That's too big a jump in too short a time.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Popular vote and electoral one.
House and Senate.
Presidency and SCOTUS.

This is as strong a mandate as any I can remember.

Control of the House is still up for grabs. I'm guessing it was the economy. Its doing very well, so they say, but what regular Americans see is a meal at McDonald's that used to cost nine or ten bucks just before Covid, now costing 15 or 16 bucks. A big bag of potato chips now costs one or two dollars more and is filled with mostly air. A hundred dollars worth of groceries is now about $140 ,or $150. That's too big a jump in too short a time.

Or maybe America's still not ready for a woman President.

[Centerfield]

Yea. I would guess inflation is a big part of it. Racism a bigger part. At the end of the day white people don’t want to lose their majority. Their community. And saw Trump as the best choice to preserve that culture. Misogyny another factor. So many just can’t grasp the concept of a woman President. And overall asshole culture. Joe Rogan. Barstool. Being a dickhead is cool.

[metsmarathon]

i think they fumbled so badly on immigration that they couldn't overcome inflation.

they also failed to make the case that the seeds of inflation were set in 2020, when we ran out of fucking toilet paper under trump's watch.

plus, well, apparently, we just don't care about "other" people.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Whether or not the Dems can flip the House will be like the difference between night and day. But for now, first things first: Special Counsel Jack Smith will soon be without a job and I guess that the January 6th convicted defendants get pardons. And Judge Aileen Cannon won't get reversed by a higher court because that litigation will soon be rendered moot.

[Frayed Knot]

the border —
Look, I’m pro-immigration. I believe that immigration has long been, remains today, and will be in the future, a net plus for this country and I in no way support building a wall or mass deportation. But you do have to maintain some degree of control over the borders and Biden/Harris made a mess of the whole thing and seem to have done so almost intentionally. From the pre-inauguration signals that the gates were down to the idea that the dems want to get as many in as possible with welfare benefits and voter registrations to follow, it all seems predicated on the idea that as long as they think it’ll help them in the next election then who cares if communities near or even far from the border are strained having to adjust to a mass influx of people who need to be clothed, fed, housed and schooled. It also didn’t help when their stock answer to any question on the subject was: ‘What border crisis?’

the economy —
Inflation was going to happen coming out of the pandemic no matter what happened. Pent-up demand based on vacations being nixed for two or three years and other spending postponements meant a flood of money was going to cause upward pressure even if government did nothing. But they didn’t do nothing but instead pumped tons of money into the system at the exact moment when it didn’t need it. And if it hadn’t been for Joe Manchin negating a whole second round of spending, for which he was called a traitor by some, it would have been worse because apparently Joe Biden's only economic philosophy was 'I'm the guy who gives people money'. So even though the problem is relatively solved by this point (the economy, as it usually does, corrected itself) the fact that things cost more now than they did four years ago is enough to get a sizable sector of the population to blame this on those in charge at the time.

Culture wars —
between identity politics, labeling opposition to biological men playing amateur women's sports as hate crimes, to the candidate herself being on film talking about publicly financed sex-change operations for convicted prisoners, that turns off a lot more voters than it attracts even if those issues don't hit everyone's day to day lives.

Israel —
American Jews have traditionally voted democratic at about a 3-1 ratio. I don't know how that vote shook out in this election but with the party fringe plus a lot of educational institutions shouting 'River to the Sea' or about how they ‘Stand with Hamas’, that sentiment likely drained off more than a few normally blue votes from much needed Florida and elsewhere.

[metsmarathon]

i think its also true that democratic voters have trouble, big trouble, voting for imperfect candidates and imperfect ideas.

republican voters have no problem holding their noses as long as they can vote for what they (are told that) they want.

but no... i also do think that a HUGE part of the blame falls on biden and democrats in general, for failing to set kamala up to succeed from the get go in 2020. they ran the country like they didn't have to also win '24, and it showed. kamala should've been a front and center part of the administration as the heir apparent after a single-term-from-the-start biden.

but no. they fucked that up. shame on them. colossal failure all around. fuck.

[Centerfield]

the border —
Look, I’m pro-immigration. I believe that immigration has long been, remains today, and will be in the future, a net plus for this country and I in no way support building a wall or mass deportation. But you do have to maintain some degree of control over the borders and Biden/Harris made a mess of the whole thing and seem to have done so almost intentionally. From the pre-inauguration signals that the gates were down to the idea that the dems want to get as many in as possible with welfare benefits and voter registrations to follow, it all seems predicated on the idea that as long as they think it’ll help them in the next election then who cares if communities near or even far from the border are strained having to adjust to a mass influx of people who need to be clothed, fed, housed and schooled. It also didn’t help when their stock answer to any question on the subject was: ‘What border crisis?’

the economy —
Inflation was going to happen coming out of the pandemic no matter what happened. Pent-up demand based on vacations being nixed for two or three years and other spending postponements meant a flood of money was going to cause upward pressure even if government did nothing. But they didn’t do nothing but instead pumped tons of money into the system at the exact moment when it didn’t need it. And if it hadn’t been for Joe Manchin negating a whole second round of spending, for which he was called a traitor by some, it would have been worse because apparently Joe Biden's only economic philosophy was 'I'm the guy who gives people money'. So even though the problem is relatively solved by this point (the economy, as it usually does, corrected itself) the fact that things cost more now than they did four years ago is enough to get a sizable sector of the population to blame this on those in charge at the time.

Culture wars —
between identity politics, labeling opposition to biological men playing amateur women's sports as hate crimes, to the candidate herself being on film talking about publicly financed sex-change operations for convicted prisoners, that turns off a lot more voters than it attracts even if those issues don't hit everyone's day to day lives.

Israel —
American Jews have traditionally voted democratic at about a 3-1 ratio. I don't know how that vote shook out in this election but with the party fringe plus a lot of educational institutions shouting 'River to the Sea' or about how they ‘Stand with Hamas’, that sentiment likely drained off more than a few normally blue votes from much needed Florida and elsewhere.

Largely agree with everything you said.

Immigration. It wasn't just that they acted like there was no border crisis. It's that they didn't do anything until it became election season, which added a ton of credibility to the argument "why didn't you do anything sooner". I'll take it one step further than you. Not only am I pro-immigration, I am an immigrant myself. And I consider myself to have a lot of positions that are pretty liberal. But when I saw the mass wave of migrants being put up in city housing and given debit cards, that was a lot. Even for me.

Culture Wars. I don't know how this could have been handled better. The right did a great job of stirring the pot on this issue that is almost non-existent. They estimate that there are less than 100 trans women/girls participating in sports across the USA. But the Republicans did a great job of making this seem like a national crisis. The visuals are jarring and were plastered everywhere. I don't know how the Harris campaign could have better handled this without alienating the trans community.

Israel. I don't have an answer for this either. She was caught in an impossible situation. October 7 is too raw. Some traditionally blue voters were lost the minute that happened. And for the Uncommitted movement, I don't know how many of these were sincere in their attempt to move Harris left, and how many were looking to undermine her. To the ones that were sincere, they're going to see that undermining their best potential ally is not the way to go. I'm guessing Gaza is basically cooked now.

And one more.

Abortion. I think we learned that white women decided that reproductive rights are important to them. But not enough to risk letting more brown people in. They put their faith in the state governments to protect them while voting for the asshole that will deport their Latino neighbors.

[metirish]

Biden got 81 million votes in 2020 , Harris 66 million in 2024 , that's crazy , obviously not all the votes are counted yet , but wow

[metsmarathon]

i don't know how to do better in teh culture wars.

the only thing i can think of is that, on the one hand, the messaging needs to be much more clear that it is not in fact a zero sum game.

the other part of it needs to be, perhaps, to lean into the empathy of it all, perhaps harder. to humanize instead of demonize. i think the left also needs to figure out how to engage with christianity instead of vilifying it. to pull hard on the threads of empathy that run rampant throughout the new testament, that form the putative foundation of the whole damned thing.

maybe also find a way to brand kindness as an inherently manly act.

[Centerfield]

I just looked at the results. Four of the swing states were called for Trump. She's losing in the remaining three. This is an annihilation.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I just looked at the results. Four of the swing states were called for Trump. She's losing in the remaining three. This is an annihilation.

I know. She didn't win a single pink or purple or swing or battleground state. Not one of them. She only won the states that she was heavily expected to win.

[Centerfield]

I think the playbook is pretty clear. You run a straight white man indefinitely until you are absolutely sure, beyond a doubt that race and gender won't be prohibitive. Then run a straight white man again anyway.

[batmagadanleadoff]

With the Election of Donald Trump, Our Fellow Citizens Are About to Get Exactly What They Want

There is nothing that God, man, or the Constitution can do about it, because we did it to ourselves.

There will be no asterisk this time around. Donald J. Trump is the president-elect of the United States.

The asterisk came at the suggestion of my wife. In 2016, I was struggling with a way to describe a president whose ascent came via what I believed to be dubious means. Four years of typing some elaborate and derisive descriptive seemed like a dreadful prospect. So when my wife suggested the asterisk, it seemed so brilliant in its simplicity, and so popular once it appeared, that it was clear that it had been a magnificent choice.

Not this time. The asterisk is not coming back. Donald J. Trump is the chosen president-elect of the United States in every possible way you can be, a winner in the popular vote and a winner in that marble mausoleum called the Electoral College. The asterisk is not coming back, because this time I am absolutely sure that a majority of my fellow citizens will get exactly what they want. They will get pardons for the January 6 insurrectionists and an end to any federal prosecution of the incoming president, now and forever. They will get attacks on the free press and on political dissent that they have been slavering for. They will get validation for their rage, and an outlet for their promised vengeance, beyond their wildest fantasies. They will get the chaos for which they voted, and which they apparently fervently desire. And there is absolutely nothing that God, man, or the Constitution can do about it, because we did it to ourselves.

With the Senate gone, because Sherrod Brown lost to a car salesman and Jon Tester to a guy who can’t remember how he shot himself, we will get J.D. Vance one occluded coronary artery away from the Oval Office, Stephen Miller as Secretary of State, Alina Habba as Attorney General, RFK Jr. at HHS, and Elon Musk as Secretary of Breaking Shit. (The Democrats had better renew their love for the filibuster in a hurry.) We will get at least an attempt at mass deportation, 200 percent tariffs (which the new president now has permission never to understand), and blowback congressional investigations until hell won’t have them. (That last threat will be mitigated somewhat if the Democrats manage to flip the House of Representatives.) We will get all these things because we have expressed our earnest desire for them through the only true means allowed to us—our votes. We will get all these things, but we may not be getting Social Security checks much longer.

We have decided that science and learning don’t count as much as misogyny and racism. We have decided that democratic institutions making reasoned decisions on matters of national policy don’t count as much as goofy nicknames and sixth-grade invective. We have traded engaging in the work of self-government for entertaining ourselves with a freak show, and don’t it feel...gooooooooood?

There’s no blaming the Russians this time around. There’s no blaming media malpractice. There’s still some blame to attribute to voter suppression, but majorities elect the people who suppress the votes, which means that majorities accept the fantastical bullshit that is the rationale for those laws in the first place. The American people, which is all of us, got together on Tuesday and chose everything that’s coming for close to the next decade. This mandate was not seized. It was not conjured up by some trickeration on the part of Balkan teenagers. It was granted in the way all legitimate mandates are granted—by the vote of a majority of the people.

Coming up next: On November 26, the president-elect is due to be sentenced in a New York courtroom on thirty-four felony counts.

The asterisk is dead because we murdered it. With malice aforethought.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/p ... cted-2024/

[MFS62]

I think the playbook is pretty clear. You run a straight white man indefinitely until you are absolutely sure, beyond a doubt that race and gender won't be prohibitive. Then run a straight white man again anyway.

I don't believe it was race or gender as much as the Democratic party got caught up in the culture wars and forgot to talk to the average people to find out what was on their minds. If they had, they would have found that it was the cost of food and everything else. They couldn't get the point across that the GOP tariffs would make those costs higher.
They talked to the educated elites and theoreticians on both coasts and ignored the practical people in the middle. If they had talked bread and butter issues and how she would make this better, it wouldn't have mattered if she was Purple. This might have been different.
Since 2016, The democratic party has had trouble finding a meaningful message and staying on it. This was just more of the same.

Later

[Chad ochoseis]

I'm in the middle of working during the busiest time of the year and trying to help friends buck up when we're all losing our shit, but the one other issue in addition to those FK and CF brought up is Ukraine. I don't think Putin gives a damn about taking back the Ukraine Sudetenland. I think the purpose of the invasion was to put the West in general and the US in particular into a no-win situation where they had to choose between doing nothing and looking weak and impotent and sending troops into a situation that would make Vietnam look like a gin rummy game.

Biden threaded that needle as well as anyone could have by doing everything he could to support Ukraine short of sending troops. But it still added to the Russian-fed myth that Biden, who acquitted himself very well as President, was a weak leader.

I still think he gets the asterisk. There was no direct foreign interference, but I have little doubt that Russia was behind the scenes on some of the issues that seemed designed to make Democrats appear incompetent.

[Chad ochoseis]

but no... i also do think that a HUGE part of the blame falls on biden and democrats in general, for failing to set kamala up to succeed from the get go in 2020. they ran the country like they didn't have to also win '24, and it showed. kamala should've been a front and center part of the administration as the heir apparent after a single-term-from-the-start biden.

This, too. I'd thought that Biden would resign two years and a day into his term, to give Kamala a head start and to keep her eligible for two full terms. He probably should have done that.

[whippoorwill]

I think the playbook is pretty clear. You run a straight white man indefinitely until you are absolutely sure, beyond a doubt that race and gender won't be prohibitive. Then run a straight white man again anyway.

I don't believe it was race or gender as much as the Democratic party got caught up in the culture wars and forgot to talk to the average people to find out what was on their minds. If they had, they would have found that it was the cost of food and everything else. They couldn't get the point across that the GOP tariffs would make those costs higher.
They talked to the educated elites and theoreticians on both coasts and ignored the practical people in the middle. If they had talked bread and butter issues and how she would make this better, it wouldn't have mattered if she was Purple. This might have been different.
Since 2016, The democratic party has had trouble finding a meaningful message and staying on it. This was just more of the same.

Later

You got that right. I might not be ‘educated’ but I am not dumb. And I am practical.
We get ignored in middle America every single day except when it’s time to run for office.

Do not like Trump but I doubt that Kamala would have done much for most of my region

Centre County PA turning red is an eye opener

[Bob Alpacadaca]

Interesting editorial in the Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trum ... _lead_pos1

Yet Mr. Trump’s comeback wouldn’t have been possible without the policy failures of the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats. He won again because President Biden failed to deliver the unity and prosperity he promised, and because over four years voters have soured on the results of his progressive policies.

Mr. Biden veered left to unite Democrats, rather than unite the country, and he believed the historians (that means you, Jon Meacham) who told him he could be another FDR. He put Elizabeth Warren in charge of his regulators, and Nancy Pelosi in charge of his agenda for the first two years on Capitol Hill.

The result was a decline in real wages as inflation soared, a divisive cultural agenda driven by identity politics, chaos at the southern border, and the collapse of American deterrence abroad. The exit polls show the economy in particular was Mr. Trump’s best issue. No matter the media lectures that the economy is great, voters who depend on wages and salaries (not assets) felt differently.

Democrats tried a late course correction by pushing Mr. Biden out of the race when it became clear he would lose, and it almost worked. Kamala Harris tried to pitch herself as a “new way forward,” but she couldn’t escape her four-year association with Mr. Biden. In the end she also failed to persuade enough people she was up to the job as President in a world of growing geopolitical danger.

Given these fundamentals, Republicans had the political advantage, and perhaps a younger GOP nominee without the baggage of Jan. 6 might have won a bigger victory. Exit polls show the threat to democracy and Mr. Trump’s character were big Democratic advantages. But Democrats overplayed their hand even here, as their comparisons to fascism and Hitler weren’t believable.