Trumpmageddon

[Danvzare]

And if "gamers" can keep up the meaningless hyperbole for this long without being drained, I'm fairly sure everyone else can. Especially when it comes down to politics.

Aren't gamers the prime example of wearing their superlatives thin? I've seen so many games called "best game ever", in some cases before the game is even out and playable (see: Cyberpunk 2077) that it's become an utterly meaningless phrase. Same for review scores.

You know that picture with the cup and two faces. I feel like we're talking about that.
Because the reason you just brought up, was the exact same reason why I brought it up in the first place. But clearly we're both looking at it from different viewpoints. 

[WHAM]

I know what you mean, and it's perfectly possible both views have merit to them, especially since in a group as broad as "the gamers" you will still find countless individuals with different views and ways of handling things. Then again, whenever people refer to a group with a label like "gamers", "feminists", "conservatives" or "leftists", one should always keep in mind that it's best to add 'some subsect of' before whatever label is used. So when I might say "gamers are X", I am most certainly referring to "some subsect of gamers are X".

A good life lesson, as well as a valuable tool for online discourse and media literacy, I feel.

[Stupot]

Bump.

It would be interesting to see where we are with our thoughts on Trump and his expected 2nd term. The world didn't quite end the first time round. Did we overreact in 2016? Are we overreacting now? Will the US ever have another general election?

Let's keep things friendly, and keep it in this thread.

[RootBound]

As a,gender-variant person, I saw after the 2016 election, a spike in hate crimes against many minorities. Legislatively, the floodwaters constantly rose around and eroded the island that is my right to exist. Those floodwaters didn't quite reach me, but they reached untold numbers of trans teenagers who now either must be outed to their parents, stripped of their medical care, or forced to hear people like them being called "groomers." This continued under Biden but at least there was no longer a threat at the federal level.

With the white house and senate now red, I see very little that can stop it if people decide to make my existence illegal, and step by step that is the direction of the party in power.

I don't know if this is the end of American democracy but it will be the end of many people's lives.

All I know is, we cannot let each other be alone through this.

[Danvzare]

When I heard the news, the first thing that went through my head was how Americans really will vote for anyone except a woman.

I held off on my judgement the first time. But I think it's safe to say now that Trump is the second worst president America has ever had. (Number 1 still being Nixon in my opinion.)
I mean the guy clearly has a few too many screws loose. It's just a good thing that the president doesn't have nearly as much power as the conspiracy nutjobs will lead you to believe.

Ah well, I guess it's time to put up with another four years of American media complaining about "Trump's America" in the most on-the-nose way imaginable. Ugh. 

I don't know if this is the end of American democracy but it will be the end of many people's lives.

What democracy?
American's literally only have two choices. That is not a democracy. That is a thinly veiled dictatorship.
At least here in Britain, there's a chance that a party other than Labour or the Conservatives can get in power (it's unlikely, but it's possible). And even if your chosen party doesn't win, if they get enough votes, then they get a voice.
But America? Don't confuse that for a democracy.

As for this being the end of many people's lives though, that is definitely true. But nobody ever cares, even in these cases.
Sure, people sometimes pretend to care. But they don't really. 
But that's a discussion for another day.
In the meantime, I may as well say good luck to everyone. It looks like the rest of this decade is going to be pretty rough.

[Blondbraid]

When I heard the news, the first thing that went through my head was how Americans really will vote for anyone except a woman.

I thought the same, there are still Americans, now, in the year 2024, willing to say on TV that a woman would be "too emotional" to be president.

They really are open with their misogyny there.

I don't know if this is the end of American democracy but it will be the end of many people's lives.

What democracy?
American's literally only have two choices. That is not a democracy. That is a thinly veiled dictatorship.
At least here in Britain, there's a chance that a party other than Labour or the Conservatives can get in power (it's unlikely, but it's possible). And even if your chosen party doesn't win, if they get enough votes, then they get a voice.
But America? Don't confuse that for a democracy.

American democracy was modern and progressive in the 1770s.

The problem is that American democracy was modern and progressive... ...in the 1770s.

[Mandle]

Shouldn't the people who rallied around Trump because of the whole moronic rigged-election thing be having serious moments of self reflection right about now?

Admitting that the very thing that galvanized them turned out to be lies?

Haha, I'm just kidding; if they were capable of that kind of logic and introspection, they wouldn't have fallen for dumb conspiracy theories in the first place.

[Perpetuall]

Shouldn't the people who rallied around Trump because of the whole moronic rigged-election thing be having serious moments of self reflection right about now?

Admitting that the very thing that galvanized them turned out to be lies?

Haha, I'm just kidding; if they were capable of that kind of logic and introspection, they wouldn't have fallen for it in the first place.

That kind of logic and introspection is rare these days. On all sides.
This is why I can't stand politics. It's too easy to see through. The party will defend their candidate to the very end no matter what they do and bash the other to pieces for every single thing they do, whether it's good or bad. No objectivity. Like Trump himself said, "My fans love me so much I could go out on Fifth Ave and shoot some guy and they'd still love me."

Can they see through their own bias and realize they're just playing a game or are they really that blind? Either way it's disgusting. It's not about the issues and what's best for the country, it's about winning. It's like sports or pro wrestling.

My Dad was a politician. I saw how it really is behind the scenes. They publicly attack each other and blame one another for ruining the country but then play basketball together after hours and stuff themselves on the food the lobbyers bribe them with.

Everyone is fake, ignorant, and irrational. The whole world can burn themselves down for all I care and they probably will. /end of misanthropic rant

[LimpingFish]

Something was up when the editors of the LA Times and the Washington Post were explicitly told not to endorse a candidate (something both papers have done for years). The excuse was "impartiality", the truth was the both were going to endorse Harris, and both papers are owned by billionaires (the Times by Patrick Soon-Shiong and the Post by Jefty Bozos Jeff Bezos).

Would it have made a difference? Not likely, but it's indicative of the one-percent's desire for a Trump-controlled White House. Trust me, none of them are shedding any tears over the coming dismantling of democracy. Not when there's money to be made!

Had Biden dropped out six months earlier? Had Harris distanced herself from Biden's policies a little more succinctly? Had the Democrats learned anything from running Clinton in 2016? Meh.

It's not as if the Democrats really offered a strong alternative to Republican policies. In fact, save for the extreme, Democrat policy hews pretty close to Republican policy.

[Mandle]

Prediction: Trump will declare California a seceding state and send in the national guard/army in an "emergency peacekeeping action".

Some other states are already putting anti-Project 2025 legislature in place, and more will follow, but California is the one he would make an example of because they are the one that could actually make a decent go of it on their own. The rest would fold under economic restrictions pretty fast.

Also, those ever-blue states have such low gun ownership compared to others that the civilian population of Florida alone could probably invade them.

(That last bit was a joke... I think)

[Snarky]

I split off the political philosophy debate into a separate thread.

[Khris]

Somebody on tiktok made a women only map:



(it's from October though, the data is not based on the actual votes but on polls etc.)

[Mandle]

Somebody on tiktok made a women only map:

Interesting. Would have been more impactful in meaning if he hadn't won the popular vote. Although I'm sure less women did vote for him than men.

[kconan]

  I agree with the big Dem campaign "What Ifs?" being "meh" as mentioned above.  I do think currency inflation damage, due to increase in money supply from Trump in '20 and Biden in '21 stimulus payments, and Democrats simply being an incumbent during this time won it for Trump.  If I had to choose a second reason, it would be young men (blue and white collar) feeling left behind and Trump being better at reaching them.

  I'm in North Carolina these days, and there were a surprising number of people that believed FEMA was giving money to illegal immigrants rather than using to help w/ the hurricane damage.  Disinformation works to some extent, even with the middle/undecideds, and that doesn't help either.


  I don't know how much of what he alleges to do will be done.  Trump planned to build a huge wall that Mexico would pay for and there was of course "Trumpcare"; neither happened.  I doubt there will be mass (more than 500K people) deportations because Trump should be afraid of grocery and construction cost spikes, but there will be some effort that Trump can tout.

[LimpingFish]

An interesting point that someone mentioned on the news (BBC, I think...) was that it doesn't seem like Trump got substantially more votes than he did in 2016, he simply won back those that he lost in 2020.

So, less a "strong mandate from the American people" and more of a case of the same people voting for Trump as have always voted for him. I think a lot of the finger-pointing at white women, Latino men and black men, is simply exasperated disbelief that people would so willingly vote against their own interests. Twice.

It wasn't the Republicans who won the election, it was the Democrats who lost it. And, like 2016, they will learn absolutely nothing.

[Snarky]

It wasn't the Republicans who won the election, it was the Democrats who lost it. And, like 2016, they will learn absolutely nothing.

I think that is unfair. This was an election that favored Republicans on the fundamentals: voters' biggest concerns were the economy and (illegal) immigration, issues on which the public have long trusted the GOP more than the Democrats. With voters unhappy about the state of the economy and an unpopular Democratic incumbent, that made things very tough for the party in this election. (I read something rather startling by one political analyst that I find credible: That Trump actually ended up benefiting from his insane "They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs" rant, because it turned the focus further onto immigration, and when people are talking about "your" issue, you're winning.)

In retrospect, the best course would clearly have been for Biden to announce that he wasn't running, and hold an open primary in which a candidate who could credibly be a figure of change from the current, unpopular administration might have come out on top. That might have given them a chance, though I think it would still have been an uphill battle. With Biden insisting on running, that path was not an option, and I think Dems made pretty much the best of a bad situation. (Of course, there will always be mistakes to criticize.)

Perhaps Democrats chose the wrong issues to run on to counter Republicans. A lot of it was about reproductive rights and Trump's unfitness and danger to democracy. I'd argue that this was a fairly idealistic strategy: it is scary what Trump and his minions will do next, and taking away reproductive rights serves as a reminder of that. A more cynical strategist would observe that although abortion was a winning issue in the 2022 mid-terms, it has already started to recede from the foreground, and that most people who agree that Trump is a threat are probably already voting blue (or are tired of being warned for the third time in a row that they have to stop Trump to save democracy). Still, I expect that these issues did drive numbers to an extent, making the election closer than it would otherwise have been. It just wasn't enough.

Of course, one could also argue that if Democrats had done a better job on policy and governing, the economy would have been in better shape, illegal immigration wouldn't be an issue, and the administration would be popular. I have doubts...

On the economy, the big issue voters were angry about is inflation. Maybe the post-pandemic stimulus was to blame—as I recall, Joe Manchin was very worried about that, and had the original Build Back Better Act reduced and rebranded as the Inflation Reduction Act—but on the other hand increased inflation has been a worldwide phenomenon for the last few years, and it hasn't been as bad in the US as in many other countries. On immigration, what is the solution? There is a populist push for heavier enforcement—is that what they should have done? And again, this tendency for illegal immigration to stoke support for draconian policies often proposed by far-right parties is not exclusive to the US.

Now, I personally wish the US adopted far more progressive policies on a number of issues. It could start by ending its support for Israel's genocide against the Palestinians. (Though it's frankly absurd to consider opposition to genocide a particularly "progressive" position.) But that doesn't mean that these positions would be election-winners in the US. Gaza in particular was far down the list of things most voters cared about, and split the party.

If I'm optimistic, I would hope that there could be political capital to be mined in effective policies to address economic inequality. In fact, the administration adopted a number of such measure, including in the pandemic stimulus and the attempt to cancel student debt, but they were hamstrung by the Supreme Court (which ruled student debt relief illegal) and Congress (through the Senate filibuster and the House after the midterms). I'm afraid the US political system is simply too dysfunctional and skewed to the right to pass large-scale progressive legislation.

[kconan]

  A Republican incumbent would have ran on this economy with a record stock market, GDP, and relatively low unemployment.  They would have found a way to pull their usual BS on inflation, and of course their voter base and anyone leaning right wing would have ignored it.  I recall economists in 2022 and 2023 saying we were headed for a huge recession, and it didn't happen.  Most voters probably don't care about what "coulda happened", but this voter does.  Anyway...Trump will be bragging about the U.S. economy by mid-2025 like he did after taking over from Obama.

  It used to be the view that Democrats were the party of the working class and Republicans were only in it for fat cats and big business.  Unfortunately, nowadays (since Obama) I think many Americans feel that Republicans are looking out for both the working class and fat cats, while Democrats only care about educated elites and their boutique issues.

  Another hurdle is that the Democrats are boy scouts who are afraid to appear biased, while the Republicans fight dirty.  Not just their overall 2020 election nonsense, but misinformation and never conceding anything.  As an example of the latter, Biden ate it in his debate with Trump and Democrats blamed him.  Trump does a horrible job against Kamala, and naturally it was the moderators fault.  I knew otherwise intelligent people who think Biden weaponized the DOJ.  I tried explaining that Trump lied to a grand jury regarding his confidential documents case, Michael Cohen went to jail for the Stormy Daniels payoff with campaign funds, and Trump's "find me 11K votes" phone call, but to no avail.  Trump's version won even with people who don't like Trump.  Bluster, concede nothing, and facts don't matter.

[Mandle]

@Blondbraid Exactly, scapegoating and conspiracy theories always appeal over complex facts that take concentration and effort to absorb and assemble into options. Plus, those opinion take a long time to explain. People lose focus. They'd rather watch a ten minute video that repeats one point over and over.

[LimpingFish]

Philip Reines, who has advised the last three democratic candidates says most Democrats are basically Republicans (and he admits that he himself is to the right of most Republicans on certain topics!), and that it's time to stop kowtowing to the minority extremist left. The "woke" is why Harris lost. To him, the real enemies are Bernie Sanders and those that think like him.

Conversely, here's Sanders' statement about the election loss:

https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1854271157135941698

Now, I'm no Bernie Bro, and I've disagreed with some of his stances in the past, but which of these two theories seem the most sensible? Is it the one says that a number of, frankly, hallucinated issues are the reason why Trump triumphed, and that it's not the real Democratic Party's fault, it's the fault of woke extremists? You fools! It wasn't the economy, it wasn't the lack of counter-policies, it was the average man's annoyance at not being able to say what they really feel; that trans people are icky! Reines ignores the fact that it's Republicans who can't stop talking, or thinking, about genitals and pronouns, fighting against imagined blue-haired ghosts, introducing sweeping draconian laws based on their disgust and fear towards an infinitesimally small number of Americans. To beat them, the Democrats have to become more like them. Ignore those queer minorities, stop those pesky immigrants, don't you want to make America great again?!

It's fucking insane.

The Democratic Party has circled the wagons to protect the Democratic Party, as they always do, and they will blame anything and everyone, except themselves.

[WHAM]

As a non-American, I do hope Trump continues to rattle European nations awake from their slumber when it comes to American world-police status. He wasn't wrong when he raised the issue of Europe trusting America to save their asses in case a conflict broke out and with Ukraine we've seen over and over again how utterly unprepared the UK, Germany and France have been to face any kind of extended conflict, as they cannot even scrounge up munitions to support a more limited one on the edge of Europe, let alone hope to defend themselves if needed. As difficult a time as Trump and his isolationist policies may bring to parts of the world, I see potential for developing better futures outside of the US as long as our leaders take what Trump says seriously enough, instead of laughing in his face as they did last time around.