What a depressing night.
Not because a newly unbound Donald Trump will wreak havoc on American democracy. I've never believed that. He remains too ignorant, too vain, and too undisciplined to do that.
He'll still do plenty of damage. Like all Republicans, he'll continue to bankrupt the country with tax cuts. He'll have four more years to nominate conservative judges. He'll be disastrously inattentive to climate change. He'll fire Jack Smith and escape all responsibility for January 6. Palestinians will be even more utterly abandoned.
But the big ticket items he's been threatening will be hard to fulfill. Does he really want to deport every illegal immigrant in the country? I don't know, but at a minimum he'd have to hire half a million new ICE officers to do it, and Congress won't go along with that.
Does he really want to fire 4,000 civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists? Probably. But it's not clear he can do this on his own. The Project 2025 folks think he can, but it's never been tested in court and there's a good chance it would fail.
And all those panderific tax exemptions for tips, overtime, Social Security, and so forth? I doubt Trump was serious about them, and in any case Republicans in Congress won't go along. They're too expensive and don't benefit corporations or rich people.
RFK Jr. may want to ban vaccines, but he can't. Elon Musk may have fantasies about cutting the federal budget by $2 trillion, but he can't either. It's impossible.
Trump has more freedom to impose tariffs on a whim. But the kind of tariffs he's been talking about are so obviously brain dead I doubt even his most loyal advisors would stand by and let 'em rip. They'd violate treaties; promote retaliation; create inflation; and tank the economy. Even MAGA cultists have some kind of minimal survival instinct against such rank stupidity.
Of course, even if I'm right about this Trump will cause plenty of misery along the way. Immigrants will be terrorized. Ukraine will be left vulnerable to further Russian expansionism. God only knows what will happen on abortion, or what he'll do to trans people.
But even that's not why this is so depressing. That's simpler: It's the fact that Americans would elect a boorish, blustering, fantasizing, moronic, self-absorbed dimwit like Trump. Any other Republican, sure. Sometimes the country turns right. But how can a man like Trump be supported by the vast majority of the Republican Party? That's depressing.
Word. It really does not speak well of us as a country, we apparently exemplify every stereotype the rest the world has about us.
Honestly, I think that a significant part of the reason that he won is that a very large chunk of people basically convinced themselves that when they voted for Donald Trump they weren't actually voting for Donald Trump- instead they were voting for a pretend moderate Republican with extremely limited policy ambition that exists basically in the minds of a bunch of opinion writers.
Shame on them.
Then they're dusional.
Only the bad stereotypes.
Spot on. As Mencken said "Nobody has ever gone broke underestimating hte American Populace."
In retrospect, I think there were two completely different campaigns. On the Democratic side we tried to argue facts and policy and make plans for an inclusive future. We appealed to people’s rational side.
On the Republican side Trump used an emotional battering ram. He used words and phrases freighted with emotional content like a battering ram to bludgeon people and dull their thinking processes. When you are angry or upset you don’t think, you just react. It wasn’t so much that Trump was telling factual lies, he just used the words and phrases he was given and kept repeating them over and over and over.
I’m guessing Frank Luntz and other operatives did a ton of research to find the kinds of emotional attacks that some people would react to and fed this to Trump like a script for the Apprentice.
Kamala Harris had the vote of every thinking person in America. (See Adlai Stevenson)
The worst thing to worry about is a creation of a special new force for immigrant deportation, because this will be used also to suppress the population in general.
The rest are awful policies, but will not damage democracy as much.
I doubt that this will get off the ground. Just like the wall.
The wall was always just a campaign slogan. The "deporting immigrants" force has a purpose (suppressing the population), which is something that Trump regards as high achivement.
If he is healthy enough in two years, he will definitely try to re-do Tiananmen square in the US.
I think Trump lacks ambition, beyond just spouting shit. He may be enamored with the idea of brutality, but lacks work ethic to actually make anything happen, even outsourcing it to his henchmen is not likely to get off the ground.
However, if it does, it'll be an unmitigated disaster, exceeding in scope and brutality even the Japanese-American internment.
".. it'll be an unmitigated disaster, .."
Which is why you need to worry about it, even if it was low probability.
"but lacks work ethic to actually make anything happen"
Tell that to the immigrants that lost their children.
"Tell that to the immigrants that lost their children."
That was quite different logistically. Creating some sort of an enforcement brigade to sweep up about 3.5% of the population and then house them somewhere indefinitely is a couple of orders of magnitude more complicated.
Yes, but that is not what this force is for.
If he creates this force, it will be for shooting at protesters, and the "immigrant deprtation" is just an excuse.
Shooting at protesters is quite simple.
Shooting of protesters has been simple ever since Kent State.
The difference is that now you have a president that:
1) wants to shoot protesters.
2) is immune from consequences.
I think that will start slowly, going after areas he and his minions don’t like. It will also be used to gain compliance without a fight. It will be a revenge tool.
"I think Trump lacks ambition." Unfortunately the people he surrounds himself don't. Exhibit A:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/new-book-details-chaos-trump-aide-start-afghanistan/story%3Fid%3D104765470&ved=2ahUKEwjAi9ia4MiJAxVhrYkEHe9qLA0QFnoECBsQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3kHWjTqFAfiU2RqSJ-jygp
How can a president let himself be manipulated by someone who is essentially a nobody?
I find myself hoping Trump lives through his term. I don't think Vance lacks ambition.
+1
Exactly.
idk if you caught the episode of 60 Minutes the other night with the thug from his previous administration, but he seems hell bent to get something done this time around.
I am sure that there's no shortage of thugs. I am just skeptical that pure thuggery will suffice.
You'll have to be more specific!
Tom Homan, led immigration enforcement under Trump.
I believe Democrats in Congress blocked that and won't be able to in the future. But I am hopeful that Trump's economic policies will put us in a bad spot prior to the midterms and we can have the opportunity to blunt some of his priorities.
I'm still of the belief that everything he touches turns to shit. He had some competent people in his first administration and none of them will be around this time to help mitigate his fuck ups.
There's no brakes on this run away rollercoaster.
But how can a man like Trump be supported by the vast majority of the Republican Party? That's depressing.
Weakness and cowardice are the heart of GOP tolerance of Trump. The party could have dealt with him. They could have voted for impeachment conviction and barred him from future office after 1/6/21—they'd have been done with him once and for all. There were other opportunities, too.
But GOP elites feared the consequences of taking him on: there would have been a political price to pay.
Usually not standing up for what is right will come back to haunt you. That day hasn't arrived yet for Republicans. But it's coming.
Exactly! GOP had their chance to get banished and they didn't have the balls. Democrats maybe need to find better candidates and work on their vision. Republicans, on the other hand, no longer have a party.
The GOP no longer exists. It's the party of Trump. Probably for the foreseeable future. If they haven't rid their party of him by now I don't think they ever will. Even after he's gone his influence will live on.
Without him, it will wither. Trump has the singular read-the-room talent of an entertainer combined with a feral ability to smell weakness. And no scruples whatsoever.
None of those other guys has his ability to do that. Just look at Desantis. Trump wiped the floor with him. And Rubio and all the others who fancy themselves trump wannabes. Those guys are pale besides him and will not, can not, build his cult-like following.
Nope, when he’s gone it’s over. They’ll nominate someone like Haley and the MAGA faithful will go back to their holes.
I hope so. But all we need is another Covid-19 type event for another Trump like personality to emerge and do far much more damage because they might be far smarter and far more ruthless than Trump.
"They could have voted for impeachment conviction and barred him from future office after 1/6/21"
Exactly. What a missed opportunity!
Republicans didn't convict the disgraced, twice-impeached, indicted and convicted former guy/shoe-and-book salesman. And the price they paid for that is regaining the House in 2 years, the Senate and the Presidency in four.
They also showed the country who they really are, and 52% of the country (that got out and voted) said "we really like that!".
The GOP is Trump's, and is indistinguishable from MAGA.
+1
Bad news on tariffs is that they don't violate treaties to impose, per se. The treaties allow retaliation. One side can start and the other side is set free to do what they want.
The question is going to be what China wants to do if TFG starts something. China wants to invade Taiwan and needs America to allow it. However, if China is hit with tariffs that impact their export sectors, Chinese leaders hoping to avoid mobs of unemployed factory workers will NEED to invade Taiwan to stay ahead of the mob, and they may secretly trade tariffs for America standing down.
Chin really doesn't want to invade Taiwan. It would destroy their economy. And presumably they are smart enough to see what an unmitigated disaster the Russian invasion of Ukraine has turned out for Russia.
China could blockade and siege Taiwan until they surrender, if the US refuses to intervene. The West is so dependent on Taiwanese and Chinese products that sanctions on the newly expanded China are likely to be mild.
China really does want to invade Taiwan, but is conscious of the costs involved. But they are almost certain to see the Trump administration abandon Ukraine. Are they likely to think that Trump will care any more about Taiwan than about Ukraine?
I don't know if they will invade. That is a big step. But it is certainly more likely they will do so with Trump in office. After all Xi only has to say something about how smart Trump is, and Trump will praise the wisdom of China invading Taiwan, as he did the wisdom of Russia invading Ukraine and even the wisdom of Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel.
The fact that those things did not prove wise will not matter when the person who thinks they are wise controls US foreign policy.
I think China wants to *absorb* Taiwan, and how that happens is secondary. They're building up a navy capable of quarantining and/or invading, but they don't have to actually take those steps.
Just like with Hong Kong, they want and/or need the manufacturing and design capabilities and income Taiwan has developed. Actual invasion risks real harm to that in a lot of ways. With HK they lucked out, in that Thatcher either didn't know the difference between HK proper and Kowloon, or feigned it in order to get rid of a difficult diplomatic and military problem.
Personally, I think the easiest path for trump is to just say informally that he recognizes Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan and then let things go from there. All he'd want from the Chinese is a big adulatory ceremony congratulating him for being himself and a bazillion-dollar bank draft, and that's chump change for China, easy-peasy.
And he's always been two-faced about China-- on the one hand yelling about how they've stolen American jobs and ruined American lives, on the other hand getting his ties and Bibles and shoes made there. He won't have any trouble at all dealing with objections or questions about what he's doing.
Partly, I think, in a 50/50 nation, Americans will always tilt to the out-of-power party if they're unhappy about the economy--no matter how unfit that party is to govern. OTOH I'm not sure that this maxim works if the unfit/crazy is a Democrat, because that person would lose the support of the MSM and the establishment, which influence Dem voters. So we're stuck with the fact that the Dem always has to be the better person... and still can lose quite easily.
I don't know about that because somehow, the in or out party, responsible for economic insanity (as Trump will be) or not, people somehow keep on believing that the wingnuts - in this case the Trump Party - are always better at managing the economy.
They aren't, of course, but facts never seem to matter in these ideological insanities.
If he lives long enough…
In 2028….He could make the argument that he is eligible for a 3rd term because the last two weren’t consecutive…..
‘His’ Supreme Court would likely verify that…
"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice . . ."
There's nothing stipulating that twice must be consecutive. Twice is two, no matter whether or not it's consecutive.
The Supremes just established a policy of total Presidential immunity based on absolutely nothing in the Constitution, common law, or American tradition. Earlier this century, they took whiteout to the "well-regulated militia" clause of the Second Amendment. Do you really think they're gonna let a little black-letter law stop them from imposing a permanent Republican government on us?
By the time they will consider it, with Trump already more than 3 years in power, they will also be under credible threats of actual violence if they don't give him what he wants.
Same for congress people, other judges, and state officials.
Because he has total immunity and no risk of impeachment, he really can do whatever he wants to, and he will use it "when needed".
He'll have advance dementia by then.
Possible, but also possible that not.
So much the better. He'd be
more compliant. How long was Reagan suffering from dementia? He managed to make it to the end of his second term.
Or dead.
You think they are worried about the law?
I don't expect he'll make it a year; that he'll die or declared incompetent.
The we get a young JD, who can run twice. that's 11 years to remake the world.
It's a billionare's paradise now.
Exactly this. We primarily have Roberts to thank for the outsized influence of billionaires, but with that kind of money, they were always going to figure out how to convert it to power. What I honestly don't understand is why? When you've already accumulated generational wealth, why the hell do you want to run the world too? The real problem is that anyone desiring that kind of power is the last person that should ever have it.
TL;DR: We're screwed.
I'm thinking that inflationary price increases not only helped America's corporations boost their profit margins, but they resulted in a second Trump Administration that will absolutely cut their taxes and there are no donation trails to tar and feather them with. Brilliant, really.
If Vance serves more than half a term, it counts as one term. So JD's hope is that the disgraced (etc.) former guy leaves after 2 years and 1 day. Then he gets to run the country for 10 years minus a day. That is the limit in the constitution, but of course, somehow the Supreme Court could find a ruling from the ninth century that enables the king to rule for life, and pass the throne on to his oldest son.
Agree with much of that. As Putin supposedly said he's a pragmatist with no principle, so a deal can be made. So his past positions tell us little about his future "policies"" or "concepts of plans".
On the other hand he's older and less inhibited so I expect him to vacillate between actions which people will consider to be "learning" from experience, and those of "Trump being Trump--squared".
Wil Vance be able to do as well as Pence in navigating Tump's psyche so he can be the front-runner in 2028. History (LBJ and HHH) and British monarchy says the path of the heir-apparent is strewn with many bananas.
I may be overly optimist, but I expect SCOTUS to suprise by resisting some Trump initiatives--Chief Roberts doesn't want to cede all authority to an executive.
"Chief Roberts doesn't want to cede all authority to an executive"
That would be a positive surprise, and Roberts may actually not want to, but I think he'll discover that he already has. He and his henchpeople have already dissolved all the boundaries on how presidents behave. Plus, trump and his minions are of the (supposed) Andrew Jackson school that says following the court's rulings is optional.
Gaza's gone and Iran will have to decide whether or not they want to start a war after Israel takes out their nuclear sites*. How's he going to respond to China's inevitable test? Our (further) loss of credibility with the civilized world costs us something too.
*yes, all of this could well have happened if Harris won.
Unlikely Israel can take out Iran's nuclear program. They can blow up a lot of stuff, but as the US found in hanoi, flashy bangs don't actually accomplish anything. The Saudi's have the same weapons as the Israeli's, and unrestricted use for a decade against the Houthi's accomplished precisely nothing.
"But how can a man like Trump be supported by the vast majority of the Republican Party? That's depressing."
Because he is the ID of the country...
It's been tough not being able to use the N word for a solid decade without any social consequences.
Our National anthem should be American Idiot. It perfectly describes a majority of us.
Oh Kevin, you sweet summer child... thinking that the wingnuts in Congress or on the Supreme Court will deny Donald anything (that doesn't impede their own power and grifts).
"Even MAGA cultists have some kind of minimal survival instinct against such rank stupidity."
Have you forgotten how many MAGA cultists died because they refused to wear masks or avoid crowds, or because they rejected the vaccines in favor of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin?
About 1 in a thousand. They will happily take those odds.
closer to 1 in 300.
I am so depressed that I could barely get out of bed. Family in Europe were sending emails so early this am. I was trying to avoid the inevitable.
What happened to all the spineless uteri? Stockholm syndrome? Do they really like men telling them what they can and cannot do.
As an older woman, I as so disappointed in the women votersof this country. The repulsive sort.
Insofar as you lot lost working class votes to Trump - working class votes that only 10-15 years ago were solidly yours, it is not merely Trump but that you need to learn a new mode of poilitical engagement.
Or you can continue to treat the unwashed labouring class masses as unworthy and continue to lose.
Working class votes have not been solidly democrat since Reagan ran in 1980.
Actually White Working Class votes haven't been Democrat since 1964...
@Lounsbury
Let it rest for a day or so, asshole. We have wounds to bind.
I'm in the laboring class. The Democrats offer me health care, protection from my employer, higher wages, unions, all sorts of things. Why should I feel like my fellow Democrats see me as unworthy?
The Democrats are the party treating the working class as unworthy? lol. Remind us which states has the so called right to work laws. Which party wants to get rid of Social Security Medicare and Medicaid, programs most working class people depend upon. Your alternative reality isn't even mildy realistic.
Unworthy? Remind me of which side fights for workers rights? It's not the Republicans.
"Does he really want to fire 4,000 civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists? Probably. But it's not clear he can do this on his own. The Project 2025 folks think he can, but it's never been tested in court and there's a good chance it would fail."
We must live under different court systems. I live in the United States. Where do you live?
It's not 4,000 civil servants it's 25-30,000 civil servants. All he has to do is get the appointed folk to fire those people, terminate their employment and their paycheck. If eventually the vicil servants get their jobs back, the point will still have been made.
Hell, he just has to credibly *threaten* to do it, and make a handful of examples. The average civil servant doesn't have resources to fight a court battle for years, or be relocated to some other city. All an authoritarian need do is force the bureaucracy to internalize asking themselves before they do anything if doing the right thing will carry professional consequences, and you've already achieved a huge amount of preemptive compliance that will cost the authoritarian zip.
Normally Kevin does not take requests, but here is one.
"What political ad/position would you suggest Dems take to win, say the dumbest, least informed 10 million potential US voters nationally?"
Now, as a Californian, I did not get full blast ads. But I did get the Trump ad with two hip black podcaster guys throwing shade on Kamala for even considering health care for trans inmates.
We all probably saw it. But the question is that they did not keep running it just for laughs, somebody on the R campaign saw it worked.
That add only works if you are either (a) totally anti-trans (fair enough), or (b) an ignoramus. I mean, really? I am expected to believe that I should even care about the one in a million trans person who is both in jail and needing health care?
There was an earlier even dumber version of the add which implied that Kamala was letting in illegal criminals who wanted to get arrested and then get free surgery. That one was so stupid they pulled it. So I guess there is a limit to how dumb they think people actually are.
I just don't see how we can expect to win elections while giving up on the votes of the dumb.
@Yikes
I think progressives don't want to believe people are that dumb. For better or worse we want to engage them on a higher level. The fascists, though, will happily take their votes then crush them under the wagon wheels.
"i think progressives don't want to believe people are that dumb." Unfortunately they keep proving that they most certainly are.
What gets me is that the pick-on-the-weakest tactics of a schoolyard bully didn’t turn off more people.
That, and the dark, bleak picture they presented of America today. Why didn’t more people look at their neighborhood, their friends and family, their lives, and say to themselves “That’s not how it is”?
No, people won't care about the fate of a handful of incarcerated transsexuals. But they will care (i.e. bitch and moan) that taxpayer money is being spent on these free operations. There was a similar case in Massachusetts a while ago which generated similar reactions.
It's not just that he is so obviously and manifestly unfit to be president. He was all of that the first time around, but I guess I can somewhat forgive people for falling for the original con. The simply unfathomable thing is that he has already had a chance to be president, and we know how he performed in the job.
To start with, he didn't really do much of anything for the first couple years other than make himself a laughing stock on the world stage and pass regressive tax cuts. The economy was just fine because it was like that when he inherited it, and he was far too lazy and incompetent to do much more damage. Of course there was also the damage he did to the judiciary, but most people don't notice that sort of thing.
However, whenever there was a crisis, his instinct was to try to just talk it away because he had no idea what to do and just wanted to escape blame. We ALL saw how this worked when it was a deadly virus and his usual bullshit and hand waving proved less than effective. All he had to do was provide some calm and steady leadership, but instead he actually fought against the recommendations of his own administration. Of course, that had the predictable result of confusing and dividing the public, prolonging the pandemic, and literally killing people. It was a textbook example of failed leadership.
We could have had a much better outcome without even spending any more money. All we needed was someone to rally the public to do what was necessary to get through to the other side. Tiny amounts of personal sacrifice for the good of the country, and his sorry loser ass couldn't be bothered to even try to lead. Like a social media influencer, all he wanted to do was say shit his supporters wanted to hear for the likes. Absolutely pathetic.
Like Kevin, I don't think he'll take overt steps to end democracy. He'll just slowly but surely continue to erode the foundations of the institutions that make democracy possible. He's going to do a LOT of damage, but like the first time around, he's inheriting a very healthy economy, so he'll probably be just about gone by the time people really start feeling the effects. Then a Democrat will be elected, work tirelessly to clean up the mess, only to end up getting blamed for it.
The supreme court will become mostly pointless as he populate it with crazy people and everyone comes to realize that they don't actually matter. Climate change will get a boost and probably push us over the point of no return. Everything else will be mostly fixable. I just hope that many, many MAGAtards get figuratively ground to dust. They are finally getting what they want, and I hope they get it good and hard.
As much as I'd love to see him shuffle off this mortal coil, JD Vance is even worse. Smart, but completely unencumbered by anything resembling principles, and bank rolled by people that are wealthy beyond belief, and basically insane. Peter Thiel is a gay conservative tech bro that made his money lucking into PayPal, and dabbles in such enterprises as sea-steading. Leon Musk is who he is, which is awful for everyone. These guys are basically less believable Bond villains.
We truly live in a bizarre time line that nobody could have predicted. So, so many easy opportunities to change course, but we keep steering straight into the iceberg, and global warming won't save us from this one.
+1
I'm not sure we can qualify the economy as "very healthy." It is fragile with a looming recession (even without Trump's regressive policies) that I don't trust the incoming administration/congress to be capable of managing.
'Still optimistic' is an enduring Democratic emotion.
I’m pretty scared of Musk and Kennedy. Who knows what mischief they will do? I think he will use his immigration policy to hurt cities/areas he doesn’t like. Since I live in one of those that worries me. Also, at least in the near term, I think congress will give him everything he asks for, and I’m not sure what he will do if Democrats control the House.
He will also take or threaten revenge on television news and newspapers he doesn’t like. It also depresses/disgusts me that the J6 insurrectionists will be pardoned and treated as heroes.
To Drum’s final point: Having an authoritarian leader as President is bad, so it’s a good thing that we we are at least getting an incompetent one. But it doesn’t feel good. A competent authoritarian leader is scary. An incompetent one is a national embarrassment.
We should all fear the next one, for the next one won't be as incompetant. Trump is the one step in our march towards an authoritarian state.
That last paragraph. we are not the country I thought we were.
"how can a man like Trump be supported by the vast majority of the Republican Party?"
Because they (and many independents) don't like what the Democrats are selling.
That speaks, you know, badly of them.
I dont think they want what they think the Democrats are selling.
They have absolutely no idea what the democrats are selling. But they have been trained to follow doctrine from their leaders, and their leaders say "democrats: bad".
+1
Kevin is most likely right about most economic issues - Trump's policies would hurt too many industries and Republican employers of immigrants. He could pivot to conciliation on many subjects and the media would approve, saying "finally Trump is becoming a real President". Trump's followers do not demand consistency.
But gutting the civil service? "It's never been tested in court and there's a good chance it would fail." Why would the Republicans on the Supreme Court disapprove? They probably have their arguments for allowing it all ready. Big business would love to get their people in all positions in government, even more than they have already.
The Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, etc., will be happy to do that work. It'll be like the CCC for assholes.
Which court are you talking about? The one that erased "well-regulated militia," or the one that decreed Trump can't be held accountable for anything?
If rich people get in Trump's way they will find themselves investigated, prosecuted, or falling out of windows. He has people to make those things happen.
His advisors were chosen spefically for their willingness to do anything he tells them to do.
I'll be feeling this way for a couple of weeks. Then I'll start trying to figure out how to live in this new world.
I don't think we know what damage he will do because we don't know what he cares about beyond revenge for people having the nerve to try to hold him responsible for his criminal behavior. And there we are likely to have a test of our legal system since it should still be impossible for even a Trump justice department to do too much damage to people who have committed no crimes. But Trump is likely to find an attorney general who will put that to the test.
Yeah his tariff idea is too dumb for anybody but a complete idiot to put it into effect. But does that mean Trump won't do it?
Obviously he is not going to deport every illegal immigrant in the country. The best thing he could do to decrease the number of illegal immigrants in the country is to add those tariffs and let the economic meltdown make the US less desirable as a destination. But he can do a lot of damage while cosplaying trying to do so.
And the idea of replacing our non-partisan civil service with people chosen for their loyalty to president and party seems to have broad support in the Republican party. It is banana republic behavior, but DeSantis seems to have done fine imposing it in Florida.
We could easily wind up with a situation in which blue states protect their residents health while red states prioritize owning the libs and abandon such things.
It is possible that Trump, freed from any consequences from his criminal behavior (although I assume he still has to pay his civil court loses) will content himself with playing golf and basking in his greatness. But it is not something to count on. For one thing while he is playing golf his underlings will be running the executive branch. And that is likely to be a loathsome bunch.
I think it is less what Trump will do as much as what his puppet masters will force him to do. Trump is transactional and spontaneous. He doesn’t strategize for the long term. The Heritage foundation and their ilk are not so silly. They have been planning for this for years and are ready to take what they can.
It won’t take long till we see things go down hill. We’ll see some short term gains as they eat the seed corn, then the hard times will set in. Less protection for unions, elimination of the minimum wage, trashing of the ACA, privatization of Social Security.
I wonder how the Palestinian supporters who were too pure to vote for Kamala will feel when Israel erases the Palestinian population and Trump cheers them on. Putin will now have free rein to conquer Ukraine and set his sights on Poland. Trump will take the US out of NATO setting the stage for war in Europe. Things will get really bad.
Trump may not survive four years. At least he will likely become openly senile and get kicked out. Then Vance, Peter Thiel’s lickspittle, will take over and things will go from bad to worse. If there is another election it will be a sham election like they hold in Russia. Maybe only Republican’s will be allowed to vote.
This election did reveal, more than the others, the nature of the American populace. People are not that smart, they don’t think things through and are susceptible to manipulation. I recommend Influence by Robert Cialdini. He explains how people can be manipulated.
When Israel "erases the Palestinian population" will Palestinian supporters notice a difference from what is happening under Biden?
God only knows... what he'll do to trans people.
To start: Cross-sex hormones will be banned for adults. And insurance plans will be prevented from providing coverage for any kind of transition health care.
Forget it, Jake. It’s MAGAtown.
+1
Up to 10 million 2020 Biden voters stayed home. That was the most significant factor in the outcome. The seeds were sown in 2020 when Democrats nominated a man who was obviously going to create problems if he decided to run for re-election. Those problems intensified when it became clear, after he did so decide, that he was unfit for the task.
It's not surprising that lots of lukewarm Democrat-leaning Americans felt deceived and betrayed, and decided they couldn't be bothered voting at all. Nor is there anything Kamala Harris could have done to change their minds.
So are those 10million 'stay-at-homes' the reason why the polls - and hence also Kevin - got the predictions so very wrong ?
And why does anybody pay any attention to the polls after so many failures ?
In 1984, Ronald Reagan won re-election by 18% of the popular vote, or 58.8% of voters. Voter turnout was 55.2%. That means, of possible voters, Reagan's landslide involved winning the votes of 32.46% of the possible total.
It's premature to look at 2024 numbers, but if turnout was around 66% and Trump holds to 51% of the popular vote, that means winning 33.66% of the possible total, meaning Reagan's landslide actually represented a smaller percentage of possible voters than Trump's victory today.
Anyone seeking to cast "blame" over this vote could easily, say, point to Republicans in the Senate in 2021 who refused to impeach Trump despite all their speeches about the endangering of democracy. Or they could as easily point to the rural/city divide or the men/women divide and accuse Democrats of neglecting the group that overwhelmingly supported Trump.
It might be more useful to ask questions like what members of both parties could do in terms of policy to improve the lives of all Americans, including those on both side of those divides. But political reporters don't care about helping people and so long as politicians pay little price, they might not either.
One thing I'm absolutely convinced of: so long as news reports focus almost exclusively on the electoral college and ignore things like turnout numbers, a lot of important information about how our democracy works remains obscured. Also, overuse of percentages without raw numbers: if Harris wins a larger percentage of a smaller number, or a smaller percentage of a larger number, that matters, but I saw a lot of coverage that only seemed concerned with the percentages.
> it might be more useful
Except that those questions were both asked and answered, and the answers were conveniently ignored.
* Working on policies to improve housing availability, affordability, and ownership;
* Working on policies to make college education more affordable and available;
* Continuing to onshore manufacturing;
* Passing the bipartisan immigration and border control agreement that Trump torpedoed;
* Restoring previous tax-rates on corporations to help reduce the deficit.
There's more, but that's a reasonable list off the top of my head.
> Not because a newly unbound Donald Trump will wreak havoc on American democracy. I've never believed that. He remains too ignorant, too vain, and too undisciplined to do that.
1) Trump successfully weakened the Supreme Court as an institution.
2) Trump attempted to weaken the federal government by making employees easier to fire, but started too late in his term. This time he will start early. And, see (1), there's reason to expect that the courts will let him do this. Trump will attack the IRS. And he will appoint a justice department lead that stop investigating Trump and who will harrass Hunter Biden and other Trump enemies.
3) Trump will again violate the constitution by using the office of the president for personal profit (e.g. booking government meetings at Trump properties). This continues to normalize this sort of constitutional violation.
4) Trump engaged in multiple acts to overturn a free and fair election: pressuring Georgia state officials to change their vote count; pressuring Mike Pence to not certify the election results; instigating a riot on capitol hill. He's now had four years to think about how to do better next time, and he will be more careful to choose more effective co-conspirators.
Agree on your substantive points, and I think he'll move fast to get key people in place. He cares personally about DOJ, top military leadership, setting up a domestic paramilitary, IRS, and just a few other specific functions; others he doesn't give a rat's ass about but is happy to let people like RFK and Elmo create chaos to cover the looting and other malfeasance.
But the big danger is the adherents like S Miller who will draft in his slipstream and have very specific goals in mind when it comes to things like immigration, agency authorities, etc. This is where Project 2025 is most clear, that there are people with fully thought out plans to dismantle much of what's been built up since the Civil War by way of federal government services and national coordination and oversight. That I think will go full-bore from a very early point.
So we're about to embark on a grand experiment, testing whether a modern 50-state post-industrial economy can function within an early 19C governing structure. Personally, I think people are going to be surprised to find how much lubrication Uncle Sam provides by way of information, guidelines, incentives, grants, and general helpfulness to keep that economy and society functioning, and how deeply ordinary businesses and local governments need that lubrication.