Last night when the election returns were turning truly nightmarish, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore and switched from MSNBC to Netflix to watch the latest episode of the Great British Bake-Off. GBBO is my security blanket in stressful times — a digital Xanax lick installed next to my sofa.
My husband, who I’ve mentioned before is a “normie,” i.e., not a politics junkie like we are, was snoring away on the other half of the couch. Later, he woke up and saw that I was watching GBBO and said, “Oh, shit. That bad?”
I let him know it was bad indeed but that all was not irredeemably lost, at least not yet. He nodded, got up, went to bed and slept like a fucking rock.
I want to be like that.
It’s not that the mister cares less or enjoys more privilege than the average reader here. He votes in every election and votes the same as me 99% of the time, with the 1% representing rare disagreements on stuff like ballot initiatives or primary preferences. He just doesn’t feel compelled to pay attention all the time.
I want to be like that.
He was happy when Obama won. He was horrified when Trump won. He’s dismayed that the current election is so close. He gets what it all means. But he can compartmentalize or something in a way I just can’t seem to manage, and I think that makes him a happier person.
He was interested in the returns, but he would never sit around refreshing a voter turnout database from Duval County, Florida, trying to read tea leaves, like I did yesterday. He cares about who’s in charge, but it’s mostly background noise to him.
I want it to be mostly background noise to me too. I don’t want to care less, donate less, volunteer less or anything like that. I just want to focus on it less.
Valued commenter Baud and I briefly discussed the concept of converting to normie-hood this morning, in a joking way, but I’m serious. I’m ready to kick the habit. Or at least cut back.
As soon as I’m done with my projects for the day, I’m going to go spy on some birds. Expect blurry photos later!
Open thread, and I mean any topic is fine, including the raging catastrophuck.
janesays
The thing that stings the most in all of this is just how badly the pollsters were off in the Senate race predictions.
Like, Jaime Harrison just got annihilated by Lindsey Graham. It wasn’t remotely close. I think most people accepted that Graham would probably eke out the win, but everybody seemed to think Harrison would make it super close. He didn’t. That was a $100 million campaign with absolutely nothing to show for it. And to be fair, the problem had nothing to do with Harrison. He’s a great guy. But he never actually had a prayer in that race, nor did any Democrat.
I’m so disgusted with this country right now.
schrodingers_cat
We are winning let’s act like it. It may not have been the landslide we were counting on but we are winning.
schrodingers_cat
@janesays: The south that has voted for racists for as long as we have been a country is not going to change that quickly.
MomSense
I wish I could be a normie, but I just can’t.
Right now things seem so bleak. The Covid positive rates in our state have doubled in the last week. They’ve announced new closings and regulations on gatherings.
I cannot believe half the fucking country looked around at the shitshow in our country and wanted more.
Sister Golden Bear
I wish I could focus less on it as well.
Unfortunately, it’s not just the election, it’s things like today’s SCOTUS hearing on an LGBTQ rights case—and while I know not to read too much into questions from the Justices, it’s not looking good.
Jim Appleton
Wisconsin recount sure seems like grasping at straws.
IANAL, but hard to see how iDJT’s habitual aggressive litigiousness has much of any route at this point. This is different from business shenanigans and libel bluster.
leeleeFL
I refused to watch, kept HGTV on all night. Woke up to better possibilities. Only looked here since waking up. Really considering some down- time. This Country is at least half-borked and apparently going to be that way awhile. I am almost 70 and I am very tired. It will get better, but I need to look at your blurry photos of birds instead if reading all the time. Actually looking forward to working tonight!
Cameron
Yeah, my original prediction that I was moving back to the Old Country is – unfortunately – coming true.
MisterForkbeard
Going ‘normie’ may be aspirational for me. I mostly shut down yesterday, was a big nervous wreck. My wife soldiered on.
CaseyL
I tried that, back in 2016. It didn’t work. I’ve been a politics junkie literally since my teens, and don’t know how you overcome a lifelong habit.
I am trying really hard to make sense of what this country has become. I keep coming up with the 2007-2008 economic crash. Tens of millions of people lost everything and have never really recovered. I think the long-term effects are a hardened bitterness and desire to drag everything down to their level of misery.
Ronno2018
Yeah, I need to do the same. I just wanted to see the country turn the corner a bit to feel a bit more positive in my life. Hopefully the votes shake out and we get Biden Harris, then we work from there.
It is not like any nationally policy changes will affect me personally if the GOP continues its idiotic rampage on sound public policy. Though creeping fascism could really suck. I am not sure we are seeing that yet though.
Bodacious
Well said. I think I long for the same thing. Intermittent reduction of focus would probably do me some good. I think I can focus on increased mental health breaks going forward.
Yarrow
Mr. Cracker is very fortunate that his ability to live a normal life, or in fact his life itself, doesn’t depend on who is in charge.
mrmoshpotato
A birds and BADGER! ♥️♥️♥️ post coming down the pipeline?
Hooray!
janesays
@schrodingers_cat: Winning what?
I’m super relieved that Biden will (hopefully) squeak out the win, but the senate is almost certainly gone, and we wildly underperformed expectations last night. We’re not going to increase our lead in the House. and will likely start the next Congress with a smaller majority. Downballot races across the country were a disaster.
Not a single piece of legislation is likely to get passed in the next 2 years. The filibuster isn’t going anywhere, court expansion isn’t happening, and DC and PR aren’t going to become states anytime soon. And I have very little hope for a COVID relief package happening now.
I’m glad that Trump may be gone, but that’s the only good thing to possibly come out of last night, and it should never have been anywhere near this close.
This country is broken.
donnah
Interesting. Just as things were going sideways last night, I texted my sis and told her that once this election was settled, I was quitting politics. I’m not a politician, but I’m a junkie. I followed polls, watched MSNBC, watched national news coverage, all of it.
I’m done. If Trump does win, I don’t want to go through four more years of hell, hearing every day about his crimes. I don’t want to lie in bed every night, worried about what Mitch McConnell has done or what stupid Republican senators are saying.
I will follow issues and causes, like immigration, Covid, women’s rights, BLM, environment and the rest, donate and vote, and volunteer when I can. I am not giving up on what’s important. But I’m not gluing myself to the endless barrage of crap. It’s making me sick and it’s making me angry all of the time. I don’t want to be angry all of the time.
I hope I can do it.
VeniceRiley
I’m with you. I’m old and I don’t have kids; so if the planet goes, I won’t be around to see it. And I’ll be in England with my wife, who is just like your husband. She doesn’t pay politics much mind and she sleeps like a rock. I deserve to be happy. I’ll be happy there. Their courts haven’t gone round the bend, at least. I’ll be happily disengaged and walking our dogs on the meadows. maybe I’ll join Dems Abroad so I have some peeps who understand nearby.
janesays
@schrodingers_cat: It’s not changing at all.
As I said before, Graham winning isn’t super shocking. And we could have had a huge night with Graham still winning that race.
Graham winning in an absolute blowout is extremely painful. Same goes for every other one of those senate races where we tricked ourselves into thinking we had a prayer.
The only place that gave me any hope at all last night in the senate races was Georgia, but even there I’m being careful not to get my hopes too high.
JMG
I’d give anything to go back to scanning the front page of the news Web sites and then heading straight to sports. But it’s not gonna happen. If Biden wins, he’ll need an army of supporters. If Trump wins (he still could, Arizona may have been prematurely called), there will be no time — except for him of course.
ballerat
@janesays: It was South Carolina, cradle of the civil war, and a black guy who asked for power. I would be shocked if he won.
Nevertheless, I did donate to Harrison’s campaign. I can be quixotic that way.
Morzer
Even Scott Walker – yes, that one – has said that a recount in Wisconsin ain’t gonna change a thing. So, there’s that.
I understand the disappointment, BUT:
mrmoshpotato
@MomSense:
Same! Even if the racists and fascists were as happy as pigs in shit for 3 years, if someone you knew died from COVID-19, wouldn’t you pull your head out of your ass?
(Yes, I know. Hurting the right people, cult, liberal tears, etc.)
R-Jud
@VeniceRiley: Um, speaking as someone who’s been in England for 15 years, I doubt it’ll be that simple. But if you land in the Midlands, absolutely look me and The Child up.
guachi
My wife doesn’t follow politics on a daily basis. She figured Trump was an asshat and can’t believe people don’t see it. She thinks Peter (in MI) sucks, though I haven’t asked why, and voted for James. She’s military absentee so read up on MI races and ballot stuff. She voted.
She tuned out all the political posts on FB (that I don’t see because her far right relatives all unfriended me, lol).
She’s probably a perfectly typical college educated white female that was repulsed by Trump and didn’t need to dwell on it day after day.
David C
You can join me in obsessing about Covid or climate change. For me they’re at least scientific.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
@MomSense: I think half the country wants this shitshow we’re stuck in. I think the bigots, homophobes and misogynists decided that if they can’t be the only ones who matter in this country, then they’ll just burn the country down.
They’re abusers.
WereBear
Ah, that’s what you meant by Normie in the other thread! Good luck with that…
zhena gogolia
@MomSense:
That’s how I feel. But if Biden can become president I’m going to be happy.
Omnes Omnibus
How many people would have welcomed this result if it had been offered back in May?
mali muso
My DH is pretty normie and also pretty pessimistic as he’s a black man in a racist country. Last night I was the one freaking out while he was sanguine. I guess from his vantage point, he just expects the worst from white voters and is not phased when reality bears that out.
Bluegirlfromwyo
I helped my dad in his political campaigns when I was a kid, back when a deep red state didn’t automatically hate democrats. Caught the bug then but I long to let it go now. What will probably keep me from doing it relates to the comment by Woodrow/asim on another thread: There are a lot of folks in America who have kept fighting after being knocked out a lot worse. Seems like they need the support of non-normies like us. Maybe I’m wrong but I wonder.
Cermet
@Morzer: And Georgia is well within shooting distence as is NC!
And if all goes well, this trime next year the fat moron that is orange will be appealing his convection and bankrupted and having his properties seized! Take joy in these great accomplishments (again, if the elctron holds – which it will.)
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: All I really care about is Trump out of the White House. The rest is gravy.
ETA: And upset as we are, it isn’t half the country. Quite a bit less than half. It’s the EC that distorts everything.
jonas
@janesays: I’m wondering if there wasn’t a substantial Bradley Effect there.
Betty Cracker
@CaseyL:
You may be on to something there. We started out with a high asshole quotient anyway, and lots of people glommed onto spite and tribe as their way of getting a malicious thrill out of perceived enemies’ misery.
I feel like I’ve become too much like them, tbh. I’m not happy about that. I don’t mean to say Trump supporters deserve anything but contempt, but I don’t want their misery to be the way I get my jollies. That’s just not healthy.
Yarrow
@R-Jud: Yep. The UK’s hurt is really going to get going on 1 Jan when Brexit hits.
guachi
@Omnes Omnibus:
Just based on the Presidential results, if you had said “I won’t tell you the margins but WI, MI, PA, AZ, GA flip to Biden” I’d have taken it in a heartbeat. And I’ve have thought you were mad saying GA flipped but not NC or FL.
Doesn’t mean I enjoy having to go through the stress of election night. :)
VeniceRiley
@R-Jud: Suffolk. But it should be that simple. Why do you imagine it won’t be?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@janesays: The odd part of Graham was he seemed genuinely terrified the last few weeks. Maybe these GOPers clowns are so used to rigged elections they stress out at any kind of challenge.
frosty
Moi aussi. I want to quit spending 8+ hours a day on B-J and the news. But here I am again. All you Valued Commenters are just too interesting and insightful!’
R-Jud
@Yarrow: Thanks for reminding me. [starts counting tins in the cupboards again]
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
Just as Trump has had a devastating negative effect on the national mood and character in his four years, Biden-Harris can have an important reverse effect in the next 4-8 years.
We’ve been bringing our Biden-Harris sign in every night since it got vandalized. Yesterday I said to my husband, “Just leave it out there, it doesn’t matter now.” A few minutes later I saw him bringing it in. I asked him why, and he said, “We’ll need it in four years.” I love him so much.
Isua
I need to stop reading basically anything on the Internet, I just end up getting so angry. (That includes my timesinks reading about terrible mothers in law, gotta cut that out.) I need to read fiction in actual books. I need to write fanfic or something. I need to knit more. I need to take the kids bike riding. I need to stop reading about politics hours a day. And spend that time editing people’s attempts at academic writing, so I can afford to send some money here and there to activist groups.
Yarrow
@Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA): They absolutely do. It’s why so many people have been taken in by the QAnon stuff. It’s exciting. It’s fun. It makes them feel like part of something. They’re in the know and you’re not. Trump is part of that – entertaining, provocative, protects the “right people” (them), punishes “bad” people. Etc. It’s like a reality show but real. People love that kind of stuff.
p.a.
1) Let’s not forget the power of incumbency. We may have beat an incumbent seeking reelection for only the 3rd time since 1932. There’s a too large group of people who only vote for progressive change when their pocketbooks are devastated. ’32, 2008.
2) I forgot because I was getting headbutted by tuxedo cat while trying to type 1).
Omnes Omnibus
@guachi: No one does. I am just trying to offer some perspective.
jonas
If Biden does eke out this win, McConnell’s just going default right back to his “obstruct everything” playbook that worked so well on Obama. But at least we’ll have the executive. At least the outward-looking of America will no longer be one of cruelty, xenophobia, and incompetence. We can put competent patriots back in charge of key departments. Then we can worry about taking on McConnell.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
Settled for? Absolutely. Welcomed? No. I wanted Collins gone.
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
It could be his campaign’s internal polling was off too
Mel
@VeniceRiley: Need a nanny (cat or dog or possibly witty children) nanny? I’d pack my bags in a second at this point.
jl
Glad I sheltered in place last night. For anyone having trouble not obsessively focusing, even this morning, might be a good idea to wait until all the elections are called before trying to diagnose what went right and what went wrong.
Looks like the biggest threat to our way of life, Trump and the Trumpsters running the executive were beaten, so I’m thankful for that. I’ll wait until the election results are finalized before I worry about it. Nothing I can do about it right now.
I will note that some one who exemplifies my idea of the way the Democrats should go in the future, Katie Porter, seems to have easily won her second term in a very purple, borderline red, district that had GOP representation for quite a while. Also, Josh Harder, a more moderate type, but good enough on the big issues like climate change, also did well in a similar borderline district. His district is next to where I spent most of my youth, so I watch that area and contribute.
West of the Cascades
It seems pretty clear that a substantial number of people responding to polls lied – presumably a lot of Republicans looking to “own the libs.” Steve M has a good column summarizing some of this. https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2020/11/theyre-angry-and-paranoid-they-just.html
As a public interest litigator, I’ve been increasingly depressed at how the legal system works in this country. Not winning the Senate, even if Biden wins, means no reform in the courts, no new Biden judges for two years, continued dominance in most circuits and the Supreme Court by a reactionary, anti-democratic judiciary. Not being able to beat Susan Fucking Collins is profoundly demoralizing as I try to sit here and write a brief about a threatened bird while the country is all LOL Nothing Matters 70 Million of Us Think Trump Is OK. It’s a real struggle to want to keep working in a system that’s nominally neutral but in reality becoming increasingly one of injustice. But the alternative is giving up, and I’m not ready to do that yet.
SiubhanDuinne
37, 24, 11 (I think those are the numbers). Someone on MSNBC said a few minutes ago that Biden has 37 different combinations of states he still needs to reach or surpass 270, while Trump has 24 combinations available to him. The 11 is the number of combinations it would take for a 269-269 tie, which would send it to the House.
Oklahomo
I’m just waiting for the McNaughton art work showing a weeping Trump, Jesus, and Uncle Sam as Joe Biden is sworn in standing on a mountain of fake ballots and fetuses.
TheTruffle
@schrodingers_cat: We are keeping the House, yes?
R-Jud
@VeniceRiley: I don’t imagine, I live here. It’s also full of racists who will cheerfully share their racist opinions with you apropos of absofuckinglutely nothing as if expecting you’ll agree. I also routinely encounter taxi drivers of varying ethnicities who will happily tell you that they think Trump has taken “a strong hand” in dealing with crime in the US. I cannot count the number of times I have pushed back against comments about immigrants by pointing out that I’m an immigrant and heard the reply “but you’re one of the GOOD ones”.
And the ruling party is privatising everything in sight–chipping away at the NHS and the tertiary education system and etc and so on.
Also, we’re nestled just below the US on the COVID-19 death ratios per 100,000 people. This in spite of the heroism of the NHS.
Yarrow
@CaseyL: @Betty Cracker:
The other thing you’re missing is the rise of social media. Facebook wasn’t a thing in 2008. By 2016 it was being used by our enemies to manipulate people to vote certain ways. We have not dealt with how social media is destroying our democracy.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
Betty, are you proposing a Jackals Anonymous program? Something where we develop 12 steps to get back to being “normal”, whatever that means in this bastard of a year?
Chacal Charles Calthrop
I’d be a normie except for climate change. If the Dunning-Kroger half of the nation wants to vote themselves to death, that’s their choice, their Covid, their problem. But we’re f*cking over the planet & it just isn’t fair to future generations
rikyrah
Want to relax?
Just watch Chunk and friends ☺️
https://youtu.be/6wtdKK4HiGY
CaseyL
@Betty Cracker: Just the fact that you live in a redneck part of Red Florida makes you a better person than I.
I was thinking of someday moving somewhere less expensive and less densely populated than Seattle, but all the spots I was thinking about are deep deep red. I won’t do that. I will not live in an area populated by Republicans.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): Considering the way Graham whines about money maybe his donations are down, something that would send fear threw the strongest willed of Republican.
One of the things I am noting is all the money in the world doesn’t buy an election. Maybe their billionaire donors might realize they are wasting their cash donating to campaigns like they do.
WaterGirl
If Biden wins, and he is our President instead of Trump, everything changes. No more kids in cages. No more rogue DOJ. We can start getting COVID under control.
Even without the Senate, we can do a lot, and un-do a lot. You think there aren’t one or two R senators who won’t vote to save the ACA? A senator or two quit or croak or decided to spend more time with family, and we are in the majority.
Buck up, if Biden wins, we are still in the fight.
jl
@West of the Cascades: I think that is another area where we have to wait to find out what really happened. I’ve read that local GOP, who probably more competent at actually doing things than the Trumpsters, swooped in to Hispanic areas and gave them a big pitch of lies and BS in the weeks right before the election. And that Dems might have missed that and not responded. I don’t know if that is true. Some of my info is from local Democrats who wanted more resources, and everyone who is disappointed by the results will say that they could have won if they had more resources.
I think we need to wait until the dust settles and can get some reliable info before we commit ourselves to a particular theory on what happened.
Spanky
I just had an unusual (in that I’ve never before seen) pair of birds at the feeder. They lingered and chowed down for so long on the black oil sunflower seeds that I was able to Google “grosbeak yellow forehead” in real time and know that I was watching two Evening Grosbeaks. Here in Southern MD we’re at the very bottom of the range maps, and the southerly winds of the last few days makes me wonder where they’ve been and where they’re going now.
I think my being such a neurotic control freak makes it unlikely if I’ll ever subside into Normie range.
Kilgore Trout
@schrodingers_cat:
This. Getting the malignant narcissist out of the White House is huge. Yeah, it’s going to suck having a McConnell controlled Senate, but one step at a time.
guachi
@WaterGirl: The ACA won’t be saved if the Supreme Court rules against it because McConnell won’t let the bill come to a vote.
Steeplejack
@TheTruffle:
Dems on track to keep the House but lose a handful of seats. The Times live tracker has it 200-185 for the Dems with 50 seats still to be called.
Dems flipped two seats, but the Republicans flipped seven seats, for a net gain of five.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, and Hilary Clinton, Obama, and Satan dance around a burning Constitution.
VeniceRiley
@R-Jud: Your care home situation also leaves me cold. But hey ho! I’m only coming for the company of one. And her jerb is, thankfully, secure. I hope she doesn’t catch Covid. And we’re lesbians, but at least we have our white privilege for safety sake. Hopefully, I’ll get up norf for Anne Lister Birthday Weekend next year.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Come sit by me
Jim Appleton
@Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA):
This.
My one minor quibble is that the lunatics I know think they’re burning everyone else’s country down, and they’ll land just fine along with all their comrades.
cope
My own ennui is due more to the state of our nation than the outcomes of elections. I have just always thought most people were good, decent, kind and tolerant because that’s the way my immediate family have always been. A lifetime of seeing examples of how wrong I can be are wearing away at me, though.
At best, I’ll get to vote in 3 more presidential elections. I am not hopeful that we won’t be fighting the same fights until then (and losing too many of them) and resent the idea that we have had to fight these same battles for what is essentially my entire adult life.
Yarrow
@VeniceRiley: If you’re not following immigration issues in the UK you may not be aware of how difficult it is and how precarious immigrants’ lives there can be. Even if they’ve lived there for decades. This recently published book might be worth a look. Sorry for the downer.
ArchTeryx
I wish I could just quit poitics. It’s a lot harder when your life literally depends on the outcome. It isn’t quite as bad this year as it was in 2016 when I was staring the Grim Reaper straight in the face, but it’s really, really bad. Even a Biden win isn’t enough to protect my access to the health care I need to keep alive.
bluefoot
@Yarrow: I’m with you on this. It’s also really hard to compartmentalize when one can see up close and personal the pain and suffering the Republican “ethos” causes. I’ve seen people go bankrupt and die when they shouldn’t have because they couldn’t afford healthcare pre-ACA. I’ve had a gun pulled on me by a cop just for walking while brown in broad daylight in a “nice” suburb of Boston. My sister and her family literally haven’t left their house since the end of Feb because she has a pre-existing condition that means if she gets COVID, she’ll die. (Thankfully, both she and her husband can work remotely for now.) I know people who were in mass shootings. I could go on. Maybe I’ll find a way to continue to carry this and compartmentalize, but not today.
jl
@WaterGirl: I agree. What the Trumpsters did with the post office is criminal and there should be consequences. I think clear that they used criminal means to try to steal the election.
There are news reports that enough ballots were sitting in post offices for over a week to change some district elections, and in Florida’s case, the state election. Later reports I saw said that is not true, the post office just wasn’t able to keep their records current of what had been delivered in the panicked rush to obey court orders to get the ballots delivered by any means necessary. Glad that the fed court in charge, I think it’s judge Sullivan is having a hearing this morning to find out what is up.
IMHO, either case is a gigantic scandal, and an example of criminal behavior by the Trumpsters that posed a real and dire threat to our democracy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
that’s the larger-than-myself concern for me, my personal concern is healthcare. I may have to make a major life change to maintain coverage.
James E Powell
Pennsylvania is counting, the gap is closing, but not as fast as I would like.
The Arizona Republic (PHX) says there are 600K ballots left to count. About 450K are from Maricopa County. Trump will need ~58% to close the gap.
raven
Omnes Omnibus
NOVEMBER 4, 2020 AT 2:21 PM
How many people would have welcomed this result if it had been offered back in May?
nothing?
gene108
The way to normiehood is to unplug from what you are plugged into. Remind yourself no matter how many times you check, you cannot do anything about the outcome.
Stay off Twitter, Balloon-Juice, or other places you go to get political information and find something else to do. When the urge takes you to “just have a peak”, you just force yourself to say “NO”. And keep doing the alternative thing.
VeniceRiley
@Yarrow: have the visa fees and 3 years NHS fees and cash in bank requirements already handled. Marrying a British National. I should be alright.
Brachiator
I avoided watching the election results last night. I admit though, that I woke up much earlier than usual and had to fight an urge to peek at the results. Turns out this was the right thing to do.
And with results dribbling in, I think I will take a break for the rest of the day.
Meanwhile, here is an interesting Guardian UK interview with Joni Mitchell, who is releasing a box set of her earliest recordings.
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@James E Powell:
That sounds good?
schrodingers_cat
@janesays: Winning the electoral college and the Presidency. Senate control may hinge on what happens in Georgia.
Luciamia
Betty, what do you think of this GBBO s season? Japan week? Japan not where your mind goes when you think of baking. And ye gods, rainbow bagels! I thought that trend died out 3 years ago. They always look like extruded Play-Doh.
bluefoot
@CaseyL: Yeah, but a lot of people are voting for the very people who were complicit in the economic crash. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me.
Betty Cracker
@Oklahomo: LMAO! Thank you — that’s truly something to look forward to! :
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: LOL! I’m gonna steal y’all’s comments for a tweet. Hope you don’t mind. :)
trollhattan
Spent mid-to-late evening alternating between blips of Judy Woodruff and “Fleabag” episodes. Our own misadventure made Fleabag’s trainwreck of a life seem much more tame.
Raoul Paste
@Ronno2018: “I just wanted to see the country turn the corner a bit“……
That says it so well. I personally think that the problem is Fox News. They emotionally condition people and turn them into assholes
Yarrow
@raven: We don’t have a result yet. I can’t really answer the question until we do. As far as the House and Senate races that have been called, not exactly excited.
janesays
FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.
Maine was just called for Susan Collins. Gideon has apparently conceded.
The Senate is almost certainly lost.
Sebastian
@janesays:
I don’t buy this.
I have one question I want everyone to answer:
Do you think Trump cheated yes or no and please state one reason why you think that.
Yarrow
@VeniceRiley: That’s what all those EU citizens thought. Oops.
zzyzx
Damnit! Trump got ME-2 according to ABC. I wanted that bonus EV in case someone decided to be an asshole.
Sebastian
@Raoul Paste:
Yes. See the movie “The Brainwashing of my Dad”
trollhattan
@CaseyL:
Same. My half-baked notion of living in the woods evaporated in face of the twin realities of ubiquitous wildfire and Trumper-State of Jeffersonites. (The Venn diagram of the two is a lone solid circle.) And I really like the woods.
John S.
@ArchTeryx: I may not be as vulnerable, but I feel the same way. My “Jewdar” was tingling at the prospect of a Trump win and having to get the fuck out of this country, much like my ancestors felt after WWI and thankfully fled Europe. Plus I have an autistic son and a very emotionally sensitive daughter that I would not want to be brought up with further damage from that orange fartcloud.
I had literally made contingency plans with my employer to relocate to Canada. But I’m feeling pretty optimistic now that will not be necessary.
Haroldo
@MomSense
I’m a former (short term) Mainer – I lived in the Portland area. Back then, and especially now, I cannot figure out why Mainers keep re-electing a mediocrity like Collins to the Senate. (I could understand why LePage got re-elected, though.) Do you have any insights?
Thanks.
Woodrow/asim
As a Black man in SC, yeah. But I’m not giving up.
50 years ago, we were just coming out of American Facism, in the form of Jim Crow. We forget that, sometimes, and only see the immediate times and issues as signals of progress.
I believe the lessons of my forebearers is that we take the wins, and build on them. The GOP didn’t rise into this position in an election cycle! Keep in mind: we talk about the “Southern Strategy” as a 1970s, thing, but we don’t realize it was decades of work, going back to Roosevelt, to develop it. People like GOP Chair Guy Gabrielson spent years building up that coalition of White Supremacists and so-called “conservatives”, until it could be fully deployed to change the electoral map.
And because it’s not talked about, many people discount it? It is that folx are expected a return to a “normal” that never was really there? For me, “normal” was subverted for decades — but you had to be in certain groups to see it, until recently.
Perhaps that is why there is so much shock, in certain quarters?
Betty Cracker
@Luciamia: Yeah, not totally thrilled with this season so far, but it’s still interesting and better than most stuff on TV. I’ve probably watched the earlier seasons half a dozen times.
jl
@bluefoot: Our opponents are expert swindlers, they understand the psychology of selling BS. Some of their marks are deluded people whose fear and bigotry predispose them to believe the BS that the GOP is selling, and some of them welcome it. Others are just very busy people, low info because of the pressure of their daily lives, and are duped by the aggressive avalanche of lies that are easy to understand and trigger their sense or resentment at their increasingly unpleasant lives.
WaterGirl
Joe Biden, less than an hour ago:
Oklahomo
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: As an artist, all I can say is that he manages to put some of the creepiest vibes onto canvas that I have ever seen. The ambiance of his works is Dark (light and emotion). He is one severely fucked up person.
mrmoshpotato
OT – I’ve been long sick of seeing George Conjob’s “good cop” tweets.
I’ll be a moose’s uncle if his lying mobster bitch of a wife didn’t commit any crimes in the past four years, and I hope he did too. I’d like to see them both in the dock.
raven
@Yarrow: That wasn’t the question asked.
lowtechcyclist
Sorry, but ‘winning’ from my perspective is finally dealing with climate change in a meaningful way. As long as there was a path to getting there – winning WH and Senate, killing the filibuster, passing a Green New Deal worthy of the name – I could convince myself that we were on the road to possibly winning.
OK, we’ve won the White House. But if Mitch still decides what the Senate votes on and what it doesn’t, all it means is that we’re still a democracy on its sickbed instead of an authoritarian state, and either way, the world will fry with America’s full participation. That’s the world my 13 year old son will live in.
So ok, we have (apparently) won the Presidential election. Whoopee.
WaterGirl
I really wonder how many mail-in ballots are stuck in post offices somewhere.
People should really follow up on their mail-in ballots so we have an idea of how many weren’t delivered all across the country.
Jinchi
I understand your frustration, but we’re not choosing between the status quo and something better. Trump has been burning the country to the ground, greenlighting atrocities, inciting violence, shredding our institutions and looting the wreckage.
Four more years of him and we’d be living a banana republic, at best. A Biden presidency stops the bleeding and injects sanity. This may not be the perfect outcome, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
guachi
@Sebastian: This was pretty clearly the result last night in Maine it just took time before it became truly obvious.
CaseyL
@Sebastian:
Yes, I believe he cheated.
How? DeJoy, in the Post Office, with delayed and lost mail-in ballots.
trollhattan
@Sebastian:
Is voter suppression (which comes in many forms) cheating?
Is sabotage of the Postal Service, cheating?
Are robocalls and robo texts telling people it’s not safe to vote, or the vote is on Wednesday, cheating?
If you believe yes, then you have your answer.
Woodrow/asim
Seconded. This election is critical for me and mine — close to life-and-death for a couple people I know w/active health conditions.
Yet I know I’ve put damn near it all on the field. I take breaks and try to scale my engagement to prioritize not freaking out in ways the lean to feeling disempowered.
JoyceH
Very much this. Last night I was pretty dismayed, but today it occurred to me – if this were a war, where would we be? We are not retreating back toward our capital. We’ve established a beach head and are advancing into enemy territory. Yes, we took a lot of casualties and we wanted it to be easier. When do we get to the part where our foes cast down their weapons and retreat in wild disorder fercryinoutloud? Well, the answer is – not yet! So – we advance. And we don’t stop.
George
@schrodingers_cat: I totally agree that we won, even if the victory was not as extensive as we hoped. All Biden needs is 270 electoral votes, which seems likely at the moment. More electoral votes mean nothing.
What needs to be emphasized is Biden finishing with over 50 percent of the popular vote, Biden likely winning WI and MI (and maybe PA) by more than Trump did in 2016, and Biden flipping AZ and close to flipping GA.
Biden also did much better than Clinton in many states, and his margin of victory likely will be at or above what Obama achieved in 2012 (which would represent a greater margin of victory than any Republican since 1988). Those things might not mean much to those of us who are political junkies, but if you keep pressing those talking points into the common mind, they might take hold.
Democrats still have the House by a healthy margin. As a federal employee, let me reassure you that having Biden in the Oval Office will do wonders for policy and general morale.
And if Democrats did not take the Senate, one strategy might be for the House to pass bill after bill, and to have Biden say that he’d love to sign the legislation if only the do-nothing Senate would get off its ass.
So stop with the goddamned doom porn. Stop with tossing victory into the jaws of defeat.
It’s all about creating and repeating the narrative now. Stop being such a field of pansies.
TheTruffle
What is the story with Pennsylvania?
schrodingers_cat
@TheTruffle: Yes.
L85NJGT
@Jim Appleton:
He is blegging money off the recounts.
Boussinesque
@CaseyL: I’ve been thinking for a while, that maybe a way that we can at least partially remedy the structural disadvantage the Senate gives us would be for us to “take back” some small-population red states. This would require a substantial number of those of us that would be less vulnerable to red state discrimination (I’m thinking liberal cis-het white guys, since I wouldn’t want to ask our LGBTQ or minority friends to risk their lives and livelihoods by moving to a red state) to move to one of these states as a chunk, establish residence, and then vote for Democratic senators.
I know there are a number of problems, but I really think some sort of reverse-colonization of the low-pop red states may be our best path to reclaiming the Senate. If we were able to get some of the more progressive companies to decide to set up shop in some of the more urban areas of those states (take Wyoming, for example), have progressive groups offer grants for relocation, or something.
Our side has more people, so there has to be a way to deploy them to better effect that doesn’t expose our most vulnerable to additional harm. I think about the rising cost of living in California, my home, and although I would miss the state and the ocean especially, if I was able to find a job doing the same thing (or work remotely) in Wyoming or a Dakota, and if my moving there was part of a migration of enough like-minded folks to stand a chance of flipping the state blue, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
I dunno. I’m sure there are a billion problems, and people smarter than I can tear apart this plan in subsequent comments, but I feel like there’s got to be something we can do. I’m not willing to accept permanent minority rule because of the way the Senate is structured =/
guachi
@TheTruffle: I and a bunch of other people bothered Nate Cohn (polling guy at NYT) on Twitter when he gave an AZ update.
His best guess (as of a few minutes ago) is that there is enough vote left to tip PA to Biden.
EDIT: Cohn’s tweet “To my mind, everything there is still consistent with Biden eventually taking the lead”
Yutsano
@TheTruffle: Over a million mail-in ballots to count. PA has said they won’t be done until Friday from what I understand.
Capri
For political junkies, I think it’s hard to fathom just how un-informed your average un-informed voter actually is. There is a huge chunk of people I meet whose perception of the parties is stuck in the sixties. They don’t know any of their representatives save the president and they have no idea what has happened in the last four years, or ever. Many will tell you it’s “tax and spend” democrats vs “fiscally responsible” republicans or the old saw if you’re not a liberal as a young person you have no heart and if you’re not a conservative as an old person you have no brain. For them it’s totally about associating each party with a brand – one that’s been wildly inaccurate for decades.
schrodingers_cat
@George: This.
Wisconsin was called for Biden and he is ahead in Michigan. And I believe that’s all he needs to get to 270.
Jinchi
@TheTruffle: Pennsylvania won’t be announcing any new numbers until tomorrow morning, so there’s no need to keep refreshing the tally there.
John S.
@lowtechcyclist: I would have thought that a Biden presidency would be a vast improvement over Trump, and could easily be considered a huge step in the right direction.
YMMV
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JoyceH: Look California with 2010 Brown verses Whitmen was nail bitter, but Brown one, ran the state well and then coasted to victory in 2014 and then Newsome in 2018. That’s how it’s done, get into office provide good government.
piratedan
well it IS time to talk about the elephant in the room.
The Voters….
as we see items of information being returned in the exit polls we discover things like this….
70% of Trump voters believe that Trump supports masking during this pandemic (or so they say)
60% of Trump voters believe that Trump supported the closing of non-essential business in order to deal with the pandemic…
How do you reconcile this? Is this all Fox News? Is this all stubborn low-information voters equating what they know is right and imprinting it on their candidate? As has been said before, Voters like liberal ideas, they just have no awareness that they ARE liberal ideas and that the people who oppose them are the people that they are voting for and returning to office.
jl
@TheTruffle: Biden is leading now, according to the election info sites. I think problem is so many mail in votes still being counted. But it has a large population, starts counting mail votes later than any other large state, and a GOP state legislature that acted like it wanted to sabotage the count when the mail in vote would be humongous.
Good news is that reports that they got their counting shit together since the primaries seem to be true. Looks like they’ll get a reliable count in days, not weeks, for the general.
gene108
@janesays:
1. No more crazy right wing judicial nominees.
2. A functional CDC, NIH, etc. which will help with COVID-19 response.
3. Same with EPA and improving our ability to deal with environmental issues.
4. An earnest attempt at reuniting the 545 children we stole from their parents.
5. No more family separation of asylum seekers.
6. Accepting asylum seekers again.
7. DOJ enforcement of civil rights protections.
8. DOL enforcement of labor protections.
9. Enforcement of consent decrees with police departments
10. No blatant daily lies from the President and the Administration.
There’s more for others to add to.
guachi
@Jinchi: Did they call it a day at 1500 for vote counting? I just saw an update on AP that has Biden now down 404,303 votes.
It’s down significantly from the 700,000 plus yesterday.
Omnes Omnibus
@George: Perception is a huge thing. We won the White House. We act like it’s a win and talk like it’s a win, and suddenly the world sees a win.
Subsole
@Yarrow:
So appx 45% of the nation have dissociated from reality and are living in a communal schizophrenic delusion.
That is, um. Sub-optimal?
John S.
You know, Republicans will take a 1 vote margin, declare supreme victory and then promptly set about doing whatever the hell they want to achieve their objectives and claim a mandate.
Fucking Democrats are knocking on the door to victory and treating it like a loss.
Jinchi
@guachi: No kidding? PA announced this morning that they’d be holding off on updates but maybe they got too many frantic calls to stick to that plan.
schrodingers_cat
@Kilgore Trout: His skin is turning blue. He is a sick man. He is not invincible or immortal.
jl
@piratedan: The GOP and the Trumpsters are master swindlers and liars. I think that is the source of the problem. Fox News and Facebook’s ruthless and dishonest business model does need a deluge of BS to transmit, and the current GOP and Trumpsters are experts at production of BS and lies
John S.
@Omnes Omnibus: Damn right. I’m really getting tired of the defeatist loser talk around here.
Searcher
@lowtechcyclist: There’s “winning” and there is “not losing”.
“Not losing” is still better than “losing”.
It’s 20-fucking-20. I’m going take all the “not losing” I can get this year.
Subsole
@jl: That’s great news! Katie’s gonna bring her whiteboard back!
Jim Appleton
@L85NJGT:
Very good point.
A lot of iDJT’s moves in the last twelve (!) hours seem to be about grift while the griftin’s good …
mad citizen
@John S.: I usually look up unfamiliar internet acronyms. I often try to work them out myself and check google. I thought YMMV might be “You Make Me Vomit”; instead it is “Your Mileage May Vary”.
All I can say is hope Joe is right with his tweet.
TheTruffle
@John S.: Same. At least it is a step in the right direction.
Ohio Mom
I used to be like Mr. Cracker. It was nice, and I miss it.
But then the stakes for me got higher — it occurred to me that my autistic kid was going to need a string social safety net, even if I did manage to live forever — and blogs came along, and they served as a powerful tutorial into the thickets I’d always ignored.
I’m afraid though that the road back to normie falls under the “Once a mind expands, it can’t go back to its original proportions” rubric.
CaseyL
@Boussinesque: I’ve given that a great deal of thought as well. I even researched the “purple” areas of some states to see how much difference my moving there would make. Answer: None.
I would absolutely be happy to join a wide-spread movement of no less than 5000 people moving to a specific Congressional District.
But that is what it would take. Really massive mobilization and relocation. Plus trusting that all those people really will vote Democratic for cycle after cycle, rather than get discouraged/disgusted after two years and stop voting.
JoyceH
Exactly! And once we have the executive branch, we find all the grunge and corruption that has been covered up for the past four years. It might even start before January – once Biden is certified as going over 270, there are a lot of career civil servants (AKA The Deep State) who are going to feel that it’s safe to start coming forward with what they know. The media will like that as a change of pace from all those dry good-government Transition stories. I suspect by the time Biden is sworn in, even a lot of Trump voters will be secretly glad to see him gone.
Brachiator
Free musical concert via streaming in Pasadena, CA on Thursday afternoon, 12 noon Pacific Time
A bit more including streaming details here.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I have been since AL morning thread, maintaining social distance, of course.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mad citizen:
LOL. Now I will always look twice at that one
jl
@Subsole: I agree with that. Given the immense stakes and importance of getting rid of Trump, and the once in a century national disaster, maybe a defensive hunker down strategy was the best thing. But that doesn’t mean it will be the best approach going forward. I agree that Dems should be far more aggressive in action (even House bills that can’t make it past Senate) and aggressive communication and outreach to every part of the country, every demographic.
Edit: Dems need to remember that that they (very probably, hope against hope) have the WH and the House. They need to deliver something, or at least try to as hard as they can and let people know who is standing in the way. They think too much like McClellan, and need to think more like Grant and Sherman.
Tim C.
@schrodingers_cat: Depends if Arizona holds. There’s disagreement between media groups on the projections.
Likewise, it’s more likely than not we get Arizona and Nevada, but it’s less certain.
trollhattan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
It seemed like a nailbiter during the campaign because Whitman was stumping relentlessly, spending tens of millions on ads, while Jerry held back and filed his nails. This made Democrats nervous (sound familiar?)
Jerry finally relented and campaigned actively, late. The outcome: 53.8 to 40.9 and death of the California Republican Party.
Searcher
So there’s a demographic problem where there are more single men on the west coast and more single women on the east coast.
I propose all of our liberal, single, cis-het white people go meet somewhere in the middle, maybe Wyoming, maybe Nebraska or Kansas.
trollhattan
@Subsole:
Katie’s a damn star. I hope she gets some more choice committee assignments and is front and center, a lot. (I also have no idea how that process works.)
catatonia
Well, my go-to zone out is a baseball simulation game where I can tweak it so that my beloved Orioles win the WS in 2014. If you know anything about MLB, you know how… trying it has been to be an Oriole fan over the past several years. More or less coinciding with Trumpler’s reign of horror.
Of course the hard drive on the laptop the game was on gave up the ghost yesterday.
evap
Here in GA, it looks like Carolyn Bordeaux flipped a seat in the house and Lucy McBath kept her seat. So there’s that.
lowtechcyclist
@John S.:
Well sure, it’s a step in the right direction, but if that direction still leads into a dead-end alley, that doesn’t do much good.
So: Biden in the White House, Mitch still Senate Majority Leader. In dealing with climate change, what’s our next step?
LurkerNoLonger
@schrodingers_cat: I said this in an earlier thread Biden is going to win (maybe today, maybe tomorrow) and a lot of people are acting like he lost. It’s very strange.
schrodingers_cat
@LurkerNoLonger: I find it tiresome in the extreme.
Woodrow/asim
@Boussinesque: Um. That’s part of why we think there’s still an chance in Georgia, in parallel with Black voter turnout.
BUT. Until we move businesses into those lower population “red” states, and/or make a lot more jobs remote-friendly, people aren’t moving in the numbers you need to those areas.
Given the challenges, the Progressive movement as a whole needs to star making serious inroads into sharing OUR values, in these regions. We need to have brave folx willing to step up and go in, and start to break the cycle of right-wingery that is part-and-parcel of this, and so many, election cycles.
And it needs to happen not just during election time, but over and again over years. That’s what Fox News provides, and what we have to structure an effective, yet ethical, counterbalance for. We have to find way to get into these systems of conservatism with ideas and policies that they hear on the regular, not just when Progressives are asking for votes.
It’s hard. There’s no real shortcuts, no fancy fix we can do and walk away. It’s that game of inches, and in our case we gotta do it while under shelling from the oppo.
And yet, it needs doing, and badly.
Yarrow
@CaseyL: Massive relocation will happen due to climate change. Canada is going to build that wall.
Searcher
@lowtechcyclist: Winning and not-losing.
Maybe we don’t get new regulations or carbon taxes, but the Trump administration has also be trying to encourage more use of fossil fuels.
Just having someone not paying oil companies to frack off-shore is a huge win for the climate.
mrmoshpotato
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah. After those decaying corpse hands pictures, I can’t bring myself to believe that Fascist McTurtleface doesn’t have some serious health problems.
Steve in the ATL
I wasn’t going to drink today, but between this and the long-awaited case of wine that was just delivered….
schrodingers_cat
@Tim C.: Arizona was called for Biden by more than one news organization, has that changed?
Yarrow
@LurkerNoLonger: It’s just the shock of thinking that the win was going to be a big landslide, the Senate was well within reach, and we might even get states like Texas or toss out Lindsay Graham. It’s hard to readjust to “I think Biden will win.”
But yeah, we need to be acting like winners. Republicans would. Let’s get going. Biden is WINNING. We are ahead. And when he does win, we are WINNERS. Let’s act like it.
Boussinesque
@CaseyL: Yeah, we’d need to have the will and the resources to relocate thousands and thousands of people…I dunno, just feels like it’s something that we could conceivably do. Start a movement, see if we can get enough people to sign up, choose a target and follow through? (Hopefully with better results than the colony of Libertarians that took over a small rural town and wound up getting eaten by bears)
guachi
@schrodingers_cat: No. But a few places have it up in the air until we see returns from the remaining ballots.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Searcher: rejoining the Paris climate accords, stop fighting states, and auto-makers, on emissions,
Dorothy A. Winsor
I see Trump intends to file suit to stop the counting in MI, and his supporters are swarming outside the room where ballots are being counted in Detroit. Police have been called in.
Biden is ahead in MI. Is Trump sure he wants to stop the count?
gene108
@janesays:
On the flip side, any Democrat wanting to take on a long term Republican Senator now knows that there’s a huge fundraising machine at their backs.
Money is no longer a limiting factor for a Democratic challenger.
oldgold
The problem with spending so much time following politics is that no one knows what the hell they are talking about.
This election cycle, I closely followed the supposed gurus of American electoral politics – Charlie Cook and Larry Sabato. Hell, I would have been ahead consulting two astrologers.
Subsole
@schrodingers_cat:
Something my father once told me: Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Life can change. Death does not.
We are alive. So we keep fighting.
JPL
Does Normieville have wine and snickers? Asking for a friend.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@oldgold: and both of those gurus are conservative, temperamentally and professionally and I suspect politically. Maybe their own never-trump instincts led them astray.
Jinchi
Ha. That must’ve made for some interesting miscommunications.
Boussinesque
@Woodrow/asim: Thanks for the thoughtful response. I’m open for ideas on how to coordinate something like that (just spitballing), and I’d definitely be willing to put myself out there to help make it happen.
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: AP called it and Joe’s at 248.
p.a.
When Biden takes office, first week he has to devise a plan to punish Russia sub rosa, some sort of digital shot across the bow to let them know THIS admin means business. Maybe an attack on Putin’s personal wealth.
LurkerNoLonger
@Yarrow: I understand, a landslide would have been nice, but maybe landslide presidential victories are a thing of the past with the way the country is now. Anyway, a win is a win. We’re winning. Will win. Won.
LongHairedWeirdo
Re: being able to compartmentalize, keep in mind that every minute you spend agonizing now is wasted energy. That means if you can focus on something – anything! – else, do so.
If Biden wins, your worry just made you miserable (or, if you’re more concerned about the Senate – and there’s reason to feel that way! – a 50/Harris majority will do the same).
If not, your worry didn’t actually *help*, did it? It basically meant you were borrowing tomorrow’s troubles for today, when today has enough.
And, I’ll tell you, Great British Bake Off is a fine balm for a tortured soul, so long as you can remain detached from the agonies of the bakers. (I once noted that I could imagine, on my worst days, having stress nightmares just *watching* the show.)
Netflix did a similar show about barbecue (American Barbecue Showdown, I think), and I found it hit most of the things I like about GBBO, except all episodes were filmed on successive days. (Since the final episode is a whole-hog barbecue (which takes a great many hours), it just *felt* exhausting!)
Yutsano
@Searcher: The Pebble Mine permit gets revoked in Alaska. The Florida offshore drilling ban gets reinstated*. We let tax breaks and subsidies for oil/gas companies expire because nothing gets through the Senate. Rules for the EPA go back to sanity. Biden can even do a couple executive orders to help wind/solar get further legs up. We have toolboxes we can use even without the Senate.
*I recall something about that happening but I’m not that certain. Florida peeps: am I accurate here?
guachi
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Stop the count so James wins the Senate.
Betty
@Yarrow: This is key. As bad as Fox is, Facebook is having a bigger negative impact by disseminating false i formation. One place to start is holding them accountable.
Ohio Mom
John S @98:
How old is your son? Mine is 23, on the mid-to-higher functioning (for lack of a better term) of the soectrum, and I am just discovering the parameters and limits of supports for adults (SSI and Medicaid primarily, but there are others).
Canada sounds tempting but check their special ed policies (if he is school-age) and programs for adults. They may not want to add an autistic to their citizen rolls.
susanna
@janesays: And I agree.
The thing with who wins? One increases possibilities and opportunities and hope, while the other will reduce choices, not only for humans, but including the running, healthy waters, the majestic mountains and national forests, animals, clear skies and the ability to be free, in body and in mind. All of it is due to choice.
Those are the simple outcomes, global issues can’t be imagined, yet.
James E Powell
@WaterGirl:
Both the Biden campaign and Nate Cohn @ the NYT express confidence that, based on their data, Biden will take the lead. It would certainly ease a lot of anxiety about other places.
Mel
@mrmoshpotato: I had to listen to a Trumper neighbor screaming (literally screaming and chanting vile Trump catchphrases) with joy in his back yard around midnight when my state got called for the Orange Menace.
Never mind that his neighbors include a sweet, very elderly couple who go to bed by 9 pm, a young couple who recently immigrated, are scared senseless about recent events, and have a tiny baby that they are trying to get to sleep through the night, a person who is on miserable chemo who can hardly get any rest as it is, and a young Black woman who recently bought her first house.
It was such a small event in the scheme of everything going on, but still so deeply disturbing and so evocative of what we’re up against in the country in general.
That particular family relied on unemployment to get through during the recession, have their health benefits through a govt. related pension program, have children and grandchildren who rely on Social Security, food assistance, and Medicaid for their basic needs, and one of the family members used govt. grants and loans to get their college education.
But if anyone else requires a safety net, or uses or supports programs that provide a fighting chance for people to get housing, education, nutritious food on the table, those “others” are labelled “commies” , “moochers”, “socialist pigs”, “welfare scum”, etc etc.
There is no reasoning with people who have gone so far around the bend. They will consistently do every single thing possible to destroy the social fabric of this country, all the while flying their flags and swearing that they are “God-fearing patriots”.
They absolutely cannot see that the toxic monsters that they worship and emulate will yank the safety net out from under them in a heartbeat as well. That will “only happen to ‘those’ people, not to me”, is their delusion chorus.
I’m feeling such a weird mix of exhaustion, grief, and uncertainty today, and I think the core of it that I can’t fathom how there can be so damned many people in this country who genuinely wish ill on millions of their fellow citizens. I knew there were a lot of them out there – I grew up in rural Appalachia and am all too familiar with the mindset that leads to McConnell, Graham, Trump, Covid Barrett, etc. .
I just didn’t think that there were SO many people so silently full of hate, hiding quietly in the shadows all across the country, ashamed to admit to their awfulness on a poll, but damned ready to unleash it on the country from the anonymity of the polling booth.
I think I need to back away from it for a short while and get some perspective. Cat, book, maybe nap if possible.
Hugs to everyone here. Good people each and every one.
gene108
I just want to say, as pissed off as we are about the EC, because of 2000 and 2016, keep in mind how much harder it is to win the Presidency from the Republican side.
I know without the EC, and going to the popular vote they have no chance, but even with the EC their path is harder than ours.
Republicans are assholes, who talk a lot of shit, but they are not in as powerful a place as their bravado makes one believe.
Yarrow
@Betty: It’s not just Facebook but also its various entities like Instagram and WhatsApp. In particular WhatsApp is used to spread disinformation during campaigns. It has been used in other countries to this effect and was used in South Florida for sure during this election here.
Jinchi
Better to lose trying, than to give up entirely. Each one of those races is a downpayment on future campaigns. We weren’t supposed to win SC, we also weren’t supposed to win AZ. We won there (twice now) because we tried.
I’m happy to see Democrats finally challenging Republicans outside of “safe” turf. It’s the only way for long-term change.
lowtechcyclist
@Searcher:
So basically back to the Obama status quo ante under which global warming was steadily getting worse, only now it’s several years further along, and time is running out.
You’ll have to excuse me if my celebration is somewhat restrained.
jl
@jl: @TheTruffle:
Opps! Sorry, I misread the current vote tally for PA. Trump is still ahead by 6 points. Shit.
But, with 82 percent of the estimated votes in, Biden needs to win 66 percent of the outstanding ballots to win. The remaining ballots come from places where Biden is winning by over 75 percent. So, very good chance Biden will win.
James E Powell
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Your advice is sound, but Brown v Whitman was not close.
UncleEbeneezer
Betty, I don’t think you can just CHOOSE to become apolitical. You care enough to be political. Believe me, I would LOVE to have those hundreds hours of fretting over this administration over the past 4 years back. I would LOVE to be able to check out for long periods and truly escape mentally. But I don’t know that it is even possible.
It’s like becoming (for lack of a better term) “woke.” It is a curse in that you suddenly see all this racism/sexism/LGBTQphobia etc., everywhere while most of your privileged friends are just blissfully unaware. It sucks. But it also puts you in the fight and on the right side with the people who need your support. You build relationships and solidarity with the communities you are trying to help in a way that really changes your life for the better, imo.
Tomorrow I’ll have one of my police reform meetings and I guarantee that one of the fabulous Black or Latina women will crack a joke or say something profound that will remind me that, oh right…they’ve been dealing with this shit (and so much more) for WAY LONGER than I have even been agonizing over it from a secondary perspective. Stuff like that helps remind me of how easy I have it as a healthy, CisHet White dude, and will remind me why I need to be in the fight with them. Why I WANT TO be in the fight.
All that said, yes days like today are much harder for us than normies. But if everyone were normies things would be so much worse. Take care of yourself.
guachi
@jl: 66% seems like a large hill but people smarter than I say Biden will make it.
Also, there are votes that are being segregated that are arriving after election day that will almost certainly be for Biden.
Betty
@UncleEbeneezer: I agree. If you care deeply about people and how government policies affect them, you are compelled to follow politics. For many of us, it is in our DNA, not really a choice.
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: WhatsApp is the weapon of choice for BJP’s IT cell. The networks are privates and the messages are encrypted so much harder to crack down. People have been lynched because of WhatsApp rumors.
Mel
@Yarrow: You’re right. And thank you – it’s important to keep this firmly in mind even while trying to process all the shitshow elements we’re dealing with.
James E Powell
@piratedan:
I think so. It’s like “Exit polls show people who voted for Trump think Trump’s a great guy.”
Voting is a complex decision and rarely as rational as we all like to believe and people often cannot or will not articulate their reasons.
My favorite illustration is the New Coke tests that showed that people in focus groups preferred New Coke by a wide margin. Once it was revealed that the Coke formula was being changed, the group members who preferred the old formula talked the others out of their opinions. So they conclude: I like this one more, but I want the other one.
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: Then get to work on getting a Democratic Senate in 2022.
Jeffro
I took yesterday and today off from work, and so I spent today swimming laps, napping, walking the dog, and re-reading some old ‘Daredevil’ collections. It’s been nice!
I’ve only occasionally been checking in on the news, vote counts, etc. I took in all my yard signs and took off all my bumper stickers.
I think a few things are slowly coalescing in my thoughts at the moment:
That’s all for now.
ballerat
@Subsole: It’s opportunity.
Lie to them. Bullshit them. Create an echo chamber that reinforces whatever they are told. They are too stupid to figure it out. Fox does this all the time.
You can’t get such people to act rationally. So don’t use truth and reason. They don’t want it and they resent you as an elitist for trying.
jl
@guachi: I heard on the news that the big delay is for mail in ballots from Philly and Pittsburg, consistently coming in 75 to 80 percent for Biden.
PA has, I think, the crappiest vote counting system of all the swing states, and made worse by the pandemic. The GOP PA state legislature is to blame that almost nothing was fixed.
Edit: and IIRC the PA state legislature GOP is so depraved, they are the bunch who had a covid outbreak, and exposed a bunch of of Dem colleagues, staff, and public, while trying to keep it secret.
guachi
I love that the Libertarian candidate’s vote total is higher than Biden’s margins in WI and MI and GA if Biden wins fractionally. Depending on how AZ and PA shake out we can add those states to the pile as well.
Thanks Libertarian voters!!!
UncleEbeneezer
@Mel: One of the ONLY upsides of this year for me is that it appears that our InfoWars/MAGA neighbor across the way moved, during the past few months.
I had an argument with a friend of mine a couple months ago because I said “People are trash” and she took issue with that and thought it was an overgeneralization etc. Anyone who has ever worked a customer facing job knows that there are a WHOLE LOT of trash-ass, petty assholes out there who will eagerly jump at the chance to fuck with other people if they get the chance. There’s also a lot of good people. But there has and always been a ton of shitty people in our society.
Subsole
@p.a.: Can we just skip straight to putting two below their waterline? We have kind of a LOT of shit that needs doing.
guachi
@jl: That makes sense.
Not just Democratic places but EARLY VOTE Democratic places that will give vote margins beyond the normal range.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JoyceH: It’s not even that, just get COVID sorted out and the budget passed them when people realize Biden isn’t their to socialize their pets they will go along with progressive agenda items.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JoyceH: It’s not even that, just get COVID sorted out and the budget passed them when people realize Biden isn’t their to socialize their pets they will go along with progressive agenda items. The whole GOP messages is “yes, we suck, but the other guy could be much worse, be scared!”
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
Targets: Rubio, Grassley (may be an open seat), Burr, Portman, Toomey, Johnson.
J R in WV
@Sebastian:
Of course Trump cheated.
I don’t think so, it is a fact. He announced his cheats ahead of time.
Mr. Dejoy carried out a whole series of illegal damage to the postal system in order to cheat. Changing schedules, removing sorting machines to be left sitting out in the weather. Multiple actions specifically designed to slow mail delivery.
And not just ballots, also medications, government forms, you name it, slower. Or lost altogether. Dejoy to dejail asap!
p.a.
Don’t forget despite the disappointment in the Senate losses- some by far wider margins than the polls showed- these races took R resources away from other races where they could do more damage. They were basically playing defense. And the Dem $ flows were fantastic (making results more disappointing) BUT if these $ results can be replicated in the future it can free the party from relying on big money boyz who generally push a more conservative line.
GoBlueInOak
@jl: House leadership needs to start thinking about it secession planning. Our House leadership should not look like a bunch of aging Senators. Younger, media friendly rising House stars with energy need to start getting elevated. Nancy Pelosi is 80 years old, Steny Hoyer is 81 and Joe Biden is 77. I love Barbara Maxwell, but she’s 74. The only person in senior Dem leadership that wasn’t AARP eligible was Xavier Becerra and he bolted in 2017 to go become California Attorney General as he got tired of waiting.
Some initial exit polls showed Trump actually improved his margin with white women over 2016, as well as with Latinos and Blacks. And that biggest change was a portion of Trump’s margin with white men shifting to Biden.
Democrats are ostensibly the party of youth, progress and change. The leadership should start reflecting it. Midterms are just two years away.
cain
@Betty:
Absolutely – and not just in the U.S. but in others – countries need to band together and fuck their shit up.
You can bet that FB used their platform to help push for a republican win because it favors them.
cain
All owned by the same corporation.
GoBlueInOak
@jl: You recall correctly. It was the PA GOP legislator with the secret Covid.
Fair Economist
I’m the opposite of Betty. I’m ready to go antinormie and spend 4 hours a day writing postcards or something like that. Fascism really, really sucks to live under.
MJS
@gene108: Sorry, but a lot of resources (including a small amount of my own) were thrown at races that, with better polling and common sense, we would have known to ignore. We got overly enthusiastic, (or at least I did), and tried to wish things into being true that, in retrospect, could not possibly be true.
That said, I am bullish on Biden’s chances, and assuming everything holds, will take kicking Trump to the curb as a major victory.
Subsole
@Betty: The next time they have a hearing, they need to skip Zuckerberg and just drag his goddamn shareholders up in front of the cameras. Read off every nasty, racist, awful tweet. Drag them through the sewer they helped fund for 11 hour stretches in front of the whole planet. Ask why they feel proud to put their money behind that.
Then tell them they’ll be back again the next time something happens.
Fuck Z-berg. He had his chances.
Let him explain that shit to people he actually worries about. Because after the third or fourth all-day televised grilling session, those holders might acquire a little heat for that pasty-faced little VoightKampff-flunking piece of shit themselves.
Central Planning
Did I miss some reporting on all the economically anxious voters? Or are they just stupid fucking racist motherfucking assholes?
*sigh* I know the answer to my last question.
jl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Seems like, looking over summary of results, that some liberal and progressive state measures passed where Democrats badly underperformed.
In Florida, minimum wage amendment passed by 60 percent. That’s pretty good. But that state went for Trump. But, Trump lies.
I think that our opponents are master swindlers and liars, and Democrats are bad at countering their BS and their PR machine plays a role in difficulty of wedging them out of power.
Splitting Image
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’d have taken it.
I was hoping for more, and I’m bummed that Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins, two of my least favourite people in the world apart from the orange idiot himself, won their elections.
But so be it. The orange idiot went down and I’ll spend the next four years gleefully rubbing it in the face of every dirtbag who supported him.
Onward.
lowtechcyclist
I think you meant, “succession.”
For a second you had me going there.
Gin & Tonic
@GoBlueInOak: Near the top of the House Dem leadership group is David Cicilline of RI-1. A comparative spring chicken at 59, openly gay, representing a blue city in a blue state. Reliable liberal, gives good TV.
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: Thank you for that much-needed pep talk.
JPL
@jl: Wasserman from Cooks Report said the same thing.
If they can cure 40,000 DeKalb votes by Friday, they have a chance at GA. The ballots were tossed because of signature mismatch
Someone just corrected the number of ballots rejected. Some were but some just need to be counted.
James E Powell
@Central Planning:
This is the first time the press/media haven’t adopted a euphemism like economic anxiety, values voter, heartland, etc. to describe bigots. They just call them Trump supporters.
schrodingers_cat
Rs are trying to repeat Brooks brother riot 2.0 in Detroit
guachi
Huzzah!
Peters is ahead of James in MI now. 2,607,590 to 2,601,926 according to AP results page.
Woodrow/asim
@Boussinesque:
Best interim solution? Get Local.
Find out who needs support for a city/county council run, and throw what you can at them — money, support, time, etc.
This is the kind of stuff Democrats are horrible at. Yet it’s pretty much how the Conservative Movement locked down a lot of these rural areas, in terms of initial power bases.
For example: we recently flipped the City Council of Greenville, SC to Democratic for the 1st time in…forever. Greenville’s the home of Bob Jones University, which had a lot of political power in the town — and still has more than a lot of us like, esp. Black folx like me who grew up under its shadow, here.
To simplify an outcome: Because of that flip, we’re getting a major Park that is the new centerpiece of the town — and that actively acknowledges the history of racial segregation in Greenville, in its name and it’s design/placement. We get a lot of other things, but I’m biased about this one :)
It’s a small, symbolical effort. Yet it’s also a stepping stone, just as “conservatives” taking over school boards to push “prayer” and “creationism” were stepping stones to today, in multiple ways. Saying out loud the racism in Greenville’s past means we can talk openly about healing its effects, today.
That’s why building up local efforts, local Progressives, really matters over time. And why looking only at the national run-up — as crucial as that is to the many people whose health and life depend upon those efforts — risks missing key things, and real coalition building.
Sab
@VeniceRiley: Littlebritdifrnt (sic?) had a hell of a time getting her American husband into England. Months of worry and separation.
Central Planning
@James E Powell:
Calling them supporters doesn’t help either. At least calling them economically anxious was clearly bullshit.
Subsole
@Mel: Right back atcha. The horrible thing about horrible people is they corrode the natural goodness of the majority.
And we are the majority. As many of them as there are, we are more.
In every sense of the word.
lee
This article pretty much sums up my reaction to the election.
James E Powell
@JPL:
What do you mean by cure? Are the voters asked to verify their ballots?
George
@LurkerNoLonger: “A landslide would have been nice.”
But what, really, is a landslide? An 80- or 120-vote margin in the electoral college, or a five- or seven-point margin in the popular vote?
In 2012 Obama won in a mild electoral landslide but only 3.9 percent in the popular vote.
I do wish people would focus on the electoral college as just a box to check off, and on the magnitude of the popular vote margin–especially compared to the past 30 years–as the true definition of the appeal of the candidate.
jl
@Woodrow/asim: I totally agree with what you say. More I look at results, seems like I see more ‘red’ states that passed good local and state propositions usually ID’d with Dems, elected candidates with moderate to liberal agendas, then said no to Biden and no to Democratic congressional candidates.
When people say that this or that state is ‘red’ and we have to accept that, not sure what the implication is supposed to be. Seems like it is limiting what Democrats, or nonpartisan, liberals and progressive can do there at local and statehouse levels. Federal office isn’t everything. We may need to pick our shots in those places, but to write them off is just nuts. But both political parties have succumbed to a kind of demographic and regional determinism, don’t even try there anymore, and then their defeats become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well sure, in a year that’s going to make 2020 look like a golden opportunity by comparison.
Barring a repeal of the political laws of gravity, 2022 is going to be a disaster. It’ll be a midterm, Mitch will make sure the economy’s in the crapper, and voters will take it out on the party in the White House because that’s what they do.
If I’m not particularly happy and upbeat and feeling like a winner right now, I’ve got good reasons for it which I’ve stated in this thread, and if it bothers you, that’s a ‘you problem’ as the kids say these days.
Frank Wilhoit
@gene108: You neglect the presence of Republican burrowers in the Executive Branch. They will refuse all orders and do whatever they want (especially ICE and CBP); and SCOTUS will overturn any attempt to punish or dismiss them.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s not Trump, it’s the Party(*), and the long game is to set the precedent that a count — any count — can be stopped.
(*) Trump is just along for the ride now. I have a hunch that McConnell was at the WH earlier today, and Trump asked McConnell for permission to retire, and McConnell said no.
@UncleEbeneezer: The semantics of choosing to become apolitical are the same as the semantics of not voting. It means that you pre-emptively declare that you can accept any possible outcome. I doubt that that is what is intended (in this case, or ever).
A Ghost to Most
@Fair Economist:
I think you truly underestimate the task at hand.
John S.
@Ohio Mom: Mine is 13. And I already took your advice from a couple weeks ago and looked into ABLE accounts.
Thanks for the tip!
TheTruffle
I said it before…
Never trust polls.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: I am sure he doesn’t count because of reasons.
guachi
@George: Speaking of popular vote margin – Biden leads Trump by 2.1028% ahead of Clinton who won by 2.0990%.
David ?Booooooo!? Koch
Boussinesque
@Woodrow/asim: That sounds lovely, and I heartily agree that building local power sounds like the path forward. I just wonder (since I’m in the Bay Area of California) if moving someplace that needs that push more would be more productive.
lowtechcyclist
Before 2019 gave us a clearer picture of just how bad a second Trump term could be, it was my worst-case scenario.
It’s still a fucking nightmare, it’s just not as bad as the other nightmare that we’ve apparently averted.
David ?Booooooo!? Koch
p.a.
So they’re trying to recreate Florida ’00 in Detroit today? Dem mayor, Dem gov, the rioters may have a different experience than the Brooks Bros Boys.
mali muso
@Woodrow/asim: Thanks for this perspective and also for your hard work in local civic engagement. Here in Virginia, I can definitely see the fruits of the labor of slowly building on Democratic successes here to finally be in a position to make meaningful change.
mrmoshpotato
Someone on NBC news just characterized Dump as liking to have the last word and being “engaged in television.”
No. DUMP IS A MEDIA WHORE!
debbie
If you can figure it out, I hope you’ll share how to stop focusing on politics.
Sloane Ranger
@jl: I agree. Was it the lack of a ground game due to COVID-19 or COVID-19 exhaustion by the electorate? Fear of poverty trumping fear of death? The beginning of some sort of political realignment by black and Latino men? Sweet sounding lies by the Trump campaign?
It needs to be looked at calmly and cold bloodedly. But I’m white and British so what do I know.
What worries me is that the bulk of the outstanding votes in Nevada are from Las Vegas. They’re expected to be predominantly Democratic, but, Vegas’ main industry is tourism and there’s a chance a lot of D voters might be desperate enough to vote R in the hope that everything fully opens up again.
BTW, there appears to be shenanigans being attempted at the counting place in Detroit. A lot of disruption by R “observers”.
Omnes Omnibus
@lee: The author of that piece is cordially invited to fuck off.
cmorenc
@janesays:
When pre-election polls showing Harrison tied with Graham @44%, many of y’all succumbed to an illusion that it was possible that a substantial (rather than negligible) part of the remaining 12% of the SC electorate nominally still undecided might ticket-split and vote for Harrison, even while also voting for Donald Trump, perhaps in combination with another portion of folks unhappy with Graham but unwilling to actually vote for Harrison might no-vote in the Senate race . INSTEAD, if you much understood South Carolina, you’d have realized tha nearly all that 12% listing themselves as nominally “undecided” were instead too disengaged from the Senate race to give it much thought until they walked into the voting booth to reliably vote for Trump. Sure, Graham didn’t turn them on enough to commit in opinion polls to having premeditated intentions to vote for him, but c’mon folks – Trump’s margin in SC almost exactly wound up matching Grahams margin – 55%-44% (rounded).
You all weren’t thinking realistically about this. Graham’s correct – y’all spend a lot of money with no chance to get anything for it.
JPL
@James E Powell: Signature match. Ossoff has a crew out contacting those that need to vouch for their signature.
There is a very conservative county counting 20,000 mail in ballots. 65 percent white. It does not appear that trump is gaining on those ballots, yet.
JPL
@James E Powell: Signature match. Ossoff has a crew out contacting those that need to vouch for their signature.
There is a very conservative county counting 20,000 mail in ballots. 65 percent white. It does not appear that trump is gaining on those ballots, yet.
Yutsano
@James E Powell:
It will be fun to watch Lil Marco flip back to never knowing Drumpf. Grassley is 87 years old. He might retire unless he goes for Feinstein old as dirt status. Burr barely beat Hagan so it’s possible. Portman will be tough but he’s such a marshmallow who is vulnerable on healthcare so making that especially local there might work. Toomey has already announced he’s not running in 2022. There is a rumour Johnson might resign in order to run for governor. It’s not impossible especially if we get really lucky in the Georgia specials.
mrmoshpotato
@p.a.:
What happened? Did a bunch of Trump trash show up with guns again?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I disagree; To a point it’s Trump. look how the GOP bombs in elections without Trump. And that’s the thing, Trump is a black swan in the flesh; a live action 80 cartoon character of a successful businessman down to the silly tie and hair. His whole persona a 30 year distillation of what the Right thinks a leader should be like. Once Trump goes to the great cheese burger in the sky, who else as that crazy mixture of populist demagogue and establishment?
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: Nah, I’ve felt that you can cheerfully bugger off for quite a while. So no big deal.
Peale
A few positive thoughts:
Ruckus
Betty, just sitting down to lunch and have some advice. To compartmentalize requires that you learn to focus like a laser. I don’t think everyone is capable of doing this but think of someone who knits while watching a movie.
I do something similar to recall something. I have to shift the question to the background and the answer pops up. If I concentrate on the question I’ll probably never find the answer.
p.a.
@mrmoshpotato: just going on a few previous posts here, no direct knowledge myself.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist:
We have had the house these last 2 years. They have had the senate. We wouldn’t agree to anything awful, so that means nothing passes the House and the Senate. The Senate mostly has done judicial appointments but those COME FROM THE PRESIDENT.
And look at all the crazy, awful, terrible stuff that has happened that HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING THAT GETS PASSED BY THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE.
That’s the stuff that will be gone. We can rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, we can do a million things. Most of the harm Trump has done, he was able to do as PRESIDENT.
If we can take the Presidency, we are 1000x better off than we are now. I do not understand why so many seem to not understand that today.
George
@guachi: Yep. And I don’t recall if Clinton even had the popular vote lead on the day after the election. I kept tabs on Wasserman’s spreadsheet over the next couple of weeks. Clinton’s margin grew as ballots trickled in from California and Washington state in particular.
raven
@Ruckus: Man, I was at a conference with a couple of knitters and I drove. On the way back I asked how in the hell they could focus on the presentations while knitting!!! Whew, I get it now.
Sab
@Steve in the ATL: Have you been lurking all these months?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@cmorenc: So what do you think would have happened if this was and off year like 2022?
Woodrow/asim
I’ll challenge that a little bit. The GOP keeps trying to break into red areas — if they didn’t, we’d not have had to deal with Romney, Baker, or Brown in Mass, to take one example.
Indeed, the reason we’re in this mess is because the GOP leadership, in the Roosevelt/Truman era, decided to “deal with the devil down in Dixie.” The GOP was a nonentity in much of the South, during much of Jim Crow.
By actively courting the Dixiecrats, they made the call to shift the GOP into a “see no evil” mode that would, over decades, see the Party make the moral and policy that, decades later, allowed someone like Trump to ascend. And they did it because they felt desperate, and feared that if they didn’t do something, the Party would just…vanish. There just wern’t enough “moderate” GOPers to keep the party afloat as a nationally-competitive interest.
By jettisoning those ethics, cycle after cycle, to court White Supremacy, runaway Capitalism, and Evangelicalism, they now have the grassroots and financial backing to make a play almost anywhere in America. That they don’t always isn’t due to lack of interest in controlling those areas, as well — they just don’t need to, esp. when they can pit “blue” against “red” for points, and the “blue” areas aren’t needed for a POTUS win, nor to control the Senate. :(
Progressives aren’t in the same position, in any way.
Fair Economist
For the next 4 years, President Biden is way better than President Trump. After that, it’s less clear. Normal expectation is that the President’s party loses downballot during his term, so President Biden gives us a very high chance of a Republican trifecta in 2024 along with a lot of state trifectas and a solid Court majority, presumably with a Republican president much less obviously reprehensible. That seems pretty grim.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: Not so different from some folks here.
tam1MI
@Peale: 3. It’s harder than hell to vote out an incumbent President. Just achieving that is a major victory.
mrmoshpotato
@Mel: I’m sorry. My city (Chicago) hates the orange shitstain, though I do have one Trumper ex-friend who still lives here as far as I know.
Splitting Image
@cmorenc:
You can’t win if you don’t try. Harrison fought the good fight and made Graham sweat. He can sit next to Stacey Abrams in my book.
He was only going to win in a landslide and we didn’t get a landslide. South Carolina’s demographics aren’t responsible for the Republicans holding on to Maine, Iowa, Kansas and Montana. The G.O.P. turned out at least five million more votes this year nationally than they did in 2016, and that saved Graham’s bacon.
Woodrow/asim
Born, raised, and came back here to Greenville, South Carolina. Both my Parents, deeply involved in politics, here.
I want to remind folx that we Progressives lose exactly 100% of fights we don’t engage in. I’ve already pointed out a key fight in the SC city I live in, that went towards Progressives. That was literally decades of work, finally come to fruition.
These Senate battles are as much about building coalitions and partnerships for future work. As disheartening as the actual vote is, we also know that there’s interest in SC moving towards where GA is, right now — on the knife’s edge of turning Blue.
That ain’t happening if we run from every damn fight in a state because it’s “hard”.
Sloane Ranger
@mrmoshpotato: A lot of Trump observers were demanding voter counters give them their names and to have access to parts of the process not permitted to observers by State law. They got obstreperous and were thrown out. More Trump “observers ” without accreditation turned up and were arguing with election officials and the police at last report. .
Kayla Rudbek
@Boussinesque: hmm, I think that you would have to consider the two-body problem (two working spouses, can they both relocate?) or else recruit a lot of single people. With more telework due to COVID-19 this may be an easier problem to solve than when I was younger or like a few years ago when Vermont was trying to recruit younger workers (if I had been single or if Mr. Rudbek had as good of telework options as I did and still do, I think that I would have tried to talk him into moving to Vermont). Also consider the schools for people with children (although for people with teenagers, looking at the in-state college options would also be a consideration IMAO). And of course look at broadband internet access as well.
bluefoot
Assuming social media platforms spreading disinformation and propaganda have a substantial negative effect (and data says yes), then how do we de-weaponize these platforms? Some of the work has to come from the companies who own/run them, but they need to be persuaded/induced to act. What other controls or legislation can we put into place? How do we fight the noise machine? Facts, logic and truth don’t seem to cut it. So what will?
LurkerNoLonger
@George: My idea of a landslide was Obama ‘08. But maybe the electoral college made it seem bigger than it was. I’m not sure how many more popular votes he got than McCain.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Now, I didn’t exactly say that, did I?
Sab
@John S.: I missed that tip to you from Ohio Mom. I have a six year pld autistic grand daughter I worry about. Thanks you and Ohio Mom.
lowtechcyclist
@WaterGirl:
Yes, the judicial appointments come from the President. And they have to pass the Senate. So the past four years worth of judicial nominees are now Federal judges and Justices. And as long as the Senate remains in GOP hands, Biden can nominate all the judicial nominees he wants, but nothing happens.
And the difference between the Dems and the GOP is that we want to actually deal with substantial problems that are coming at us, and they don’t.
Dealing with a problem like the economic hurt that families are going through right now takes LEGISLATION. Dealing with climate change will take LEGISLATION; rejoining the Paris Accords is nice, but if we don’t hold up our end, it doesn’t mean much. Making voting rights a reality will take LEGISLATION.
And of course, SCOTUS could strike all that legislation down, if we don’t expand the courts, which takes LEGISLATION.
Yes, we’ll be better off in a limited way with Biden as President in two and a half months, than we would be with Velveetamort still running the place. But damned if I can see how we avoid the climate change train barreling down the tracks at us if we can’t pass some pretty serious LEGISLATION.
So if you don’t like my pessimism about climate change, explain why I’m wrong. But as far as I’m concerned, if we don’t stop that train in time, everything else is deck chairs on the Titanic. Yeah, it’ll be better to be in a dysfunctional semi-democracy than an authoritarian state as the world burns, but the outcome’s still the same.
So: what’s the plan for stopping the world from burning, while Mitch controls the Senate? Like I’ve said already in this thread, I figure that puts us back to what we were doing under Obama, which wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough even then, and it’s several years later now. We’ve elected Biden. Now what?
Subsole
@Sloane Ranger:
I think the other group really worth looking at is college whites. He gained there, while losing non-college. And by more than the black male vote.
mrmoshpotato
I COULD GIVE A SHIT! The Republican party in this country has been a goddamned fucking pile of shit for my entire life. Every time, every time these bastards are in power it’s “TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH! Umm…we have no money now, so we need to cut social programs.” And yet, there’s ALWAYS money to go bomb the shit out of foreign lands.
As a wise man was known to say – Fuck ’em!
Boussinesque
@Kayla Rudbek: Yeah, there’re a lot of moving pieces to consider–makes me wish that it was as easy as playing SimCity: get a boatload of cash and just straight-up construct a new town with all the desired amenities. But that ain’t the reality we’ve got to work with, so we’ll need to co-opt what we can. And the earlier points about the movement of Georgia, Virginia, and other states that are on the edge of flipping gives reason for hope. Probably makes more sense to focus there, but the long-term nature of the fight means we need to start planting seeds everywhere so that they have time to germinate.
Caravelle
I was watching the CNN election night coverage (would have watched MSNBC but it wasn’t available overseas… Should plan on a VPN next time) and I was struck how much it was reminiscent to me of people sportscasting a snail race. Or a game I sometimes do to sort a pack of cards, where I’ll work through the pack laying the cards down according to some basic adjacency rules and treating it like there’s a race to which color will get filled first. It’s like… you can sportscast a totally random contest! It will sound exciting! But it is the pure essence of sound and fury signifying nothing. And of course an election isn’t completely random, but the fact it sounded exactly as though it were was significant IMO. All your caveats of “this means nothing, it can totally change overtime” are pretty weak John King when your proceed to talk endlessly about “this” anyway.
Maybe that could be a perspective on things that could help. When you’re watching the returns, on tenterhooks for the next tidbit of information, maybe cast your mind to five days from now – how will you look back on this information stream? Did each of these tidbits really provide information that you now value five days later, or were a significant amount of them essentially a random walk getting to a final result that *is* what you cared about… but didn’t turn up until much later?
I don’t want to say that watching election night returns is stupid; I mean, the game I describe with cards is entertaining to me, that’s why I do it. But I think that what it largely is: entertainment (even more so given the completely empty “analysis” CNN was providing, ffs…). If you’re being entertained then it’s good, if it’s breaking your soul then remembering that it’s entertainment and not actually useful for you to engage in might be useful. Maybe do meditation, mindfulness exercises to try and manage the emotions that are prompting you to try and watch. Or force yourself to disconnect in some way or another (ranging from turning off the computers/tv/wifi to planning a camping trip to the middle of nowhere at the relevant moment).
Yarrow
@cain: Well, yeah. That’s why I said “its various entities.” Facebook owns a lot of stuff. They bought Giphy, for instance.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus: Hey, you’re the one who decided to engage me, not the other way around. But whatever.
People here keep telling me I should be happier about the results. I’ve explained why I’m not. I haven’t seen any convincing rebuttals to my explanation. Didn’t really think my attitude was spoiling anyone else’s party, but apparently people really want me to be happy.
I’m a pretty resilient guy. I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow. But the reasons aren’t going away.
TEL
@Peale: Totally agree, especially with your no. 2. Getting rid of an incumbent nationalist demagogue is incredibly hard – especially a charismatic one like Trump. There’s a fair amount of people who don’t normally vote who voted for him. When he’s not on the ballot, the GOP has a much harder lift. You can’t just push a Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton into Trump’s position and get the same result. However, it still sucks that such a large proportion of our country are idiots who allow themselves to be defined by who they hate.
Sab
@Sloane Ranger: Vegas is a very weird town. It votes reliably D but utterly depends on tourism. But it was originally founded by Mormons and they are still about a third of the population. They usually are reliably R (Harry Reid is an exception, but he and his wife converted from other religions). Mormons are pretty much appalled by Trump.
mrmoshpotato
@LurkerNoLonger: Obama won ’08 by 9,522,083 votes.
Source
Kayla Rudbek
@Boussinesque: as David Brin would say, there are plenty of small towns in less-populated states that need population and revitalization. This could be like the utopian socialist towns of the 19th century…
Subsole
@lowtechcyclist: I feel largely the same. I have no answers. No good ones. Hope some of the Filth die of covid. Executive action the fuck out of everything. Await opportunities. Let our reps know we expect forceful action. Badger them. Write letters. Tell our friends to do the same. Most of team blue really seems to care. Getting a flood of contact from people stuck in red states who are turning to them because they are the only people listening might put a little steel in their spines. Which already seem pretty reinforced, frankly. I mean, fucksakes Manchin and King have had enough of this shit. I doubt we are going into Kumbaya mode, IF we let our reps know how ridiculous we think that is.
The nice thing about dems, coming from someone who has lived his whole life in a red state, is they actually pick up their phone. I wonder how many blue staters really APPRECIATE that simple difference, sometimes…
We may have to sit and let things develop a bit. As maddening as that is. Sorry I haven’t got better answers. We do what we can until we can do more because it’s all we can do.
Subsole
@Sab: Utah was red this time, last I checked. Doubt they are too terribly apalled.
Chbnna
@MomSense: This, this right here….what am I missing, am I crazy? How can half the electorate not only be ok with this dumpster of a fire presidency but actually wants more? How???
JustRuss
The do-nothing Republican-controlled Senate. Cuz if Biden doesn’t say it, the media sure fucking won’t.
JustRuss
I’d like to believe that, but a good chunk of my LDS in-laws think he’s the bestest thing ever.
beckya57
You’re describing my marriage. My husband and I are the same way. I wish I was more like him, but I’m not and probably never will be.
I am going to try to spend some more quality time with my ukulele, though, and be grateful that Trump is on his way out.