There is nothing that God, man, or the Constitution can do about the fact that we elected Trump, because we did it to ourselves.
Summary
Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 election leaves no room for ambiguity or an “asterisk” in his legitimacy, as he won both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
This outcome represents a clear mandate from American voters, who knowingly chose Trump’s policies and approach.
The anticipated results include pardons for January 6 participants, attacks on the press, and an administration filled with controversial figures.
By voting for Trump, Americans prioritized divisive rhetoric over democratic values, accepting the resulting turmoil.
There’s no blaming the Russians this time around. There’s no blaming media malpractice. There’s still some blame to attribute to voter suppression, but majorities elect the people who suppress the votes...
what a stupid fucking article. why carve out exceptions for shit you don't understand and then double down on the politico.
Healthcare is going away for most people as are women's rights and rights, really, for anyone who isn't a rich white Christian man. You guys really fucked yourselves, and to a great extent everyone else, this time. Get ready for the biggest deficit in global history followed by a depression for the ages.
American conservatives wouldn't understand personal responsibility, especially the ones that crow about others not taking it, if it was literally rage fucking their assholes without lube.
And it absolutely will be once Trump's policies are in effect.
But somehow it will still be Obama's fault because the poor, ignorant fools consider critical thinking to be a librul plot like climate change and gravity.
I am American, and I have always loved my country. Until now, I've never been ashamed to call myself patriotic. My thought has always been than there will always be uninformed, uneducated assholes that vote against their own self-interests and the interests of their own country.
This election is different, though. We knew exactly what we were getting if we re-elected Trump. We responded by not only electing him in a landslide election, but handing the House and the Senate over to the Republicans, too. It was a clear message. America is not a nation of mostly good people with a few vocal "bad apples." We are a nation of hateful, scared bigots, and we proved it in a big way.
This was a turning point in American history, and the majority of us sent a clear message to their fellow citizens and to the world. America is not a nation of mostly good people being overshadowed by a media that covers the loudest assholes in the room. America is a nation of people who by a majority support exactly what the "crazy" Republicans are saying. I would feel better if Trump lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote, but that's not what happened.
This isn't an election where I've lost only lost faith in the democratic process or my fellow citizens, although both are true. This is an election where I've lost faith in my country as a whole. I have never been proudly Republican or proudly Democrat, but I've always been proudly American. Now I'm just... sad. I don't expect I'll see a day any time soon where I can honestly say I'm proud of my country. The best I can do is retreat into my own personal bubble, live my life, and watch the world burn around me until the flames consume everything I care about.
I'm in the same boat. I'm a white straight guy. So, I guess I'm not in immediate danger, although I am an academic. So, I guess my choices are: fight, flee or essentially hide.
Fighting seems infeasible although I think violence is justifiable.
Fleeing would require leaving the country. I dunno if I can swing that.
So....I guess I just live my life and hope it's not quite as bad as I fear? I dunno. I'm open to advice.
I do now hate this country and the bulk of the people who live here. Fuck them.
For me, it was the days and weeks after Jan 6th, when it became clear that outright insurrection, a violent coup, was not going to spark a course correct.
The republican party should have shattered. The non-fascists should have woken up, and fought with MAGA, and years later, a viable political party rise from the ashes.
But that didn't happen. A few conscientious dissenters fell on their swords, most at retirement age anyway. Fascism took over completely. And the American people ate it up.
Weeks after Jan 6th, it was clear that consequences were not coming. They took their mask off, and no one cared, or couldn't stop them.
And here we are. Convicted felon with absolute power on his way to the Whitehouse, who owns the SCOTUS, Senate, and likely the House.
Trump will have unchecked power to do whatever he damn well pleases.
Way to fucking go, America. I fucking hate my countrymen.
I'm with you. It was absolutely soul crushing to watch the worst person to run for president get elected on no qualifications and give us reasons to despise him deeply every day for 8 years. But even worse was that people cheered him the fuck on. Then demanded more. This country is lost. We have no reason to hope anymore. Everything good is in danger and everything dangerous is a possibility. We're fucked. I'll never have another warm and fuzzy feeling about this country or its institutions.
How old are you, if you don't mind me asking? I'm 40, started paying attention to politics in the Clinton years and then really paying attention with Bush v Gore in 2000. America was full on neolib vs neocon bullshit back then, a quarter of a century ago. The 2nd Iraq War was a big moment for me of realizing that the only thing America stands for is corporate hegemony. Project 25 is no different than the Project for a New American Century, and the "opposition" from the "left" isn't fundamentally against any of it, they just pay a bit more lip service to culture issues (which are of course important if you aren't a cis white christian male, but they are clearly not enough).
I am close to the same age and something feels different now. The Trump administration is many levels of degenerate beyond the Bush administration. Even Dick fucking Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris FFS. I think Trump is pretty far beyond neocon, unfortunately. Just straight up Fascist.
The Neocons may have started rolling this snowball back then, but it is an avalanche now.
Take heart. Our fellow citizens are slow learners, and few of them have paid close attention to Trump and his shit forsaken privilege in escaping consequences since he left office.
It will be a long wait, but four years of unbridled trump will open a lot of eyes. Let them get a healthy, sustained dose of exactly what they didn't realize they asked for and then we rebuild.
And don't give away the House like that. It's not over yet, and with any luck that guardrail will remain.
Honestly yeah. My hopes are at this point our electoral process does exactly what it just did. It's clear a lot of people went out and voted for him. Not a small group but a ton. And my resignment has just been "Okay, this is what you asked for, buckle up".
It's gonna suck ass and I really hope they don't start some bullshit that makes them squeak out of the mess they're about to step in. (They'll definitely try to) But let's give the American people exactly what they asked for and just try to stop the house from catching on fire while they realize what a bad idea it was.
Trump's stated plan is to deport 20 million people. There are only around 11 million undocumented immigrants. Both the dude mentioned in the comment above and his mom are definitely on the list. It's staggering that he didn't take that seriously.
Yeah, I'm no expert but won't Trumps tariffs on everything under the sun be much much worse than the inflation?? Manufacturing won't come back to the USA, it'll just shuffle around any of dozens of countries that will still be cheaper to operate out of. Also, retalitory tariffs are a thing which will harm what manufacturing IS in the USA. Also, Trump promised his rich buddies 3 trillion dollars in tax breaks. He's going to slash health budgets (and more besides) to fund it. What are people thinking!? They're going to fund the ultra rich from their own pockets AND pay massively more for goods while damaging local industry?! I mean there's a million other things to worry about including mass-deportation but cost of living is about to increase BIGLY!?
The thing about mental illness is it's not logical, and will never make sense. Cults, religion, and political ideology all indoctrinate — spread a mental illness — in the exact same way; they all attack the same psychological vulnerabilities.
If someone knows the sky isn't red, but chooses to believe it anyway, there's not a whole lot that can be done.
Trump didn't win a significant number of new voters. He kept his base, which is roughly the size of what it was in 2020.
The problem was that Harris lost voters. In droves. Nationwide. And she took a lot of winnable downballot candidates with her. And I'm not even saying that to blame her. She ran a magnificent campaign while Trump was most noted for saying "They're eating the dogs!". So why did she still lose, and lose so hard? Because Democrats stayed home. Roughly about 10% of them overall, nationwide. Sure, some of them stayed home or voted 3rd party to protest Gaza, especially in Michigan. But the real story is that she underperformed so badly nationwide. I mean, for the love of God, New Jersey was competitive. That call about Iowa possibly going blue is going to be up there with "Dewey defeats Truman" in terms of political misfires. She severely underperformed with men and Latinos, especially Latino men. Which means this: 8-10 million people couldn't stomach voting for Trump, but they'd rather passively hand over the country to Trump vs. voting for a black woman. Whether the problem they have is the fact that she's black, female, or both is irrelevant. But the message they sent was clear. "We don't want Trump, but we'd rather step back and just let Trump take the country rather than vote for her."
The problems with bigotry in this country go much deeper than some people are willing to admit, and Harris just found that out the hard way. As far as the voting base is concerned, voting for Obama was a mistake that they will not repeat again, and they just proved that by handing Trump everything he wanted on a silver platter instead.
We can't even say that it's an outsized minority any more. A majority of the people in this country just spoke up and said that they either want the racism and bigotry or are at least willing to put up with it.
Trump won the election not because Democrat voters said "Trump!", but because they said "Not Harris."
The large turnout in 2020 was more driven by the will to remove Trump than to elect Biden. This time it seems they forgot how bad it was and decided to stay home.
This honestly cements my view that America is a racist nation, no question.
You don't get 15 million missing votes without a solid chunk of those being Democrats, bog standard Democrats, that didn't want to vote for a black woman.
Trump won because the DNC underestimated the sexists, racists and the idiot woke who think they somehow did something with this for palestine.
Editorial note:
i know woke is a poisoned word but I like to use to describe idiots who think they are so smart and better than others that they would rather let trump elected than admit that voting for the lesser evil is the right thing to do
Nailed it. People are still mad that Obama made it into the White House and we’re forever going to pay for it. And a black woman running for president? Americans all saw Trump’s serious cognitive decline — I don’t doubt that any outside of a hardcore few didn’t — but America made for damn sure it wouldn’t be Kamala.
Trump won because Harris was a shitty candidate who never won a primary for the president.
I was hoping she'd pull off a victory anyways but the lesson we should take away is that if a sitting president needs to step down from running for another term we need to have a snap election.
This all went to hell when Harris was appointed as our candidate.
Her rallies were drawing far more people than Trump's
She had A-list star power (Beyonce, Julia Roberts, Taylor Swift, etc.) actively endorsing her
She took over a race where Biden was down by 5%+ and losing ground daily to at least making it competitive
She only had 107 days to work with.
It proved to not be enough. The people who were coming to her rallies were apparently all people who were going to vote for her anyway; the size of the rallies only gave the illusion that her campaign was attracting more voters. And with so many Democrats actively choosing to stay home rather than vote at all, it seems like nothing she did would have mattered anyway. But given the crap she had to work with, she ran a near-flawless campaign. She had no way of knowing that it just didn't matter.
Yeah but if you start to poke fingers at the Democratic Party, you might start to realize that most of their corporate donors are fine with a Trump presidency. Almost like they were fine with Harris campaigning on keeping the status quo, because they'd win either way. Better to start blaming voters now!
Remember, with doublespeak they’ll continue* to blame the democrats while their Republican leaders dismantle their rights, the economy, and the government right in front of their eyes.
Do not underestimate the allure of a man who offers you a boogeyman to blame all your problems on, while promising you that only he can stop it. That allure is very difficult for many people to overcome. One of the other problems with it is that even if they do see the consequences of their choices, it's just as easy for Trump to convince them that those problems are the boogeyman's fault too. It doesn't have to make sense, and Trump doesn't care if it does as long as it keeps the rubes in line and focusing their anger on anyone else but him.
This is a cult following. Any attempt to show them that their problems were caused by Trump will only cause them to MAGA harder.
As a fellow Canafian, I think we will have our own issues soon/currently, so I'm not going to have time for schadenfreude. Granted I live in Ontario and a folksy goon has been in power with no plans for so long that maybe I've lost my sense of humor.
Hopefully this election interference situation blows up in PPs face and the cons collapse.
I feel dirty hoping for such an outcome but it feels hopeless when someone like PP, who is obviously making a cynical power grab, has so much popularity. Canada is infested with fascists just like the US and I'm getting pretty worried about the future of humanity.
It seems like the problem was turnout. In the last election liberals decided to come out and vote to remove Trump from office. This time they didn’t bother to vote.
There won’t be more immigration. Quite the opposite. Get ready to see your friends, neighbors, and relatives deported. Get ready to see crops dying in the fields.
Yes there will, because you missed what he was saying about "wet-bulb" events.
If you wrap a wet cloth around a thermometer, and place it in air that has less than 100% relative humidity, the thermometer will read a lower temperature than an equivalent one without a wet cloth. This is because the evaporation of water wicks heat away from the thermometer; the lower the RH the faster the water will evaporate the heat from the thermometer and thus the lower the temperature will read. This is called the "wet-bulb temperature" and is how the human body cools itself when you sweat.
However, when the RH is 100% the wet-bulb and dry-bulb temperatures are the same, and the human body stops being able to cool itself by evaporation (since your sweat won't evaporate because the air can't hold any more moisture). In fact, thanks to physics not giving a fuck about how conservatives feel, there's a point - thought to be above a wet-bulb temperature of 35 degrees C - where your body works in reverse and starts absorbing exterior heat.
This is fatal to the human.
The point is, the higher the RH, the less effective sweating is to cool humans down. Now what do you think will happen when people in equatorial regions- areas that have high humidity and temperatures to start with- see those temps go even higher thanks to climate change? They won't have any choice but to move to higher latitudes, because just being outside for long periods of time will be lethal as their bodies slowly cook themselves.
You silly person, the climate crisis coming doesn’t care, and neither will the climate refugees. We are going to see unprecedented suffering in the next two decades
they don't know what they want because the campaign was all about a dude saying bad words instead of any sort of real plan to fix anything. I'm tired of the spin. Harris adopted all the far right framing on immigration and bent over backwards for like half a dozen centrist republicans which lead to low turnout for like the obama voter crowd
I hate this take so much. I have been a good person all of my life, went out of my way to think of others and their feelings, never been in trouble, always followed the rules, worked hard to get to where I am at, and you're telling me that I deserve this bullshit? Makes it all feel so worthless to have dedicated my time and energy for something that apparently no one else can even muster sympathy. Fuck man.
It simply comes down to "it didn't matter." Not in the collective sense, not in the long haul. I have no doubt the people you impacted appreciated it, I appreciate you even, but to the rest it just wasn't enough.
In a sane world this would make the Democrats turn to introspecting and move leftward. In our billionaires world they're just going to keep pursuing the "moderate" and move more and more right....
"Surely the special interests and their enormous piles of money will offer guidance the people will all benefit from in these trying times," they'll say