I'm writing this note at about 11:45 PM and the election results are still up in the air. By the time you read this, we may know a bit more. Regardless, let's talk about what's happened so far and the path ahead.
You can leave your thoughts in the discussion thread linked below, starting now. I’ll be dropping by to participate in the discussion and answer your questions at 10:00 AM Eastern, for about an hour.
Your regularly scheduled newsletter will return on Thursday.
— Judd
UPDATE (11:05 AM): Thanks everyone for participating. I’m hoping off the chat so I can begin thinking about what to write about next. Please continue the discussion. If you have thoughts about what I should cover in the next newsletter, please let me know!
Hello everyone! I thought I'd start with a few thoughts of my own.
1. To find out the outcome of an election, you have to count votes. That's what's going on now. It's frustrating that the result is still up in the air, but patience is key. Trump will try to make the process as unpleasant as possible. Stay focused.
2. The main reason people are surprised by last night's results is that the polls suggested a decisive Biden victory. This is why I don't really discuss horse race polls. And why I think the media spends too much time focused on them. I wrote the first ever edition of Popular Information on this topic: https://popular.info/p/1-ignore-the-polls
3. Trump argument that the vote counting should be halted will be difficult to maintain because if you stopped counting the votes now, Biden would win. This isn't a prediction but it's the current state of play.
4. One encouraging thing I've observed is that Republican elected officials are rejecting Trump's premature declaration of victory. And election officials are staying the course with the vote count. That's important.
5. Litigation has already started but its still unclear if the result will be close enough for it to play a decisive role. That's one thing I'll be monitoring closely.
I disagree somewhat with#2...yes there is surprise because of the polls but I think it's more that people are disappointed at how gullible we've become as a nation to believe or disregard this man after everything we know. We didn't want to believe so many people are making the choice that brings out the absolute worse in our nation.
Bridget - you nailed it with this comment and that is exactly why I am shocked and saddened by this close race. After 4 years with this hideous excuse for a human being, I had faith that a large majority of Americans would reject him. I couldn't envision the situation we're facing now.
I used to work with political polling professionally. I agree with you. I'd like to add that following the polls is lazy journalism. Critical analysis of the polls would make interesting reading... for me. And a small audience, I'm guessing. So we are stuck with this decades-long pattern of journalistic practice and all I think I can do about it is tell my friends "ignore the polls. Fight like your candidate is losing but might win".
This is the absolute last time I pay ANY attention to polling. In fact, since it appears our family was oversampled this election season (phone calls to the landline every day), I'm going to stop participating in polling as well. I have always been one to search for the good in others, but I'm stick-a-fork-in-me done with that. From where I'm sitting, it appears that most of my neighbors would rather shoot me (and other "libs") than look at me. No more Ms. Nice Gal.
I became an ace, I think, at having cold and cool conversations with dangerous people. I've had hundreds of those conversations. A couple of years ago I sat at a table in a diner talking with a man and our mutual friend. I noticed he had a huge Trump fan banner on the back window of his pickup truck. I knew that in his way of life he did not need a truck. I asked him if he owned guns. I asked him about ammo shortages. I mentioned I used to shoot. He randomly mentioned he had stockpiled 50,000 rounds. I knew he lived by the Atlantic with white middle class retirees all around. I learned that he had his back against the sea and had a mind to create a defensible fortress even though it was just him living there. Why did he need 50K rounds? "To prepare for the Muslim apocalypse". He said it dryly. Matter of fact. He is afraid he will face mobs of people coming for him, and for his property. If I show him my anger, how will he react? If I call him stupid, how will he feel? If I laugh out loud, what next? I need results. I want results. I do not have the skills for talking him off that ledge. He is terrified. His whole life revolves around that fear.
I get what you're saying. I really do. And I was the one telling my paranoid son that he needed to see the abject fear that motivates some of these people - until recently. I'll still remember that they're afraid, and their fear causes their belligerence, but I will no longer go out of my way to do for them. No more solicitous calls when I see their animals running loose, no more offers to clean their driveways after a heavy snow, no more asking after the kids & grands. I don't know them anymore.
Have you become afraid of them? (BTW - that guy, in my story - I do nothing at all to help him, although I supposed I could - I DO help people who ask for help)
Nope. As long as they don't realize where my sentiments lie, I'm good. And, if they do ever realize it, I don't think they're scared enough of me to do anything to me.
I am in a similar situation though the neighborhood is split between evangelical ‘christians who oppose abortion but would do nothing to help a struggling single mother and the gun toting 2nd amendment folks- who could not tell you what the 2nd amendment says- I try to simply not engage because they know where I live and violence is not out of the question
Alex Burns on NYTimes Daily this morning said that polling in key states like Florida and Wisconsin was likely overestimated and even the campaigns were trying to tell media that their data was showing much closer margins. Had no idea and thought that was interesting.
If journalists consistently tried to follow up on leads and dig into facts by consulting a Ouija board, how long would it take for you to disregard what they report (and cancel your subscriptions)? Polling stories are poison, especially when delivered as “this new twist just in.” Why do we think that predicting the future is a job for a news organization? NYT handled it especially poorly this week. 538 four years ago, Upshot this year - they are selling us an addictive mind-altering framework, not evidence. Polling is a tool in campaigners’ toolbox, I get that. But look at us consumers, handing horserace-paradigm journalists the keys to our brains.
We are failing an open-book test. I understand why someone may have voted for DJT in 2016. I don't agree with it, but I understand it. But we had nearly four years of instability, deception, corruption, and complete lack of basic decency upon which to draw when casting our ballots this year. I fully realize that votes are still being counted, but I'm struggling to understand how this is even close.
So much is at stake. And an alarming percentage of Americans appear to have turned a blind eye to real problems facing our nation. Instead, they're drawn to the President's claims of a strong economy and promises to resolve the very disorder he created.
I think recognizing there are lots of things about the politics of the United States that are poorly understood is a good starting place. I'm right there with you.
Absolutely. To include the possibility that more and more people are voting for bombast than for actual politics. I once assumed people voted for Trump's "policies" despite his personality. I'm slowly realizing it could be the other way around.
Yes, and this. Though I agree with Judd's assessment. There is clearly a lot we don't know about why people vote for him. If we'd figured that out in the last four years, I have to assume this race would not be so close.
Actually, a whole bunch of people did the research and know very well why they vote for him. Not one funder on the left ever stepped up to truly build an equal digital eco system to rival what the Kochs have built.
Agree to disagree, I suppose. It seems clear to me there is a lot we still don't understand about politics in this country. And yes, even if we did have a firmer grasp on why people vote the way they do, we likely wouldn't be as effective at communicating our message to voters as Republicans have been for the reasons you've pointed out.
What frightens me the most is seeing huge swaths of the country (not just the south; also areas in the midwest and west) where people truly believe that covid is not real and doesn't need any action taken to control it. There are districts with the highest covid death counts that voted Trump, and that is not (entirely) Trump's own doing. It is the complicit press, social media, and the state's local leaders parroting the same deceptions.
This is a cancer to a free society. Freedom of speech is a powerful tool, but echo chambers and free access to megaphones weaponizes it against us. Opinions must be considered, but "covid is a hoax" is not an opinion.
To be clear, I hold Zuckerberg responsible to a point because he is a GOP lapdog, but it isn't entirely Facebook's fault, it's the ability for individuals to isolate themselves from hearing and considering dissent that is destroying America.
Everything Facebook is doing right now is to avoid government regulation of the platform. Because of my job right now I'm becoming something of an expert on social media technology, especially what's wrong with it, how the recommendation algorithms work and how disinformation is a perfect application for them. Facebook is out of control and so are the other platforms. YouTube is actually worse.
As far as market share of ads, Twitter is between the two of these. Jack Dorsey seems to have sort of grown a conscience, but it really doesn't matter. I wrote a whole bunch more, but this thread is about the election and I don't want to keep going off on a tangent.
I worried in the election lead-up that Biden would somehow fumble at the three-yard line.
It’s soul-destroying and a crushing defeat even if he somehow manages to win. That a huge number of Americans see Trump as their saviour whilst he robs them of their health and health care is a staggering testament to herd mentality. Sadly, herd immunity will not protect many of them and they will succumb to COVID. What they fail to see is he and the GOP truly don’t care.
My god. I mean, I can't help but think about all the stories in 2017 when self-avowed Trump voters were saying, "please, don't take away my healthcare coverage." That is literally what he was campaigning to do!
Somehow they’ve tied it to a belief that having affordable health care for everyone is a communist plot. I am so glad I live in Canada. No, it's not perfect, but Prescription costs in the US kill. Many who get COVID may find themselves with no coverage as the consequent long-term affects are deemed a pre-existing condition.
As to the environment, those people who live with contaminated water supplies (Forever chemicals) voted for a man who told them America has the cleanest water. Ah, but they are poor and expendable as are the 230,000 + who died of COVID.
I was watching a Trump rally last week (because I enjoy pain and feeling dead inside), and in the midst of listing of litany of fear-mongering critiques about the Democratic party he shouted to his supporters "They want to make healthcare free for everybody." And they booed! He was making fun of free healthcare!!!!
It is sometimes so disorienting to hear that, right? I know exactly what you mean. You wonder if anyone is listening to the words, or just cheering on command like a studio audience. Now to be fair, the Democratic party also emphatically rejected universal healthcare during this election cycle, and even adopted the healthcare=socialism line from the GOP. Personally, this frustrated me even more than the surreal spectacle of people cheering for bankruptcy, insurance companies, and death, because they had the chance to really take up a huge reform for the benefit of all, and in the midst of the pandemic no less. What a squandered opportunity.
"Free for everybody" is a dog whistle. They know and he knows that he's not making fun of free healthcare, he's making fun of people who think that BIPOC should also get healthcare.
That makes so much sense. It is remarkable to me how successful the Republican party is at convincing people to hate something that could benefit them because it might also benefit others.
The headlines have screamed, every single stinking day, about what Trump was doing and saying. You absolutely don’t get to blame “the media“ for not telling when the truth is people didn’t care as long as their portfolios looked good.
I agree with you somewhat. However, I think it has been clear for years that most media outlets have refrained from calling Trump's words and actions what they are (racist, illegal, fascist) because they didn't want to appear biased. My other issue with MSM outlets is that they gave (and still give) airtime to people operating in bad faith to debate the issue of the day. Instead, they need to avoid headline news coverage and report things in terms and perspectives that allow viewers to fully understand how it impacts their lives.
Really? What Maddow? How about how the children at the border in detention dropped off the radar. The pardons of his henchmen, no they chased the Trump ball and dropped it over and over and over. The examples are numerous but you have your opinion and I have mine. They are to blame.
Agreed. What are elderly people in FL thinking of? Especially when there’s a good chance #45 will take away health care. How much of a factor in all this is Fox News?
It is! I believe he’s said as much. I’m disappointed in Dems & Biden for not jumping all over this and campaigning hard on their commitment to preserving Social Security and Medicare.
Please stop. Stereotyping is not helpful in any discussion. All senior citizens (or elderly as you prefer) are not the same nor do they vote the same. Additionally, seniors are not the only voting “block” in Florida. Every state (some more than others) has low-informed voters who are easily swayed by the loudest voices and pushers of fear which brings me to your question about Fox “News” being a factor - well duh!
It’s frighteningly apt that this monster and its acolytes are on the verge of returning to lay waste to what is left of America’s soul. Some might say it has a new darker soul, but are Americans willing to accept that and follow a truly evil man?
This is why we have to work in the schools to change the curriculum back to a time when asking questions was not punishable and thinking about ideas was encouraged and taught. If I take a minute and think about the evangelical teachings, I see that it is pure bullshit with gold dust and feathers of the angels. This is not made up. It exists here at a megachurch where I live. The young searchers who come here from all over the world are frisked of their money and told massive lies. It is Jim Jones again. This kind of control is in the schools, police departments and local government. All white perpetrated. If you are LGBTQ or of color you are not so welcome. In fact the former can be sent to a special place to get "cured". I see where the systemic racism is born again!
And you think they are caring because . . . they volunteer at animal shelters? give tours of local battlefield sites? I’m legit confused by your comment.
I see where you’re coming from, not ready to agree or disagree with you. But if they’re “caring” only in the universe of beneficiaries of their belief system, I can’t call that caring.
I was not at all surprised by Trump taking 2016 and 2020's close margins seem about right. Woman in a STEM field see this because Every. Single. Man. we work with is a Trumper. Many are openly racist and sexist, but don't think they are because "that is the normal way to think."
I was told by colleagues for TWO separate jobs in very different locations that I would not get an internal company job that I had applied for because 1) "He won't hire a woman or any Black person" 2) Look around... see what we hire: you are not what we hire. These are Trumpers. They will just say it to your face like they are explaining something reasonable. One guy was even having me fill in while he looked for a white male. He wrote nice things about my work to his bosses, but hire a Woman?!? NO WAY. I refused to "fill in" until my replacement could be found after I found out what he really thought. It took them over a year and a half to find a suitable white guy. These are Trumpers. They are everywhere.
More white women voted for Trump, both in terms of raw numbers and percentages, in 2020 than in 2016. With the caveat that we don't have complete numbers yet, but right now it's looking like 55% of white women voted for Trump in 2020, versus 53% in 2016. White women are just as much to blame, nonwithstanding the existing issues of sexism in STEM.
We're watching this from Asia and are kinda shocked that the race is so close. Was expecting a blue wave after four years of this monster. Gave you guys the benefit of the doubt in 2016, but this election has shown, this is America. Even if Biden wins narrowly, half of America holds Trumpist views, whether we or you'd like to admit. I don't know what the future holds, good luck my American friends.
I love Sicily and often fantasize about living there. However we do split our time between Bangkok and San Diego. Neither Italy nor Thailand have come to a steady state of economic equality. And Italy has a pretty brazen right wing. I'm not trying to deflect everyone's despair; it's justified. But if the fantasy of fleeing occurs to us, make sure to investigate where you'd feel comfy and what aspects of that other place appeal to you. Food and climate? Ability to insulate yourself from the domestic realities of the other place? The set of individuals you personally encounter as opposed to the electoral results in that country? Then apply those criteria to the country we despair about. We now know that 35% of our population would prefer "Father Knows Best" and "The Donna Reed Show" to the realities of the 21st century. OTOH cities and their suburbs don't have that mindset. Our challenge is to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable orientations.
This rightwing swing has been going on all over Europe. There isn't remotely enough coverage about how Putin has funded political extremists on both right and left in Western democracies in order to destabilize them, draw attention away from his regime, and prove to his populace that our systems of government don't work. He has used the same tactics on us that the CIA has used to destabilize governments such as those in Central and South America. He has met with varying success, the most successful has been in Hungary and Poland. I don't know if the Philippines or Brazil are anything to do with him, but I wouldn't be surprised. Sadly the state of American affairs has done nothing but help his efforts along.
so Ecuador is good? I have not been a big traveler in my life, and relocating sounds hard, but I m thinking seriously about it. what about healthcare? has to better than here, I would imagine, but how do you become citizen?
Citizenship takes 5 years of residency, but legal residency is easy......special residency visa programs for retirees. 12 hours of daylight every day, all year, with year round temps of 68 lows -87 highs. And the beach! and whales! and the Amazon! and the Galapagos! johninecuador@gmail.com
Ecuador is good. The health care is supposed to be decent, not as good as the US. Rent is cheaper. I researched it a lot at one point. At that time there were a few cities in which a lot of expats have relocated, so there is an expat community. It is a third world country, so some things are not as convenient or comfortable, but there are good things about it. I don't know if you can become a citizen, but I think you can be a legal resident. The thing to do is read, read, read. Read books, blogs, etc. Meet people online who live there, etc., and remember not to believe everything people say.
Alas there is no blue wave, at present Biden is ahead by a mere 25 electoral votes, and the senate is 47-47, and most of the issues and people I have been rooting for and donating to have lost to the Republicans.
Stupid freakin Americans are swayed by commercials, there is no salvation. In California Prop 22 failed, simply because Uber and Lyft spent millions on commercials.
Let's be clear. There is a portion of the population - specifically, Black and other POC voters - who have been telling us for decades that this is how America is. That we, as a nation, care more about protecting our wealth and our status than we do about actually pursuing equality. That issues involving race cannot be compartmentalized. That socialism is just fine when it's me but it's not fine when you benefit too (think farmers getting bailouts or the stimulus checks). This is deeply frustrating and disheartening, but it isn't a surprise.
And if this isn't clear evidence that a lot of people on the left live in echo chambers of news sources, I don't know what could be clearer. So many people on the left that I know - myself included, though probably to a lesser degree - convinced ourselves that this election would be a repudiation of what Trump stood for and his ignorance and the harm he's done. Even if Biden does end up winning, the election absolutely does not represent a repudiation of Trump and the GOP. At all.
I agree with you completely. Let’s face up to what this says about America and Americans’ fear of POC. Millions showed up to vote for Trump’s “law and order” appeals and don’t care about the pandemic deaths. It’s so disheartening but also a call to fight harder for racial justice and an end to poverty.
One major issue is the folks who support Trump see racial justice as a loss for them. For them, it seems like equality is somehow a threat, so they fight it tooth and nail, irrespective of the dangers it poses to them and the country as a whole.
It can't be solely the responsibility of the Democratic party to address this issue, though it seems like that's the expectation. Meanwhile, the GOP seems unconcerned about the problem unless it threatens their power, and even then, that requires only the most overt and uncontested expressions of racial violence.
A Biden win is a positive thing, but as long as one of the two major political parties proudly makes itself a home for racism, misogyny, anti-immigration for non-white people, etc., many people will view all significant issues as partisan. And when everything is partisan, nothing truly matters because partisanship reduces all to political disputes, akin to a sport. However, it is not a sport, and the denial of fundamental rights is not just a game.
The bigger problem is Democrats are as ignorant to the racial equity issues as the GOP. This isn't just a GOP issue by any means. The fact that the GOP is the party of white supremacy doesn't mean that the Democrats are not full of white supremacy as well. Democrats are fine with calling out the more blatant forms of racism. But when Democrats are confronted about less obvious forms of racism that are no less harmful, they start getting just as shut down and defensive as the GOP.
Democrats do not make a concerted effort to fight for equality. Some Democrats do. The party, as a whole, does not. Nor does everyone or even most of the people in the party.
That's fair. Pelosi appeared on PBS NewsHour last night and was asked whether Democrats had underperformed among minority voters. Her answer, that "minority voters are the most brilliant voters, they see clearly what is in their interest" felt really patronizing and from a similar perspective that generated "if you don't vote for me then you ain't black."
Yes, that was an awkward moment and inelegant phrasing, to say the least. However, I don't thick she was being patronizing. I took her comments as "Black voters have their eyes open."
He loves the uneducated and the stats illustrate uneducated poor folks seem to love sucking up to the rich. I believe the large increase in Black & Latino males this time is do to the fact they despise female equality. The all want to proud pussy grabbers just like our #POUTINGpotus. It's sad that these folks think the GOP will ever do anything to improve their standing in our society. Worse yet, when progressive assistance programs are made available they are the first one with their hands out and then after they got theirs, they'll bitch about others getting theirs.
Indeed. America's so-called "greatness" was built on the backs of enslaved black people, and that subjugation, while it has changed appearance over centuries, has never really truly been defeated.
Yes. In fact, the current electoral map shows that the Confederacy lives on and has metastasized. How do you get absolute surrender 170 years after the defeat? I’m stumped.
Trump showed fundamentalist mainly white christians the power he would give them and they threw themselves at his feet. He showed racists and other bigots the legitimacy they craved and they lined up for him. He has exposed for everyone to see the worst of America and they lapped it up. Now he has followed through On his democracy destroying path to reelection. Declare victory prematurely, demand counting stop, tie it up in lawsuits that make their way to an SC he has packed. If that happens I fear our democracy is dead and we are a backwoods dictatorship. And the fact that so many Americans think this is ok, since they like what he says, is disheartening. Everyone who says our system of checks and balances will work it out, I don’t think factored in such a craven GOP.
This was written three hours ago, so perhaps things look a bit different now. But I think it's important to grapple with the deep factual and ideological divides of the country. I don't believe those divides mean democracy is dead. That is democracy. It's being tested, but the outcome is not preordained.
I agree wholeheartedly. I also think (because I'm related to some of these folks) that they legitimately do not see what seems to us to be right in front of our faces. They think all the talk of dictatorship is overblown and delusional. They don't think it is anywhere near as 'bad as we think it is'. It is a cult and so, so many have drunk the Kool-aid.
yet they are afraid of so called "socialism" rather than authoritarianism, it's like they dont understand what that is... and I think They like the thought of that, they need a daddy. especially one who hates the liberals.
They don’t understand. They did not grow up after WW II when there were real threats - as there are today but younger filks have grown up essentially spoiled and entitled
We have ignored how mediagenic Trump is. When combined with prioritizing power, delivering legitimacy that pulls people out of the shadows, and the right wing machine that has been operating for years — putting judges on benches and training candidates and campaigns in local races — his style, his years on TV cannot be matched by anyone wanting to have a thoughtful conversation.
Now, the Democrats — maybe thinking of the Lincoln Project — it’s better to say the non-Trumpists — have to play a long game AND a short game. Putting in place machine, building power training candidates while effectively combatting a President who is willing to say anything, consolidate power at the expense of rights and liberties.
I know it’s not over yet and he might end up being a lame duck President (terrifying before, more so now with this close vote behind him). I’m not sure that changes the reality of what’s ahead for the country.
Shocked to find out that half my country, who elected a black man for president twice (only 8 & 12 years ago) is okay with systemic racism & okay with almost a quarter million Americans dying (so far) due to a mishandled pandemic. I really believed that we were better than this. The feeling of defeat, regardless of the Presidential election result, is overwhelming.
As usual this country used a black man to save it from the economic ruins from the Bush administration and then shows its true racist ways by electing a pos racist to take the credit
Here is a hard truth to swallow. The president has little or nothing to do with the economy. The economy is not the DOW or Wall Street. is is you and I with change in our pockets that spend it. Spending is the economy, no money to spend, no economy.
always talk of the GDP, every time a cancer of cancer is diagnosed, the GDP goes up
The Gross Domestic product is dependent on spending, not production. COVID-19 was a GDP accelerant, offset by the layoffs and unemployment
The media, which is corporate owned and reports what the corporations want to report, is fixated on the DOW Jones and other stock market indicators, not on the welfare of and the spending of the citizen. So they report a good economy when the DOW goes up.
And the stock market does not respond to spending and jobs, it responds to shareholder emotions, and shareholder emotions are driven by such things as Presidential policies and now, today, by of all things tweets.
I repeat the economy is not the stock market, but you wouldn't know that because of the reporting of the lame stream media.
As usual this country used a black man to save it from the economic ruins from the Bush administration and then shows its true racist ways by electing a pos racist to take the credit
Dems are guilty of voter suppression as well. I don't see a giant wave of Democratic legislatures allowing convicted felons the right to vote unconditionally. And those laws preventing convicted felons from voting, all enacted during Jim Crow, were designed to prevent Black people from voting.
I agree with your sentiments, but not with your conclusion. Julie's statement was not false equivalency. The fact is that Democrats, especially when the party was racist Dixiecrats are behind the laws prohibiting convicts from voting. A hold over of the 13th Amendment which outlawed chattel slavery, but allowed for enslavement of convicts.
It is no coincidence that Angola, the largest state prison was built on the largest plantation in Louisiana and possibly the south. Named after the country from which the majority of slaves came.
Unfortunately Biden's sponsorship and vote on the Crime Bill of 1996 has criminalized people, most of whom are black, for such trivial things as marijuana possession and turned them into felons.
Fortunately votes have already been cast, but the Democratic party has a lot to do to become what it holds itself out to be, a party of the people. Rather it is the party of the plutocrats, and the peoples votes are taken for granted because "the alternative is unthinkable".
Penny, you are a real pain in the butt, you slap down every hand offered because it is not politically correct, as I said elsewheres your penchant for being self righteous, self pitying and accusatory of those who are allies, but not sufficiently correct, is tiresome and counter productive.
Get over yourself, welcome allies rather than slap down their hands because they are not sufficiently politically correct.
You are wearing on one's patience, and frankly I really don't care
You are as obnoxious as Trump voter. The other side of the same coin.
LOL My false equivalency? No. I'm enabling deniers like yourself to wake up and have to face the reality. Until you actually wake up and see the reality of how this has been going on, you're going to keep perpetuating the status quo and not understanding why.
I is not really shocking. The strength of the American fight for civil rights rose to the surface again under DJT. But so did the strength of America's brutal racism. It was not destroyed in the 60's. It was not sealed in a tomb with Martin Luther King. We've lived in a divided country since before the Civil War. Since before the Constitutional Congress. Alexander Hamilton was one of a very few adamant proponents of the abolition of slavery. If anyone still believes that the Civil War settled things, they do not know the still breathing "righteousness" of the rebel "cause." So many times I have thought about what we would be if we had let the South secede. Never more than now.
My opinion is that the racists didn't vote, because they didn't think that he would win. The minorities turned out in unheard of numbers, but he failed to deliver, and they have resigned themselves.
The Democratic party has always taken the minority, labor and gay vote for granted, because , in their mindset, the alternative is worse. And so it is with this election.
I love Canada; I lived in the Toronto area for 12 years with my Canadian husband and absolutely fell in love with your country, it's history, it's people, it's diversity, it's beauty...Unfortunately my husband passed away 8 years ago and I'm back in the Chicago area to help my elderly parents. I don't recognize this country anymore...and I would give anything to go back to Canada!
I don't see one. Even if Biden pulls out a squeaker, half the electorate voted to reelect the worst president in history. Half the electorate wants to destroy the Atlantic alliance. Half the electorate is more comfortable with the US playing in Putin's sandbox than in the EU's. What sort of pathway is there out of that mess, aside from a cataclysmic world war (God forbid) that might possibly unite the country?
What is the purpose of the Atlantic alliance? Why are some Dems so eager to maintain the war machine? I want to deescalate with China, Russia, Iran, and N. Korea and move half the war budget to reconstruction.
The Atlantic alliance is economic, not just military. It represents common values of democratic principles embedded in capitalist societies. The only reason the EU goes to war is because the US drags them in.
I have no problem with reducing the military budget. Part of why we're here is because we are now a military society with patriotism measured by how much you love guns and bombs. I don't see that changing, especially since that is the heart and soul of the QOP.
We need to re-engage with China and Iran. Putin's Russia will remain focused only on what can make Russia a world power again. He has no interest in being a good neighbor. Putin would love to rebuild the USSR built around the White countries in the area. Do we stand by while that happens? If NATO stands up, Putin sits down, and vice versa. We saw that with Crimea and are seeing it with Lithuania.
North Korea is a rogue state that is not interested in playing nice. De-escalation puts Seoul at grave risk. At the same time, South Korea needs to be allowed to take the lead in making nice with Kim Jong-un.
and to think Trump even knows what he is doing is absurd. Not only does he want military build up , he wants to use nuclear bombs! he says why not? why dont we? wow. what a mess. sure he says he doesnt want a war, but that is not true, that guy is the most wreckless.
What is the purpose of the Atlantic alliance? Is that a rhetorical question or are you genuinely interested? If the latter, then maybe we can crowd source here some good books for you to read. The United States’ alliances around the world are a peace machine and a economic machine. Like it or not, we are a global economy and share global concerns, such as pandemic control and environmental preservation and the safe guarding trade routes. If we retreat to protectionism and try to go it alone, our economy will tank, our already shrinking influence on the word (thanks to trump) will vanish, and we will live in a far more dangerous world, in which dictators and bullies can affect US internal affairs.
You may need to change that one sentence of yours about the US being a global economy. We WERE the main driver of the global economy until trumps tariffs and his completely mishandling of this pandemic. Our “fantastic” economy has shrunk like a cheap suit caught in a rainstorm.
This is at least the second time someone has pointed to half the population as holding reactionary and racist views. But let's recognize that the Electoral College mechanism grants outsized voting power to rural voters. And that it is most certainly not 50% of the voters painting the map red. I wish I had a link to a map that shows how our population votes based purely on their ballot choices without respect to state lines. Yes, it's awful that 35-40% are looking at the world from a rear view mirror. But are we frozen in this? I sure hope that 60-65% of us can find a way to transcend the shackles of rural know-nothing electoral hegemony. (Wow, I haven't even had my coffee yet.)
EC be damned. Some 65 million voters pulled the lever for the fascist in orange. A few million more pulled for Biden. That's a massive problem in my book.
I haven't had my coffee yet. And I haven't verified the numbers. Absolutely it's a problem that any sizeable voting bloc look to that authoritarian, mentally ill con man. Do we just give up when we're the majority? Do we give in to the temptation of painting Trump voters as uniformly irredeemable? Have we pondered what's in the mind of Voters who elected Obama twice and yet can vote for Trump? Quite a puzzle. It's the 50th anniversary of the Rubik's cube. Something to spin about.
This is at least the second time someone has pointed to half the population as holding reactionary and racist views. But let's recognize that the Electoral College mechanism grants outsized voting power to rural voters. And that it is most certainly not 50% of the voters painting the map red. I wish I had a link to a map that shows how our population votes based purely on their ballot choices without respect to state lines. Yes, it's awful that 35-40% are looking at the world from a rear view mirror. But are we frozen in this? I sure hope that 60-65% of us can find a way to transcend the shackles of rural know-nothing electoral hegemony. (Wow, I haven't even had my coffee yet.)
The fact that this election is so close is a reflection of America’s failed educational system, a lack of understanding of American civics, and American addiction to social media. I am embarrassed that so many of my fellow voters are unable to discern fact from fiction, and don’t bother to fact check stories that they see on social media before sharing them. Misinformation and disinformation helped to make this election as close as it is.
A perfect example of what I’m talking about: on Monday, I was talking to someone in my office in his late 20’s who is a Trump supporter. He was laughing at the attempt by Texas Trump supporters to run the Biden-Harris bus off the road. He had no understanding of the electoral college and the bicameral system of government. Trump is entertainment to him, and is worthy of his vote.
I completely agree with the above. I relocated to rural GA 40 yrs ago and was appalled (and still Am despite marginal improvements) at the educational system. My 60+ year old step children, grands and greats haven’t a clue about how government is designed to work. They watch Fox and listen to the preachers. Really sad
Out with de Vos! She is continuing the destruction of our educational system. This is by design and has been in play for the last 40 years. Kochs decide the curriculum from 1st grade thru university. They fund "schools" within schools, award grants to those who do things their way, who teach the kind of economics they approve.
Numb, sad, and enraged all at the same time. Twice in 4 years I’ve gone to bed on election night feeling like I’m living in an alternate dimension that doesn’t square with what I believe we are about.
Honestly, I don't understand why so many (mostly white) Americans are shocked to pieces. America was built on racist individualism, has enabled racism individualism throughout its history, elected this racist individualist, allowed him to enact racist and individualist policies using racist and individualist rhetoric. So yes, half the country is pumped about elected a racist individualist. It sucks. But as a black woman, it's not at all surprising that so many people would vote for someone who is so blatantly racist and self-serving. They LIKE that about him and they HATE that all these years they've been shamed for it.
As someone who grew up in a very racist family, I can confirm that this is true. They like that they can say racist things out loud and in public now. The people that vote for Trump who say they aren't racist are either lying or are simply OK with looking the other way, which is being racist.
1000% this. I've noted that it has been almost entirely white ppl (mostly men) who told me 'don't worry, it'll be a landslide, early bedtime etc etc' meanwhile most of the women LGBTQ and Black/brown ppl I know have been battling crippling anxiety going into this election. The ignorance around this is stunning, even 4 yrs later
I point it out only because anecdotally for me, where I'm not surrounded by white men, almost all the white women I see are going through this shock - even those that are more aware of the issues than others.
Phoebe, you paint a bleak but sadly true historical background. But you ought not let our electoral college obscure the fact that the popular vote did not point to Trump in 2016. Or to George W. in his first race. And the nation did muster enough popular AND electoral votes to elect Obama twice. History is full of contradictory waves. Our challenge is to somehow neutralize the haters. The coalition of antiracist people just this year is an indication that all is not lost. We need to keep the faith. John Lewis would be reminding us. He bore the scars but he got up again and went back into the arena. Let's give ourselves a few days of despondency if it's inescapable. And then let's each ask ourselves how we can strike out for equality-- and yes-- love for our fellow humans.
It's presumptuous to assume I've given up on improving the country or that I am despondent. I am simply realistic about where we are where others have not been.
The problem with folk talking about the popular vote in 2016, is that it didn't break for Hillary until it got to California. It was in California that she finally won the popular vote.
It is pretty hard to keep the faith, when the evidence is that at least 44% of Americans are indeed and in fact racists, and that even more are patriarchalists, but voted for Biden because of Trump's and the GOP's racism.
Man, I really hate that you have a good point. I just want us to be so much better than this and was lulled to believing we were better. -- The narrative has to change. It has to be that keeping people down is bad for everyone instead of this idea that resources are finite and for someone to have more means that you have less. That property, business, home ownership=investment in a community so if they don't like seeing looting and destruction they would be better to help people invest, not just condemn them and say "see, I told you so, they are no good".
I feel sick at heart. To me this is worse than 4 years ago. We have seen the corruption and incompetence of Trump and yet so many of us still support him. I don't know how to proceed. How do we heal this insanity before it is too late?
They have excelled at propagandising his base. They don't know the things we know from the news sources we watch but rely heavily on their separate right wing news sources so they are brainwashed with their fake news and their explanations of reality that explain away the things he's doing. That's what I learned from listening to my brother in Colorado. He's a good man but when I talk to him I say , "where do you get this baloney" cause he's got facts and reality so different from what I know it to be and he has no idea about what I see. He gets mad if I try to tell him the truth and will show him proof. This is a huge problem. Putin taught them how to do this.
As an outdoor "poll ambassador" advocating for the Democratic party in the rural Duplin County, North Carolina town of Kenansville, I have been vilified as a Communist, told I should be in prison, and sneered at by poor local people who don't realize that they are voting against their own self-interests. This is definitely "Trump/Tillis Country."
One sympathetic gentleman who offered to relieve me from my post for 2 hours one day suggested that I should move away somewhere more conducive to my political state of mind. One enthusiast for the Republicans decided that my tires were too round and used his cordless drill to insert a drill bit into one of them, causing a slow leak and requiring a new tire purchase. These minor annoyances were offset by the gratitude of a few folks who were clearly astonished to see me at my volunteer station, seeming to believe that they were, indeed, the last Democrats within driving distance (with a full tank of gasoline), surrounded as they were on all sides by Trump and Tillis yard signs.
I stood with pride and humility and thanked every voter for coming out, even (perhaps especially) the one with the "Trumpinator" T-shirt and the multitudes wearing MAGA caps.
The US media has failed this country terribly. Normalizing Trump's presidency got us here.
Perhaps, instead of relying on Republicans (The Lincoln Project) to help Democrats win, they should learn how to fight back. Fight hard - fight dirty. When Democrats "go high" they lose. Every damn time. When Republicans define the terms of the dialogue, they win. They bray "socialist" and Democrats patiently explain how they aren't socialist. Maybe laugh at them next time. Maybe avoid getting sucked into that kind of nonsense.
Democratic leadership needs changing. The old people who have a stranglehold don't know how to deal with current realities. This ain't the good old days, and they ain't coming back.
We should think about busting up the union into smaller, more manageable nations.
Yeah I think I'm done with voting and politics all together. It's just exhausting with no positive outcome. Too many idiots out there who don't even care what the facts are, much less acknowledge them. This country has been dumbed down to such a point that the oppressed defend their oppressors with a cult like enthusiasm. This country has been sold to the highest bidder years ago, and we the people are just pawns in the game. At this point it's just depressing and self punishment.
This is how Trump AND Vladimir Putin would like him to feel. The only way to pull out of a dive is to PULL OUT OF IT. The Biden campaign has been urging patience for weeks because of the expected "Red Mirage" of Election Night, which did happen. The Blue Response due to late counting of mail in and absentee, and then military and Americans abroad ballot counting, will by definition and law happen over the next days. So, be patient, as Biden urges. It is Trump that wants to stop all counts while he's "up." Because he's a cheat with no respect for voters.
for my own family members that did vote for DT they believe that he will keep $ in their pockets and borders closed. It was a tough one for me to swallow, there was no giving them a legitimate discussion. Kamala was to them " a b*tch" and Biden was "senile" . No thought about babies in cages or crimes or being Putin's puppet etc..... I was sad for their closed minds.
What I find extremely disheartening about pro-#POUTINGpotus is their constant denial of the facts, especially when it comes to our economy. Numbers don't lie and they clearly illustrate that our economy is actually worse under Trump than Obama. I ask them to choose between a 100%+ increase in their wealth versus 50-75% increase, and obviously they all choose the 100%+ until they discover that stock market growth was under the Obama & not Trump...then they all resort to the deep state for falsely maintaining the government's web-sites who are making these numbers available for the public.
You're onto something but I'd go even further and say that a lot of the economic growth of the last decade has sadly been at least partially fictional. Under any currency but a gold standard backed monetary note...
...haha psyche not gonna start that vs. Anyways, without getting too detailed were starting to run up against a wall of (essentially) a zero interest lending rate, multiple rounds of quantitative easing (without the initial bailing out of homeowner and individually held debt that should have transpired but didn't thanks to Rohm Emanuele and Tim Geithner), the true unemployment rate or underemployment rate being marked by the gig economy and multiple part time jobs, super over-valued silicon valley based ponzi-scheme startups, and the devastating after-effects of offshoring and free-trade agreements geared towards capital flight and removing worker protections. The fact that the market averages and index trackers rebounded so massively this year after just the announcement of the fed dumping trillions of dollars into the economy (largely as convertible loans to large corporations; some of them cash-rich, with leverage of up to 4.5 trillion USD at the discretion of treasury dipshit Steve Mnuchin...anyways...) was able to return the basis point count back to pre-pandemic levels, all the while unemployment had soared and productivity had cratered...well the markets just haven't been attached to the material reality of the economy for quite some time. We were headed for a recession long before the pandemic but that's also seemingly been erased from the narrative as well now, but that's a bit out of scope so I'll leave it there.
Note: I'm not blaming Obama specifically, mostly just saying the hand of cards we're all playing now (with a joker as pitboss) was dealt long ago by Democrats and Republicans alike (insert the Sheriff Bell or Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men expounding on fate here for dramatic effect).
I think it's belligerence and stupidity and a lust for warlordism, because they're too childish to understand history and the machinery of democracy, too impatient to cope with it, and stupid enough to believe they'll always be on the winning side of conflict.
Fortunately, I'm not the least bit interested in changing their minds. I gave up on trying that after the billionth time I heard or read them calling President Obama and his beautiful family "Niggers."
The way the GOP treated Obama was disgraceful and sad. This country is more racist than I ever could imagine. Obama was a classy, intelligent president. We went from class to trash -- because of skin color.
You won’t send you can’t change anyone’s mind. That’s a fact. The only person that can change a persons mind is themselves. BUT I do get your point of putting people on the defensive does make them come up with more reasons to justify their own stance
Don't ever underestimate the delusion of religion and the role it has played and is still playing in our 2020 world. I've got Catholic wingnut neighbors on my left and evangelical wingnut neighbors on my right. The immediate outer fringes are just regular xians.
You have hit on the crux of this 'worship cult' of Trump. Since early in human societal development, religion or systems of worship were primary in the culture. Worship of a deity or deities was the driver of all socioeconomics. People expected to be 'ordered' to behave a certain way or do certain things which kept them in favor of the god(s).
So we've been conditioned. In contemporary society, the right and far right wing and fringe groups rely primarily on this conditioned response - worship the god & you will be favored.
People who are more liberal rely on facts rather than beliefs, even though they may be religious.
So when you say 'wingnut' it's because these folks who may have very legitimate religious beliefs have incorporated all their religious, political and societal 'beliefs' into one jumbled ball of thoughtless babble and are playing follow the leader.
They might as well be in 2nd Century BCE Canaan worshiping Baal, the god of greed and gluttony, and his disciple, the Lord of the Flies.
"the delusion of religion" <-- this is precisely the attitude that has driven many people away from the Democratic Party. Like it or not, if you don't want wingnuts you can't keep alienating people for having a religion. This is exactly what I have heard my "wingnut" family members complain about. People don't respond well to being told their entire belief system is a bunch of bullshit, at best they will just ignore you. At worst they'll elect an autocrat who tells them he's the only one who can protect their way of life...
The other side of the coin is the religious condemning non believers, demonizing them. A black man can be elected president by an atheist never.
Religious people are of necessity self righteous and exclusionist. They believe that their belief is the one true faith, and given that, everybody should be a believer, my lack of belief is a personal threat to them and thus I am their enemy. They excuse evil by saying man has free will, then go on to deny free will.
The only way to come to an accord with a believer is by submission and adoption of their beliefs. There is no middle ground
If you want to track the worlds ills and evils, at root you will find beliefs. Notice I have defined A belief, because all beliefs are evil and sociopathic.
I don't alienate them, however, I have a real goddamn problem when one of them comes into my house after I just buried my husband, screeching that he's in hell because he wasn't saved, badgering me to take jesus as my savior so I can save my husband. Twenty five years later same person is still nagging me to accept jesus as my personal savior.
Maybe the delusion of religion has driven good people away from them with their bullshit beliefs.
If they need an autocrat to protect them, maybe they aren't such good xians in the first place.
As a grandmother and teacher, I have witnessed the gutting of our school curriculums. The present ignorance can be overcome by demanding the schools teach civics again. Testing the students on knowledge of how this republic is supposed to work and what their responsibilities as citizens are could help lead us out of the darkness.
Gary Kasparov said “ The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” They’ve been chipping away at you, getting you to give up. Exhausted you. But either you care enough to fight them to the end or you don’t. I’m not begging anyone to engage in the fight - you’d just get in the way.
Yeah, I feel like that too. I am also thinking this is not a good country. So many people sick and dying and literally no one in the government gives a shit. When the borders open, I may shop around for a different nation. Fuck this place. I think about my mother's family in Germany in the lead up to Hitler. If I was watching that movie, I would be yelling at them to get out, go to Australia, Canada, get off that continent.
Many Americans will be thinking of “shopping for a different nation.” What they will find, however, is there are very few options available to them. The idea that you can just live anywhere you want is nonsense. Just like for people wanting to move to the US, each country has strict immigration rules. And thanks to Trump, those rules have gotten even stricter. If you are a multimillionaire, you can buy your way into a few countries. Otherwise, you’re stuck.
Unless you are referring to the post COVID scenario, what you just said is not correct. I successfully became a legal resident of another country, and there were definitely a number of other options.
That’s understandable and I do empathize. I also hold the stance that I will Never give up on America or Americans. Get this: I live in Trumpville and less than 50% of registered voters voted. For all of our efforts, we didn’t reach enough people and certainly not enough poor people who long ago gave up. We haven’t lost the War.
Totally agree. I also like the binding "none of the above" option used in Australia, where if a majority of voters select that, then new candidates get nominated. So many good ideas out there in the world that we could consider to improve our elections.
Our current system is not working for many people, so why not look for ways to improve it? I see that you and I will personally disagree here, but doubling down on a system that isn't working rather than looking for new ways to approach the problems seems silly to me.
10 years ago I agreed that ranked-choice was the way forward.... now I'm not so sure. Not sure that bringing forward more fringe and extreme voices will help.
Have you considered the Unity Party where the dominant parties lead together? Brett Weinstein’s work you can hear the discussions on YouTube. The point is to force cooperation at the Presidential level with members of both parties being represented. Collateral damage from this election will be that half the voters feel alienated and disappointed regardless of who wins.
I'm not sure if you really want to have a discussion or are kind of spoiling for a fight. I'm down for the first, not the second. If you want to discuss what you see as the best path for a two party system to continue, I am open to listening to your ideas. I like to consider the perspectives of other people, and I don't think my efforts to vote for candidates I believe in should be offensive to anyone, but if you have a point to make, by all means elaborate.
Here's a thought - look at the damage one corrupt swine and his 63 million voters have done to this country's institutions and societal comity in barely four years. A third party trying to rise beside two so well-entrenched parties, one of which is decent and pluralistic and the other completely corrupt and disgusting, poses a profound threat of cataclysmic and likely terminal damage to the country and its place in the world, no matter how noble it thinks its goals are, because it would be doing nothing but splitting the vote of "the goods" against the unified "bads" for a generation at least, and likely much longer. Look how aggressively Trumpists are moving to block their opposition from any control over the machinery of power, through voter suppression, gerrymandering, use of state propaganda television and media, endless deceit, including a firehose of lies in the White House, filling the courts with political stooges.
Started with Reagan. Give massive tax cuts to the wealthy. Now the division of wealth is insurmountable. We have government by and for the billionaires.
Yes, I have considered this point. I think it is basically the 'lesser of two evils' or pragmatic compromise, sometimes considered strategic. And I agree with you both that it is a legitimate point of view. Here is where we differ: the assumption that third party votes would have or should have been democratic party votes. We do not see the democratic party the same way. Which is fine. But I'd ask you to try and understand that I do not reach the same conclusions about the dems that you have reached, and they are not entitled to my vote.
Absolutely correct, especially during these times. The 3rd party endeavor can easily become a reality, BUT it MUST begin at local & state legislature levels if it's ever going to happen. Until the "New" party gains a foothold within the state, it will never be able to offer the congress a new bread of leader.
With this in mind, I am planning on running in our upcoming Township election as an Independent and after I win, declaring my "New" party affiliation.
Matt, I agree, and I think the fact that the Senate didn't go blue is the stark example of that. Whatever it is that the right is offering people, it seems to reassure or lure people.
I suspect that it is fear of liberals that leads so many people to embrace the GOP. I think that a lot of conservative voters (certainly not all of them) don't actually like the things that Trump says or the way that he says them. But I suspect that they fear more a world where liberal "political correctness" scrutinizes their every action, where they could be accused of being racist or sexist for simply being who they are (which might be racist or sexist, but let's not make assumptions), not to mention the claims that Democrats will take away their guns and murder their fetuses and increase their taxes.
OK, I'm hoping out of the chat now so I can start thinking about the next newsletter! If you have things you'd like to hear about respond to this. (If things are too unsettled by this evening, I may host another chat.)
I would like to hear more about two things #1 - how Dejoy keeps ignoring court orders without repercussion -- #2 - I don't know if this had in impact but after Sept dealings with Tik Tok Pro-Trump support videos skyrocketed. I can't help but to suspect something in the deal, or a side deal, was made to optimizing that content. While it may not impact this election the precedent to hold a corporation hostage for political gain is very dangerous.
Hello, I'm 25 and from Oklahoma City. This is my second time to vote in a presidential election, and if it turns out anything like the first, then I will have lost all confidence in the presidential election process.
I am not going to continue to participate in an election process that doesn't allow the person with the most votes to win. Period. Pardon my French, but it's fucking dumb. The people need to begin mobilizing around this. The day after Trump was announced President in 2016, many students at my university did a half-ass march to express our dissent. It felt powerful in the moment and abolishing the electoral college was definitely the main focus of our demonstration.
We will need to go further than this, though.
The millions of voters like me, whose votes are left behind in the election simply because we don't think like the people that surround us, need to peacefully demonstrate incessantly until the Electoral College is figuratively burned to the ground.
People who can't coerce their way out of oppression with their bank rolls or their color, or vote with their feet, a passport and a plane ticket, aren't "done", because they know that if they ARE "done", then they're "done for."
you are right. sorry. I am not done. Im depressed- again from the turnout of the voting in the United states. Republicans fight like hell and cheat and steal to win. Ive seen it over and over.
I don't worry about mine anymore, they are in their late 50's, self absorbed, and when I talk to them, on the phone, which is not anymore) all I heard is petty gripes about I loved one more than the other, and why I didn't give up my life, my job, my love and go running to them, when they stubbed their toe (as adults with kids )
My mother was a single mom, with 3 kids, worked in a bank for $1 an hour, lived in a government project, and I never ever berated her because she lost her temper or didn't pay attention to me.
There is only so much you can do for your children. Nature teaches us, if we pay attention. Momma lion teaches her cubs how to survive and then sends them on their way to make it on their own.
We humans have this fantasy that we can cheat the grave by reproducing and thus take it with us. The genes may, but not all genes are passed on via reproduction, and genes do not possess that which makes us unique and aware of self.
Self delusion, humanities greatest disability and threat.
Hey, there! Same. I’ve never felt like ‘I’m done’ but have been incredibly discouraged, disillusioned and PISSED OFF a lot these last 4 years & last night & today.
I’m no babe in the woods & I saw how Obama energized voters so I have to think people aren’t nearly as racist & sheeplike than it seems today.
My thing is if we don’t care & keep plugging away even if we have to suffer too many defeats & horrible people like Trump & Co, we are sending the message to the young people - who have the energy, passion & new ideas - that there’s no hope.
Everything changes & we gotta keep fighting but also step away & recharge. I hope you find your energy again. 👍
Thank you. yeah . Fascism is exhausting. seems to always be around the corner. America seems like it is a big pot of rednecks to me- even though Obama won big, I wonder if that was because everyone thought change and hope and then....then change and hope didnt really happen. But he got the ACA, which may be gone after next week. and while Obama brought out the people to vote- trump has brought out the racists and the self defeatist. own the libs! Then the religion thing is a big problem.
I'm in my 70's with pre-existing medical conditions. Other countries don't want old people unless they are multi-millionaires and bring all their money along with them. My husband and I are stuck here. If I were younger, I'd leave.
I wish you had written something about the National Popular Vote proposal,Doesn't require a constitutional amendment, an interstate compact in which states will appoint electors who will vote for the winner of the national popular vote, not just the state winners, If they had that system Hillary would have been president.
Don't lose hope, Peyton! We almost got rid of the EC in 1969, you can look that up and read about it. It's a fight for sure, but it isn't as distant or impossible a battle as a lot of people think.
I hear from my 28 year old son, a very smart Mech. Engineer, this bit about "what does politics offer my generation," and I tell him that power is always taken, it's rarely if ever handed over, and that's been true since the dawn of time. You gain power by fighting your way to the center of the scrum and demanding it, and we're lucky in this country to be able to do that with our votes, instead of weapons. Using our votes can keep it that way. Abandoning our voting power risks and abandons all other possibilities.
Regrettably there are many his age and younger & a few older who took much for granted. I’m 75. I remember the fights of the 60s, had to wait until 21 to vote( changed to 18 a few yrs later) and could not WAIT until I was old enough. We didn’t think in terms of “I” but rather “WE”. Selfishness and lack of community thinking i.e. ‘me me me’ is an unfortunate attitude for democracy. They may think an autocracy is better until they have it! I’m glad I’m old
Sadly I've seen many of your generation, once they got their nice house and job and 2.5 kids and a dog, move to "I" and those are a lot of the people voting for Trump. I've long thought of the GOP as the "screw you, I've got mine" party.
I moved from an R to a D. And I am very comfortable now,. Some years ago I attended a Peter, Paul and Mary open air concert, practically all gray hairs, driving up in BMW's and Lexus. I asked the guy sitting next to me, who had nostalgic tears and asked him. What happened to your generation (he was a Boomer I am a Silent) He said "We own stuff now".
That's it in a nutshell. I know a lot of ex hippies that are now conservative because they "own stuff" and want to keep it all.
Money corrupts, but not absolutely, there are Boomers, like my wife, and friends, who retain their values.
To get rid of the EC would require a constitutional Amendment, that means 2/3rds of the senate and 3/4's of the states, (impossible today) however the National Popular Vote via an Interstate Compact end runs the constitution, because the constitution does not address how electors are chosen. In some states it's winner talks all, two states have a mixed system.
Another Oklahoma voter here! I can completely empathize with you in feeling totally defeated and more than a little angry about this whole process, especially as it relates to the Electoral College and the idea that my vote doesn’t mean anything. I feel as though I’m surrounded by uneducated, oblivious, and/or ignorant people who are choosing a racist and misogynist to represent them because he makes them feel better about their own offensive and shameful beliefs and behavior. However, nearly 1/3 of this state voted for Biden, especially from areas or counties with a more educated, diverse population. I support the idea of abolishing the Electoral College because I want my voice, and the voices of 1/3 of Oklahomans, to be heard & recognized, and to actually mean something.
There are many books written about the demographic,, cultural, social divide in this country. Thomas Frank asked the question "What's the matter with Kansas" and the question is "Why do people vote against their own self interest".
a variety of reasons are and reams of paper and tons of ink are used to expounding theories.
But if one looks at the Demographics, one sees that practically all of the votes for Republicans come from rural and sparsely populated communities and regions.
There is a reason for that. Having lived in one such area in north east Louisiana, with a Southern Baptist Preacher uncle.
From personal experience. These communities are rather tight knit, and homogeneous in thinking and "values".
And from whence comes their homogeneity? The press and the pulpit.
Both are motivated by survival instincts. They instinctively perceive that enlightenment, secularism, free thought, independent thought is a danger to their social control, hence their power and income.
The churches preach politics from the pulpit, tell people how to vote, if not directly, but by filling them full of fear of the "devil" if they let them godless, communists or whatever euphemism they construct win.
Rural communities and small towns, really have no social outlets, and their sole source of information is cable TV and AM radio, both of which are dominated by the right wing.
So church and grange is where they gather, in "wet" areas, there is the American Legion, which is nothing but a bunch of old sots, who gather to get drunk and tell lies.
I am a retired officer, a mustang, with 26 years service, and I have too much self respect to associate with the old sots at the Am Legion or VFW.
You hit the nail on the head. The Democratic party has failed these people. They have forgotten about them in their policies, just as the GOP has, except when there is an election, and then the GOP uses their scare tactics to get their votes. But rural folks have valid needs too. They need to put food on the table,roof over their head, send the kids to college. Farmers, particularly small family farmers have one of the highest suicide rates in the country. Rural areas have been hit hard with addiction and joblessness. And I am sorry but there is plenty of truth to the claim that Democrats look down their noses at these people. Dems often sound like a bunch of snobs. But Democrats had better learn to deal with them better than the Republicans,and like Judd said, that has to start by bringing positive and meaningful changes to their lives.Remember, hurt people hurt people. You don't have to like them but you do have to help them if you are going to govern effectively.
I agree Shannon,however there is a problem. Even though farmers are going bankrupt and committing suicide because of Trumps tariffs and trade policies, they are still, by and large voting for him and them.
There is more to the story and than economics. Rural folk are victimized (and I chose that word carefully) by the pulpit and press. They go to church and are harangued about ungodly liberals, gays, and then they turn on Fox news and are scared about Mexicans, Blacks, gays and them god awful liberals.
They are more concerned about the culture war than they are about pocket book matters, sad but true.
I don't know how to get them out of their shell, teach them critical thinking skills, and how to arrive at opinions and not acquire them.
Till then they are their own worst enemy, and America's as well, so much bigotry, intolerance and hate drives them and their politics. I know I have lived amongst them
The fewer people of color and gays these people see or know, the more fearful and intolerant they are. Thanks to the pulpit and press.
On the other hand large cosmopolitan centers, where people know and associate with blacks, browns, Mexicans, gays, liberals and know them as people are not so easily scared and manipulated by pulpit and press, unless their source of fake news is Fox.
I and others have identified at least one known enemy of democracy and freedom and that is Fox news, which is bent towards right wing authoritarianism , racism and theocracy.
I grew up in a rural area in the South among farmers and factory workers. I am well aware of what --some-- churches teach, but my father's church doesn't teach these things, our church growing up didn't, my mother's in Virginia didn't. But you are correct regarding education, and that is one of the main problems. My mother happens to be a retired English teacher who teaches other teachers how to teach AP English. She has been around the country teaching these workshops and she has said that "white flight" is partly to blame. The people who have been convinced that "coastal elites" are "forcing" them to accept "gay lifestyle" and other euphemisms for things they don't personally agree with have formed their own private schools. As white people they generally have much more money so they pay to put little Alice and little Bob into their isolated echo chamber church schools and home schools where their precious ears and eyes are shielded from world, and from science, and from critical thinking of any kind. The best teachers are going there because the pay is better. My mother reports that, for example in Mississippi the teachers in the public schools are "poorly educated and not very bright." The failing American public school system is everyone's fault. It's stupid to pay for this with local taxes. That's precisely why we still have de facto segregated education where some schools the kids have to share textbooks and others have paid-for trips to Washington D.C, and guess what demographic dominates in each one? How can any BIPOC or otherwise disadvantaged person get a leg up when their game of Life difficulty is set to "Nightmare" level through no fault of their own. Your story is just one example and another is your debate opponent who has had it even worse, it seems, and still hurting and recovering. You aren't going to convince people to change their morals but you could make them less entrenched and more accepting if they weren't having such a hard time economically. To do that, we need to fund education differently and better. We also need to address the addiction problems. We also need to address joblessness which was already bad in some of these areas and now far worse. But their intolerance has driven BIPOC and LGBTQ people away.
I don't particularly care for generalizations. Even though these kind ideas ring true, there's more to it than that. Take the example of my stepbrother who did grow up around Black people, he works with them, but he's a staunch Trump supporter and a born again Christian. On the other hand his sister, my stepsister, is not that way at all. She's left leaning and is a teacher's assistant. They were both raised by the same people, my dad and my stepmom. There are lots of families like this all across the South, and it's not just white people suffering from these types of problems.
I remain convinced that addressing people's economic and health care (physical, mental, addiction, etc) needs first will provide a basis for calming fears, which can be built upon for the remainder. People without hope for the future aren't going to be reasonable.
If it makes ya feel better then those veterans groups were at least tangentially related to a likely fascist-plot to overthrow FDR called the Business Plot. Should check it out if ya aren't aware of it.
Thomas Frank is a hell of an author and I really appreciate the work he's been doing lately on populism and the turn of the century Populist Party centered in states like Kansas, Nebraska, Georgia, etc. They were very progressive for the time and numerous chapters included former-slaves and women (Jim Crow laws are viewed by some as a means to divide the burgeoning union of working class whites and blacks developing at the time). The party did quite well in the 1892 election, but chicanery carried out by the monopolists, Dems/GOP and state officials really worked to break any power that had been established. As such by 1904 or so they were non-existent.
As a side note, later on in the 20's and 30's Huey Long seemed to do really well all over Louisiana as a (blatantly corrupt mind you) economically, and in some ways socially, progressive FDR-style Democrat. I don't know if any politicians, never mind Democratic politicians, around today have the balls to pull off a Huey Long though.
Thanks, I am quite aware of that which you mention and more. The treatment of Huey Long by the establishment is indication of the power and visceral fear that they have of progressive populists.
Yeh Huey was corrupt, what politician isn't. Any that leave office with more than they entered is corrupt, either taking it under the table or using their position to trade on inside knowledge.
The powers that be, are hyperbolic as regards Huey's sins, that we don't know or pay attention to his policies and facts that he laid out.
The victors do indeed write the history.
Voltaire said that all of ancient history is no more than commonly accepted myth, to which I add we are bound together by myths. Independent research and critical thinking. Cast these foundation myths in a completely different light.
I'll keep it short here, but am completely in agreement. Huey was just willing to admit that he expected something in return either for himself, his political allies, or his state when he was negotiating with business interests or the feds (or as is likely the powerful criminal syndicates based in Louisiana especially at the time). There is a very weird media narrative sometimes pushed by outlets like CNN, NYT, WaPo, etc. that one owes their vote to liberal politicians like Biden or Hillary with no expectation of anything in return for their "selfless service." That's not politics, never has been, never will be.
Voltaire was very astute when he said that and I agree. Don't get me started on national mythology, influence of foundation and structure through time, narrative building, or the insanely flawed idea of American exceptionalism. To paraphrase Faulkner, we're never done with the past, hell the past isn't even the past...especially when we keep digging it up and rewriting based on the personal whims of the powerful.
P.S. If anyone wants even just two examples of corruption greater than the likes of Huey Long would dare dream (or probably even see as slightly justifiable in any sense), just look at the F-35 development project, and additionally the legislation to deregulate the derivatives market passed at the end of the Clinton administration...with special help from Joseph Robinette Biden.
Totally agree. Have you heard of the National Popular Vote initiative? This is a law individual states can adopt which says that the state will give its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The idea is to abolish the electoral college without a Constitutional amendment. Once enough states adopt the law to reach 270 electoral votes, then the law becomes active in all the states that have adopted the legislation. Looks like in Oklahoma, the bill is working its way through your state legistature: https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/state/ok
This is why state legislative elections are so important. Oklahomans, please stay focused and stay involved! Call, email, visit, and tweet at your state legislators. Support those who support the Interstate Popular Vote Compact, and work to replace those who don’t.
Definitely this alongside other large scale protest ideas like a general strike should be goals that activists, unions, etc. start working to set up immediately. Also, in states like Oklahoma where there are large populations of Native Americans, the rest of the population should be working with them even more than they are now as their rights under treaty (imo) are one of the most promising legalistic means left to reshape the system more democratically, and ward off further environmental damage. Even a pretty hardline conservative judge like Gorsuch was willing to go to bat for the NA's in Oklahoma over their long neglected treaty rights over half the goddamn state; further cases to define scope and precedent will be coming in the none too distant future so getting in touch with and assisting those groups would be only beneficial to everyone.
Sadly the SCOTUS has ruled, as recently as 2005, that in essence native Americans aren't human. Seriously it has all come about in suits by whites v native Americans over land claims. The first ruling was that there was a right to discovery that superseded any claims by previous claimants. This was confirmation of Columbus claim for the Spanish crown.
This was confirmed by the SCOTUS when they ruled against the Oenida's in a taxation claim by a municipality, in essence the court denied the existence of the Oneida, in favor of the right of discovery.
Great point about NA’s who the Republicans have under-counted in the Census, allowed to sustain horrific death rates by not providing adequate testing & medical equipment & disenfranchise to an astonishing degree. Not to mention all the environmental damage on native lands.
Just as, and in fact more important is the Senate. Last I looked it was 47-48 (Dems to Republicans) (Politico). With a Republican senate, we are dead in the water, and Biden's only alternative is Executive Orders, and Trump has set the precedent, however I do not have faith in Biden, he is into "healing" and amelioration, and is after all a darling of Wall Street.
We truly need young, dynamic Democrats to run the Democratic party. The party also needs better strategists. We're playing nice with thugs. Being a poll watcher this year, there were threats and nasty comments from Repubs going to vote. The Dems don't behave like this. If Biden tries to be bi-partisan, he'll get nothing done. He needs to start writing Executive orders as Mitch McC will continue to block any Democratic initiatives.
The elimination of the electoral college will require an amendment to the Constitution. This can happen if young folks step up and make this important and elect Senators and Representatives at state and Federal level that support this. It takes 2/3 vote House and Senate then approval by 3/4 of state legislatures so get started and make it happen!’
I don't think slow formal processes are going to get us there anymore. When our election process is as flawed as it is, how are we supposed to vote our way out of it? You don't vote out creeping authoritarianism. You toss it out. We need to physically show members of Congress they have something to fear if they do not abolish the Electoral College. Peacefully of course.
I quite understand where you are. I'm 81. I gave up after Reagan. I was a Republican and very right wing then. (Had an epiphany in 1989 when circumstances cast me in the company of "liberals", actually some old SDS types.
I voted for Reagan primarily because he promised not to bring any CFR and Trilateral commission types into his cabinet. And the first thing he did was appoint Caspar Weinberger and other TC and CFR members
I was not into social wars and economic issues then, I was besotted with the "anti communist" anti globalist "crusade.
By the time Bill Clinton ran I was a shop steward and a member of the union bargaining committee. I was total.
ly dismayed when I watched Clinton sell out his base of labor, then blacks, then gays and finally women.
I watched Republican Democrats betray their base..for the favor of the plutocrats.
I had to vote for Hillary, because it was so obvious that Trump was a narcissistic, racist, kleptocratic, sociopathic fascist.
I voted for Biden for the same /
And this time with full knowledge he too is going to sell out his base. He has said so. He is going to appoint Republicans to teh cabinet and set up a Bipartisan commission on Judicial reform.
He has invited the Fox to the planning of hen house security upgrades. And commissions are fluff, PR crap, they are held to validate foregone conclusions, like Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission to privatize social security. Thank god the congress did not go along with it, and that was just one Obama betrayal.
Dems need to differentiate themselves and clearly remind voters of what they stand for. If they keep governing "Repub. Light", they'll continue to lose.
Thank you! Not enough people seem to remember that one goal of Obama/Biden was to privatize social security, but Ted Cruz was so incompetent he blew up the process (amongst other factors of course). Biden spearheaded the committee to investigate doing as such, which if I recall was funded by austerity-hawk billionaire Pete Peterson (one of the mentors of Nancy Pelosi; she read his obituary into the congressional record when he passed away a few years back, the infamous U.S. debt clock is his doing), and the only reason the committee conclusions weren't followed up on was the Democrats losing any governing control besides the executive branch. Joe Biden is not your friend folks...unless you've donated 10k USD+ to his campaign, then "friendship" increases linearly with donation size. It should go without saying that clearly I think Trump is awful as well.
It's also great to read that someone can have such a dramatic shift in political opinion leftward beyond their early 20's. I've always hated the adage about young with heart being leftist, older with brains being conservative; look where that's gotten us all? Anyways, I've heard from or about a good number of folks that voted for Reagan either once or twice, and then shifted so hard left (at least on the U.S. scale) in response to Reaganite/Thatcherite neoliberalism, that the Democrats became a hard-to-swallow lesser-evil vote, especially after Clinton. I have to agree, and I hope the political alienation and resulting increase in support for the left/labor/union movements becomes large enough in time to avert some truly terrible things I think we can all see coming.
P.S. SDS, SNCC, and all those associated groups were some interesting and pretty gutsy folks. Anyways I hope the future finds you well, best of luck.
I remember very well Obama's blue ribbon commission, in which he pulled in a prominent Democrat (David Boies who argued for Gore in Bush v Gore), the whole charade was to give Obama, who was and is under the sway of Investment bankers, cover for privatizing Social Security, the Democratic party successfully with the help of the corporate controlled media has shoved that down out of the public consciousness, leaving the boobs to idolize Obama. Obama's second act of betrayal was pushing the TPP, which thankfully a Republican Congress rejected, oly because it was Obama's parting gift to Wall Street.
When I live in Santa Cruz I made friends with some SDS (Weatherman) vets and they opened my eyes to quite a bit, previous to that I was pretty much a very right wing Republican.
Peyton, I feel your pain and I'm about to be 53 and a native San Franciscan. I've always lived in a liberal bubble and assumed I was part of the majority - it took these last 2 elections for me to really understand how gerrymandering and the electoral college have neutralized my votes and those of the majority of Americans. My 18 yo son thinks the problem the Dems have encountered the last 2 elections is there is a razor thin difference between the two candidates when it comes to the massive changes that the USA requires to dig out of the current political, economic, social, and environmental messes we find ourselves in. He may be right.
I think the other part of it is that the current president has made it okay to feel like you need to take care of yourself before considering anyone else. People who voted for him to have a 2nd term clearly care more about their bank accounts than their health. Unfortunately,
Hopefully, your (and his) generation can keep fighting to make the changes we need.
What is interesting is that mass demonstrations can make changes. In Chile, it led to a referendum which resulted in a positive majority to change the constitution to a future constitution nominated by the people and not the politicians. Surely the USA can do this to get rid of the Electoral College.
Mass demonstrations make changes when the police are not out to maim or kill the protestors. Or they can lead to slow change over time, like the Civil Rights movement.
The current US president doesn't care about mass demonstrations - he's happy to send in the National Guard to bust some heads.
Please read my post. I'm a lifelong Okie too. It didn't used to be this way. Have you ever heard of Frosty Troy? He used to be played on every radio station in Oklahoma. When I registered to vote way back in the 80s, if you registered as a republican, you couldn't vote in the primaries because...no republicans ran. All democrats.
I stayed up way too late last night & eventually went to bed sorely disappointed. I thought that there were enough other voters that felt as I do about Trump that he would be defeated decisively. Even if Biden is elected, the Senate will be Republican, & after watching Obama struggle with an opposing Senate, I think it would be gridlock again. I will be 76 in January. I had hoped that I would see a progressive agenda in my remaining years, where Americans would all come together for the good of everybody. Tell me something that will give me hope.
I'm a senior also -- in Florida and am extremely disappointed that people actually approve of that criminal in the White House. I believe greed and racism are destroying Democracy. If I were younger, I'd leave the country, but few countries want seniors with medical conditions. They want young workers who can add to their economy. Also, I'm too old to pick up a foreign language.
The educational system has never been properly funded even by Democrats. That part isn't a partisan issue. Democrats just don't want to face their failings in that and are now trying to blame the last decade or so of school choice movements and pretending that somehow the education system started failing just recently.
It has ALWAYS been designed to be an unequal system.
Were PA schools fully and equitably funded by past legislatures with Democratic majorities? I doubt it, as that would make PA literally the only place in the country and in the history of this system to do so. More likely what you're suggesting is that the GOP has chipped away at what already existed. That doesn't mean the system as it existed prior to those moves was properly funded. I wasn't speaking about any particular state, because this is an issue in all states.
Of course, if I'm wrong, please feel free to provide evidence to the contrary, and I'd be happy to admit my error.
I'll be staying away from social media & the blame game. This has been a big issue for me for years; we know how to passive aggressively whine around a problem but not attack the reality head on. The GOP has cheated for years. It's been proven other countries are interfering. Voter information was accessed ahead of the election. The evening news has screamed of all the crimes for 4 yrs that can be charged if they're no longer in office. And here we are saying Biden was the wrong candidate, blaming pollsters & saying we can't believe this many voted for Trump. We have no problem destroying ourselves from the inside out, but no one wants to say straight out that we can't trust our elections. Even if more turned out in person for Trump, there are #'s in some areas that don't add up. There's absolutely nothing I wouldn't believe the GOP is capable of.
I agree. That’s exactly why I believe this is a rigged election—that and the fact that Trump kept announcing a rigged election and Trump almost always announces his Evil prior to its ascent.
This election, regardless of whether Biden manages to win (which does seem more likely than not at this point), is an indictment of the Democratic Party Establishment's strategy of eschewing real change that is supported by a strong majority of Americans and putting forth mediocre, out-of-touch moderates. 70% of Americans support Medicare-for-All, 60% of Americans support a Green New Deal, and yet neither made their way onto the Democratic Party Platform. I am reminded of Bernie's town hall on Fox News in March, where he reframed his policy-platform as not Democrat-Republican but for the people, and has the conservative audience literally chanting along with him. I am concerned that the Democratic Party, if they don't pivot aggressively to become the party of the working class as opposed to corporate interests and "nothing would fundamentally change," will keep losing, and losing decisively.
Beyond Bernie, Biden pursued a low-risk campaign that emphasized that he beat socialist candidates and wouldn't ban fracking. He may ultimately win. But the message was not as successful as people thought it might be.
agree, weak and lacking powerful message/enthusiasm and the ability to be convincing that meaningful change would be possible. I was never convinced. I, like many voted against Trump, not for Biden. If Biden wins, lets hope that all good ideas/avenues will have influence on his administration and that his team plus the American consciousness grows and expands.
What he said. Bernie had double the individual campaign donations going into the primaries and yet Democrats went with an establishment candidate to run against a man who first gained the presidency by being anti-establishment. Old Democrats need to hang around, but let the new generation shape the party's platform so it strategically represents the majority of people.
Last night (and continuing through today and beyond), I was never more disheartened to be an American, though. Even if Biden somehow does eke out a win, half this country has proven it is perfectly okay with xenophobia, hatred of the LGBTQ community, destruction of the environment, overt racism, hundreds of thousands needlessly dying because of the denial and mismanagement of a pandemic, etc......
It looks like Americans want the division, hatred, and chaos. It's disappointing, but not as shocking as last time. Regardless of who wins, this country is not the place I was naive enough to think it was.
When Americans, like all human beings, are ripe for the influence of media and social media propagandists, they become so entrenched in their personal rabbit holes with like-minded others that they might not even be aware of the reality taking place in the world around us. It happened in my family and I thought that it would be an impossibility for us. I blame Murdoch and Fox and Facebook et al - and dark money long-viewed Koch type conservatives. Their corrupting fingers are in every branch of our government now Not sure how to break out of this entangled scary morass. But until we do we’ll have a growing political divide.
It is true that people are living in alternate realities. It's not that people see Trump's failures and vote for him anyway. What a majority of the country views as failures, a lot of other people view as successes. (This reflects the fact that Biden will almost certainly win the popular vote by a wide margin.)
I'm not sure I'd call 51-52% of the vote in an election with no meaningful third party candidates a wide margin. We needed something more like 55% at least to not only ensure victory but to make it plain that the majority really does reject what the Republicans stand for. As it is win or lose, the struggle to save America has barely begun.
You’ve said a mouthful there. Our little Madison Cawthorn had a lot of big, dark money behind him. His face was all over my county. Looked like a Cawthorn truck farm.
My condolences. It appears that lying, and narcissistic projection are rewarded in our culture. Sadly Cawthorne also seems to be a bully in some charming sheep’s clothing.
I found insight in "The Narcissism Epidemic" - Twenge is co-author. Not political, but it speaks to your point about how and to what extent narcissism is rewarded in our culture. Twenge offers partial solutions - and stuff you and I can do.
Well one of the fundamental assumptions ground into "Western" culture and society is that individualist notions of competition, property, and consumer fetishism are fundamentally positive things and that cooperation and empathy are negative traits in regards to economic prosperity. Similar concept to why shareholder value is now the bottom line responsibility in corporate ethics, whereas at least concepts like environmental and community responsibility were at the least paid lip service. Additionally the worship and assumedworthy hvirtue/intelligence of the colossally rich has warped the societal ideals of who to aspire to become and how to get there; a society in which one man is set to be a trillionaire, gaining roughly 900 billion dollars in just a few years, is an obviously deeply unwell society...to have more than a small number worship that state of reality is just...well plainly disgusting and nigh unspeakable.
P.S. I think Eugene Debs (upon receiving word of the absolute travesty of a conviction against him for speaking against the WWI draft) said it best, and I've always found his address to the court inspirational: https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1918/court.htm Don't let the link title scare you, it really is an applicable speech to anyone who wants a better world.
Very good post. I would like to point out one thing, and it is not contradictory but additive. SCOTUS ruled, decades ago, can't remember the case, but it had to do with the social responsibility of corporations,that corporations had one duty and that is maximizing shareholder value, and that failure to do was misfeasance.
The solution is for the 50 states to revert to a practice that was abandoned long ago, that a corporation had a limited life of 50 years, and had to prove it's social value for charter renewal, and could be given a death sentence by the appropriate state.
This led to an event known as Charter Shopping, when corporations announced that they would move to the state that gave them the best deal...Delaware won. And therein lies (sadly) an explanation of Joe's political success.
Less someone accuse me of something, bear in mind votes are cast, what is done is done, but if he wins, with knowledge of his experience, votes and who has funded him, we know what to expect.
Knowing that, and more, I voted for Joe, the idea of another four years of DJT and our slide into fascism and racism is just too much.
If he wins, progressives need to keep his and the DNC's feet to the fire.
Well one of the fundamental assumptions ground into "Western" culture and society is that individualist notions of competition, property, and consumer fetishism are fundamentally positive things and that cooperation and empathy are negative traits in regards to economic prosperity. Similar concept to why shareholder value is now the bottom line responsibility in corporate ethics, whereas at least concepts like environmental and community responsibility were at the least paid lip service. Additionally the worship and assumedworthy hvirtue/intelligence of the colossally rich has warped the societal ideals of who to aspire to become and how to get there; a society in which one man is set to be a trillionaire, gaining roughly 900 billion dollars in just a few years, is an obviously deeply unwell society...to have more than a small number worship that state of reality is just...well plainly disgusting and nigh unspeakable.
P.S. I think Eugene Debs (upon receiving word of the absolute travesty of a conviction against him for speaking against the WWI draft) said it best, and I've always found his address to the court inspirational: https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1918/court.htm Don't let the link title scare you, it really is an applicable speech to anyone who wants a better world.
I don't agree, but need to mention that SCOTUS has decreed that the sole purpose of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value, that disregarding that obligation is misfeasance and that the executives responsible are not only culpable but pecuniary liable.
There as a time that corporations had a limited life span, at most 50 years, and had to prove their value to the incorporating authority (the state) to have their charter renewed.
Then they went Charter Shopping and Delaware won the lottery, and corporations, especially financial corporations fled to Delaware.
And that explains Bidens successful career, his votes in the Senate, when he first arrived in the Senate it was controlled by racist Dixiecrats and Biden ingratiated himself with them, that is how he has survived.
The only progressive move that I can think of is persuading Obama not to defend the suit against the Defense of Marriage act, and I have to think that the decision was totally political, to polish his image as a progressive.
Establishment Dems, are always ready to play the "liberal" side of the culture war that they may stay in power and gain favor with the economic royalists (as FDR called them) who could care less about the culture war, so long as they got the economic, tax, trade and regulatory policies that the need to maximize shareholder value and their personal bank accounts.
When I was in junior high and high school, passing the Constitution Test was a prerequisite to graduate. It is a shame that so many Americans have no basic understanding of how the federal government is set up, how the Electoral College works and how the dicennial census affects representation in Congress. These past four years have exposed this ignorance, not to mention, have unleashed the racism, classism, xenophobia and disdain for science that have been simmering for a long time. I am beyond demoralized.
Unwittingly, we have all been victimized by the abject failure of our communication edifices to focus on issues. Instead we have been consumed by the cult of personality; political, economic, military and media. We should all demand that our fellow citizens’ problems become our issues. I suggest we start with clean water, food security, safe housing and economic fairness. I am so tired of hearing from airbrushed pundits who have an interest in our despair.
I'm Canadian so forgive my intrusion, but I have many friends and relatives that live and enjoy all the US has to offer and for a Torontonian to be able to fly to New York or anywhere south of the border for a weekend or longer stay the US has always felt welcoming. Over the last four years that has started to wane sadly. Like many of you I woke up this morning after a short night shocked and depressed and haunted by the "why" of it. You might wonder why I care and I wish I could put my finger on it but it is as gutting for me as it is you because the US is supposed to represent the best in society and certainly not the worst. It isn't supposed to be divided and polarized. But this thread seems like a great opportunity to share what I read in the letters to the editor section of the NYT, another publication I pay to read, along with PI, just after the Democratic Convention. It is written by someone who had left the US and made Canada home
and they made the following prescient observation.
"Obama's speech was a beautiful appeal for Americans to salvage what Americans like to believe their nation is. But what if America isn't what Americans have been taught to believe it is? What if America needs to be transformed in radical ways? What if our Constitution and our presidential democracy aren't our hope—but our bane? What if the racism and cruelty that has existed in the United States throughout our history—the destruction of Native American people and culture, slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, lack of universal health care and other essential social programs, the attacks on immigrants and labour, and the fetish for guns, the police, the military, and stand your ground laws—what if all this is really what America stands for? What if our love of freedom is really a love of freedom from restraint so that we can pursue our avaricious desires without responsibility? What if Trump and today's Republicans aren't some aberration—but are the most honest expression of America's true values?
I no longer live in the United States and have no desire to return. I don't believe America's system of government or its culture are salvageable. Increasingly, freed by my life in Canada from the preconceptions all of us Americans share about who we are, I can't help asking: What if Trump's lying and cheating are in some ways the most honest expression of what America really is and Obama's high minded words are the real lie?"
I know it hasn't been decided just yet, but the lack of a decisive win leads me to believe the US electoral mechanism is broken and can't possibly reflect the society I knew it to be based on my experiences, yet here we are. Can it change? Not under Trump. We are by no means perfect but our political differences rarely if ever lead to the public outcry, protest and divisiveness of what we have witnessed the past four years.
I am disheartened like others on this thread. At age 68, with a long interest in history, I am puzzling over something. From 1875 or 78 (not sure) to the mid1920's, there was a vast wave of aggression - legal, social, physical - against black people in the USA. Huge massacres (North Carolina, Arkansas), the organization of the Ku Klux Klan (a terrorist organization), lynchings, anti-democratic legislation, trickery, thievery and more. This process, which is UNNAMED, might be called the Great Reaction. It lasted 50 years - ⅓ of the nation's life at that time. And it is completely missing from our history books, popular media, and most of all, memory and imagination. Now, since 1970, "conservatives" (white Republicans - the Southern Strategy) - have been mobilizing to do it again and this time the targets are not only people of color, but also LGBT people, women, working people, unions. Through the courts and legislatures, they aim to repeal or eviscerate all the protections gained since the New Deal. And more. This Second Reaction aims directly at the processes and core values of the liberal nation-state: equality of all citizens, due process, and regulation by the state of the vast power of private economic interests. The failure by our media and political parties to see, name, interrogate, expose and oppose this movement - this Second Reaction - has now persisted for 50 years. You can't fight or transform what you can't see and name. We have "right blindness." Like "night blindness"- that inability to see in the dark after being exposed to bright light. We, Americans have been blind to the right wing who have been waging this campaign in broad daylight.
I've always been a fairly positive person - but the last 4 years have deeply corroded that positivity in me. Our incompetent idiot is a person who takes all the air out of a room. No room for air when the room is filled with corruption, self-interest, dishonesty, intense rudeness, and most of all hatred and division. I've all but stopped reading the news. I cannot stand to see his face or hear his voice. I've quipped more than once that if Trump is re-elected that suicide becomes an option. I'm too old and too poor to leave the country which has long been a deep desire of mine. Like another commenter on here who says "I wish Facebook could be shut down...." I'll add all of social media. I think preening on Twitter is a tragic waste of time. Instagram is just a place where people can display their beauty or their muscles. Think of the time spent on these sites for low-level purposes and how it means there's no time left for reaching out to other human beings. I just don't know what else to say. Popular Information has become my tread to sanity.
One bottom line of this era: Democrats have won national majorities in three elections in a row. Structural biases mean the net results of these elections have given GOP more spoils than our side. But, this year, we likely have done just enough to win White House (even under the bullshit rules of the Electoral College) — and right now we need to secure that above all else.
We can take up soul-searching, autopsy, strategy, and the long game weeks from now.
There is no doubt that we’ll need to adapt our message, tactics, and theory of change. We need to win big enough to actually grab the levers of structural power, so we can change them.
I hardly slept last night. I keep going back and forth from the New York Times and the Washington Post, frantically refreshing the page each time, and rubbing my eyes which disbelief that it is this close. Trump simultaneously declaring victory and also promising. To challenge the final results if he loses in the days to come is absolutely bonkers.
It is hard to be eloquent this morning. I think it is because i am not surprised of the situation. I spent the last three weekends canvassing. Two in Pennsylvania and one in Maine to flip the senate seat. In PA, i canvassed the latino population in key areas since i speak spanish. When i got to my first list, i realized neither the DNC nor the Biden campaign had boots on the ground to reach such vote. We visited around 120 homes and 60% answered doors. The people who opened their doors were real voters and they expressed frustration because no one had ever come before i did to talk about the issues, their vote and how important it was. That weekend (one day before last day of registration) we got people excited about registering and about voting. I provided feedback to local organizers who did their best to get the vote out considering the limited resources they got. So i went with my partner, again this last weekend. The Biden campaign came for few days before but left again because they suspended canvassing due to covid and left no resources because they did not consider the latino vote important. Although i am educated latina, i feel the same way throughout the campaign that my vote was not important. Frustrating. So, no i am not surprised of these losses we are going through today.
We stay separated and this is the result. I'm independent of party, but lean liberal. I saw race and fear being used. The same tactics in 2016. Immigration not as hot of an issue, so an entire population was disregarded. Dreamers are still in limbo, children and families separated.
A lot of the Latinx leaders I have been speaking to throughout this cycle expressed very similar feelings Diana. That the community was invisible in many ways despite the political rhetoric.
The only successful campaign over these last two elections was carried out by Russia. They’ve succeeded in dividing our country with their lies and disinformation. It doesn’t matter who sits in the Oval Office when the counting is done. We’ve all lost and it’s doubtful that we will ever be united again, at least not in the remaining years I have. I’m beyond sad. I feel broken.
While I am somewhat disheartened, I am also not surprised at the outcomes. This has only strengthened my resolve to continue to act locally, where I have the ability to influence.
I hope that the Dem party also steps up its game and models the ethical way going forward.
I appreciate this newsletter because it is laser focused on a specific issue and gains traction to make change. I amplify it’s messaging where I can.
This is MY country and I am not giving up or giving in to despotism.
At the risk of being insensitive to the real anguish and dismay being shared in this thread, I did wish to share one shining moment of optimism. I also wanted to thank Judd and his team for always prioritizing insightful and impactful journalism and for creating a community of knowledgeable and passionate readers as evidence by the many posts here. Looking out the window of my hastily thrown-together and still temporary home office, I can see the sun is shining brightly, I am enjoying my morning coffee, and my cat is reading all of your comments while perched on my shoulder. Today will be a beautiful and happy day and I am convinced that nothing can change that. And if you ask me to provide evidence for this belief, I will cheerfully pretend not to hear your question!
Whether Biden wins or loses, this country didn't soundly reject a man who ripped children away from their parents as punishment and allowed over 230,000 Americans to die for political gain, and that speaks volumes about this fucking country. I no longer have faith in Americans.
I loathe Donald Trump and I loathe Trumpism, MAGA, and QAnon.
Lots of work ahead, no matter what. Personally I allowed the (gratifying) hit pieces of the Lincoln Project to reassure me that it wouldn't be this close. Appreciate other posters who are pointing out all the people who voted for Trump, with whom we have to collaborate now. It would be comforting to think Russia had a thumb on the scale again, but our multiple problems (RACISM and CLIMATE CHANGE and they are intertwined) are solidly domestic.
I despair for democracy and my home country. I used to feel that Americans were defined by kindness and now the ethos is the polar opposite- all fomented by a self-serving reckless elitist.
Can someone explain why his supporters are often clothed head to toe in badges, flags, statement t-shirts, MAGA hats, etc? This has never been true before and wearing a flag certainly does not increase one’s patriotism by an iota. It is as if their sense of personal identity has been replaced.
Trumpers are a true cult. I live in a 55+ community in Florida, full of Trumpers....All wear MAGA hates, fly American flags on their homes, Trump flags on the golf carts. This is like no other election. It's a cult and they have swallowed the Kool-aide of Faux News.
very discouraging...i drank the kool-aid from cnn and cnbc.....they are as bad as fox just other side of the coin....was also hoping for that blue wave that showed that people were more concerned about their fellow citizens and the covid response....so disappointing......at this time i don't care who wins.....a biden win will mean nothing without some control of senate....bye bye obamacare, police reform, etc....trump was already insufferable but now he'll take the gloves off and so many support this behavior.
I think a Biden victory, if it comes, will be significant with or without a Senate victory. Trump hasn't had many legislative victories but still has a huge influence on policy. Biden could do the same.
CNN and CNBC are NOT the other side of the Fox coin. That is a false narrative, perpetuated by the corporatists.
Anything you watch on TV, except Free Speech TV is infotainment. Managed and produced by the same corporations that control our political parties and the elections.
Corporations are interested in only one thing, the Quarterly Earnings Report, the Profit and Loss statements,...profits.
Do a little research, google is easy, check out who owns and controls the main stream media, including CNN, CNBC
There political coverage is much better than Fox's, as Fox coverage is mostly devoid of any semblance of reality, and is essentially mis or disinformation.
Never the less the MSM, including CNN and CNBC are only interested in preserving and promoting the status quo, from a stock market point of view.
Bear in mind the words of the CEO of CBS, Les Moonves, who (as did the other broadcast and cable networks) are responsible for the election of DJT. ""It May Not Be Good for America, but It's Damn Good for CBS"
You seem to know an awful lot; I am wondering what country would be best for a single senior woman to move to. Spain? Canada? Needs to be affordable. I want out of this country. If this jackass is president for four more years I don't want to be here.
I agree. Trump built a wall alright...around USA. Because of his mishandling of the COVID pandemic, we can’t leave, no country will take us. May be time to have 2 America’s...red and blue.
It’s possible to still get out. My two sons are working on getting out of here and I’m encouraging them to go. Read up and start the process if you’re serious.
Last time I checked, you may be able to get into Asia. Maybe Latin American countries. Possibly African continent. Not sure about Mexico. Europe is closed. Canada is closed. You can do a search and find out.
I forgot to suggest for you to read blogs from American expats living in Vietnam or any country you may wish to move to. It's a great way to find out the ins and outs of a living in a vastly different country. I used to read a few bloggers in SK, China, Taiwan and Japan. They are excellent resources for you.
I've read it's a beautiful country. Can you handle the excessive heat? I would love being free from radical evangelical and Catholic doctrines being rammed down our throats. Lots of things to research.
I'm shocked so many people in the U.S. support violence, support white supremacy, and the Nazi's. What gives? Why did to many people gives their lives in World War II only for a bunch of money grubbers, power hungry white people to laugh at them and call them losers?? I really thought people would reject Trump, yet they embrace him.
If 45 wins another term, his base is in for a surprise. They will begin to understand that 45 never cared about them and only needed them to buy more time for himself. As a lame duck president, he can stop pretending they matter (other than the occasional ego-stroking rally). Without the pretense of actually caring about his supporters, he will be able focus all his efforts on eroding what’s left of our democracy and establishing himself as the dictator he so desperately wants to be.
I am so disheartened by and ashamed of my country.
Its unimaginable that 48,2% of voters or 66 Mio Americans put us in this situation of still not knowing that this medieval thinking and blatant lying is going to end after dreadful 4 years. What a horendous nightmare. Yes we should count ANY vote.....but this depressing fact will stay: This contra factual, contact science, contra wisdom, contra ethics administration has a strong support. This is sad news for a country that once was the beacon of a modern way of living and a horrifying news for the rest of the world so eagerly in need for joined action on climate change, SARS-CoV-2 etc. which we should be able to solve if science and collaboration could prevail. So hang in there, but consider what the hack is going on in this country ? ---Til
I glean 2 things from this election: 1) Polling, as a science, has been shattered. 2) Many millions of my fellow citizens refuse to think, apparently preferring to follow. These citizens only require an upgrade to an adequate leader for us to survive as a species, for unlike polling, climate science marches on inexorably. Personally, I prefer that we humans do not become extinct.
I'm in Texas and it's almost daybreak. I can't believe that just 24 hours ago I actually fantasized that my state might turn blue.That I woke up anxious, but excited.
Sure, I suspected that that snake would follow through on declaring victory and claiming fraud. But I really didn't think that half the country would still, after seeing him in all his horror, would still be behind him. But they are, and that fact will give license to the Barrs and the McConnells and the Barretts to help him carry us all into Hell.
The Democrats offer no real alternative. They have become the party of outrage and virtue signaling, not the party of democracy and real solutions for real problrms. To be this close after all this mayhem requires some profound rethinking of the DNC leadership.
I totally agree. Republicans obtained control of states by investing from Dog Catcher to Governor. Dems have sat on their butt, awaiting the next presidential, and when they vote in the House and Senate, they vote on the side of the donors, and the donors are the same people that essentially owned the Republican Party.
Nancy Pelosi backed a "legacy" DINO candidate Joe Kennedy, against an experienced and well like progressive Democratic Senator Markey. She backed a homophobe House candidate against a gay candidate.
She and the leadership are terrified of real opposition within their own party, like the Squad.
"I never expected a blowout. But the idea that it is even close tells you that America has changed in ways that we might never recover from.
I have not given up. I have no idea how this will turn out and neither does anyone else. But the fact that it is this close is heartbreaking about America." - Tom Nichols - professor at the U.S. Naval War College and at the Harvard Extension School."
Hello everyone! I thought I'd start with a few thoughts of my own.
1. To find out the outcome of an election, you have to count votes. That's what's going on now. It's frustrating that the result is still up in the air, but patience is key. Trump will try to make the process as unpleasant as possible. Stay focused.
2. The main reason people are surprised by last night's results is that the polls suggested a decisive Biden victory. This is why I don't really discuss horse race polls. And why I think the media spends too much time focused on them. I wrote the first ever edition of Popular Information on this topic: https://popular.info/p/1-ignore-the-polls
3. Trump argument that the vote counting should be halted will be difficult to maintain because if you stopped counting the votes now, Biden would win. This isn't a prediction but it's the current state of play.
4. One encouraging thing I've observed is that Republican elected officials are rejecting Trump's premature declaration of victory. And election officials are staying the course with the vote count. That's important.
5. Litigation has already started but its still unclear if the result will be close enough for it to play a decisive role. That's one thing I'll be monitoring closely.
I disagree somewhat with#2...yes there is surprise because of the polls but I think it's more that people are disappointed at how gullible we've become as a nation to believe or disregard this man after everything we know. We didn't want to believe so many people are making the choice that brings out the absolute worse in our nation.
Bridget - you nailed it with this comment and that is exactly why I am shocked and saddened by this close race. After 4 years with this hideous excuse for a human being, I had faith that a large majority of Americans would reject him. I couldn't envision the situation we're facing now.
MORE people voted for him this time than last!! 3 MILLION more!! It's disgusting.
I used to work with political polling professionally. I agree with you. I'd like to add that following the polls is lazy journalism. Critical analysis of the polls would make interesting reading... for me. And a small audience, I'm guessing. So we are stuck with this decades-long pattern of journalistic practice and all I think I can do about it is tell my friends "ignore the polls. Fight like your candidate is losing but might win".
This is the absolute last time I pay ANY attention to polling. In fact, since it appears our family was oversampled this election season (phone calls to the landline every day), I'm going to stop participating in polling as well. I have always been one to search for the good in others, but I'm stick-a-fork-in-me done with that. From where I'm sitting, it appears that most of my neighbors would rather shoot me (and other "libs") than look at me. No more Ms. Nice Gal.
I became an ace, I think, at having cold and cool conversations with dangerous people. I've had hundreds of those conversations. A couple of years ago I sat at a table in a diner talking with a man and our mutual friend. I noticed he had a huge Trump fan banner on the back window of his pickup truck. I knew that in his way of life he did not need a truck. I asked him if he owned guns. I asked him about ammo shortages. I mentioned I used to shoot. He randomly mentioned he had stockpiled 50,000 rounds. I knew he lived by the Atlantic with white middle class retirees all around. I learned that he had his back against the sea and had a mind to create a defensible fortress even though it was just him living there. Why did he need 50K rounds? "To prepare for the Muslim apocalypse". He said it dryly. Matter of fact. He is afraid he will face mobs of people coming for him, and for his property. If I show him my anger, how will he react? If I call him stupid, how will he feel? If I laugh out loud, what next? I need results. I want results. I do not have the skills for talking him off that ledge. He is terrified. His whole life revolves around that fear.
I get what you're saying. I really do. And I was the one telling my paranoid son that he needed to see the abject fear that motivates some of these people - until recently. I'll still remember that they're afraid, and their fear causes their belligerence, but I will no longer go out of my way to do for them. No more solicitous calls when I see their animals running loose, no more offers to clean their driveways after a heavy snow, no more asking after the kids & grands. I don't know them anymore.
Have you become afraid of them? (BTW - that guy, in my story - I do nothing at all to help him, although I supposed I could - I DO help people who ask for help)
Nope. As long as they don't realize where my sentiments lie, I'm good. And, if they do ever realize it, I don't think they're scared enough of me to do anything to me.
I am in a similar situation though the neighborhood is split between evangelical ‘christians who oppose abortion but would do nothing to help a struggling single mother and the gun toting 2nd amendment folks- who could not tell you what the 2nd amendment says- I try to simply not engage because they know where I live and violence is not out of the question
Alex Burns on NYTimes Daily this morning said that polling in key states like Florida and Wisconsin was likely overestimated and even the campaigns were trying to tell media that their data was showing much closer margins. Had no idea and thought that was interesting.
If journalists consistently tried to follow up on leads and dig into facts by consulting a Ouija board, how long would it take for you to disregard what they report (and cancel your subscriptions)? Polling stories are poison, especially when delivered as “this new twist just in.” Why do we think that predicting the future is a job for a news organization? NYT handled it especially poorly this week. 538 four years ago, Upshot this year - they are selling us an addictive mind-altering framework, not evidence. Polling is a tool in campaigners’ toolbox, I get that. But look at us consumers, handing horserace-paradigm journalists the keys to our brains.
Polls are crack for quants. Let’s all detox.
Trump got a pretty dry reception from GOP courts at state and federal levels with his antics in Harris County TX.
We are failing an open-book test. I understand why someone may have voted for DJT in 2016. I don't agree with it, but I understand it. But we had nearly four years of instability, deception, corruption, and complete lack of basic decency upon which to draw when casting our ballots this year. I fully realize that votes are still being counted, but I'm struggling to understand how this is even close.
So much is at stake. And an alarming percentage of Americans appear to have turned a blind eye to real problems facing our nation. Instead, they're drawn to the President's claims of a strong economy and promises to resolve the very disorder he created.
It. Blows. My. Mind.
I think recognizing there are lots of things about the politics of the United States that are poorly understood is a good starting place. I'm right there with you.
Absolutely. To include the possibility that more and more people are voting for bombast than for actual politics. I once assumed people voted for Trump's "policies" despite his personality. I'm slowly realizing it could be the other way around.
people voted because of a world view deeply instilled in them by a billion + of weaponized content that has pummeled them since 2016.
Yes, and this. Though I agree with Judd's assessment. There is clearly a lot we don't know about why people vote for him. If we'd figured that out in the last four years, I have to assume this race would not be so close.
Actually, a whole bunch of people did the research and know very well why they vote for him. Not one funder on the left ever stepped up to truly build an equal digital eco system to rival what the Kochs have built.
Agree to disagree, I suppose. It seems clear to me there is a lot we still don't understand about politics in this country. And yes, even if we did have a firmer grasp on why people vote the way they do, we likely wouldn't be as effective at communicating our message to voters as Republicans have been for the reasons you've pointed out.
What frightens me the most is seeing huge swaths of the country (not just the south; also areas in the midwest and west) where people truly believe that covid is not real and doesn't need any action taken to control it. There are districts with the highest covid death counts that voted Trump, and that is not (entirely) Trump's own doing. It is the complicit press, social media, and the state's local leaders parroting the same deceptions.
This is a cancer to a free society. Freedom of speech is a powerful tool, but echo chambers and free access to megaphones weaponizes it against us. Opinions must be considered, but "covid is a hoax" is not an opinion.
To be clear, I hold Zuckerberg responsible to a point because he is a GOP lapdog, but it isn't entirely Facebook's fault, it's the ability for individuals to isolate themselves from hearing and considering dissent that is destroying America.
i AGREE COMPLETELY. ZUCKERBERG HELPED ALL THIS HAPPEN.
Yes he did
Everything Facebook is doing right now is to avoid government regulation of the platform. Because of my job right now I'm becoming something of an expert on social media technology, especially what's wrong with it, how the recommendation algorithms work and how disinformation is a perfect application for them. Facebook is out of control and so are the other platforms. YouTube is actually worse.
I'm not terribly knowledgeable about this stuff at all. How does Twitter rank in all this?
As far as market share of ads, Twitter is between the two of these. Jack Dorsey seems to have sort of grown a conscience, but it really doesn't matter. I wrote a whole bunch more, but this thread is about the election and I don't want to keep going off on a tangent.
I worried in the election lead-up that Biden would somehow fumble at the three-yard line.
It’s soul-destroying and a crushing defeat even if he somehow manages to win. That a huge number of Americans see Trump as their saviour whilst he robs them of their health and health care is a staggering testament to herd mentality. Sadly, herd immunity will not protect many of them and they will succumb to COVID. What they fail to see is he and the GOP truly don’t care.
My god. I mean, I can't help but think about all the stories in 2017 when self-avowed Trump voters were saying, "please, don't take away my healthcare coverage." That is literally what he was campaigning to do!
Somehow they’ve tied it to a belief that having affordable health care for everyone is a communist plot. I am so glad I live in Canada. No, it's not perfect, but Prescription costs in the US kill. Many who get COVID may find themselves with no coverage as the consequent long-term affects are deemed a pre-existing condition.
As to the environment, those people who live with contaminated water supplies (Forever chemicals) voted for a man who told them America has the cleanest water. Ah, but they are poor and expendable as are the 230,000 + who died of COVID.
I was watching a Trump rally last week (because I enjoy pain and feeling dead inside), and in the midst of listing of litany of fear-mongering critiques about the Democratic party he shouted to his supporters "They want to make healthcare free for everybody." And they booed! He was making fun of free healthcare!!!!
It is sometimes so disorienting to hear that, right? I know exactly what you mean. You wonder if anyone is listening to the words, or just cheering on command like a studio audience. Now to be fair, the Democratic party also emphatically rejected universal healthcare during this election cycle, and even adopted the healthcare=socialism line from the GOP. Personally, this frustrated me even more than the surreal spectacle of people cheering for bankruptcy, insurance companies, and death, because they had the chance to really take up a huge reform for the benefit of all, and in the midst of the pandemic no less. What a squandered opportunity.
"Free for everybody" is a dog whistle. They know and he knows that he's not making fun of free healthcare, he's making fun of people who think that BIPOC should also get healthcare.
That makes so much sense. It is remarkable to me how successful the Republican party is at convincing people to hate something that could benefit them because it might also benefit others.
That's an excellent observation. I guess we all need to be able to translate GOP talking points into "grievance speak".
Lolsob
Mine, too. But you can lay some blame on the MSM as well. They have done a piss poor job covering Trump's presidency
The headlines have screamed, every single stinking day, about what Trump was doing and saying. You absolutely don’t get to blame “the media“ for not telling when the truth is people didn’t care as long as their portfolios looked good.
I agree with you somewhat. However, I think it has been clear for years that most media outlets have refrained from calling Trump's words and actions what they are (racist, illegal, fascist) because they didn't want to appear biased. My other issue with MSM outlets is that they gave (and still give) airtime to people operating in bad faith to debate the issue of the day. Instead, they need to avoid headline news coverage and report things in terms and perspectives that allow viewers to fully understand how it impacts their lives.
You make valid points; better than blanket condemnation. Thank you.
Calling him racist would not have helped.
Why do you believe that?
Really? What Maddow? How about how the children at the border in detention dropped off the radar. The pardons of his henchmen, no they chased the Trump ball and dropped it over and over and over. The examples are numerous but you have your opinion and I have mine. They are to blame.
Agreed. What are elderly people in FL thinking of? Especially when there’s a good chance #45 will take away health care. How much of a factor in all this is Fox News?
Wait until he cuts payroll taxes people. I think that’s the next thing on his agenda.
It is! I believe he’s said as much. I’m disappointed in Dems & Biden for not jumping all over this and campaigning hard on their commitment to preserving Social Security and Medicare.
Eh, they'll all be dead before they figure out how they helped screw their kids.
Please stop. Stereotyping is not helpful in any discussion. All senior citizens (or elderly as you prefer) are not the same nor do they vote the same. Additionally, seniors are not the only voting “block” in Florida. Every state (some more than others) has low-informed voters who are easily swayed by the loudest voices and pushers of fear which brings me to your question about Fox “News” being a factor - well duh!
I think it may be called delusion.
It’s frighteningly apt that this monster and its acolytes are on the verge of returning to lay waste to what is left of America’s soul. Some might say it has a new darker soul, but are Americans willing to accept that and follow a truly evil man?
Pretty succinct. I struggle with the same question. I'm blown away by supposedly caring people voting for this.
This is why we have to work in the schools to change the curriculum back to a time when asking questions was not punishable and thinking about ideas was encouraged and taught. If I take a minute and think about the evangelical teachings, I see that it is pure bullshit with gold dust and feathers of the angels. This is not made up. It exists here at a megachurch where I live. The young searchers who come here from all over the world are frisked of their money and told massive lies. It is Jim Jones again. This kind of control is in the schools, police departments and local government. All white perpetrated. If you are LGBTQ or of color you are not so welcome. In fact the former can be sent to a special place to get "cured". I see where the systemic racism is born again!
And you think they are caring because . . . they volunteer at animal shelters? give tours of local battlefield sites? I’m legit confused by your comment.
I see where you’re coming from, not ready to agree or disagree with you. But if they’re “caring” only in the universe of beneficiaries of their belief system, I can’t call that caring.
I was not at all surprised by Trump taking 2016 and 2020's close margins seem about right. Woman in a STEM field see this because Every. Single. Man. we work with is a Trumper. Many are openly racist and sexist, but don't think they are because "that is the normal way to think."
I was told by colleagues for TWO separate jobs in very different locations that I would not get an internal company job that I had applied for because 1) "He won't hire a woman or any Black person" 2) Look around... see what we hire: you are not what we hire. These are Trumpers. They will just say it to your face like they are explaining something reasonable. One guy was even having me fill in while he looked for a white male. He wrote nice things about my work to his bosses, but hire a Woman?!? NO WAY. I refused to "fill in" until my replacement could be found after I found out what he really thought. It took them over a year and a half to find a suitable white guy. These are Trumpers. They are everywhere.
More white women voted for Trump, both in terms of raw numbers and percentages, in 2020 than in 2016. With the caveat that we don't have complete numbers yet, but right now it's looking like 55% of white women voted for Trump in 2020, versus 53% in 2016. White women are just as much to blame, nonwithstanding the existing issues of sexism in STEM.
We're watching this from Asia and are kinda shocked that the race is so close. Was expecting a blue wave after four years of this monster. Gave you guys the benefit of the doubt in 2016, but this election has shown, this is America. Even if Biden wins narrowly, half of America holds Trumpist views, whether we or you'd like to admit. I don't know what the future holds, good luck my American friends.
Try living here. I share your horror.
it's awful.
I would like to leave this country. It's horrible here.
I left to Ecuador 3 years ago although I still am a US citizen and vote in NV. .....best move I ever made. I think I was ahead of the curve.
We moved to Italy this year. So far not regretting it.
I love Sicily and often fantasize about living there. However we do split our time between Bangkok and San Diego. Neither Italy nor Thailand have come to a steady state of economic equality. And Italy has a pretty brazen right wing. I'm not trying to deflect everyone's despair; it's justified. But if the fantasy of fleeing occurs to us, make sure to investigate where you'd feel comfy and what aspects of that other place appeal to you. Food and climate? Ability to insulate yourself from the domestic realities of the other place? The set of individuals you personally encounter as opposed to the electoral results in that country? Then apply those criteria to the country we despair about. We now know that 35% of our population would prefer "Father Knows Best" and "The Donna Reed Show" to the realities of the 21st century. OTOH cities and their suburbs don't have that mindset. Our challenge is to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable orientations.
This rightwing swing has been going on all over Europe. There isn't remotely enough coverage about how Putin has funded political extremists on both right and left in Western democracies in order to destabilize them, draw attention away from his regime, and prove to his populace that our systems of government don't work. He has used the same tactics on us that the CIA has used to destabilize governments such as those in Central and South America. He has met with varying success, the most successful has been in Hungary and Poland. I don't know if the Philippines or Brazil are anything to do with him, but I wouldn't be surprised. Sadly the state of American affairs has done nothing but help his efforts along.
I almost did leave in the 60s. Now I’m too old to relocate but sure wish I was elsewhere
I left 3 years ago at age 67, now 70, living in Ecuador. YOU can do it!
so Ecuador is good? I have not been a big traveler in my life, and relocating sounds hard, but I m thinking seriously about it. what about healthcare? has to better than here, I would imagine, but how do you become citizen?
Citizenship takes 5 years of residency, but legal residency is easy......special residency visa programs for retirees. 12 hours of daylight every day, all year, with year round temps of 68 lows -87 highs. And the beach! and whales! and the Amazon! and the Galapagos! johninecuador@gmail.com
Ecuador is good. The health care is supposed to be decent, not as good as the US. Rent is cheaper. I researched it a lot at one point. At that time there were a few cities in which a lot of expats have relocated, so there is an expat community. It is a third world country, so some things are not as convenient or comfortable, but there are good things about it. I don't know if you can become a citizen, but I think you can be a legal resident. The thing to do is read, read, read. Read books, blogs, etc. Meet people online who live there, etc., and remember not to believe everything people say.
Expats and Amigos in Manta and manabi is a good expat forum of expats living in my coastal area. https://www.facebook.com/groups/323275021650751/?__cft__[0]=AZXTHZtU5Nzfm5D4B3sQqg0Q59o8OndMAZ-REkHNsTyZ4rlDpAEV4roIIa2wID4OQ03soHmbWZSjuO0beW9-XmBBfPeM7XAzUG8sV4CuKyOtC8GJxSLXY1X0W7MZh1LdSIJjgL91IDi86p7FOUKs6P9hfnCHGRuNFk4WsbGnIl8EA-g5hiYJ_xQjv6dxEGTINM_dM3Bp9Wf0TMyQKwKJbpg6&__tn__=-UC%2CP-R
Since the US is becoming a 3rd world country that should not matter. Learning a new language might be a deterrent
Can I join you?
c'mon down!
I've been able relocate internally. A very small, liberal county, no COVID deaths and the Trump idiots and COVIDIOTS keep their head down.
Wherever you go, Facism will come for you. It will be easy to find you with Big Tech Google and Facebook surveillance .
Take a stand here and now.
Fight here (non-violently, duh).
Fight for your country.
Americans fight for their country. Forever.
Me too.
Alas there is no blue wave, at present Biden is ahead by a mere 25 electoral votes, and the senate is 47-47, and most of the issues and people I have been rooting for and donating to have lost to the Republicans.
Stupid freakin Americans are swayed by commercials, there is no salvation. In California Prop 22 failed, simply because Uber and Lyft spent millions on commercials.
Let's be clear. There is a portion of the population - specifically, Black and other POC voters - who have been telling us for decades that this is how America is. That we, as a nation, care more about protecting our wealth and our status than we do about actually pursuing equality. That issues involving race cannot be compartmentalized. That socialism is just fine when it's me but it's not fine when you benefit too (think farmers getting bailouts or the stimulus checks). This is deeply frustrating and disheartening, but it isn't a surprise.
And if this isn't clear evidence that a lot of people on the left live in echo chambers of news sources, I don't know what could be clearer. So many people on the left that I know - myself included, though probably to a lesser degree - convinced ourselves that this election would be a repudiation of what Trump stood for and his ignorance and the harm he's done. Even if Biden does end up winning, the election absolutely does not represent a repudiation of Trump and the GOP. At all.
I agree with you completely. Let’s face up to what this says about America and Americans’ fear of POC. Millions showed up to vote for Trump’s “law and order” appeals and don’t care about the pandemic deaths. It’s so disheartening but also a call to fight harder for racial justice and an end to poverty.
One major issue is the folks who support Trump see racial justice as a loss for them. For them, it seems like equality is somehow a threat, so they fight it tooth and nail, irrespective of the dangers it poses to them and the country as a whole.
It can't be solely the responsibility of the Democratic party to address this issue, though it seems like that's the expectation. Meanwhile, the GOP seems unconcerned about the problem unless it threatens their power, and even then, that requires only the most overt and uncontested expressions of racial violence.
A Biden win is a positive thing, but as long as one of the two major political parties proudly makes itself a home for racism, misogyny, anti-immigration for non-white people, etc., many people will view all significant issues as partisan. And when everything is partisan, nothing truly matters because partisanship reduces all to political disputes, akin to a sport. However, it is not a sport, and the denial of fundamental rights is not just a game.
I don't know how this will change.
The bigger problem is Democrats are as ignorant to the racial equity issues as the GOP. This isn't just a GOP issue by any means. The fact that the GOP is the party of white supremacy doesn't mean that the Democrats are not full of white supremacy as well. Democrats are fine with calling out the more blatant forms of racism. But when Democrats are confronted about less obvious forms of racism that are no less harmful, they start getting just as shut down and defensive as the GOP.
This isn't an issue with just one party.
Only one party openly invites it and the other makes a concerted effort to fight for equality.
Democrats do not make a concerted effort to fight for equality. Some Democrats do. The party, as a whole, does not. Nor does everyone or even most of the people in the party.
The Democratic party is imperfect in this regard. I do not agree. The GOP openly invites white supremacy. There is a major difference.
That's fair. Pelosi appeared on PBS NewsHour last night and was asked whether Democrats had underperformed among minority voters. Her answer, that "minority voters are the most brilliant voters, they see clearly what is in their interest" felt really patronizing and from a similar perspective that generated "if you don't vote for me then you ain't black."
Yes, that was an awkward moment and inelegant phrasing, to say the least. However, I don't thick she was being patronizing. I took her comments as "Black voters have their eyes open."
I can appreciate that.
He loves the uneducated and the stats illustrate uneducated poor folks seem to love sucking up to the rich. I believe the large increase in Black & Latino males this time is do to the fact they despise female equality. The all want to proud pussy grabbers just like our #POUTINGpotus. It's sad that these folks think the GOP will ever do anything to improve their standing in our society. Worse yet, when progressive assistance programs are made available they are the first one with their hands out and then after they got theirs, they'll bitch about others getting theirs.
Indeed. America's so-called "greatness" was built on the backs of enslaved black people, and that subjugation, while it has changed appearance over centuries, has never really truly been defeated.
Yes. In fact, the current electoral map shows that the Confederacy lives on and has metastasized. How do you get absolute surrender 170 years after the defeat? I’m stumped.
Could not have put it better myself. The South truly lost the war but won the peace.
Because of where I live I am less surprised than if I had remained in a predominantly blue area
Trump showed fundamentalist mainly white christians the power he would give them and they threw themselves at his feet. He showed racists and other bigots the legitimacy they craved and they lined up for him. He has exposed for everyone to see the worst of America and they lapped it up. Now he has followed through On his democracy destroying path to reelection. Declare victory prematurely, demand counting stop, tie it up in lawsuits that make their way to an SC he has packed. If that happens I fear our democracy is dead and we are a backwoods dictatorship. And the fact that so many Americans think this is ok, since they like what he says, is disheartening. Everyone who says our system of checks and balances will work it out, I don’t think factored in such a craven GOP.
This was written three hours ago, so perhaps things look a bit different now. But I think it's important to grapple with the deep factual and ideological divides of the country. I don't believe those divides mean democracy is dead. That is democracy. It's being tested, but the outcome is not preordained.
I agree wholeheartedly. I also think (because I'm related to some of these folks) that they legitimately do not see what seems to us to be right in front of our faces. They think all the talk of dictatorship is overblown and delusional. They don't think it is anywhere near as 'bad as we think it is'. It is a cult and so, so many have drunk the Kool-aid.
yet they are afraid of so called "socialism" rather than authoritarianism, it's like they dont understand what that is... and I think They like the thought of that, they need a daddy. especially one who hates the liberals.
They don’t understand. They did not grow up after WW II when there were real threats - as there are today but younger filks have grown up essentially spoiled and entitled
This.
We have ignored how mediagenic Trump is. When combined with prioritizing power, delivering legitimacy that pulls people out of the shadows, and the right wing machine that has been operating for years — putting judges on benches and training candidates and campaigns in local races — his style, his years on TV cannot be matched by anyone wanting to have a thoughtful conversation.
Now, the Democrats — maybe thinking of the Lincoln Project — it’s better to say the non-Trumpists — have to play a long game AND a short game. Putting in place machine, building power training candidates while effectively combatting a President who is willing to say anything, consolidate power at the expense of rights and liberties.
I know it’s not over yet and he might end up being a lame duck President (terrifying before, more so now with this close vote behind him). I’m not sure that changes the reality of what’s ahead for the country.
You nailed it!
Sadly his cult has grown
I agree wholeheartedly and it is sad-
Shocked to find out that half my country, who elected a black man for president twice (only 8 & 12 years ago) is okay with systemic racism & okay with almost a quarter million Americans dying (so far) due to a mishandled pandemic. I really believed that we were better than this. The feeling of defeat, regardless of the Presidential election result, is overwhelming.
As usual this country used a black man to save it from the economic ruins from the Bush administration and then shows its true racist ways by electing a pos racist to take the credit
Here is a hard truth to swallow. The president has little or nothing to do with the economy. The economy is not the DOW or Wall Street. is is you and I with change in our pockets that spend it. Spending is the economy, no money to spend, no economy.
always talk of the GDP, every time a cancer of cancer is diagnosed, the GDP goes up
The Gross Domestic product is dependent on spending, not production. COVID-19 was a GDP accelerant, offset by the layoffs and unemployment
The media, which is corporate owned and reports what the corporations want to report, is fixated on the DOW Jones and other stock market indicators, not on the welfare of and the spending of the citizen. So they report a good economy when the DOW goes up.
And the stock market does not respond to spending and jobs, it responds to shareholder emotions, and shareholder emotions are driven by such things as Presidential policies and now, today, by of all things tweets.
I repeat the economy is not the stock market, but you wouldn't know that because of the reporting of the lame stream media.
I agree 110%.
As usual this country used a black man to save it from the economic ruins from the Bush administration and then shows its true racist ways by electing a pos racist to take the credit
Not half. More than half would be Dems and there's the voter suppression.
True, and we knew (well in advance) that voter suppression was going to be a huge issue, and it was still allowed to happen.
Dems are guilty of voter suppression as well. I don't see a giant wave of Democratic legislatures allowing convicted felons the right to vote unconditionally. And those laws preventing convicted felons from voting, all enacted during Jim Crow, were designed to prevent Black people from voting.
Which states?
All of them.
I agree with your sentiments, but not with your conclusion. Julie's statement was not false equivalency. The fact is that Democrats, especially when the party was racist Dixiecrats are behind the laws prohibiting convicts from voting. A hold over of the 13th Amendment which outlawed chattel slavery, but allowed for enslavement of convicts.
It is no coincidence that Angola, the largest state prison was built on the largest plantation in Louisiana and possibly the south. Named after the country from which the majority of slaves came.
Unfortunately Biden's sponsorship and vote on the Crime Bill of 1996 has criminalized people, most of whom are black, for such trivial things as marijuana possession and turned them into felons.
Fortunately votes have already been cast, but the Democratic party has a lot to do to become what it holds itself out to be, a party of the people. Rather it is the party of the plutocrats, and the peoples votes are taken for granted because "the alternative is unthinkable".
Penny, you are a real pain in the butt, you slap down every hand offered because it is not politically correct, as I said elsewheres your penchant for being self righteous, self pitying and accusatory of those who are allies, but not sufficiently correct, is tiresome and counter productive.
Get over yourself, welcome allies rather than slap down their hands because they are not sufficiently politically correct.
You are wearing on one's patience, and frankly I really don't care
You are as obnoxious as Trump voter. The other side of the same coin.
LOL My false equivalency? No. I'm enabling deniers like yourself to wake up and have to face the reality. Until you actually wake up and see the reality of how this has been going on, you're going to keep perpetuating the status quo and not understanding why.
I is not really shocking. The strength of the American fight for civil rights rose to the surface again under DJT. But so did the strength of America's brutal racism. It was not destroyed in the 60's. It was not sealed in a tomb with Martin Luther King. We've lived in a divided country since before the Civil War. Since before the Constitutional Congress. Alexander Hamilton was one of a very few adamant proponents of the abolition of slavery. If anyone still believes that the Civil War settled things, they do not know the still breathing "righteousness" of the rebel "cause." So many times I have thought about what we would be if we had let the South secede. Never more than now.
My opinion is that the racists didn't vote, because they didn't think that he would win. The minorities turned out in unheard of numbers, but he failed to deliver, and they have resigned themselves.
The Democratic party has always taken the minority, labor and gay vote for granted, because , in their mindset, the alternative is worse. And so it is with this election.
I am reading this from Canada and deeply sick about all this. I am losing faith in my fellow man and it's crushing my spirit
I love Canada; I lived in the Toronto area for 12 years with my Canadian husband and absolutely fell in love with your country, it's history, it's people, it's diversity, it's beauty...Unfortunately my husband passed away 8 years ago and I'm back in the Chicago area to help my elderly parents. I don't recognize this country anymore...and I would give anything to go back to Canada!
Are you Canadian? If so, congrats. It’s too cold, but I’d take it at this point.
I am Canadian, not that bad in say Vancouver damn chilly in the prairies and yes I imagine I'll see more interest in coming here LOL
I will take the cold any day.....
Do you have a room for rent?
... path ahead.
I don't see one. Even if Biden pulls out a squeaker, half the electorate voted to reelect the worst president in history. Half the electorate wants to destroy the Atlantic alliance. Half the electorate is more comfortable with the US playing in Putin's sandbox than in the EU's. What sort of pathway is there out of that mess, aside from a cataclysmic world war (God forbid) that might possibly unite the country?
What is the purpose of the Atlantic alliance? Why are some Dems so eager to maintain the war machine? I want to deescalate with China, Russia, Iran, and N. Korea and move half the war budget to reconstruction.
The Atlantic alliance is economic, not just military. It represents common values of democratic principles embedded in capitalist societies. The only reason the EU goes to war is because the US drags them in.
I have no problem with reducing the military budget. Part of why we're here is because we are now a military society with patriotism measured by how much you love guns and bombs. I don't see that changing, especially since that is the heart and soul of the QOP.
We need to re-engage with China and Iran. Putin's Russia will remain focused only on what can make Russia a world power again. He has no interest in being a good neighbor. Putin would love to rebuild the USSR built around the White countries in the area. Do we stand by while that happens? If NATO stands up, Putin sits down, and vice versa. We saw that with Crimea and are seeing it with Lithuania.
North Korea is a rogue state that is not interested in playing nice. De-escalation puts Seoul at grave risk. At the same time, South Korea needs to be allowed to take the lead in making nice with Kim Jong-un.
and to think Trump even knows what he is doing is absurd. Not only does he want military build up , he wants to use nuclear bombs! he says why not? why dont we? wow. what a mess. sure he says he doesnt want a war, but that is not true, that guy is the most wreckless.
Here shows the problem....someone has to explain the value and purpose of NATO to Cooper.
I agree with you that S. Korea should take lead regarding the North.
What is the purpose of the Atlantic alliance? Is that a rhetorical question or are you genuinely interested? If the latter, then maybe we can crowd source here some good books for you to read. The United States’ alliances around the world are a peace machine and a economic machine. Like it or not, we are a global economy and share global concerns, such as pandemic control and environmental preservation and the safe guarding trade routes. If we retreat to protectionism and try to go it alone, our economy will tank, our already shrinking influence on the word (thanks to trump) will vanish, and we will live in a far more dangerous world, in which dictators and bullies can affect US internal affairs.
You may need to change that one sentence of yours about the US being a global economy. We WERE the main driver of the global economy until trumps tariffs and his completely mishandling of this pandemic. Our “fantastic” economy has shrunk like a cheap suit caught in a rainstorm.
This is at least the second time someone has pointed to half the population as holding reactionary and racist views. But let's recognize that the Electoral College mechanism grants outsized voting power to rural voters. And that it is most certainly not 50% of the voters painting the map red. I wish I had a link to a map that shows how our population votes based purely on their ballot choices without respect to state lines. Yes, it's awful that 35-40% are looking at the world from a rear view mirror. But are we frozen in this? I sure hope that 60-65% of us can find a way to transcend the shackles of rural know-nothing electoral hegemony. (Wow, I haven't even had my coffee yet.)
EC be damned. Some 65 million voters pulled the lever for the fascist in orange. A few million more pulled for Biden. That's a massive problem in my book.
I haven't had my coffee yet. And I haven't verified the numbers. Absolutely it's a problem that any sizeable voting bloc look to that authoritarian, mentally ill con man. Do we just give up when we're the majority? Do we give in to the temptation of painting Trump voters as uniformly irredeemable? Have we pondered what's in the mind of Voters who elected Obama twice and yet can vote for Trump? Quite a puzzle. It's the 50th anniversary of the Rubik's cube. Something to spin about.
Nice segue into the Rubik’s cube 🤣
This is at least the second time someone has pointed to half the population as holding reactionary and racist views. But let's recognize that the Electoral College mechanism grants outsized voting power to rural voters. And that it is most certainly not 50% of the voters painting the map red. I wish I had a link to a map that shows how our population votes based purely on their ballot choices without respect to state lines. Yes, it's awful that 35-40% are looking at the world from a rear view mirror. But are we frozen in this? I sure hope that 60-65% of us can find a way to transcend the shackles of rural know-nothing electoral hegemony. (Wow, I haven't even had my coffee yet.)
The fact that this election is so close is a reflection of America’s failed educational system, a lack of understanding of American civics, and American addiction to social media. I am embarrassed that so many of my fellow voters are unable to discern fact from fiction, and don’t bother to fact check stories that they see on social media before sharing them. Misinformation and disinformation helped to make this election as close as it is.
A perfect example of what I’m talking about: on Monday, I was talking to someone in my office in his late 20’s who is a Trump supporter. He was laughing at the attempt by Texas Trump supporters to run the Biden-Harris bus off the road. He had no understanding of the electoral college and the bicameral system of government. Trump is entertainment to him, and is worthy of his vote.
I completely agree with the above. I relocated to rural GA 40 yrs ago and was appalled (and still Am despite marginal improvements) at the educational system. My 60+ year old step children, grands and greats haven’t a clue about how government is designed to work. They watch Fox and listen to the preachers. Really sad
The real worry I have is that fact/fiction did not come into play - that they did or could, but did not care.
Out with de Vos! She is continuing the destruction of our educational system. This is by design and has been in play for the last 40 years. Kochs decide the curriculum from 1st grade thru university. They fund "schools" within schools, award grants to those who do things their way, who teach the kind of economics they approve.
Numb, sad, and enraged all at the same time. Twice in 4 years I’ve gone to bed on election night feeling like I’m living in an alternate dimension that doesn’t square with what I believe we are about.
me too. and I cant sleep. ever.
Honestly, I don't understand why so many (mostly white) Americans are shocked to pieces. America was built on racist individualism, has enabled racism individualism throughout its history, elected this racist individualist, allowed him to enact racist and individualist policies using racist and individualist rhetoric. So yes, half the country is pumped about elected a racist individualist. It sucks. But as a black woman, it's not at all surprising that so many people would vote for someone who is so blatantly racist and self-serving. They LIKE that about him and they HATE that all these years they've been shamed for it.
Thanks for sharing this Phoebe.
As someone who grew up in a very racist family, I can confirm that this is true. They like that they can say racist things out loud and in public now. The people that vote for Trump who say they aren't racist are either lying or are simply OK with looking the other way, which is being racist.
Ditto
1000% this. I've noted that it has been almost entirely white ppl (mostly men) who told me 'don't worry, it'll be a landslide, early bedtime etc etc' meanwhile most of the women LGBTQ and Black/brown ppl I know have been battling crippling anxiety going into this election. The ignorance around this is stunning, even 4 yrs later
There are plenty of white women too who are shocked about this.
Definitely true. Anecdotally for me it's been mostly men though.
I point it out only because anecdotally for me, where I'm not surrounded by white men, almost all the white women I see are going through this shock - even those that are more aware of the issues than others.
Let's remember that January 21, 2017 marked the largest public demonstration in US history: the Women's March.
Phoebe, you paint a bleak but sadly true historical background. But you ought not let our electoral college obscure the fact that the popular vote did not point to Trump in 2016. Or to George W. in his first race. And the nation did muster enough popular AND electoral votes to elect Obama twice. History is full of contradictory waves. Our challenge is to somehow neutralize the haters. The coalition of antiracist people just this year is an indication that all is not lost. We need to keep the faith. John Lewis would be reminding us. He bore the scars but he got up again and went back into the arena. Let's give ourselves a few days of despondency if it's inescapable. And then let's each ask ourselves how we can strike out for equality-- and yes-- love for our fellow humans.
It's presumptuous to assume I've given up on improving the country or that I am despondent. I am simply realistic about where we are where others have not been.
The problem with folk talking about the popular vote in 2016, is that it didn't break for Hillary until it got to California. It was in California that she finally won the popular vote.
It is pretty hard to keep the faith, when the evidence is that at least 44% of Americans are indeed and in fact racists, and that even more are patriarchalists, but voted for Biden because of Trump's and the GOP's racism.
Man, I really hate that you have a good point. I just want us to be so much better than this and was lulled to believing we were better. -- The narrative has to change. It has to be that keeping people down is bad for everyone instead of this idea that resources are finite and for someone to have more means that you have less. That property, business, home ownership=investment in a community so if they don't like seeing looting and destruction they would be better to help people invest, not just condemn them and say "see, I told you so, they are no good".
I absolutely agree 100%. And I think Fox News, Facebook, and other media behemoths have fanned the flames to a point it wouldn’t have been otherwise
Because some white people are decent.
Well put.
I feel sick at heart. To me this is worse than 4 years ago. We have seen the corruption and incompetence of Trump and yet so many of us still support him. I don't know how to proceed. How do we heal this insanity before it is too late?
They have excelled at propagandising his base. They don't know the things we know from the news sources we watch but rely heavily on their separate right wing news sources so they are brainwashed with their fake news and their explanations of reality that explain away the things he's doing. That's what I learned from listening to my brother in Colorado. He's a good man but when I talk to him I say , "where do you get this baloney" cause he's got facts and reality so different from what I know it to be and he has no idea about what I see. He gets mad if I try to tell him the truth and will show him proof. This is a huge problem. Putin taught them how to do this.
Problem: THEY believe that THEY have the truth.
As an outdoor "poll ambassador" advocating for the Democratic party in the rural Duplin County, North Carolina town of Kenansville, I have been vilified as a Communist, told I should be in prison, and sneered at by poor local people who don't realize that they are voting against their own self-interests. This is definitely "Trump/Tillis Country."
One sympathetic gentleman who offered to relieve me from my post for 2 hours one day suggested that I should move away somewhere more conducive to my political state of mind. One enthusiast for the Republicans decided that my tires were too round and used his cordless drill to insert a drill bit into one of them, causing a slow leak and requiring a new tire purchase. These minor annoyances were offset by the gratitude of a few folks who were clearly astonished to see me at my volunteer station, seeming to believe that they were, indeed, the last Democrats within driving distance (with a full tank of gasoline), surrounded as they were on all sides by Trump and Tillis yard signs.
I stood with pride and humility and thanked every voter for coming out, even (perhaps especially) the one with the "Trumpinator" T-shirt and the multitudes wearing MAGA caps.
Win, lose, or draw -- I'll do it all again.
Thank you Barbara.
I've been that lone voice and I know your experience well. It's exhilarating, maddening, fascinating work! Thank you for stepping up. Do it all again!
Barbara, you did great! Grateful for your perseverance, awed by your attitude. Thx for telling us your story.
Thank you.
A few things:
The US media has failed this country terribly. Normalizing Trump's presidency got us here.
Perhaps, instead of relying on Republicans (The Lincoln Project) to help Democrats win, they should learn how to fight back. Fight hard - fight dirty. When Democrats "go high" they lose. Every damn time. When Republicans define the terms of the dialogue, they win. They bray "socialist" and Democrats patiently explain how they aren't socialist. Maybe laugh at them next time. Maybe avoid getting sucked into that kind of nonsense.
Democratic leadership needs changing. The old people who have a stranglehold don't know how to deal with current realities. This ain't the good old days, and they ain't coming back.
We should think about busting up the union into smaller, more manageable nations.
Kamala laughed.
Yeah I think I'm done with voting and politics all together. It's just exhausting with no positive outcome. Too many idiots out there who don't even care what the facts are, much less acknowledge them. This country has been dumbed down to such a point that the oppressed defend their oppressors with a cult like enthusiasm. This country has been sold to the highest bidder years ago, and we the people are just pawns in the game. At this point it's just depressing and self punishment.
This is how Trump would like you to feel and I understand the feeling this morning but give yourself some time and then stay in game.
This is how Trump AND Vladimir Putin would like him to feel. The only way to pull out of a dive is to PULL OUT OF IT. The Biden campaign has been urging patience for weeks because of the expected "Red Mirage" of Election Night, which did happen. The Blue Response due to late counting of mail in and absentee, and then military and Americans abroad ballot counting, will by definition and law happen over the next days. So, be patient, as Biden urges. It is Trump that wants to stop all counts while he's "up." Because he's a cheat with no respect for voters.
I agree... stay in the game... opting out is what 'they' want you to do...
Whatever the outcome, if you opt out will you ever look in the mirror the same way?
I agree with you. How can so many people vote for this corrupt clown?
for my own family members that did vote for DT they believe that he will keep $ in their pockets and borders closed. It was a tough one for me to swallow, there was no giving them a legitimate discussion. Kamala was to them " a b*tch" and Biden was "senile" . No thought about babies in cages or crimes or being Putin's puppet etc..... I was sad for their closed minds.
What I find extremely disheartening about pro-#POUTINGpotus is their constant denial of the facts, especially when it comes to our economy. Numbers don't lie and they clearly illustrate that our economy is actually worse under Trump than Obama. I ask them to choose between a 100%+ increase in their wealth versus 50-75% increase, and obviously they all choose the 100%+ until they discover that stock market growth was under the Obama & not Trump...then they all resort to the deep state for falsely maintaining the government's web-sites who are making these numbers available for the public.
You're onto something but I'd go even further and say that a lot of the economic growth of the last decade has sadly been at least partially fictional. Under any currency but a gold standard backed monetary note...
...haha psyche not gonna start that vs. Anyways, without getting too detailed were starting to run up against a wall of (essentially) a zero interest lending rate, multiple rounds of quantitative easing (without the initial bailing out of homeowner and individually held debt that should have transpired but didn't thanks to Rohm Emanuele and Tim Geithner), the true unemployment rate or underemployment rate being marked by the gig economy and multiple part time jobs, super over-valued silicon valley based ponzi-scheme startups, and the devastating after-effects of offshoring and free-trade agreements geared towards capital flight and removing worker protections. The fact that the market averages and index trackers rebounded so massively this year after just the announcement of the fed dumping trillions of dollars into the economy (largely as convertible loans to large corporations; some of them cash-rich, with leverage of up to 4.5 trillion USD at the discretion of treasury dipshit Steve Mnuchin...anyways...) was able to return the basis point count back to pre-pandemic levels, all the while unemployment had soared and productivity had cratered...well the markets just haven't been attached to the material reality of the economy for quite some time. We were headed for a recession long before the pandemic but that's also seemingly been erased from the narrative as well now, but that's a bit out of scope so I'll leave it there.
Note: I'm not blaming Obama specifically, mostly just saying the hand of cards we're all playing now (with a joker as pitboss) was dealt long ago by Democrats and Republicans alike (insert the Sheriff Bell or Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men expounding on fate here for dramatic effect).
I think it's belligerence and stupidity and a lust for warlordism, because they're too childish to understand history and the machinery of democracy, too impatient to cope with it, and stupid enough to believe they'll always be on the winning side of conflict.
It takes a real effort for me to say this, but applying labels like stupidity or childishness is not the way to change any of their minds.
Fortunately, I'm not the least bit interested in changing their minds. I gave up on trying that after the billionth time I heard or read them calling President Obama and his beautiful family "Niggers."
The way the GOP treated Obama was disgraceful and sad. This country is more racist than I ever could imagine. Obama was a classy, intelligent president. We went from class to trash -- because of skin color.
You won’t send you can’t change anyone’s mind. That’s a fact. The only person that can change a persons mind is themselves. BUT I do get your point of putting people on the defensive does make them come up with more reasons to justify their own stance
Don't ever underestimate the delusion of religion and the role it has played and is still playing in our 2020 world. I've got Catholic wingnut neighbors on my left and evangelical wingnut neighbors on my right. The immediate outer fringes are just regular xians.
You have hit on the crux of this 'worship cult' of Trump. Since early in human societal development, religion or systems of worship were primary in the culture. Worship of a deity or deities was the driver of all socioeconomics. People expected to be 'ordered' to behave a certain way or do certain things which kept them in favor of the god(s).
So we've been conditioned. In contemporary society, the right and far right wing and fringe groups rely primarily on this conditioned response - worship the god & you will be favored.
People who are more liberal rely on facts rather than beliefs, even though they may be religious.
So when you say 'wingnut' it's because these folks who may have very legitimate religious beliefs have incorporated all their religious, political and societal 'beliefs' into one jumbled ball of thoughtless babble and are playing follow the leader.
They might as well be in 2nd Century BCE Canaan worshiping Baal, the god of greed and gluttony, and his disciple, the Lord of the Flies.
This is a remarkable assessment. Thank you.
"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here we are, stuck in the middle with Q." (With apologies to Stealers Wheel)
"the delusion of religion" <-- this is precisely the attitude that has driven many people away from the Democratic Party. Like it or not, if you don't want wingnuts you can't keep alienating people for having a religion. This is exactly what I have heard my "wingnut" family members complain about. People don't respond well to being told their entire belief system is a bunch of bullshit, at best they will just ignore you. At worst they'll elect an autocrat who tells them he's the only one who can protect their way of life...
The other side of the coin is the religious condemning non believers, demonizing them. A black man can be elected president by an atheist never.
Religious people are of necessity self righteous and exclusionist. They believe that their belief is the one true faith, and given that, everybody should be a believer, my lack of belief is a personal threat to them and thus I am their enemy. They excuse evil by saying man has free will, then go on to deny free will.
The only way to come to an accord with a believer is by submission and adoption of their beliefs. There is no middle ground
If you want to track the worlds ills and evils, at root you will find beliefs. Notice I have defined A belief, because all beliefs are evil and sociopathic.
I don't alienate them, however, I have a real goddamn problem when one of them comes into my house after I just buried my husband, screeching that he's in hell because he wasn't saved, badgering me to take jesus as my savior so I can save my husband. Twenty five years later same person is still nagging me to accept jesus as my personal savior.
Maybe the delusion of religion has driven good people away from them with their bullshit beliefs.
If they need an autocrat to protect them, maybe they aren't such good xians in the first place.
Can we really be surprised that shaming "them" and insulting "them" didn't convince thump voters to start seeing things our way?
As a grandmother and teacher, I have witnessed the gutting of our school curriculums. The present ignorance can be overcome by demanding the schools teach civics again. Testing the students on knowledge of how this republic is supposed to work and what their responsibilities as citizens are could help lead us out of the darkness.
As a sister teacher, I wholeheartedly agree.
I agree! You should run on that!
Gary Kasparov said “ The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” They’ve been chipping away at you, getting you to give up. Exhausted you. But either you care enough to fight them to the end or you don’t. I’m not begging anyone to engage in the fight - you’d just get in the way.
Yeah, I feel like that too. I am also thinking this is not a good country. So many people sick and dying and literally no one in the government gives a shit. When the borders open, I may shop around for a different nation. Fuck this place. I think about my mother's family in Germany in the lead up to Hitler. If I was watching that movie, I would be yelling at them to get out, go to Australia, Canada, get off that continent.
Additionally, who wants to live among the brownshirt monsters who elected this creep?
Many Americans will be thinking of “shopping for a different nation.” What they will find, however, is there are very few options available to them. The idea that you can just live anywhere you want is nonsense. Just like for people wanting to move to the US, each country has strict immigration rules. And thanks to Trump, those rules have gotten even stricter. If you are a multimillionaire, you can buy your way into a few countries. Otherwise, you’re stuck.
Unless you are referring to the post COVID scenario, what you just said is not correct. I successfully became a legal resident of another country, and there were definitely a number of other options.
That’s understandable and I do empathize. I also hold the stance that I will Never give up on America or Americans. Get this: I live in Trumpville and less than 50% of registered voters voted. For all of our efforts, we didn’t reach enough people and certainly not enough poor people who long ago gave up. We haven’t lost the War.
Before you quit altogether, might cheer you up a little to consider the Movement for a People's Party. You might not be alone in how you feel.
Seems like we'd need more universal adoption of ranked-choice voting to make a 3rd party candidate feel they had a chance.
Totally agree. I also like the binding "none of the above" option used in Australia, where if a majority of voters select that, then new candidates get nominated. So many good ideas out there in the world that we could consider to improve our elections.
Our current system is not working for many people, so why not look for ways to improve it? I see that you and I will personally disagree here, but doubling down on a system that isn't working rather than looking for new ways to approach the problems seems silly to me.
10 years ago I agreed that ranked-choice was the way forward.... now I'm not so sure. Not sure that bringing forward more fringe and extreme voices will help.
Have you considered the Unity Party where the dominant parties lead together? Brett Weinstein’s work you can hear the discussions on YouTube. The point is to force cooperation at the Presidential level with members of both parties being represented. Collateral damage from this election will be that half the voters feel alienated and disappointed regardless of who wins.
I'm not sure if you really want to have a discussion or are kind of spoiling for a fight. I'm down for the first, not the second. If you want to discuss what you see as the best path for a two party system to continue, I am open to listening to your ideas. I like to consider the perspectives of other people, and I don't think my efforts to vote for candidates I believe in should be offensive to anyone, but if you have a point to make, by all means elaborate.
Here's a thought - look at the damage one corrupt swine and his 63 million voters have done to this country's institutions and societal comity in barely four years. A third party trying to rise beside two so well-entrenched parties, one of which is decent and pluralistic and the other completely corrupt and disgusting, poses a profound threat of cataclysmic and likely terminal damage to the country and its place in the world, no matter how noble it thinks its goals are, because it would be doing nothing but splitting the vote of "the goods" against the unified "bads" for a generation at least, and likely much longer. Look how aggressively Trumpists are moving to block their opposition from any control over the machinery of power, through voter suppression, gerrymandering, use of state propaganda television and media, endless deceit, including a firehose of lies in the White House, filling the courts with political stooges.
He didn't do it by himself and it wasn't 4 years... the Republican party's been scheming for this for decades. Literally decades.
Started with Reagan. Give massive tax cuts to the wealthy. Now the division of wealth is insurmountable. We have government by and for the billionaires.
Note Penny Adrian's comment just below. She gets the "splitting dynamic to disempower those split" very well.
Yes, I have considered this point. I think it is basically the 'lesser of two evils' or pragmatic compromise, sometimes considered strategic. And I agree with you both that it is a legitimate point of view. Here is where we differ: the assumption that third party votes would have or should have been democratic party votes. We do not see the democratic party the same way. Which is fine. But I'd ask you to try and understand that I do not reach the same conclusions about the dems that you have reached, and they are not entitled to my vote.
Absolutely correct, especially during these times. The 3rd party endeavor can easily become a reality, BUT it MUST begin at local & state legislature levels if it's ever going to happen. Until the "New" party gains a foothold within the state, it will never be able to offer the congress a new bread of leader.
With this in mind, I am planning on running in our upcoming Township election as an Independent and after I win, declaring my "New" party affiliation.
Review the National Anthem:
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
This means we area still in the fight.
No giving up. That is the American way
me too. Im done.
Even if Biden wins, way, way too many people want what Trump has given them.
Matt, I agree, and I think the fact that the Senate didn't go blue is the stark example of that. Whatever it is that the right is offering people, it seems to reassure or lure people.
I suspect that it is fear of liberals that leads so many people to embrace the GOP. I think that a lot of conservative voters (certainly not all of them) don't actually like the things that Trump says or the way that he says them. But I suspect that they fear more a world where liberal "political correctness" scrutinizes their every action, where they could be accused of being racist or sexist for simply being who they are (which might be racist or sexist, but let's not make assumptions), not to mention the claims that Democrats will take away their guns and murder their fetuses and increase their taxes.
I do hear this all the time in N. Florida
OK, I'm hoping out of the chat now so I can start thinking about the next newsletter! If you have things you'd like to hear about respond to this. (If things are too unsettled by this evening, I may host another chat.)
I would like to hear more about two things #1 - how Dejoy keeps ignoring court orders without repercussion -- #2 - I don't know if this had in impact but after Sept dealings with Tik Tok Pro-Trump support videos skyrocketed. I can't help but to suspect something in the deal, or a side deal, was made to optimizing that content. While it may not impact this election the precedent to hold a corporation hostage for political gain is very dangerous.
And thank you for all of your insight, investigation and the hardwork from your team. It have been greatly appreciated.
Judd, thank you so much for your insight and hard work.
Hello, I'm 25 and from Oklahoma City. This is my second time to vote in a presidential election, and if it turns out anything like the first, then I will have lost all confidence in the presidential election process.
I am not going to continue to participate in an election process that doesn't allow the person with the most votes to win. Period. Pardon my French, but it's fucking dumb. The people need to begin mobilizing around this. The day after Trump was announced President in 2016, many students at my university did a half-ass march to express our dissent. It felt powerful in the moment and abolishing the electoral college was definitely the main focus of our demonstration.
We will need to go further than this, though.
The millions of voters like me, whose votes are left behind in the election simply because we don't think like the people that surround us, need to peacefully demonstrate incessantly until the Electoral College is figuratively burned to the ground.
Hey Peyton! I also think we should have a national popular vote but if we are ever going to get there we need people like you to stay involved.
we are all done . this country is too stupid and racist.
People who can't coerce their way out of oppression with their bank rolls or their color, or vote with their feet, a passport and a plane ticket, aren't "done", because they know that if they ARE "done", then they're "done for."
you are right. sorry. I am not done. Im depressed- again from the turnout of the voting in the United states. Republicans fight like hell and cheat and steal to win. Ive seen it over and over.
Me too, but I've got kids to worry about.
I don't worry about mine anymore, they are in their late 50's, self absorbed, and when I talk to them, on the phone, which is not anymore) all I heard is petty gripes about I loved one more than the other, and why I didn't give up my life, my job, my love and go running to them, when they stubbed their toe (as adults with kids )
My mother was a single mom, with 3 kids, worked in a bank for $1 an hour, lived in a government project, and I never ever berated her because she lost her temper or didn't pay attention to me.
There is only so much you can do for your children. Nature teaches us, if we pay attention. Momma lion teaches her cubs how to survive and then sends them on their way to make it on their own.
We humans have this fantasy that we can cheat the grave by reproducing and thus take it with us. The genes may, but not all genes are passed on via reproduction, and genes do not possess that which makes us unique and aware of self.
Self delusion, humanities greatest disability and threat.
but im not young , Im 60. Have had enough.
Hey, there! Same. I’ve never felt like ‘I’m done’ but have been incredibly discouraged, disillusioned and PISSED OFF a lot these last 4 years & last night & today.
I’m no babe in the woods & I saw how Obama energized voters so I have to think people aren’t nearly as racist & sheeplike than it seems today.
My thing is if we don’t care & keep plugging away even if we have to suffer too many defeats & horrible people like Trump & Co, we are sending the message to the young people - who have the energy, passion & new ideas - that there’s no hope.
Everything changes & we gotta keep fighting but also step away & recharge. I hope you find your energy again. 👍
Thank you. yeah . Fascism is exhausting. seems to always be around the corner. America seems like it is a big pot of rednecks to me- even though Obama won big, I wonder if that was because everyone thought change and hope and then....then change and hope didnt really happen. But he got the ACA, which may be gone after next week. and while Obama brought out the people to vote- trump has brought out the racists and the self defeatist. own the libs! Then the religion thing is a big problem.
I'm in my 70's with pre-existing medical conditions. Other countries don't want old people unless they are multi-millionaires and bring all their money along with them. My husband and I are stuck here. If I were younger, I'd leave.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/national-popular-vote/604861/
I wish you had written something about the National Popular Vote proposal,Doesn't require a constitutional amendment, an interstate compact in which states will appoint electors who will vote for the winner of the national popular vote, not just the state winners, If they had that system Hillary would have been president.
Don't lose hope, Peyton! We almost got rid of the EC in 1969, you can look that up and read about it. It's a fight for sure, but it isn't as distant or impossible a battle as a lot of people think.
The one sure way to lose, though, is to give up.
It will depend on young folks getting as involved as we were back then!
I hear from my 28 year old son, a very smart Mech. Engineer, this bit about "what does politics offer my generation," and I tell him that power is always taken, it's rarely if ever handed over, and that's been true since the dawn of time. You gain power by fighting your way to the center of the scrum and demanding it, and we're lucky in this country to be able to do that with our votes, instead of weapons. Using our votes can keep it that way. Abandoning our voting power risks and abandons all other possibilities.
Regrettably there are many his age and younger & a few older who took much for granted. I’m 75. I remember the fights of the 60s, had to wait until 21 to vote( changed to 18 a few yrs later) and could not WAIT until I was old enough. We didn’t think in terms of “I” but rather “WE”. Selfishness and lack of community thinking i.e. ‘me me me’ is an unfortunate attitude for democracy. They may think an autocracy is better until they have it! I’m glad I’m old
"! I’m glad I’m old"
I'm 81 and have to admit that the plus side of growing old is that one won't have to endure the shitstorm to come.
Bill, that's what my older brother keeps telling me too, but I won't say that to my kids because I don't want them to be depressed.
You're not alone. I'm a senior, too. Selfishness is destroying our society.
Sadly I've seen many of your generation, once they got their nice house and job and 2.5 kids and a dog, move to "I" and those are a lot of the people voting for Trump. I've long thought of the GOP as the "screw you, I've got mine" party.
I moved from an R to a D. And I am very comfortable now,. Some years ago I attended a Peter, Paul and Mary open air concert, practically all gray hairs, driving up in BMW's and Lexus. I asked the guy sitting next to me, who had nostalgic tears and asked him. What happened to your generation (he was a Boomer I am a Silent) He said "We own stuff now".
That's it in a nutshell. I know a lot of ex hippies that are now conservative because they "own stuff" and want to keep it all.
Money corrupts, but not absolutely, there are Boomers, like my wife, and friends, who retain their values.
They have been AMAZING this year. Remember- highest turn out since 1900. Only 62 ish %. EDUCATION.
To get rid of the EC would require a constitutional Amendment, that means 2/3rds of the senate and 3/4's of the states, (impossible today) however the National Popular Vote via an Interstate Compact end runs the constitution, because the constitution does not address how electors are chosen. In some states it's winner talks all, two states have a mixed system.
Another Oklahoma voter here! I can completely empathize with you in feeling totally defeated and more than a little angry about this whole process, especially as it relates to the Electoral College and the idea that my vote doesn’t mean anything. I feel as though I’m surrounded by uneducated, oblivious, and/or ignorant people who are choosing a racist and misogynist to represent them because he makes them feel better about their own offensive and shameful beliefs and behavior. However, nearly 1/3 of this state voted for Biden, especially from areas or counties with a more educated, diverse population. I support the idea of abolishing the Electoral College because I want my voice, and the voices of 1/3 of Oklahomans, to be heard & recognized, and to actually mean something.
There are many books written about the demographic,, cultural, social divide in this country. Thomas Frank asked the question "What's the matter with Kansas" and the question is "Why do people vote against their own self interest".
a variety of reasons are and reams of paper and tons of ink are used to expounding theories.
But if one looks at the Demographics, one sees that practically all of the votes for Republicans come from rural and sparsely populated communities and regions.
There is a reason for that. Having lived in one such area in north east Louisiana, with a Southern Baptist Preacher uncle.
From personal experience. These communities are rather tight knit, and homogeneous in thinking and "values".
And from whence comes their homogeneity? The press and the pulpit.
Both are motivated by survival instincts. They instinctively perceive that enlightenment, secularism, free thought, independent thought is a danger to their social control, hence their power and income.
The churches preach politics from the pulpit, tell people how to vote, if not directly, but by filling them full of fear of the "devil" if they let them godless, communists or whatever euphemism they construct win.
Rural communities and small towns, really have no social outlets, and their sole source of information is cable TV and AM radio, both of which are dominated by the right wing.
So church and grange is where they gather, in "wet" areas, there is the American Legion, which is nothing but a bunch of old sots, who gather to get drunk and tell lies.
I am a retired officer, a mustang, with 26 years service, and I have too much self respect to associate with the old sots at the Am Legion or VFW.
You hit the nail on the head. The Democratic party has failed these people. They have forgotten about them in their policies, just as the GOP has, except when there is an election, and then the GOP uses their scare tactics to get their votes. But rural folks have valid needs too. They need to put food on the table,roof over their head, send the kids to college. Farmers, particularly small family farmers have one of the highest suicide rates in the country. Rural areas have been hit hard with addiction and joblessness. And I am sorry but there is plenty of truth to the claim that Democrats look down their noses at these people. Dems often sound like a bunch of snobs. But Democrats had better learn to deal with them better than the Republicans,and like Judd said, that has to start by bringing positive and meaningful changes to their lives.Remember, hurt people hurt people. You don't have to like them but you do have to help them if you are going to govern effectively.
I agree Shannon,however there is a problem. Even though farmers are going bankrupt and committing suicide because of Trumps tariffs and trade policies, they are still, by and large voting for him and them.
There is more to the story and than economics. Rural folk are victimized (and I chose that word carefully) by the pulpit and press. They go to church and are harangued about ungodly liberals, gays, and then they turn on Fox news and are scared about Mexicans, Blacks, gays and them god awful liberals.
They are more concerned about the culture war than they are about pocket book matters, sad but true.
I don't know how to get them out of their shell, teach them critical thinking skills, and how to arrive at opinions and not acquire them.
Till then they are their own worst enemy, and America's as well, so much bigotry, intolerance and hate drives them and their politics. I know I have lived amongst them
The fewer people of color and gays these people see or know, the more fearful and intolerant they are. Thanks to the pulpit and press.
On the other hand large cosmopolitan centers, where people know and associate with blacks, browns, Mexicans, gays, liberals and know them as people are not so easily scared and manipulated by pulpit and press, unless their source of fake news is Fox.
I and others have identified at least one known enemy of democracy and freedom and that is Fox news, which is bent towards right wing authoritarianism , racism and theocracy.
I grew up in a rural area in the South among farmers and factory workers. I am well aware of what --some-- churches teach, but my father's church doesn't teach these things, our church growing up didn't, my mother's in Virginia didn't. But you are correct regarding education, and that is one of the main problems. My mother happens to be a retired English teacher who teaches other teachers how to teach AP English. She has been around the country teaching these workshops and she has said that "white flight" is partly to blame. The people who have been convinced that "coastal elites" are "forcing" them to accept "gay lifestyle" and other euphemisms for things they don't personally agree with have formed their own private schools. As white people they generally have much more money so they pay to put little Alice and little Bob into their isolated echo chamber church schools and home schools where their precious ears and eyes are shielded from world, and from science, and from critical thinking of any kind. The best teachers are going there because the pay is better. My mother reports that, for example in Mississippi the teachers in the public schools are "poorly educated and not very bright." The failing American public school system is everyone's fault. It's stupid to pay for this with local taxes. That's precisely why we still have de facto segregated education where some schools the kids have to share textbooks and others have paid-for trips to Washington D.C, and guess what demographic dominates in each one? How can any BIPOC or otherwise disadvantaged person get a leg up when their game of Life difficulty is set to "Nightmare" level through no fault of their own. Your story is just one example and another is your debate opponent who has had it even worse, it seems, and still hurting and recovering. You aren't going to convince people to change their morals but you could make them less entrenched and more accepting if they weren't having such a hard time economically. To do that, we need to fund education differently and better. We also need to address the addiction problems. We also need to address joblessness which was already bad in some of these areas and now far worse. But their intolerance has driven BIPOC and LGBTQ people away.
I don't particularly care for generalizations. Even though these kind ideas ring true, there's more to it than that. Take the example of my stepbrother who did grow up around Black people, he works with them, but he's a staunch Trump supporter and a born again Christian. On the other hand his sister, my stepsister, is not that way at all. She's left leaning and is a teacher's assistant. They were both raised by the same people, my dad and my stepmom. There are lots of families like this all across the South, and it's not just white people suffering from these types of problems.
I remain convinced that addressing people's economic and health care (physical, mental, addiction, etc) needs first will provide a basis for calming fears, which can be built upon for the remainder. People without hope for the future aren't going to be reasonable.
^Even though kind --of-- ideas...
But it's hard for Democrats to implement helpful policies with the GOP Senate majority. Mitch McConnell blocks all Democratic legislation.
If it makes ya feel better then those veterans groups were at least tangentially related to a likely fascist-plot to overthrow FDR called the Business Plot. Should check it out if ya aren't aware of it.
Thomas Frank is a hell of an author and I really appreciate the work he's been doing lately on populism and the turn of the century Populist Party centered in states like Kansas, Nebraska, Georgia, etc. They were very progressive for the time and numerous chapters included former-slaves and women (Jim Crow laws are viewed by some as a means to divide the burgeoning union of working class whites and blacks developing at the time). The party did quite well in the 1892 election, but chicanery carried out by the monopolists, Dems/GOP and state officials really worked to break any power that had been established. As such by 1904 or so they were non-existent.
As a side note, later on in the 20's and 30's Huey Long seemed to do really well all over Louisiana as a (blatantly corrupt mind you) economically, and in some ways socially, progressive FDR-style Democrat. I don't know if any politicians, never mind Democratic politicians, around today have the balls to pull off a Huey Long though.
Thanks, I am quite aware of that which you mention and more. The treatment of Huey Long by the establishment is indication of the power and visceral fear that they have of progressive populists.
Yeh Huey was corrupt, what politician isn't. Any that leave office with more than they entered is corrupt, either taking it under the table or using their position to trade on inside knowledge.
The powers that be, are hyperbolic as regards Huey's sins, that we don't know or pay attention to his policies and facts that he laid out.
The victors do indeed write the history.
Voltaire said that all of ancient history is no more than commonly accepted myth, to which I add we are bound together by myths. Independent research and critical thinking. Cast these foundation myths in a completely different light.
I'll keep it short here, but am completely in agreement. Huey was just willing to admit that he expected something in return either for himself, his political allies, or his state when he was negotiating with business interests or the feds (or as is likely the powerful criminal syndicates based in Louisiana especially at the time). There is a very weird media narrative sometimes pushed by outlets like CNN, NYT, WaPo, etc. that one owes their vote to liberal politicians like Biden or Hillary with no expectation of anything in return for their "selfless service." That's not politics, never has been, never will be.
Voltaire was very astute when he said that and I agree. Don't get me started on national mythology, influence of foundation and structure through time, narrative building, or the insanely flawed idea of American exceptionalism. To paraphrase Faulkner, we're never done with the past, hell the past isn't even the past...especially when we keep digging it up and rewriting based on the personal whims of the powerful.
P.S. If anyone wants even just two examples of corruption greater than the likes of Huey Long would dare dream (or probably even see as slightly justifiable in any sense), just look at the F-35 development project, and additionally the legislation to deregulate the derivatives market passed at the end of the Clinton administration...with special help from Joseph Robinette Biden.
Totally agree. Have you heard of the National Popular Vote initiative? This is a law individual states can adopt which says that the state will give its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The idea is to abolish the electoral college without a Constitutional amendment. Once enough states adopt the law to reach 270 electoral votes, then the law becomes active in all the states that have adopted the legislation. Looks like in Oklahoma, the bill is working its way through your state legistature: https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/state/ok
Call your congresspeople!!!
This is why state legislative elections are so important. Oklahomans, please stay focused and stay involved! Call, email, visit, and tweet at your state legislators. Support those who support the Interstate Popular Vote Compact, and work to replace those who don’t.
Definitely this alongside other large scale protest ideas like a general strike should be goals that activists, unions, etc. start working to set up immediately. Also, in states like Oklahoma where there are large populations of Native Americans, the rest of the population should be working with them even more than they are now as their rights under treaty (imo) are one of the most promising legalistic means left to reshape the system more democratically, and ward off further environmental damage. Even a pretty hardline conservative judge like Gorsuch was willing to go to bat for the NA's in Oklahoma over their long neglected treaty rights over half the goddamn state; further cases to define scope and precedent will be coming in the none too distant future so getting in touch with and assisting those groups would be only beneficial to everyone.
Sadly the SCOTUS has ruled, as recently as 2005, that in essence native Americans aren't human. Seriously it has all come about in suits by whites v native Americans over land claims. The first ruling was that there was a right to discovery that superseded any claims by previous claimants. This was confirmation of Columbus claim for the Spanish crown.
This was confirmed by the SCOTUS when they ruled against the Oenida's in a taxation claim by a municipality, in essence the court denied the existence of the Oneida, in favor of the right of discovery.
Great point about NA’s who the Republicans have under-counted in the Census, allowed to sustain horrific death rates by not providing adequate testing & medical equipment & disenfranchise to an astonishing degree. Not to mention all the environmental damage on native lands.
Yes.,This may indeed be the best solution but unlikely to pass in many red or purple states until us old folks are gone
Vote counts are ongoing, so don't let Trump's deceitful and self-serving bluster and threats get you down.
And at this moment, things are looking pretty good.
Just as, and in fact more important is the Senate. Last I looked it was 47-48 (Dems to Republicans) (Politico). With a Republican senate, we are dead in the water, and Biden's only alternative is Executive Orders, and Trump has set the precedent, however I do not have faith in Biden, he is into "healing" and amelioration, and is after all a darling of Wall Street.
We truly need young, dynamic Democrats to run the Democratic party. The party also needs better strategists. We're playing nice with thugs. Being a poll watcher this year, there were threats and nasty comments from Repubs going to vote. The Dems don't behave like this. If Biden tries to be bi-partisan, he'll get nothing done. He needs to start writing Executive orders as Mitch McC will continue to block any Democratic initiatives.
and that is exactly how Obama chose to behave and then acted like a raygun democrat, which is no more than republiKKKlan light!
The elimination of the electoral college will require an amendment to the Constitution. This can happen if young folks step up and make this important and elect Senators and Representatives at state and Federal level that support this. It takes 2/3 vote House and Senate then approval by 3/4 of state legislatures so get started and make it happen!’
I don't think slow formal processes are going to get us there anymore. When our election process is as flawed as it is, how are we supposed to vote our way out of it? You don't vote out creeping authoritarianism. You toss it out. We need to physically show members of Congress they have something to fear if they do not abolish the Electoral College. Peacefully of course.
But anything short of a constitutional process is unconstitutional.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/national-popular-vote/604861/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/national-popular-vote/604861/
I quite understand where you are. I'm 81. I gave up after Reagan. I was a Republican and very right wing then. (Had an epiphany in 1989 when circumstances cast me in the company of "liberals", actually some old SDS types.
I voted for Reagan primarily because he promised not to bring any CFR and Trilateral commission types into his cabinet. And the first thing he did was appoint Caspar Weinberger and other TC and CFR members
I was not into social wars and economic issues then, I was besotted with the "anti communist" anti globalist "crusade.
By the time Bill Clinton ran I was a shop steward and a member of the union bargaining committee. I was total.
ly dismayed when I watched Clinton sell out his base of labor, then blacks, then gays and finally women.
I watched Republican Democrats betray their base..for the favor of the plutocrats.
I had to vote for Hillary, because it was so obvious that Trump was a narcissistic, racist, kleptocratic, sociopathic fascist.
I voted for Biden for the same /
And this time with full knowledge he too is going to sell out his base. He has said so. He is going to appoint Republicans to teh cabinet and set up a Bipartisan commission on Judicial reform.
He has invited the Fox to the planning of hen house security upgrades. And commissions are fluff, PR crap, they are held to validate foregone conclusions, like Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission to privatize social security. Thank god the congress did not go along with it, and that was just one Obama betrayal.
Dems need to differentiate themselves and clearly remind voters of what they stand for. If they keep governing "Repub. Light", they'll continue to lose.
Thank you! Not enough people seem to remember that one goal of Obama/Biden was to privatize social security, but Ted Cruz was so incompetent he blew up the process (amongst other factors of course). Biden spearheaded the committee to investigate doing as such, which if I recall was funded by austerity-hawk billionaire Pete Peterson (one of the mentors of Nancy Pelosi; she read his obituary into the congressional record when he passed away a few years back, the infamous U.S. debt clock is his doing), and the only reason the committee conclusions weren't followed up on was the Democrats losing any governing control besides the executive branch. Joe Biden is not your friend folks...unless you've donated 10k USD+ to his campaign, then "friendship" increases linearly with donation size. It should go without saying that clearly I think Trump is awful as well.
It's also great to read that someone can have such a dramatic shift in political opinion leftward beyond their early 20's. I've always hated the adage about young with heart being leftist, older with brains being conservative; look where that's gotten us all? Anyways, I've heard from or about a good number of folks that voted for Reagan either once or twice, and then shifted so hard left (at least on the U.S. scale) in response to Reaganite/Thatcherite neoliberalism, that the Democrats became a hard-to-swallow lesser-evil vote, especially after Clinton. I have to agree, and I hope the political alienation and resulting increase in support for the left/labor/union movements becomes large enough in time to avert some truly terrible things I think we can all see coming.
P.S. SDS, SNCC, and all those associated groups were some interesting and pretty gutsy folks. Anyways I hope the future finds you well, best of luck.
I remember very well Obama's blue ribbon commission, in which he pulled in a prominent Democrat (David Boies who argued for Gore in Bush v Gore), the whole charade was to give Obama, who was and is under the sway of Investment bankers, cover for privatizing Social Security, the Democratic party successfully with the help of the corporate controlled media has shoved that down out of the public consciousness, leaving the boobs to idolize Obama. Obama's second act of betrayal was pushing the TPP, which thankfully a Republican Congress rejected, oly because it was Obama's parting gift to Wall Street.
When I live in Santa Cruz I made friends with some SDS (Weatherman) vets and they opened my eyes to quite a bit, previous to that I was pretty much a very right wing Republican.
Peyton, I feel your pain and I'm about to be 53 and a native San Franciscan. I've always lived in a liberal bubble and assumed I was part of the majority - it took these last 2 elections for me to really understand how gerrymandering and the electoral college have neutralized my votes and those of the majority of Americans. My 18 yo son thinks the problem the Dems have encountered the last 2 elections is there is a razor thin difference between the two candidates when it comes to the massive changes that the USA requires to dig out of the current political, economic, social, and environmental messes we find ourselves in. He may be right.
I think the other part of it is that the current president has made it okay to feel like you need to take care of yourself before considering anyone else. People who voted for him to have a 2nd term clearly care more about their bank accounts than their health. Unfortunately,
Hopefully, your (and his) generation can keep fighting to make the changes we need.
What is interesting is that mass demonstrations can make changes. In Chile, it led to a referendum which resulted in a positive majority to change the constitution to a future constitution nominated by the people and not the politicians. Surely the USA can do this to get rid of the Electoral College.
Mass demonstrations make changes when the police are not out to maim or kill the protestors. Or they can lead to slow change over time, like the Civil Rights movement.
The current US president doesn't care about mass demonstrations - he's happy to send in the National Guard to bust some heads.
Please read my post. I'm a lifelong Okie too. It didn't used to be this way. Have you ever heard of Frosty Troy? He used to be played on every radio station in Oklahoma. When I registered to vote way back in the 80s, if you registered as a republican, you couldn't vote in the primaries because...no republicans ran. All democrats.
I stayed up way too late last night & eventually went to bed sorely disappointed. I thought that there were enough other voters that felt as I do about Trump that he would be defeated decisively. Even if Biden is elected, the Senate will be Republican, & after watching Obama struggle with an opposing Senate, I think it would be gridlock again. I will be 76 in January. I had hoped that I would see a progressive agenda in my remaining years, where Americans would all come together for the good of everybody. Tell me something that will give me hope.
I'm a senior also -- in Florida and am extremely disappointed that people actually approve of that criminal in the White House. I believe greed and racism are destroying Democracy. If I were younger, I'd leave the country, but few countries want seniors with medical conditions. They want young workers who can add to their economy. Also, I'm too old to pick up a foreign language.
Biden will win the presidency. It will be a narrow victory and with a Republican controlled Senate it will be like Obama's final term all over again.
However, when half the country votes _again_ for a racist, immoral, vain carnival barker we need to sit down and ask ourselves:
Who are we as a nation?
What are our defining values?
It appears we are a selfish bunch of people and the educational system has failed. I am grieving for my country
Education system has been slowly chipped away by Republicans toward a private and non public system. It is on purpose.
The educational system has never been properly funded even by Democrats. That part isn't a partisan issue. Democrats just don't want to face their failings in that and are now trying to blame the last decade or so of school choice movements and pretending that somehow the education system started failing just recently.
It has ALWAYS been designed to be an unequal system.
My perspective is specifically from my state of PA and how state legislatures fund schools.
Were PA schools fully and equitably funded by past legislatures with Democratic majorities? I doubt it, as that would make PA literally the only place in the country and in the history of this system to do so. More likely what you're suggesting is that the GOP has chipped away at what already existed. That doesn't mean the system as it existed prior to those moves was properly funded. I wasn't speaking about any particular state, because this is an issue in all states.
Of course, if I'm wrong, please feel free to provide evidence to the contrary, and I'd be happy to admit my error.
I'll be staying away from social media & the blame game. This has been a big issue for me for years; we know how to passive aggressively whine around a problem but not attack the reality head on. The GOP has cheated for years. It's been proven other countries are interfering. Voter information was accessed ahead of the election. The evening news has screamed of all the crimes for 4 yrs that can be charged if they're no longer in office. And here we are saying Biden was the wrong candidate, blaming pollsters & saying we can't believe this many voted for Trump. We have no problem destroying ourselves from the inside out, but no one wants to say straight out that we can't trust our elections. Even if more turned out in person for Trump, there are #'s in some areas that don't add up. There's absolutely nothing I wouldn't believe the GOP is capable of.
I agree. That’s exactly why I believe this is a rigged election—that and the fact that Trump kept announcing a rigged election and Trump almost always announces his Evil prior to its ascent.
This election, regardless of whether Biden manages to win (which does seem more likely than not at this point), is an indictment of the Democratic Party Establishment's strategy of eschewing real change that is supported by a strong majority of Americans and putting forth mediocre, out-of-touch moderates. 70% of Americans support Medicare-for-All, 60% of Americans support a Green New Deal, and yet neither made their way onto the Democratic Party Platform. I am reminded of Bernie's town hall on Fox News in March, where he reframed his policy-platform as not Democrat-Republican but for the people, and has the conservative audience literally chanting along with him. I am concerned that the Democratic Party, if they don't pivot aggressively to become the party of the working class as opposed to corporate interests and "nothing would fundamentally change," will keep losing, and losing decisively.
Beyond Bernie, Biden pursued a low-risk campaign that emphasized that he beat socialist candidates and wouldn't ban fracking. He may ultimately win. But the message was not as successful as people thought it might be.
agree, weak and lacking powerful message/enthusiasm and the ability to be convincing that meaningful change would be possible. I was never convinced. I, like many voted against Trump, not for Biden. If Biden wins, lets hope that all good ideas/avenues will have influence on his administration and that his team plus the American consciousness grows and expands.
What he said. Bernie had double the individual campaign donations going into the primaries and yet Democrats went with an establishment candidate to run against a man who first gained the presidency by being anti-establishment. Old Democrats need to hang around, but let the new generation shape the party's platform so it strategically represents the majority of people.
Last night (and continuing through today and beyond), I was never more disheartened to be an American, though. Even if Biden somehow does eke out a win, half this country has proven it is perfectly okay with xenophobia, hatred of the LGBTQ community, destruction of the environment, overt racism, hundreds of thousands needlessly dying because of the denial and mismanagement of a pandemic, etc......
It looks like Americans want the division, hatred, and chaos. It's disappointing, but not as shocking as last time. Regardless of who wins, this country is not the place I was naive enough to think it was.
When Americans, like all human beings, are ripe for the influence of media and social media propagandists, they become so entrenched in their personal rabbit holes with like-minded others that they might not even be aware of the reality taking place in the world around us. It happened in my family and I thought that it would be an impossibility for us. I blame Murdoch and Fox and Facebook et al - and dark money long-viewed Koch type conservatives. Their corrupting fingers are in every branch of our government now Not sure how to break out of this entangled scary morass. But until we do we’ll have a growing political divide.
It is true that people are living in alternate realities. It's not that people see Trump's failures and vote for him anyway. What a majority of the country views as failures, a lot of other people view as successes. (This reflects the fact that Biden will almost certainly win the popular vote by a wide margin.)
I'm not sure I'd call 51-52% of the vote in an election with no meaningful third party candidates a wide margin. We needed something more like 55% at least to not only ensure victory but to make it plain that the majority really does reject what the Republicans stand for. As it is win or lose, the struggle to save America has barely begun.
You’ve said a mouthful there. Our little Madison Cawthorn had a lot of big, dark money behind him. His face was all over my county. Looked like a Cawthorn truck farm.
My condolences. It appears that lying, and narcissistic projection are rewarded in our culture. Sadly Cawthorne also seems to be a bully in some charming sheep’s clothing.
I found insight in "The Narcissism Epidemic" - Twenge is co-author. Not political, but it speaks to your point about how and to what extent narcissism is rewarded in our culture. Twenge offers partial solutions - and stuff you and I can do.
Well one of the fundamental assumptions ground into "Western" culture and society is that individualist notions of competition, property, and consumer fetishism are fundamentally positive things and that cooperation and empathy are negative traits in regards to economic prosperity. Similar concept to why shareholder value is now the bottom line responsibility in corporate ethics, whereas at least concepts like environmental and community responsibility were at the least paid lip service. Additionally the worship and assumedworthy hvirtue/intelligence of the colossally rich has warped the societal ideals of who to aspire to become and how to get there; a society in which one man is set to be a trillionaire, gaining roughly 900 billion dollars in just a few years, is an obviously deeply unwell society...to have more than a small number worship that state of reality is just...well plainly disgusting and nigh unspeakable.
P.S. I think Eugene Debs (upon receiving word of the absolute travesty of a conviction against him for speaking against the WWI draft) said it best, and I've always found his address to the court inspirational: https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1918/court.htm Don't let the link title scare you, it really is an applicable speech to anyone who wants a better world.
Very good post. I would like to point out one thing, and it is not contradictory but additive. SCOTUS ruled, decades ago, can't remember the case, but it had to do with the social responsibility of corporations,that corporations had one duty and that is maximizing shareholder value, and that failure to do was misfeasance.
The solution is for the 50 states to revert to a practice that was abandoned long ago, that a corporation had a limited life of 50 years, and had to prove it's social value for charter renewal, and could be given a death sentence by the appropriate state.
This led to an event known as Charter Shopping, when corporations announced that they would move to the state that gave them the best deal...Delaware won. And therein lies (sadly) an explanation of Joe's political success.
Less someone accuse me of something, bear in mind votes are cast, what is done is done, but if he wins, with knowledge of his experience, votes and who has funded him, we know what to expect.
Knowing that, and more, I voted for Joe, the idea of another four years of DJT and our slide into fascism and racism is just too much.
If he wins, progressives need to keep his and the DNC's feet to the fire.
That really is a great speech - thanks for posting it.
Well one of the fundamental assumptions ground into "Western" culture and society is that individualist notions of competition, property, and consumer fetishism are fundamentally positive things and that cooperation and empathy are negative traits in regards to economic prosperity. Similar concept to why shareholder value is now the bottom line responsibility in corporate ethics, whereas at least concepts like environmental and community responsibility were at the least paid lip service. Additionally the worship and assumedworthy hvirtue/intelligence of the colossally rich has warped the societal ideals of who to aspire to become and how to get there; a society in which one man is set to be a trillionaire, gaining roughly 900 billion dollars in just a few years, is an obviously deeply unwell society...to have more than a small number worship that state of reality is just...well plainly disgusting and nigh unspeakable.
P.S. I think Eugene Debs (upon receiving word of the absolute travesty of a conviction against him for speaking against the WWI draft) said it best, and I've always found his address to the court inspirational: https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1918/court.htm Don't let the link title scare you, it really is an applicable speech to anyone who wants a better world.
I don't agree, but need to mention that SCOTUS has decreed that the sole purpose of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value, that disregarding that obligation is misfeasance and that the executives responsible are not only culpable but pecuniary liable.
There as a time that corporations had a limited life span, at most 50 years, and had to prove their value to the incorporating authority (the state) to have their charter renewed.
Then they went Charter Shopping and Delaware won the lottery, and corporations, especially financial corporations fled to Delaware.
And that explains Bidens successful career, his votes in the Senate, when he first arrived in the Senate it was controlled by racist Dixiecrats and Biden ingratiated himself with them, that is how he has survived.
The only progressive move that I can think of is persuading Obama not to defend the suit against the Defense of Marriage act, and I have to think that the decision was totally political, to polish his image as a progressive.
Establishment Dems, are always ready to play the "liberal" side of the culture war that they may stay in power and gain favor with the economic royalists (as FDR called them) who could care less about the culture war, so long as they got the economic, tax, trade and regulatory policies that the need to maximize shareholder value and their personal bank accounts.
Seconded thanks. Will read later.
Thanks for the recommendation! Sounds like a something I’ll want to read soon.
It took 2 seconds, and was great!
A bully and a lying dummy too.
When I was in junior high and high school, passing the Constitution Test was a prerequisite to graduate. It is a shame that so many Americans have no basic understanding of how the federal government is set up, how the Electoral College works and how the dicennial census affects representation in Congress. These past four years have exposed this ignorance, not to mention, have unleashed the racism, classism, xenophobia and disdain for science that have been simmering for a long time. I am beyond demoralized.
Unwittingly, we have all been victimized by the abject failure of our communication edifices to focus on issues. Instead we have been consumed by the cult of personality; political, economic, military and media. We should all demand that our fellow citizens’ problems become our issues. I suggest we start with clean water, food security, safe housing and economic fairness. I am so tired of hearing from airbrushed pundits who have an interest in our despair.
I totally agree that staying focused on the issues is key. Politics is about people.
I'm Canadian so forgive my intrusion, but I have many friends and relatives that live and enjoy all the US has to offer and for a Torontonian to be able to fly to New York or anywhere south of the border for a weekend or longer stay the US has always felt welcoming. Over the last four years that has started to wane sadly. Like many of you I woke up this morning after a short night shocked and depressed and haunted by the "why" of it. You might wonder why I care and I wish I could put my finger on it but it is as gutting for me as it is you because the US is supposed to represent the best in society and certainly not the worst. It isn't supposed to be divided and polarized. But this thread seems like a great opportunity to share what I read in the letters to the editor section of the NYT, another publication I pay to read, along with PI, just after the Democratic Convention. It is written by someone who had left the US and made Canada home
and they made the following prescient observation.
"Obama's speech was a beautiful appeal for Americans to salvage what Americans like to believe their nation is. But what if America isn't what Americans have been taught to believe it is? What if America needs to be transformed in radical ways? What if our Constitution and our presidential democracy aren't our hope—but our bane? What if the racism and cruelty that has existed in the United States throughout our history—the destruction of Native American people and culture, slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, lack of universal health care and other essential social programs, the attacks on immigrants and labour, and the fetish for guns, the police, the military, and stand your ground laws—what if all this is really what America stands for? What if our love of freedom is really a love of freedom from restraint so that we can pursue our avaricious desires without responsibility? What if Trump and today's Republicans aren't some aberration—but are the most honest expression of America's true values?
I no longer live in the United States and have no desire to return. I don't believe America's system of government or its culture are salvageable. Increasingly, freed by my life in Canada from the preconceptions all of us Americans share about who we are, I can't help asking: What if Trump's lying and cheating are in some ways the most honest expression of what America really is and Obama's high minded words are the real lie?"
I know it hasn't been decided just yet, but the lack of a decisive win leads me to believe the US electoral mechanism is broken and can't possibly reflect the society I knew it to be based on my experiences, yet here we are. Can it change? Not under Trump. We are by no means perfect but our political differences rarely if ever lead to the public outcry, protest and divisiveness of what we have witnessed the past four years.
The other half of America needs to figure out how to calm the fears of rightwing constituents. Justified or not.
I am disheartened like others on this thread. At age 68, with a long interest in history, I am puzzling over something. From 1875 or 78 (not sure) to the mid1920's, there was a vast wave of aggression - legal, social, physical - against black people in the USA. Huge massacres (North Carolina, Arkansas), the organization of the Ku Klux Klan (a terrorist organization), lynchings, anti-democratic legislation, trickery, thievery and more. This process, which is UNNAMED, might be called the Great Reaction. It lasted 50 years - ⅓ of the nation's life at that time. And it is completely missing from our history books, popular media, and most of all, memory and imagination. Now, since 1970, "conservatives" (white Republicans - the Southern Strategy) - have been mobilizing to do it again and this time the targets are not only people of color, but also LGBT people, women, working people, unions. Through the courts and legislatures, they aim to repeal or eviscerate all the protections gained since the New Deal. And more. This Second Reaction aims directly at the processes and core values of the liberal nation-state: equality of all citizens, due process, and regulation by the state of the vast power of private economic interests. The failure by our media and political parties to see, name, interrogate, expose and oppose this movement - this Second Reaction - has now persisted for 50 years. You can't fight or transform what you can't see and name. We have "right blindness." Like "night blindness"- that inability to see in the dark after being exposed to bright light. We, Americans have been blind to the right wing who have been waging this campaign in broad daylight.
I've always been a fairly positive person - but the last 4 years have deeply corroded that positivity in me. Our incompetent idiot is a person who takes all the air out of a room. No room for air when the room is filled with corruption, self-interest, dishonesty, intense rudeness, and most of all hatred and division. I've all but stopped reading the news. I cannot stand to see his face or hear his voice. I've quipped more than once that if Trump is re-elected that suicide becomes an option. I'm too old and too poor to leave the country which has long been a deep desire of mine. Like another commenter on here who says "I wish Facebook could be shut down...." I'll add all of social media. I think preening on Twitter is a tragic waste of time. Instagram is just a place where people can display their beauty or their muscles. Think of the time spent on these sites for low-level purposes and how it means there's no time left for reaching out to other human beings. I just don't know what else to say. Popular Information has become my tread to sanity.
One bottom line of this era: Democrats have won national majorities in three elections in a row. Structural biases mean the net results of these elections have given GOP more spoils than our side. But, this year, we likely have done just enough to win White House (even under the bullshit rules of the Electoral College) — and right now we need to secure that above all else.
We can take up soul-searching, autopsy, strategy, and the long game weeks from now.
There is no doubt that we’ll need to adapt our message, tactics, and theory of change. We need to win big enough to actually grab the levers of structural power, so we can change them.
- A.G.
I hardly slept last night. I keep going back and forth from the New York Times and the Washington Post, frantically refreshing the page each time, and rubbing my eyes which disbelief that it is this close. Trump simultaneously declaring victory and also promising. To challenge the final results if he loses in the days to come is absolutely bonkers.
It is hard to be eloquent this morning. I think it is because i am not surprised of the situation. I spent the last three weekends canvassing. Two in Pennsylvania and one in Maine to flip the senate seat. In PA, i canvassed the latino population in key areas since i speak spanish. When i got to my first list, i realized neither the DNC nor the Biden campaign had boots on the ground to reach such vote. We visited around 120 homes and 60% answered doors. The people who opened their doors were real voters and they expressed frustration because no one had ever come before i did to talk about the issues, their vote and how important it was. That weekend (one day before last day of registration) we got people excited about registering and about voting. I provided feedback to local organizers who did their best to get the vote out considering the limited resources they got. So i went with my partner, again this last weekend. The Biden campaign came for few days before but left again because they suspended canvassing due to covid and left no resources because they did not consider the latino vote important. Although i am educated latina, i feel the same way throughout the campaign that my vote was not important. Frustrating. So, no i am not surprised of these losses we are going through today.
We stay separated and this is the result. I'm independent of party, but lean liberal. I saw race and fear being used. The same tactics in 2016. Immigration not as hot of an issue, so an entire population was disregarded. Dreamers are still in limbo, children and families separated.
A lot of the Latinx leaders I have been speaking to throughout this cycle expressed very similar feelings Diana. That the community was invisible in many ways despite the political rhetoric.
Thank you for what you did & for sharing the positive experiences. That’s encouraging
The only successful campaign over these last two elections was carried out by Russia. They’ve succeeded in dividing our country with their lies and disinformation. It doesn’t matter who sits in the Oval Office when the counting is done. We’ve all lost and it’s doubtful that we will ever be united again, at least not in the remaining years I have. I’m beyond sad. I feel broken.
We weren't ever united.
While I am somewhat disheartened, I am also not surprised at the outcomes. This has only strengthened my resolve to continue to act locally, where I have the ability to influence.
I hope that the Dem party also steps up its game and models the ethical way going forward.
I appreciate this newsletter because it is laser focused on a specific issue and gains traction to make change. I amplify it’s messaging where I can.
This is MY country and I am not giving up or giving in to despotism.
At the risk of being insensitive to the real anguish and dismay being shared in this thread, I did wish to share one shining moment of optimism. I also wanted to thank Judd and his team for always prioritizing insightful and impactful journalism and for creating a community of knowledgeable and passionate readers as evidence by the many posts here. Looking out the window of my hastily thrown-together and still temporary home office, I can see the sun is shining brightly, I am enjoying my morning coffee, and my cat is reading all of your comments while perched on my shoulder. Today will be a beautiful and happy day and I am convinced that nothing can change that. And if you ask me to provide evidence for this belief, I will cheerfully pretend not to hear your question!
Whether Biden wins or loses, this country didn't soundly reject a man who ripped children away from their parents as punishment and allowed over 230,000 Americans to die for political gain, and that speaks volumes about this fucking country. I no longer have faith in Americans.
I loathe Donald Trump and I loathe Trumpism, MAGA, and QAnon.
And, we now have a QAnon cohort in Congress.
Lots of work ahead, no matter what. Personally I allowed the (gratifying) hit pieces of the Lincoln Project to reassure me that it wouldn't be this close. Appreciate other posters who are pointing out all the people who voted for Trump, with whom we have to collaborate now. It would be comforting to think Russia had a thumb on the scale again, but our multiple problems (RACISM and CLIMATE CHANGE and they are intertwined) are solidly domestic.
I despair for democracy and my home country. I used to feel that Americans were defined by kindness and now the ethos is the polar opposite- all fomented by a self-serving reckless elitist.
Can someone explain why his supporters are often clothed head to toe in badges, flags, statement t-shirts, MAGA hats, etc? This has never been true before and wearing a flag certainly does not increase one’s patriotism by an iota. It is as if their sense of personal identity has been replaced.
Trumpers are a true cult. I live in a 55+ community in Florida, full of Trumpers....All wear MAGA hates, fly American flags on their homes, Trump flags on the golf carts. This is like no other election. It's a cult and they have swallowed the Kool-aide of Faux News.
very discouraging...i drank the kool-aid from cnn and cnbc.....they are as bad as fox just other side of the coin....was also hoping for that blue wave that showed that people were more concerned about their fellow citizens and the covid response....so disappointing......at this time i don't care who wins.....a biden win will mean nothing without some control of senate....bye bye obamacare, police reform, etc....trump was already insufferable but now he'll take the gloves off and so many support this behavior.
I think a Biden victory, if it comes, will be significant with or without a Senate victory. Trump hasn't had many legislative victories but still has a huge influence on policy. Biden could do the same.
Signing off now for the whole day. Thx for your levelheaded approach to this unsettled morning after the polls closed.
CNN and CNBC are NOT the other side of the Fox coin. That is a false narrative, perpetuated by the corporatists.
Anything you watch on TV, except Free Speech TV is infotainment. Managed and produced by the same corporations that control our political parties and the elections.
Corporations are interested in only one thing, the Quarterly Earnings Report, the Profit and Loss statements,...profits.
Do a little research, google is easy, check out who owns and controls the main stream media, including CNN, CNBC
There political coverage is much better than Fox's, as Fox coverage is mostly devoid of any semblance of reality, and is essentially mis or disinformation.
Never the less the MSM, including CNN and CNBC are only interested in preserving and promoting the status quo, from a stock market point of view.
Bear in mind the words of the CEO of CBS, Les Moonves, who (as did the other broadcast and cable networks) are responsible for the election of DJT. ""It May Not Be Good for America, but It's Damn Good for CBS"
You seem to know an awful lot; I am wondering what country would be best for a single senior woman to move to. Spain? Canada? Needs to be affordable. I want out of this country. If this jackass is president for four more years I don't want to be here.
This article might help you: https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/best-countries-for-american-expats
I agree with you. I can’t take four more years of this circus
I feel the same way, but because of Covid, the borders are closed to Americans.
I agree. Trump built a wall alright...around USA. Because of his mishandling of the COVID pandemic, we can’t leave, no country will take us. May be time to have 2 America’s...red and blue.
I've been thinking the same thing. I don't see how we'll ever be able to be a somewhat unified country again.
He is a horrible blight on US history.
It’s possible to still get out. My two sons are working on getting out of here and I’m encouraging them to go. Read up and start the process if you’re serious.
Everywhere?
Last time I checked, you may be able to get into Asia. Maybe Latin American countries. Possibly African continent. Not sure about Mexico. Europe is closed. Canada is closed. You can do a search and find out.
I have been thinking about Viet Nam.
I forgot to suggest for you to read blogs from American expats living in Vietnam or any country you may wish to move to. It's a great way to find out the ins and outs of a living in a vastly different country. I used to read a few bloggers in SK, China, Taiwan and Japan. They are excellent resources for you.
I've read it's a beautiful country. Can you handle the excessive heat? I would love being free from radical evangelical and Catholic doctrines being rammed down our throats. Lots of things to research.
I'm shocked so many people in the U.S. support violence, support white supremacy, and the Nazi's. What gives? Why did to many people gives their lives in World War II only for a bunch of money grubbers, power hungry white people to laugh at them and call them losers?? I really thought people would reject Trump, yet they embrace him.
What a disgrace.
If 45 wins another term, his base is in for a surprise. They will begin to understand that 45 never cared about them and only needed them to buy more time for himself. As a lame duck president, he can stop pretending they matter (other than the occasional ego-stroking rally). Without the pretense of actually caring about his supporters, he will be able focus all his efforts on eroding what’s left of our democracy and establishing himself as the dictator he so desperately wants to be.
I am so disheartened by and ashamed of my country.
Its unimaginable that 48,2% of voters or 66 Mio Americans put us in this situation of still not knowing that this medieval thinking and blatant lying is going to end after dreadful 4 years. What a horendous nightmare. Yes we should count ANY vote.....but this depressing fact will stay: This contra factual, contact science, contra wisdom, contra ethics administration has a strong support. This is sad news for a country that once was the beacon of a modern way of living and a horrifying news for the rest of the world so eagerly in need for joined action on climate change, SARS-CoV-2 etc. which we should be able to solve if science and collaboration could prevail. So hang in there, but consider what the hack is going on in this country ? ---Til
I glean 2 things from this election: 1) Polling, as a science, has been shattered. 2) Many millions of my fellow citizens refuse to think, apparently preferring to follow. These citizens only require an upgrade to an adequate leader for us to survive as a species, for unlike polling, climate science marches on inexorably. Personally, I prefer that we humans do not become extinct.
I view #1 as a positive development. Thinking about polling is a poor use of limited time.
The feeling of disgust, contempt and dissapointment at the populace that supports him is difficult to put into words.
I'm sick. I'm furious. I'm scared.
I'm in Texas and it's almost daybreak. I can't believe that just 24 hours ago I actually fantasized that my state might turn blue.That I woke up anxious, but excited.
Sure, I suspected that that snake would follow through on declaring victory and claiming fraud. But I really didn't think that half the country would still, after seeing him in all his horror, would still be behind him. But they are, and that fact will give license to the Barrs and the McConnells and the Barretts to help him carry us all into Hell.
God, help us.
Sid
Hideous to see so much red across the country.
The Democrats offer no real alternative. They have become the party of outrage and virtue signaling, not the party of democracy and real solutions for real problrms. To be this close after all this mayhem requires some profound rethinking of the DNC leadership.
I totally agree. Republicans obtained control of states by investing from Dog Catcher to Governor. Dems have sat on their butt, awaiting the next presidential, and when they vote in the House and Senate, they vote on the side of the donors, and the donors are the same people that essentially owned the Republican Party.
Nancy Pelosi backed a "legacy" DINO candidate Joe Kennedy, against an experienced and well like progressive Democratic Senator Markey. She backed a homophobe House candidate against a gay candidate.
She and the leadership are terrified of real opposition within their own party, like the Squad.
"I never expected a blowout. But the idea that it is even close tells you that America has changed in ways that we might never recover from.
I have not given up. I have no idea how this will turn out and neither does anyone else. But the fact that it is this close is heartbreaking about America." - Tom Nichols - professor at the U.S. Naval War College and at the Harvard Extension School."