America Failed

[Overlander]

I am done trying to prevent MAGA from shitty on their own head. You want it, you got it. I hate how many people are going to get hurt or killed but I cannot continue to try to convince MAGA morons that they are morons. They have chosen their course, deal with the consequences.

100%.

[BiggDick]

Sooo

I can't help but feel compelled to post on the pols bored at least a little.

Sorry to renege on any previous word. But, come on, the republic is in too ridiculous a place not to.

So maybe let's just like not make a big a deal about it. Simple as that. Except that's just still way too big a deal, I guess.

Or just blame the Real Del Valle.

Or just...I dunno...deal with it?

And he and his inner circle, they refuse to believe the polls. They refused to believe he was unpopular. They refuse to acknowledge until very late that anyone could be upset about inflation. And they just kept telling us that his presidency was historic and it was the greatest economy ever. We just heard him again say that it’s the greatest economy ever. Clearly, 7-80 percent of voters don’t believe that. They don’t believe that about their own personal financial situation, but they just keep telling us that.

And then after the debate, the Biden people told us that the polls were fine and Biden was still the strongest candidate. They were privately telling reporters at the time that Kamala Harris couldn’t win. So, they were shivving Kamala Harris to reporters while they told everyone else, not a time for an open process. And his vice president can’t win, so he’s the strongest candidate. Then we find out when the Biden campaign becomes the Harris campaign, that the Biden campaign’s own internal polling at the time when they were telling us he was the strongest candidate, showed that Donald Trump was going to win 400 electoral votes. That’s what their own internal polling said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... ral-votes/

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/pod-s ... ral-votes/

[BiggDick]

and in tonight's episode of, trickle down economics...

When Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to a locally owned brewery in New Hampshire to talk about helping small businesses — a major plank of her economic platform — she made sure that one group of Americans felt included: millionaires who wanted to keep more of their profits from selling stocks and real estate.

“If you earn a million dollars a year or more, the tax rate on your long-term capital gains will be 28 percent under my plan,” Ms. Harris said in that campaign speech this fall. “Because we know when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad-based economic growth.”

The moment stuck out. In remarks that her campaign had pitched as a major address to the middle class, Ms. Harris offered a striking concession on tax rates for the wealthy — an olive branch that she used to present herself as more business friendly than President Biden, who had sought a higher rate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/us/p ... onomy.html

[KUTradition]

Obama said as much years ago, and a number of us have alluded to it here

https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/tru ... dscape-fox

[jfish26]

Obama said as much years ago, and a number of us have alluded to it here

https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/tru ... dscape-fox

Which relates to the “let it fail” point.

Politically speaking, helping people who will not only lack awareness that you’re helping them, but who will actively hate you for trying, is a sucker’s game.

[Sparko]

Truth

[JKLivin]

Obama said as much years ago, and a number of us have alluded to it here

https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/tru ... dscape-fox

Which relates to the “let it fail” point.

Politically speaking, helping people who will not only lack awareness that you’re helping them, but who will actively hate you for trying, is a sucker’s game.

Speaking as a member of the majority that elected Trump again and handed control of both houses of Congress to the Republicans, this condescending, dismissive attitude is a major part of your party's downfall. Nobody likes to be looked down upon, and nobody who knows they are being looked down upon wants to hear anything the person looking down on them has to say.

Person after person I have talked to was sick of being told that inflation was their imagination or that they should view it in the context of the rest of the world. They don't think the border being overrun is "not a big deal," and they don't appreciate their tax money being sent overseas. Being called garbage, just like being called deplorable, just motivated them to vote the opposite way and to be vocal about it.

I guarantee that most of those who voted for Trump feel like I do about him. He is not a good person. He's not the best this country can do. We'd love an alternative, but your party seems stuck in this "it's her turn" mode that insists that we have to have a person of color who is also a woman who is also lefthanded and has two different colored eyes, actual qualifications and fitness for the job be damned.

Just as in 2016, the 2024 landslide was a giant middle finger at people like all of you here who look down your nose at the people who make this country work. In the immortal words of Trad: Do better.

[KUTradition]

Obama said as much years ago, and a number of us have alluded to it here

https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/tru ... dscape-fox

Which relates to the “let it fail” point.

Politically speaking, helping people who will not only lack awareness that you’re helping them, but who will actively hate you for trying, is a sucker’s game.

Speaking as a member of the majority that elected Trump again and handed control of both houses of Congress to the Republicans, this condescending, dismissive attitude is a major part of your party's downfall. Nobody likes to be looked down upon, and nobody who knows they are being looked down upon wants to hear anything the person looking down on them has to say.

Person after person I have talked to was sick of being told that inflation was their imagination or that they should view it in the context of the rest of the world. They don't think the border being overrun is "not a big deal," and they don't appreciate their tax money being sent overseas. Being called garbage, just like being called deplorable, just motivated them to vote the opposite way and to be vocal about it.

I guarantee that most of those who voted for Trump feel like I do about him. He is not a good person. He's not the best this country can do. We'd love an alternative, but your party seems stuck in this "it's her turn" mode that insists that we have to have a person of color who is also a woman who is also lefthanded and has two different colored eyes, actual qualifications and fitness for the job be damned.

Just as in 2016, the 2024 landslide was a giant middle finger at people like all of you here who look down your nose at the people who make this country work. In the immortal words of Trad: Do better.

i thought you didn’t read my posts?

giggles…still

and, do better, still

[pdub]

Not that I didn’t see this coming.
I think Christian white people - largely men - ( yes Trump gained some of the Latino vote - again largely men - but Harris still won the majority ) were concerned about their role in society and felt abandoned/attacked. They were also not happy with the recovery of the economy, specifically their individual purchasing power, after the pandemic.

I think Democrats can take part of the blame here for not being realistic with the health of their candidate earlier.

The failure isn’t how they felt per se—it is the candidate that they stood behind.

It is important to note there was a Republican primary and this was who was chosen to address their issues so when people like Psych say, “we’d love an alternative” well, they had many.

He is the embodiment of the worst of this country. A cheater. A bigot. A felon. A sore looser. A liar. A terrible role model. A man solely out for his money and his ego. And a man who at best riled up his base after he lost in 20 just enough to cause something he didn’t intend and, at worst, was trying with everything he had to overturn the Democratic process.

He conned the people yet again with promises he can fix things. He will try his best to give tax breaks to the wealthy. He will try his best to institute tariffs. And deport immigrants. And absolve himself of crimes or misconduct. It remains to be seen if any of that will actually work in any positive way.

I’m doubting it.

And for those like Psych who ignored all of the above egregious flaws and red flags just so they could stick their middle finger to America, well:
Fucking shameful.

[jfish26]

I was wrong about what would and would not matter in how people filled in the bubble at the top of the ticket.

How people voted when presented with issues (and not people), however, paints a much more muddled picture, of where the American mood is, than is suggested by the results at the top of the ticket.

Take Missouri, where Trump and Hawley cruised, and voters ALSO stood up for reproductive rights and an increased minimum wage and other protections for labor.

Take Florida, where Trump and Scott cruised, but a strong majority of voters ALSO stood up for reproductive rights.

I’m not saying the Democrats lost the White House solely or even primarily because of candidate weakness. The result was entirely consistent with voters in peer countries holding the incumbent party leadership to blame for inflation.

I do think it’s worthwhile to note that the Democrats lost less vote share than the incumbent parties in other nations, and I do find the mismatch between voting trends (as to people versus issues) instructive, as well.

[KUTradition]

and so it begins…

Trump Victory Leaves China Calling the Shots at COP29 Climate Negotiations

[DeletedUser]

Would Kamala have had better control over China? (Not disagreeing, just curious)

Trump needs to adjust his stance on our involvement of the UN. 100%.

[jfish26]

and so it begins…

Trump Victory Leaves China Calling the Shots at COP29 Climate Negotiations

Have you read the Remembrance of Earth's Past series? What we're seeing now doesn't look so unlike what the bad guys (?) did in that one.

[hartjack8]

I was wrong about what would and would not matter in how people filled in the bubble at the top of the ticket.

How people voted when presented with issues (and not people), however, paints a much more muddled picture, of where the American mood is, than is suggested by the results at the top of the ticket.

Take Missouri, where Trump and Hawley cruised, and voters ALSO stood up for reproductive rights and an increased minimum wage and other protections for labor.

Take Florida, where Trump and Scott cruised, but a strong majority of voters ALSO stood up for reproductive rights.

I’m not saying the Democrats lost the White House solely or even primarily because of candidate weakness. The result was entirely consistent with voters in peer countries holding the incumbent party leadership to blame for inflation.

I do think it’s worthwhile to note that the Democrats lost less vote share than the incumbent parties in other nations, and I do find the mismatch between voting trends (as to people versus issues) instructive, as well.

There is a tendency to blame the incumbents and you are seeing that across the world.

But the biggest question was Biden's cognitive health. When this issue became evidently apparent it ended his campaign. The ensuing move with Harris just probably did not sit well with enough voters.
Say Biden was 70 and 100% healthy this maybe does not happen. When things are not going well the incumbents take the blame.

[KUTradition]

what’s not going well?

[jfish26]

what’s not going well?

I understand what you're saying.

But as the local champion of the (failed) "just improve things on the ground, don't worry about the convincing" approach, I think it is clear that the "going well" is not being (or, was not?) distributed in a manner that shores up the D flank politically.

And that failure - which is both practical and on messaging - is what gives people room to draw exactly wrong conclusions; obviously someone who feels burdened by inflation should run the hell away from the idea of deporting 4% of the workforce and imposing universal tariffs.

But nonetheless.

[...]

That many Americans not only believe incredibly strange and wrong things but will also dutifully and willfully wreck their lives in service to those beliefs is not really a new development. It is not just true of Americans, either, although a strident kookery built around rancid delusions is and has long been a fundamental American way of being. That the depravity and abstraction of American politics at this moment is to some extent the result of a bad and worsening information environment—of too many of those individuated alternative realities being nudged outward into Escher-ian impossibility by corrosive algorithms and the influence campaigns of outlandishly predatory elites and various toxic and longstanding cultural derangements—seems to me self-evidently true, but also insufficient.

For one thing, it was true well before Donald Trump won a second term in office. While the depravities and abstractions of all that bad information were necessary conditions for that outcome, they are also a market's response to a depraved and abstracted—and precarious, and cruel, and crumbling—daily reality. Everywhere, in every way, American culture works to prise people apart and keep them confused and worried and mean; this is much easier to do when people think of themselves only as themselves, and not as part of any greater community or project, which is why America's reactionaries have so dedicated themselves to tearing down or splitting up those kinds of communities and projects. This is a good way to keep people working and shopping and pliable, but it is also corrosive and lonely. No one really seems to like it, or to know what to do about that. Living this way, and being vulnerable in all the ways everyone is always so vulnerable, is an atomizing and deranging thing, and it has created a culture and a country that is atomized and deranged as a result.

A healthy culture could not have produced a Trump, let alone elevated him in the way that ours has. He has been a gaudy and tumid metonym for masterful and unaccountable wealth in the broader culture for decades now and managed to maintain that status in defiance of, among many other things, more or less every single thing he says and does. What he represents is powerful enough—to be rich, for one thing, is to be safe in a way that no one else ever really is—to outweigh how flailing and oafish and stupid he is in representing it. If anything, it proves the point; when you're a star, they really do let you do it. The social sicknesses at work here are old enough and powerful enough to have shaped Trump himself into the pitiless and pitiable thing that he is, and then to have made him inevitable, and now finally to have delivered something like the impunity that he has always claimed as his by right. Look this reality in the face and there is just no getting around how shameful it all is.

Or you could just look at something else. That so many of the people who voted for Trump believe things about him that are manifestly not true—that he will protect the right to get an abortion, that he will Do Good On The Economy and be circumspect about only deporting people who deserve it, that he will work on behalf of ordinary people and not their bosses's boss's boss, that he will do any work at all on the behalf of anyone but himself—even after he already did not do any of those things during his recent previous term as president is a testament to how powerful these abstractions are. It is just very hard to know things, now, and the systems and spaces through which people might come to know true things are being eroded by irresponsible capital and razed by reactionary political actors, both of which understand (correctly) that the success of their respective projects depends upon people being stupid, suspicious, and scared. But at some point the decision to believe whatever Trump is lying about at any given moment or to simply brush it off is just that—a choice, made by people who more or less understand what they're choosing and that they're choosing it. The things Trump actually says and does just seem not to really matter as much as they should, or really at all, to the people who support him. It's not that they take him either seriously or literally, as the old first-term formulation went; they simply take him for granted as whatever they've imagined him to be.

This strange imaginative project is itself the result of a broader failure of imagination with and within which we all live. The triumph of Trump, which fits within a broader global trend against incumbents, was also about the failure of the Democrats to offer something that seemed sufficiently different. The promise of a better-managed and incrementally improved version of the present was better and more coherent on the merits than Trump's chaotic and bigoted revanchism, but ultimately couldn't surmount how loathsome this present had become. It made for a pretty undignified end to whatever this last moment was—a party promising ostentatiously moderate institutionalism and meliorism at home and the usual brutality abroad lost to a no-shit oligarchic power play built around increasingly less idle genocidal fantasies, primarily because many of the voters that had voted for the regime overseeing the current moment couldn't quite find it in themselves to vote to keep that moment going any longer.

"Everyone is quoting Gramsci on the interregnum, but that assumes that something new will be or could be born," Mike Davis wrote back in 2022. He looked at that tenuously post-Covid world and couldn't see it. There were wars and politics, as there are always wars and politics, but not any meaningful broad-based organization or movement towards the common good. In its place was what Davis called "pathological presentism, making all calculations on the basis of short-term bottom-lines in order to allow the super-rich to consume all the good things of the earth within their lifetimes." We can see, from this moment, what such a future might look like.

We already know how it will work, from one moment to the next, because things are more or less working that way—a bunch of choices, but nothing like an actual alternative; the lurid bloom of every variety of hothouse extraction and scam; a wild and wary lonesomeness pretending to be freedom; some screens on which to watch the richest people human history has ever made congratulate or feud with each other; machines of violence pounding away all day and all night. The people have elected a government that will be dedicated to making sure that nothing gets better for anyone but those already in charge, and which will work to lock in the miserable present that they presently command in place of any less brutal future. They are counting on ancient cultural fantasies and state-of-the-art methods of derangement and confusion to provide cover for that, and on being able to rip up any methods of recourse or remediation faster than people will be able to realize that they're doing it. They may be right, but they absolutely will not fix any of the problems that brought them to power; those problems are all that this elite has got. If there is hope to find in this, it is that people do not seem to like living this way, and keep trying to find some other way to be. If the work ahead comes down to finding and building a future that might end this present, that sense of dissatisfaction seems like as good a place as any to start.

https://defector.com/beyond-belief

[JKLivin]

Not that I didn’t see this coming.
I think Christian white people - largely men - ( yes Trump gained some of the Latino vote - again largely men - but Harris still won the majority ) were concerned about their role in society and felt abandoned/attacked. They were also not happy with the recovery of the economy, specifically their individual purchasing power, after the pandemic.

I think Democrats can take part of the blame here for not being realistic with the health of their candidate earlier.

The failure isn’t how they felt per se—it is the candidate that they stood behind.

It is important to note there was a Republican primary and this was who was chosen to address their issues so when people like Psych say, “we’d love an alternative” well, they had many.

He is the embodiment of the worst of this country. A cheater. A bigot. A felon. A sore looser. A liar. A terrible role model. A man solely out for his money and his ego. And a man who at best riled up his base after he lost in 20 just enough to cause something he didn’t intend and, at worst, was trying with everything he had to overturn the Democratic process.

He conned the people yet again with promises he can fix things. He will try his best to give tax breaks to the wealthy. He will try his best to institute tariffs. And deport immigrants. And absolve himself of crimes or misconduct. It remains to be seen if any of that will actually work in any positive way.

I’m doubting it.

And for those like Psych who ignored all of the above egregious flaws and red flags just so they could stick their middle finger to America, well:
Fucking shameful.

Meh. I don't know that there were really any viable candidates on the Republican side. It was essentially a foregone conclusion, as there aren't many others who aren't indistinguishable from the Democrats.

I was so disgusted with Trump in 2020 that I couldn't bring myself to vote for him. I allowed myself to be convinced that who is POTUS really doesn't make much difference, and I voted third party. The last four years were enough to shock me back into understanding that I was wrong, and that I would be better off holding my nose and voting for someone with whom I agree on some points than standing by and leaving things in the hands of people with whom I disagree fundamentally.

As I've said, I would have gladly voted for Tulsi Gabbard over Trump, had she made the party switch earlier, and I'd vote for her in the future. I'd also back RFK, Jr.

[KUTradition]

meh

[pdub]

“I don’t know if there were any viable candidates so I chose one of the worst possible candidates that has ever run in the history of our country.”

[KUTradition]

but he played to psych’s worst character traits