#and didn’t get to vote until 2020

[astrobei]

my to my sister: mom and i are voting and drinking alcohol

my sister: that’s the most american sentence i’ve ever heard

[tomorrowusa]

A lot of those bros who embraced Trump may soon become incel bros.

Apparently the "4B" movement has crossed the Pacific from South Korea.

To explain 4B, this is from Elle...

McKenna, who did not want her last name published for privacy reasons, first heard about 4B a few months ago, via a TikTok video referring to the South Korean social movement. The basic idea: women swear off heterosexual marriage, dating, sex and childbirth in protest against institutionalized misogyny and abuse. (It is called 4B in reference to these four specific no-nos.) The mostly online movement began around 2018 protests against revenge porn and grew into South Korea’s #MeToo-esque feminist wave. In the wake of Trump’s victory, 4B is once again on McKenna’s mind – and she’s not the only one.

Trump’s embrace of manosphere figures such as Joe Rogan, the Nelk Boys and Adin Ross means he has strong support among their evangelists – mainly, young men. But for young women, the former president’s long history of misogyny means a vote for Trump is a vote against feminism, especially with reproductive rights as a key issue in 2024. Ahead of the US election, pundits predicted a history-making gender gap, and early exit polls support that prediction: women aged 18-29 went overwhelmingly left, while Trump picked up ground with their male counterparts compared with 2020. With the race called, TikToks viewed hundreds of thousands of times offered one way for women to go for the jugular: 4B, specifically cutting off contact with men. “Girls it’s time to boycott all men! You lost your rights, and they lost the right to hit raw! 4b movement starts now!” one creator wrote on TiKTok in a video viewed 3.4m times.

B4 began in South Korea to protest blatant misogyny. It grew when South Korean bros helped to elect a misogynistic president.

In South Korea, 4B began as an offshoot of national protests against the spycam epidemic, in which perpetrators filmed targets – most of whom were women – during sex or while urinating in public bathrooms without their knowledge or consent. “These videos were sold and exchanged by men on Discord, and women didn’t know how many men had taken part, and if any of the men in their lives had,” said Min Joo Lee, an assistant professor of Asian studies at Occidental College. “There was a general sense of, ‘Who can I trust? And before I regain my trust in men, I need to refrain from contact with them.’”

Voyeurism is something Trump is famous for.

4B happens at a time South Korea is experiencing a drop in its fertility rate. So women are operating from a position of strength. Of course fertility fanatic Elon Musk is appalled by B4.

South Korea’s fertility struggle caught the attention of the vehement Trump ally Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO has at least 11 living children (one son died in infancy in 2002). He describes pronatalism, the enthusiastic promotion of reproduction, as a way to save humanity from “population collapse”. When Taylor Swift came out in support of Kamala Harris this summer, he seemingly offered, creepily and unprompted, to get her pregnant. He’s propped up South Korea’s declining fertility rate as a case study for Americans who do not get busy making babies. Consider Musk an archetypical 4B foe. He’s far from the only one. Far-right figures such as Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who has praised Hitler and once described his “ideal wife” as 16 years old, celebrated on X after Trump’s win, tweeting, “I’d just like to take the opportunity to thank men for saving this country from stupid bitches who wanted to destroy the world to keep abortion,” and, “Your body, my choice. Forever.” That sort of violent rhetoric, which is spreading among Trump’s far-right supporters, will not exactly convince the majority of young American women they should be dating at the moment.

Musk's worry about "population collapse" is contrived and probably racist. What he really wants is higher white fertility.

We're in no danger of our species going extinct unless we make the planet unlivable. There are currently 8.1 billion humans. Even if that were cut in half, that would leave us with more humans than there were in 1974; they seemed to do just fine back then with ABBA and Gerald Ford.

So women, do whatever it takes to secure your rights. At the very least, discriminate in favor of guys who donated to Harris-Walz before November 5th.

[qqueenofhades]

One of my biggest annoyances is leftists and communists beinging up Biden’s tweets during the 2020 campaign of things he said he would do, and being like “see?? he didn’t deliver on anything and this is why you shouldn’t vote for the Dems again” Like, for all the understanding they seem to have of communist or marxist or whatever theory, the idea that the President is not a king and can’t do whatever he wants without Congress’s approval is lost on them?? He still believes in those things but if Congress won’t pass the legislation what is he supposed to do? EOs won’t solve all our problems.

Yeah. Not even to mention, the claim that "Biden hasn't done/delivered anything!!!" is a big fat lie, as people keep pointing out the things he has done, with a razor-thin House majority (until 2022) and two "Democratic" senators who torpedoed everything and one of whom has now literally left the party (Manchin and Sinema). So while Online Leftists obviously don't understand the difference between "achieving all of his campaign goals" and "achieving some," for the last frikkin time, Biden has done a lot of good things in very bad circumstances!!!!!! Using "he didn't do everything!!!!" as an excuse to not vote and so enable the open and unrepentant fascists is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard!!!!

Like. Take the debt deal. As in other things, Biden clearly learned from Obama's mistake (which was believing that the Republicans would ever negotiate in good faith about anything, and/or would reciprocate in kind if Biden made concessions). McCarthy whined for WEEKS that Biden wasn't listening and wasn't talking to him and wasn't entertaining his ridiculous proposals (22% cuts in ALL discretionary/non-military spending, including Social Security, Medicare, etc etc, while preserving the giant Trump tax cuts for the rich.) No matter that a full one-quarter of the national debt ($7.8 trillion of $31 trillion) was racked up under Trump and the debt ceiling involves paying bills that have already been spent. No sir, those Damn Free-Spending Democrats wanted to use your money on icky things like ~social welfare!! It was mean and it was hypocritical and it was blindingly obvious, and Biden just completely ignored it. He didn't try to negotiate in good faith with that, because there was no way it would work. He just let them whine.

Then, when it came down to it, Biden went in and got a deal that preserves pretty much all of the Democrats' major legislative priorities and expansions from the last two years. The only real change is raising the work requirement age for childless adults on SNAP food assistance from 49 to 54, but this has also been accompanied by a corresponding expansion of the definition "homeless" to make more people eligible, some for the first time ever. There's not going to be any major new spending for the next two years, but that wasn't happening anyway since the GOP controls the House and wouldn't agree to anything Biden put in the budget (and plus, none of the money that has already been allocated through the American Rescue Plan and other federal assistance is getting taken away). But more importantly, it raises the debt ceiling for the next TWO years and it won't come up again until after 2024. That is HUGE: the GOP really, REALLY wanted to hold the economy hostage again prior to the next presidential election. But Biden basically went in and told McCarthy to stfu and got what he wanted. Qevin was even forced, after months of "Sleepy Joe" GOP propaganda, to call Biden "very smart and very tough" in the negotiations. Soooo.

Anyway, this is what I mean: this isn't as sexy and/or as utterly fucking useless as spouting lukewarm rebaked "Marxist" propaganda on the Twittermachine about how Biden hasn't done anything, but it's the actual nitty-gritty work of government and flat-out beating the Republicans. They got absolutely shit-all that they wanted, because Biden didn't fall for their same old, same old dirty tricks and disingenuous squealing. He went in, got the job done, and will get way less credit for it than he deserves, from anyone. Dunno about you, but I like that guy. I plan to vote for him again.

[simply-ivanka]

A Minnesotan Sizes Up Tim Walz

During his tenure, student achievement has slipped, crime has surged, and state residents have fled.

By Scott W. Johnson - Wall Street Journal

St. Paul, Minn.

Tim Walz has such a bad record as Minnesota’s governor that I was astonished when he landed on Vice President Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential shortlist. As Minnesota’s Center of the American Experiment has documented, under Mr. Walz Minnesota has become a high-crime state. Student achievement has tumbled as spending on schools has skyrocketed. Per capita gross domestic product has fallen below the national average. Minnesotans have joined residents of New York, California and Illinois in fleeing their home state.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—also on Ms. Harris’s shortlist—made sense to me. Pennsylvania is a key state. Mr. Shapiro seems to be a man of substance and would give liberal Jews a reason to vote for Ms. Harris without a guilty conscience. As a Jewish supporter of Israel, I worried that Mr. Shapiro would give the animus throbbing in the heart of the Democratic Party cover. Indeed, that animus drove a nasty intraparty campaign against him.

But Tim Walz? I’m a conservative Republican. I don’t completely understand Democrats’ ways. As an observer of Minnesota politics, however, I understand how Mr. Walz became governor. Having served six terms in Congress from a rural district, he challenged the endorsed DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) candidate—a liberal metro-area state senator, Erin Murphy—in the 2018 DFL primary. Ms. Murphy was also challenged by another metro-area liberal, Lori Swanson, then state attorney general. With Ms. Murphy and Ms. Swanson dividing the liberal urban vote, Mr. Walz and his far-left running mate, former state Rep. Peggy Flanagan, won the primary with 41%.

On taking office in 2019, Gov. Walz was restrained by a one-seat Republican majority in the state Senate—until Covid hit in the spring of 2020. He declared a state of emergency on March 25, 2020, and ruled by decree for 15 months. He proclaimed the emergency on the basis of an allegedly sophisticated Minnesota Model projection of the virus’s course in the state. In fact, the projection reflected a weekend’s work by graduate students at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Relying on their research, Mr. Walz presented a scenario in which an estimated 74,000 Minnesotans would perish from the virus. The following week the Star Tribune reported that with the lockdown Mr. Walz ordered, 50,000 would die. Maybe it would have been preferable to address the virus through democratic means.

Having destroyed jobs and impeded life routines, including family get-togethers and church attendance, Mr. Walz finally let his one-man rule lapse on July 1, 2021. When the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center stopped counting in March 2023, the deaths of 14,870 Minnesotans were attributed to the virus. (In 2020 I successfully sued the administration for excluding me from Health Department press briefings on Covid.)

During the state of emergency, protests broke out in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020 following the death of George Floyd. That Thursday, rioters burned Minneapolis’s Third Precinct police station to the ground. Mr. Walz didn’t deploy the National Guard until the weekend. Riots, arson and looting throughout the Twin Cities caused about $500 million in damage.

Minnesota leads the nation in Covid fraud. Under the auspices of the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, its founder, Aimee Bock, allegedly recruited mostly young Somali men to seek reimbursement for millions of meals supposedly served to poor students and families. According to indictments handed up by a grand jury to U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, Ms. Bock and others allegedly defrauded the state and federal government of $250 million. Ms. Bock has pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges.

Among the 70 defendants charged to date, 18 have pleaded guilty. In April the first of the cases to go to trial had seven defendants; five were convicted. The remaining cases have yet to be tried. In all, the Minnesota Department of Education oversaw the payout of $250 million to reimburse fictitious meals. The nature and scale of the fraud are staggering. Mr. Walz tried to blame state district court judge John Guthmann, who in April 2021 handled a case regarding the department’s processing of applications for reimbursements. According to Mr. Walz, Judge Guthmann ordered the state to continue payouts to the alleged perpetrators of the fraud even after the state Education Department discovered it.

In September 2022, Judge Guthmann authorized a news release titled “Correcting media reports and statements by Gov. Tim Walz concerning orders issued by the court.” The release concluded: “As the public court record and Judge Guthmann’s orders make plain, Judge Guthmann never issued an order requiring the MN Department of Education to resume food reimbursement payments to FOF. The Department of Education voluntarily resumed payments and informed the court that FOF resolved the ‘serious deficiencies’ that prompted it to suspend payments temporarily. All of the MN Department of Education food reimbursement payments to FOF were made voluntarily, without any court order.”

In November 2022 Mr. Walz was elected to a second term, and the DFL won majorities in both chambers of the Legislature. In the preceding two years the state had accumulated an $18 billion budget surplus. With the DFL in full control, Mr. Walz and the Legislature have spent the $18 billion surplus on infrastructure, education and other programs that will burden the state for years. They have also raised taxes.

Mr. Walz and his DFL colleagues have backed measures establishing Minnesota as a mecca for abortion and a “trans refuge.” The legislation prohibits enforcing out-of-state subpoenas, arrest warrants and extradition requests for people from other states who seek treatment that is legal in Minnesota. It also bars complying with court orders issued in other states to remove children from their parents’ custody for authorizing hormone treatment or surgery to alter sex characteristics.

Like so many Democrats who have kept up with the demands of the progressive agenda, Mr. Walz has “grown” in office. In his second term, he has been the most left-wing Minnesota governor since the socialist Floyd B. Olson (1931-36). I doubt that Mr. Walz could be elected to Congress in his old district, which is now represented by a Republican. The idea that he can appeal to voters who don’t already support Ms. Harris seems far-fetched.

Mr. Johnson is a retired Minneapolis attorney and contributor to the site Power Line.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Michael de Adder, Halifax Chronicle Herald

* * * *

Trump promises to eliminate future elections

July 29, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Last Friday, Trump told Christian rally-goers that “You won’t have to vote any more” if they elect Trump in 2024.

Let that sink in. A presidential candidate promised to eliminate future elections.

The media yawned.

Actually, the media ignored the story (except for The Guardian) until commentators on social media and the Harris Campaign shamed journalists into acknowledging Trump's antidemocratic threat—which they did in a dismissive, begrudging manner.

It is tiresome to highlight the media’s failings, but this incident is so egregious that it is important on many levels. Most importantly, it underscores that Democrats cannot relent in their effort to warn the American people that Trump hopes to end fundamental democratic norms—like the peaceful, regular transfer of power as prescribed by the Constitution.

Among the issues that should drive voters to the polls in 2024, Trump’s repeated promises to end democracy should be the most alarming. But concepts like “democracy” and “tyranny” strike many voters as “abstract.” Taking away the right to vote is not abstract; doing so would render all other rights illusory.

Let’s turn this incident against Trump by convincing voters that Trump really, truly wants to eliminate the right to vote after 2024. And we must not let him (or his surrogates) weasel out of the plain meaning of his words.

What did Trump say?

 At a rally in Florida on Friday, Trump said,

Christians, get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it any more. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians. I love you. Get out – you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.

See The Guardian, Trump tells supporters they won’t have to vote in the future: ‘It’ll be fixed!’.

Like most of Trump's statements, it is simultaneously inscrutable and blazingly obvious. He is promising the end of democracy if he is elected. “In four years, you won’t have to vote again.”

The same words uttered by most other politicians might be susceptible to innocent interpretations. But those words uttered by this president can mean only one thing: He wants to eliminate elections in America. He tried to override the will of the people in 2020 by canceling their votes through coup and insurrection. He says he will do so again if he is re-elected. We should believe him.

To repeat: A presidential candidate has promised that 2024 will be the last time that Americans will vote because “everything will be fixed.” That is the equivalent of a five-alarm fire for democracy.

How did the GOP, the media, and the Harris campaign respond? You can probably predict their responses, but let’s look for ourselves.

The GOP response

In typical GOP fashion, the GOP response was (a) he didn’t mean what he said, (b) he said the opposite of what you think you heard, and (c) Trump says weird things all the time, so chill out!

The typical Republican response was delivered by New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who laughed off the statement by saying, (a) it was “hyperbolic,” (b) Trump was trying to make the point that “We want everyone to vote in all elections,” and (c) it was a classic “Trumpism.”

Saying that the statement was hyperbolic and “a Trumpism” are. not serious responses because they do not address the substance of what Trump actually said. Trump incited an insurrection by telling people to “Fight like hell” moments before the attack on the Capitol.” We are long past claiming that Trump's words should not be taken seriously and literally.

Claiming that Trump's statement means the exact opposite of what Trump said is depraved. Sununu’s interpretation of “We want everyone to vote in all elections” vs. Trump's “You’re not gonna have to vote again” is depraved. The depravity of Sununu’s perverse interpretation is not diminished because Sununu delivered the lie with a hearty laugh.

Other Trump apologists (on social media) argued that Trump was saying only that Republicans would not need Christian evangelical votes after 2024 because Trump would do such a great job of fixing all problems in America, “you’re not gonna have to vote.” That explanation makes no sense; even if Trump “fixed” all the problems in America in the next four years, the Constitution still requires an election in 2028.

There is simply no reasonable interpretation of Trump's words other than his declaration that in four years, he intends to eliminate elections (if he can).

The media’s response

As noted above, The Guardian gave serious coverage to Trump's statement. US media outlets, not so much. See, for example, Lucian K. Truscott IV’s description of the NYTimes’ pathetic response. As Truscott notes in his Substack, the Times relegated the statements to “a few lines in a wrap-up piece about what’s happening in the presidential campaign . . . and they buried it on the Times website.” The Times then breezily moved on to pedestrian coverage of the campaigns as if they were reporting the details of an itinerary rather than one of the most shocking statements ever by a major-party candidate for the presidency.

Perhaps even worse was the pathetic interview of Chris Sununu by Martha Raddatz on ABC. Raddatz asked Sununu, “What the heck did he [Trump] mean there [in the statement]?” As noted above, Sununu responded,

(a)  The statement was hyperbolic; (b)  Trump meant that everyone should vote in every election; and (c)  That statement is a Trumpism.

Sununu’s pathetic response was enough to satisfy Radattz, whose follow-up question was, “Ok. Let's turn to President Biden and Kamala Harris.”

I won’t pick on Raddatz (much). Almost every journalist on mainstream media is as pathetic as Raddatz. The inability to ask follow-up questions to ludicrous rationalizations of attacks on democracy is staggering. Most are entertainers, not journalists. Their presence on “news” shows is insulting to their viewers.

Raddatz’s failure to challenge Sununu’s answer and her immediate transition to a question about President Biden and Kamala Harris demonstrates the media’s dangerous addiction to mindless “balance” and false equivalency. Nothing Kamala Harris did over the weekend deserves to be in the same news block as a story about a presidential candidate promising to end the need for elections. Nothing.

Having watched the media fail miserably for seven years with Trump, nothing should surprise us. But the guy tried to overturn one election already and is saying he will do it again. What will it take for the media to realize that Trump is a unique threat to democracy who deserves coverage that applies only to aspiring dictators?

Even if the Times and Raddatz believed that Trump's remarks had a benign explanation, they failed to acknowledge the more plausible, malign interpretation. Instead, they were willing to assume that Trump's remarks were harmless “Trumpisms.” They are not. We saw what happened after Trump told his followers on January 6, 2021: “We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.”

So, continue writing those letters to the editor and comments to stories highlighting the media’s failings. And become a messenger for Harris by amplifying her campaign’s messaging. Read on!

The Harris Campaign’s response

Kamala Harris’s campaign organization has been reacting to Trump's missteps and threats like a rapid response force to each. Early Saturday morning, the Harris campaign posted a clip of Trump's comments and attached the following statement:

Statement on Trump's Promise to End Democracy When Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom she means it. Our democracy is under assault by criminal Donald Trump: After the last election Trump lost, he sent a mob to overturn the results. This campaign, he has promised violence if he loses, the end of our elections if he wins, and the termination of the Constitution to empower him to be a dictator to enact his dangerous Project 2025 agenda on America. Donald Trump wants to take America backward, to a politics of hate, chaos, and fear —this November America will unite around Vice President Kamala Harris to stop him.

The Harris campaign’s statement is spot-on for several reasons. First, the campaign issued the statement just after noon on Saturday morning, showing a willingness and ability to rebut Trump quickly. By responding within the same news cycle, the Harris campaign shaped the social media response, which ultimately prodded the major media to acknowledge Trump's threat.

Second, the Harris campaign identified Trump's threats in plain language, including

“Trump's Promise to End Democracy.” “Last election Trump sent a mob to overturn the results.” “He has promised violence if he loses” “He has promised the end of elections if he wins” “He has promised to terminate the Constitution” “To become a dictator” “To enact dangerous project 2025”

Dangerous threats demand plain language. The Harris campaign rose to the challenge.

The campaign’s statement was strong in another respect: In identifying Trump as a threat to democracy, it identified Kamala Harris as the point of unity to stop Trump. A very smart move! Kamala Harris is giving Democrats the antidote to Trump's cult of personality. The campaign is fashioning Kamala Harris as a champion of democracy. And it is working!

Concluding Thoughts

Trump's threats present a dilemma. Should we take them seriously? Or does our attention give them credence and heft they do not carry on their own? As with most things in life, there is tension in truth. We must take Trump's threats literally and seriously. But we must not ascribe superpowers to Trump or self-executing inevitability to his threats. By taking his threats seriously, we can prevent them from coming to fruition. So, do not despair or cower in fear. Raise the alarm as we work to defeat Trump and stop his dark plans.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to rally around Kamala Harris. She held her first fundraiser in Pittsfield, MA at the Colonial Theatre. The event was sold out, with an overflow crowd in front of the theater. Kamala Harris spoke after an all-star warm-up that included former Governor Deval Patrick, Senators Warren and Markey, Rep. Neal, and Heather Cox Richardson.

According to those in attendance, the evening was “electric.” The crowd was so enthusiastic, Kamala Harris had difficulty quieting the cheers so she could say “Thank you.” She gave a great speech and pumped up the crowd even further.

In eight short days, Kamala Harris has unified and inspired Democrats in a way that has defied expectations of pundits and career politicians. She is doing so at the precise moment that Trump's veneer of invincibility is cracking. We need to sustain the wave of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris and spread it to others—so that we can push Trump’s downward trajectory past the tipping point of no return. We can do that!

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[starmada4546]

Kamala Harris deserved to lose.

That’s a controversial statement, so let me get something out of the way right out the gate: I am not a Trump supporter. I fucking hate Trump’s racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, fascist guts, and I will until the day I die. I voted for Harris, I volunteered for her campaign and several other local campaigns in my area. I did everything a politically active person should do to participate in our democracy.

And yet I, and anyone who was paying attention knew how this election was going to go ahead of time, for one very simple reason. What were Kamala Harris’s policy positions? What did she actually run on? What did she say she was going to do differently? Building a million homes for working-class people who have had their salaries so undercutted by inflation and price hikes that they can no longer afford the kind of long term saving required for that? Increase child tax credits when grocery prices are so high that nobody can afford another mouth to feed? Raising taxes on billionaires? She’s the Vice President of the current administration, why are they not already being taxed? And furthermore, where is that tax money going? Clearly not Medicare for All, or Student Debt Relief, or anything that could actually constitute benefits for the average citizen.

Discussing which demographics are “responsible” for electing Trump is a fucking stupid discussion, and anyone engaging in it should feel absolutely fucking ashamed at buying into more crap that the oligarchs put up to divide us. Except for a few exceptions, the demographics were coin-flip toss ups. What happened was that Kamala Harris lost 15 million votes. Not to Trump, but to apathy. Trump got 3 million less votes than he did in 2020, and still won, because people didn’t vote for Harris. The battle was in voter turnout, like we always knew it would be, and the Democratic Party lost it. Why?

Because Kamala Harris ran, like Biden did, on being the anti-Trump. And regardless of whether or not you think that the Democrats are responsible for current woes, (and I do not,) that's not a winning strategy when the "Anti-Trump" is the one in power. Being the Anti-Trump isn't a policy position. It's not a solution to anyone's issues. It's merely a hope that people think Trump is worse, and as we've seen, regardless of whether or not it should, that does not win elections. When gas prices or grocery bills are so expensive people can barely afford to survive, saying "Well, those will be worse under Trump," is not a solution. It does not provide confidence that she has plans to fix the issues. It is a shrug of the shoulders, and a dismissal, and that's why so many people stayed home.

In 2020, when the problems could be blamed on Trump without any sort of understanding of the complex issues that caused the problems, because Trump was simply the one in power and The President's Job Is To Fix Everything, so being Anti-Trump worked. When Democrats have been in the white house for four years, and people feel like the problems still aren't fixed, they lose confidence that the democrats will fix the problem, so they don't vote.

When food prices are spiking, you don't say, "The other guy will make it worse," because that's what any candidate would say, and it's not particularly different than just purely mudslinging, and its a claim that Trump will deny vehemently, so you can't win that argument. What you need to say is "I'll subsidize agriculture," or, "I'll increase the accessibility and power of food assistance programs." Regardless of whether or not those things would actually work, what they are is some kind of solid plan to actually fix the fucking problem. It's said that people don't vote on policy, and that's true a lot of the time, or at least more than it should be, but people do vote on confidence, and having policy of any kind builds that confidence. Regardless of what you think of Trump, the man has plenty of plans to implement policy. It's terrible, awful, nation destroying policy, but that's getting into the details and the facts, and that's where the voters' eyes glaze over and they stop listening to you. The fact that Trump has plans to change the status quo and Harris does not is how she lost this election.

When the status quo is untenable, people will vote for whatever breaks it, and that wasn't Harris.

It also doesn't help that Harris has pretty much refused to significantly differentiate herself from Joe Biden, who has plenty of his own problems, and again, is the status quo. Joe Biden refused to step aside and relegate himself to being a single term president because of his personal pride, and the Democrats absolutely refused to consider not backing him until he was forced to step aside when his problematic degradation was put on full display for the entire country to see and mock. Then, instead of holding an actual primary, where voters could choose who they wanted to see on the Democratic ticket, they decided to simply coronate Kamala Harris, a historically unpopular candidate with historically low approval ratings, and force anyone who was against Trump to rally behind a candidate they didn't choose and statistically speaking don't like. Is it any wonder that her ticket hemorrhaged 15 million votes from 2020? That's before getting into her incredibly strange choices during her campaign, from again having essentially no policy positions, to picking a Tim Walz, who while being imo a good person, is from an entirely blue state and not a swing state, and has neither experience running against serious mainline GOP candidates, nor any real nationwide appeal beyond his personality, and we've already established that vibes don't turn out voters.

Kamala Harris, and on a larger scale the Democratic Party, deserved to lose this election because they have almost entirely abandoned any sense of being the progressive option. They've completely abandoned the progressive wing of their party, because who else are they going to vote for? Trump?

I don't like being the guy who says, "Harris hasn't earned the votes," because if you didn't vote, fuck you, you're nearly as culpable in this as the MAGAts, but is it any wonder why progressives are abandoning the democrats? After being ignored, fucked over time after time for nearly a decade at this point, literally screaming and begging for people to care about genocide, fascism, and the literal end of the world and getting a pat on the head and a vote sticker, what the fuck else did anyone expect? Harris cozied up with Liz Cheney and tried to court the votes of a few thousand moderate republicans, while tens of millions of progressive votes were expected, and then you're all trying to to blame them when those votes don't come? Shame, shame on you, ye moderate democrats who'd rather get into bed with the center-right than any kind of progressive, you get what you fucking deserve.

Normally, I'd laugh at establishment democrats fucking around and finding out, but this time, it's not just them finding out, it's the whole of America finding out with them. I don't really have any advice, because I'm just as shattered as anyone else. Hunker down, spend time with your loved ones, and maybe learn how to use a gun in case some neo-nazi decides to try to hate-crime you. I'm hoping that the Democrats learn their lessons from this, but honestly at this point, I'm not sure they're capable of learning, if there'll even be a democratic party to speak of come 2028. Right now, I'm gonna go stare at the election results and feel my faith in humanity crack a little bit more.

[ysabelmystic]

Spent some time trying to see if there was any logical reasoning amongst the Americans refusing to vote for Biden and honestly, not seeing any. There seems to be a complete inability to think ahead.

Honestly, ask yourself:

1) is trump going to be better for Palestine than Biden?

The answer is no. Fuck no.

2) is there anything you can do personally to help Palestinians?

Donate money and protest. Are people being attacked for exercising their free speech on the matter? Yes, and that will continue to happen, possibly to a more extreme extent, under Trump. This country sucks ass.

So all they’re really doing by trying to punish the Democratic Party is convincing themselves that they will avoid having blood on their hands. Somehow, this same logic does not apply to them when it comes to the inevitable outcome, which, since there is no viable third party option, is that republicans win. I guess the republicans can do whatever they want to Americans, Palestinians, and people around the world, and these arrogant, “well read” fools will continue to pat themselves on the back, saying that America was already fascist anyways, that this couldn’t be prevented, that America deserves to fall actually, that voting does nothing, and aren’t they just so enlightened and moral for using “the real tools of the revolution” (which is almost always something that they aren’t willing to do themselves). If 2016 and 2020 taught them nothing, I suppose they’ll be harping on about it until the internet gets shut down.

It’s not a “Zionist take” to want my community to live. This isn’t a choice between Palestinians and Americans who aren’t cishet white men. This is a choice between shit staying the same amount of fucked and possibly improving, and full blown Christian nationalism. I’m guessing most of these people don’t know what that is. They probably didn’t grow up around it and they probably don’t live around it. They probably live in blue states or very blue cities and haven’t experienced right wing religious people consistently enough to really understand the extent of that threat. Or maybe they don’t care about themselves enough to feel like they have skin in the game at all (so fuck the rest of us I suppose).

Grit your teeth and vote for Biden, and if you think you’re too good for it and Trump wins, I hope you experience the fallout in the most direct way possible. If basic logic doesn’t work, maybe some personal experience will, that is, assuming you’ll still be able to vote in 2028.

[dicapiito]

Since Black People share zero blame about what happened in the election and why Trump won again; let’s do a master post on who’s to blame as to why Trump won again:

1. White people. They are never to be trusted to actually pay attention to shit so they will believe anything anyone tells them to. If someone is promising to get rid of anyone who’s not white; white people will vote for that candidate. White men vote for violence and white women vote in hopes to be like white men. I mean, Roe V Wade SHOULDVE been important …until I remember those stories from nurses at Planned Parenthood mentioning how obnoxious white women are about the service. White people who are actual allies are very rare and they know if they admitted to being hateful; they’d be all alone watching Fox News.

2. The mainstream media. MSNBC, CNN, Bill Maher, John Oliver, Jon Stewart ( the biggest douchefuck), Chris Hayes, Anderson Cooper, Joy Reid, among others (who I can’t name because I refuse to hate-watch their media). They spent all their fucking time bashing Biden and the Democrats. They let the lunatic leftists have a platform and they treated Trump like he’s no threat until it was way too late. They figured it’s better for their audiences to not take what Trump did in 2016-2020 seriously and just be mean towards Biden, Harris and the Democrats who actually work towards better.

Any one of these jokers could’ve taken an actual stand and report actual news about Biden but once Covid got calmer thanks to Biden and the White House became boring again because the Biden Administration was busy ACTUALLY WORKING; it just wasn’t enough for them. Once they knew leftists also found another cause they could hijack for themselves to “ stick it to the Dems” they also let these fuckers on their show to help spread more lies about the Democrats. But nope! They latched onto the “ Free Palestine” movement and sold that shit, knowing full fuckin well that it’s not America’s problem about the conflict and Biden and Harris were making sure to get a two state solution.

Their buyers remorse media is not cute and they are only doing this because they know they are a major reason why Trump won again. They’re also scared of retaliation so they’re going to act like they “ regretted it” and that Biden “ wasn’t so bad” while not ever really apologetic but their audiences will eat it up.

3. Nonblack PoC. Latino, Asian/ Pacific Islander community ( I’m not even shocked. I’m apart of this group and they love antiblackness), Arab Americans ( Rashida Tlaib is antiblack but because leftists are stupid; they couldn’t see something so obvious). The desperation to be accepted by white people and also the xenophobia in all these communities had them voting for Trump. They have the “ I’m one of the good ones” mentality and well they’re about to see that antiblackness and xenophobia has screwed themselves .

4. Social media websites letting misinformation spread, and I include tumblr since yet again this happened. I appreciate that X has a community note and people tried to fight it but it was just way too great. Too many bots were getting through. Facebook, tumblr, Twitter, TikTok, likely Instagram as well. And once the elections are over; it’s like they treat the election interference shit like it didn’t happen.

5. Leftists. As usual, since they’re bored and rich, they do this protesting “ the establishment” every four years because they don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes. They went right along with the Free Palestine bullshit because it has worked for them before. Susan Sarandon , remember her? She helped fuck over 2000 as well as 2016 and let the GOP into the White House. Since leftist includes being racist/antiblack and antisemitic; it’s a great way to get more stupid white people to not vote or “ protest vote” and help the GOP win. Now that they have; we won’t see the likes of Jill Stein or any third party candidates. They are only around to help fuck over the Democrats and yet this lesson seems to have to keep being repeated and holy fuck it’s fucking annoying.

6. Nancy Pelosi. I know I haven’t said much but she wanted Biden to step down. She wanted an open Democratic primary to get a new candidate and to go right past Kamala Harris. Her bullshit has been known for awhile, especially if you live in the Bay Area. People forgot because of Covid and because of the whack job who attacked her husband. But remember; she’s also Gavin Newsom’s aunt and well…do with that what you will. If Democrats have any chance at getting their base back; Pelosi needs to step aside and let Hakeem Jeffries be Speaker. Pelosi knew damn well if it was not Kamala Harris; Black People would not show up but she is a white woman first so of course she did what she did. And for her to act like Biden was too old when she’s in the same age group was even more moronic since he won against Trump the first fuckin time

7. antisemitism also played a huge part. Remember Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is Jewish so if it wasn’t antiblackness; antisemitism was also at play here. Even though people won’t say it just like they won’t say their true reasons why they didn’t vote for Kamala Harris. Jewish People were the only allies along with the lgbt community who overwhelmingly voted for Kamala Harris. Every group has knuckleheads but the knuckleheads were extremely smaller than everyone else.

8. The Squad members. AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Jayapal, Cori Bush, Summer Lee and Jamaal Bowman. It’s time to get rid of these idiot DSA morons and the fact that Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman are out is awesome. They always wanted to fuck over the Democrats because they want to appear like they’re activists while they really just sell “ someday it’ll be better” while making $176K a year. They need the GOP in charge so they can coast in the House. Too bad leftists don’t get that.

So now that we all know who’s to blame; maybe now take some fuckin responsibility and hope to fucking heaven that Trump won’t have SCOTUS overturn shit but who are we kidding? With Elon Musk around; a lot of things will be rolled back but let’s see if people learn anything from it. Oh who am I kidding ?

Oh and thinking of moving to Canada? Lmao Justin Trudeau already went “ AHT AHT”. Best believe other countries are already following suit so y’all are going to be owning up to who you voted for lol.

But ya know, Biden was “ too old” and Harris was “ too joyful”

[mariacallous]

The list of Wisconsin Republicans endorsing the Democratic presidential ticket in November has added three high-profile names: Longtime conservative commentator Charlie Sykes, former lawmaker and judge David Deininger and onetime state Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz.

The three went public just before the weekend in a Zoom call with reporters to declare their support for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, and their opposition to the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

“It is a uniquely dangerous moment, and it’s a moment for us to set aside our differences,” said Sykes, explaining why supporting Harris was “not a difficult choice for me” even though he said he’s likely to disagree with many of the policies on her agenda.

“That’s not the point,” he said of those policy differences. “The point is this choice that America has to make — what kind of country we want to be.”

In backing Harris, the three added to the Democratic campaign’s concerted appeal across party and ideological lines to people who view Trump as a distinct, existential threat. All three declared that under Trump the Republican party has evolved far from the party with which they historically have aligned themselves.

“Unless or until the Trump era ends, that party will not regain its footing, and I think defeating him this year is a way to make sure the Republican Party can rebuild and get back to what has always been the party of Lincoln,” Deininger said.

Sykes has opposed Trump since before he first won the Republican nomination for president in 2016. He’s one of the founders of The Bulwark, a digital publication established in 2019 by anti-Trump conservatives.

Schultz left the state Senate midway through Scott Walker’s tenure as Wisconsin governor after voting against two of Walker’s signature pieces of legislation — a bill that stripped public employees of most of their union rights and another loosening mining regulations.

Deininger was among the former judges who served on the Government Accountability Board — a nonpartisan agency that for a few years served as Wisconsin’s elections and ethics watchdog.

After the board investigated Walker’s campaign for coordinating spending with outside groups in the 2012 recall election — at the time a violation of Wisconsin law — Republicans in the Legislature abolished the independent board in 2015 and changed the state’s campaign finance laws to permit coordination.

“When I was on the Government Accountability Board, our primary function was to protect and preserve the integrity of Wisconsin government and our elections,” Deininger said. “That’s the kind of leadership we need at the federal level, and sadly, it’s the opposite of what we saw from Donald Trump.”

Deininger didn’t equivocate in his criticism of the former president.

“Trump has lied repeatedly to the American public about just about everything, but probably the worst of all is his lies about the outcome and integrity of our elections,” he said, recalling that on Jan. 6, 2021, “Trump encouraged a violent mob to attack the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election.”

“The reality is a second Trump term would be far worse and far more dangerous,” he added.

A U.S. Navy veteran, Deininger also asserted that the president has unique responsibility for overseeing national security — and that he was “dismayed at some of the public comments, publicly reported comments, that former President Trump has made about veterans and military service.”

Schultz emphasized his belief in a bipartisan approach to governing and his faith that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, would govern in a bipartisan manner. In contrast, he pointed to the destruction brought by Hurricane Helene to the American Southeast and lies spread by the GOP standard bearers in the storm’s aftermath.

Schultz also drew a contrast between Trump’s evocation of “a dystopian future” and “a candidate seeking the highest office in the land talking about the need to come together, joyfully, working on the problems that all of us face” — Harris.

“I myself want to cast my lot with those folks who are [optimistic about] our future, not who are hung up on some sort of Mad Max scene that they see as a future for our country,” Schultz said.

While echoing some of the same criticisms of Trump, Sykes focused on the party that once served as the political homeland for all three Wisconsin Republicans on the press call.

“I have been surprised and disillusioned by watching how many conservatives have gone along with Donald Trump — his lies, his insults, his kowtowing to dictators, his willingness to violate the law,” Sykes said. “One after another, Republicans have decided that winning or staying in power is more important than standing up for these values that used to be, I think, fundamental.”

He also noted the number of staff and appointees  from Trump’s four years in the White House “who are now saying that he is not fit to be returned to office,” including his former vice president, his former defense secretary and his former national security advisor. “There’s no historical parallel for this,” Sykes said.

Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, and former U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the Janesville Republican who served in Congress for two decades, have both publicly stated Trump should not be reelected but have declined to endorse  Harris.

Sykes professed his respect for them, but also said leaving the presidential line on the ballot empty or writing in a name — George Washington, Edmund Burke or Ronald Reagan — wasn’t a sufficient response, since it won’t prevent Trump from being reelected.

“The only two candidates who have a chance to win this election are Kamala Harris and Donald Trump,” Sykes said. “And by voting for Kamala Harris, I think that we draw the line and say that Donald Trump should never be allowed anywhere near power again.”

[calm-with-anxiety]

If I see or hear people defending their votes for Trump with “well I didn’t really know her policies and plans for her presidency” I will burst into flames. We live in a time where almost every piece of information is in your hand, you could’ve Googled her plans, it was on her fucking website for weeks, it was 80 pages of policy and how they planned to pay for it. Like you chose to be an uneducated voter that got information from commercials and short form video.

The economy line is bullshit because his plans will make everything more expensive, tariffs are payed for by you, you think the multibillion dollar company will take on the extra cost to buy and ship goods by lowering the CEO salary, no, they will make the item more expensive because they never promised you a $200 tv, but they did promise stockholders a dividend of $10/share. His mass deportation policy will cause the economy to collapse because immigrants, legal or illegal, do the jobs that others look down on. You never see a line of white guys in overalls hoping to be hired for below minimum wage to pick fruit for hours in the sun, you don’t see young white men showing up to construction jobs that the builder has subcontracted so it’s cheaper to build. The bedrock of the U.S. economy is cheap labor and a majority of that is immigrants who are looking for jobs that don’t require knowing perfect English and have employers that look the other way when you don’t have documents because they know you will work for anything.

Don’t even get me started on healthcare, outside of women’s healthcare which will get worse, if he finally gets rid of the affordable care act, aka Obamacare, they will replace it with nothing. The man was president before and after John McCain put his thumb down they never tried to make a new policy that wasn’t throwing the whole program into the trash. Also the affordable care act is more than just low cost healthcare, it put in place pre-existing conditions, for those too young to remember, the insurance companies could deny you coverage all because you might get cancer one day because your mother had it, you would have to pay out of pocket for an inhaler because asthma was a pre-existing condition, even if you were diagnosed with it later in life. Don’t forget what the vaccine situation will be, especially if he puts RFK jr. anywhere near it, like there is actual fear that Polio will come back because guess what? Most people under the age of 40 are not vaccinated for it because it was considered eradicated due to the mass vaccination of children in the 50s and 60s. When you complain about feeling like shit after getting the flu shot or a Covid booster, that is the vaccine working in your body, your body is doing an internal workout so if and when you come in contact with those viruses you won’t be getting extremely sick or die because someone doesn’t know how to cover their cough.

I think this election was proof that you can have all the information and still know nothing because you chose to know nothing. People vote with their eyes, not their mind. Gas where I live has been under $3.00 for months, it’s been under $2.50 at the warehouse stores for weeks, but because an ad on tv said prices are rising people believed the tv over their own experience. People saw grocery prices increase and blamed the administration when in reality corporations took advantage of Covid shortages, raised prices, recorded historic profits, and didn’t start bring prices down until this summer after people realized what was happening to some extent and even then they didn’t return to pre-2020 prices because the profit still needed to be high, they looked at the $2 increase in a bag of chips over 4 years and blamed democrats and not Lays.

This is going to be a painful 4 years, for many people here and abroad, Ukraine will have to depend on Europe which is starting to lean conservative as well and the war in Gaza will take an extreme shift that will make the last year look like a paper cut in terms of humanitarian assistance and a possible end. It’s already getting on my nerves as people tweet “we keep fighting” and “we need to be strong so they can’t do all they plan to do like the first time”, it’s not going to be like the first time, the adults in the room he had with him, many who came out and supported Harris, are gone and now it will be yes men that he was told to put there by the extreme right like the supporters of project 2025 and billionaires. And for those saying “well maybe he will die in office”, you think JD Vance is better? He allegedly picked him because DT jr. suggested him and if you have ever seen jr. and his takes you would know Vance can be worse.

This is gonna hurt for many people that will now be seen as lower than second class citizens and you won’t even have lower prices to show for it as that seemed to be the reason you voted for him, enjoy your expensive goods as people lost rights.

[thosemotivationalquotes]

Understanding Election Results

I wanted to make this guide for people who are following the upcoming U.S. election, but are unsure of how votes are actually counted, since it’s not just a simple majority vote.

The U.S. uses something called the Electoral College, which is different than a majority vote.

There are 2 kinds of votes that matter when determining who the winner of the presidential election is. The popular vote, and the electoral vote. The popular vote is the simple majority - whoever gets the most votes win. However, the U.S. doesn’t actually use the popular vote to determine the winner.

This brings us to the electoral votes. Each state gets assigned electors, the amount of which is decided by the state’s population (for example, AZ has 11 electors). Each state takes whichever candidate received the most votes, and casts its electoral votes for that person.

For example, if Harris has 55% of the AZ votes, she gets 11 electoral votes. Whichever candidate reaches 270 votes (the majority) will be the next president.

This is why ‘swing states’ are so important. The popular vote for the state might be neck and neck, but whoever has the most votes gets all the electoral votes for the state. It’s also possible for someone to win the popular vote, but lose the election (Clinton in 2016).

So what does that mean for this election? Take a look at the below map from 270towin:

As we can see, Harris is currently at a predicted 226 electoral votes, with 191 being considered safe. It will come down to the leans and toss up states to decide if she will get enough votes to win. Any state can flip with enough votes, so it’s important to vote no matter how “safe” your state appears to be.

It’s important to vote even if you live in the safely blue states, but it’s especially important to vote if you live in a lean or toss up state. I live in AZ and got to see our state go from red to blue in 2020, so it possible IF people show up and vote.

You’ll also see states being “called”. This means that there are enough votes to make the conclusion that one of the candidates has won the electoral votes for that state. States like CA usually get called fairly early since there are usually an overwhelming amount of blue votes. But a swing state like AZ might be “too close to call” until a few days after the election, while they count any last minute mail in ballots and provisional ballots. A state being “called” on election night does not mean they stop counting the votes, just that there is enough confidence to state who has won that state.

Also a final note, your mental health is super important. If you have already voted, or if you are unable to vote, watching the election results will not change the outcome. If you are stressed to the point you are having anxiety, not eating, missing work/school, etc., please don’t feel like you have watch the election results. We probably won’t know the winner until at least the next day, maybe even a few days after that. If Trump wins he won’t take office for a couple months. So if you need to, take a step back and just focus on getting through the day.

Some states have same day registration, so if you didn’t register check here to see if there is still a chance.

I have voting resources here for anyone voting today:

[tanadrin]

This might sound like a gotcha but I promise it's an honest question: do you think you're better at analyzing polls than Nate Silver? Or do you think he sees the same weirdness that you do but isn't talking about it for some reason?

The stuff you're saying sounds superficially plausible but my priors give him a lot more weight than you, especially without a specific case for why he might be getting it wrong.

I think some of the premises of this ask are weird. Bullet points for clarity.

You don’t need to be Nate Silver to look at a poll’s crosstabs and go “20% of African-Americans saying they will vote for Trump seems super unlikely.”

Nate Silver’s whole thing is modeling elections based on (in part) polls. This is a useful exercise. Even if polls are being weird, doing this may provide some nonzero amount of useful information.

While I couldn’t remotely do what Nate Silver does, Nate Silver’s job relies fundamentally on the assumption polls are an accurate metric to some extent. There are reasons to think, however, that this year they are unusually inaccurate (see point 1)

You didn’t need to be a particle physicist to doubt that the faster-than-light neutrinos result from a few years ago was in fact an error. As it turned out to be. Basic contextual knowledge like whether FTL particles are likely to be a thing—or how various American demographic groups historically vote—means you do not have to approach all subject-specific questions with total Pyrrhonian skepticism, even if you do not have expertise in them.

Lots of people who do this shit for a living *are* talking about the weirdness in the polls, including the new guy running 538, and Nate Cohn over at the NYT. Silver may be too, I haven’t been following him since he left 538.

They may be factoring in the weirdness to some extent in their own modeling, but this is risky! You don’t wanna engage in arbitrary “unskewing” like amateurs tried to do in 2020, and pollsters don’t always release their full data and methodology. So it’s hard to figure out exactly what’s going on.

Nonetheless we do know that poll response rates are at an all time low—much lower even than they were four years ago.

None of what I have posted about the polls and polling is original; these are all points people much smarter than me in this area have talked about and continue to debate. I know what arguments I find persuasive, but if you disagree, that’s cool. I don’t think we will have any solid answers until the election actually happens.

[ragana62]

This is a reminder: (edited to add links to resources)

Votes are still being counted. Check your ballot, make sure yours was. Call your local election authorities/follow appropriate means as indicated in your vote tracking to cure your ballot if need be. The website you’re looking for here is vote.org, where state specific resources are listed out and linked. If you need better internet access to do this, public libraries are your best friend.

Democratic votes are disproportionately represented in early/mail in ballots. Those are typically counted last.

Democratic votes are disproportionately represented in major cities. Higher population density means it takes longer to reach, submit, and verify final vote counts. These also report later than other areas.

Unreported vote margins in several key states including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and many others are high enough that it can still flip the state.

He did this in 2020 too. He called the vote for himself before all votes were in, then threw a fit when people wouldn’t “stop the count”. The reasons above are why they want to stop the count prematurely.

Things look bad right now. I’m fucking stressed. We’re all fucking stressed. I’m fucking angry. A lot of people are justifiably fucking angry.

I’m not going to say “oh, we survived last Trump presidency” because a lot of people didn’t. I’m not going to say “oh, if we flip those states and the final counts put Harris in, everything will be fine” because that still means WAY TOO MANY people were ok voting for a convicted traitor, rapist, and bigot and last time he tried to overthrow the government because he was mad he couldn’t have it.

We probably won’t know anything for sure until Thursday. Plan for the worst, hope for the best, don’t burn yourself out before the fight begins.

Renew your passport or get one (not just as a ‘I’m leaving if my person doesn’t win’, as a ‘they have pitched voting reforms that will for all intents and purposes require one to vote and it’s a good thing to have if you can’). You can now renew your passport online if you meet certain requirements. Travel.state.gov is your friend for that.

If you have a uterus, now is a great time to get in with a gyno to talk about long term birth control options like IUDs/Implants or even surgical sterilization if you aren’t interested in having more kids than you already have. This is the list affectionately dubbed the TikTok Tubal List, in case you do not have a reliable provider or the one you have will not perform the procedures you need (and odds are, if a doc is willing to surgically sterilize you, they will prescribe you birth control if you’d prefer). The Brigid Alliance is great for helping support people who need to travel out of state for abortions. This is the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Check the phone numbers of organizations focused on immigration law and refugee/immigrant resources like orgs that help process asylum requests, refugee/immigrant settlement orgs, and obviously legal aid, not just for yourself, but because you never know who might need it, and make sure you know them, not just save them in your phone. This will vary state to state as well as the specific variety of aid needed and the person needing it. There are religious based groups (shout out to LIRS/Global Refuge for helping my family flea WWII and its aftermath.) You can find ones for other denominations and religions by googling “*religious group* Refugee Aid”. You can use the same process for nationality specific ones as well. Community specific ones might be your best chance at finding someone who speaks your language if you aren’t a native English speaker, at finding community support as well. General practice, IMMLAW is well regarded for a reason.

Do the same for those focused on queer advocacy and support. Get specific. Knowing your local chapter of the ACLU is good, knowing trans specific resources, youth specific resources, intersectional resources for queer folx of color and disabled queer folx, knowing how to reach your local community outreach groups, etc. is better. Most of these resources are local specific. Check in with your local community organizers (if you don’t know who that is, find a local queer centric space and ask people), to find out where people need help most and what organizations and resources they trust locally. Trevor Project is also a good nationwide resource for personal support and information if you need that now, but note that they are usually very busy after elections.

Do the same for women’s health and safety groups (using this term because it is what usually gets used by the groups/resources themselves, but these resources are also good for anyone in possession of a uterus). Abortion access groups that are dedicated to helping people who cannot financially leave a state trying to stop them, domestic violence shelters, resources for accessing birth control. Even better, get to know your neighbors and community, and help each other. Plan B has a shelf life, as does Plan C, as do condoms and spermicide. Stock what you can, share what you can, help each other out. (Links are above for TikTok Tubal List, Brigid Aliance, and National Domestic Violence Hotline) AidAccess will mail abortion pills to every state, both for emergency use (within 1-5 days) and to have on hand (there is a separate form and it may take longer to fulfill).

Talk to your neighbors where it is safe to do so. Make plans for what happens if the worst happens. Who needs to leave, who can’t leave, who has what support needs, who has what resources, etc. The only way through this is together.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and know that nothing is official until the last county reports and confirms the last ballot. That could be Thursday, that could be this weekend, but until it happens, we aren’t completely fucked just yet.

I know I’ve been freaking the fuck out about this, despite normally being a mostly fandom blog. It’s worth freaking out about. But freak out in a way that does not do more harm than good if at all possible. Feel your feelings, but channel them towards protecting yourself, protecting others, and most importantly, not burning yourself out. There’s a lot of fear-mongering out there. There’s a lot to be afraid about. It isn’t official yet.

Plan like it is, hope like it isn’t.

[golvio]

I am still holding on to hope tonight. In 2020, we didn’t start seeing the actual, conclusive results until around Saturday. There were a bunch of major unexpected delays in Georgia and other battleground states this year due to bogus bomb threats called in by Putin’s goons, so who knows when their results are going to show up. The tiniest, reddest counties are getting in their results first and the mainstream news wants to call things early in Donald’s favor because the most conclusive looking results will get them eyeballs and ad clicks, but the results from the cities aren’t even ready yet.

We’ve been hearing good news from local elections and ballot initiatives across the country. New York passed a measure enshrining trans rights into its state constitution, which reminds me of when they protected civil unions years before gay marriage was nationally legalized. Even if Florida is still ratfucked to hell, over half of the state voted in favor of repealing the abortion ban—the enthusiasm is there, it just hasn’t found the right entry points to start putting cracks in the Republicans’ great wall of gerrymandering yet.

There are people out there who are willing to fight for us, who are also sick of this shit and want to beat it back. Please don’t lose heart. I know it’s hokey, but after 2020 I still want to believe it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Noah Berlatsky at Everything Is Horrible:

Outgoing president Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, to protect him from prosecution by a rabid and vengeful incoming President Donald Trump. In response, a lot of pundits, and a lot of Democrats, denounced the action as nepotism, or as a clear abuse of the pardon power. Colorado Governor Jared Polis insisted, “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.” Senator Peter Welch of Vermont said the pardon was “unwise.” Legal journalist and Brookings fellow Benjamin Wittes argued that the pardon was “self-dealing to a family member” and that it was “wildly broad” since it immunizes Hunter for any crimes he may have committed over the course of a decade. You can argue back and forth here on the merits. But Tim Miller at the Bulwark makes a big picture argument; he worries that support for the Hunter Biden pardon is a sign of disintegrating norms and an erosion of faith in the rule of law among Democrats.

Trump was found liable for sexual assault, convicted of hush money payouts in the 2016 election, and of course led an insurrection in 2020. Nonetheless, he was reelected. Democrats, Miller says, are now following Republicans into nihilism; the Hunter pardon is Biden, and his supporters, insisting the LOL, nothing matters. Miller then makes an appeal to decency and liberal values. We have to follow the rules and demand better of ourselves than of the opposition, he argues. “There is one thing that does matter in this life. And it’s the only thing you actually control: Acting in accordance with your own integrity. In a way that lets you feel good about yourself.” That’s a stirring argument. But I think it’s one that can cut various ways. Because…does “acting in accordance with your own integrity” really have to mean putting a “kick me, fascists” sign on your face and then letting the fascists kick you? When Trump says he will use the vast powers of the presidency in unprecedented and violent ways to go after his personal enemies, do you just have so sit on your hands and say, “well, gee, that sucks, but at least I’m not dirtying myself by trying to stop him”? Or, maybe, might integrity mean refusing to let Trump roll over you?

Fight, for fuck’s sake

There are certainly some things Democrats shouldn’t do and shouldn’t countenance. Democrats should not, for example, agree to let fascists target trans people in order to get votes (not least because it won’t work). They shouldn’t let party leaders like Bob Menendez indulge in an orgy of corruption with impunity. They shouldn’t support a genocide in Gaza either. (Biden hasn’t done so well with that one.) There are lines you shouldn’t cross.

But when thinking about which norms matter, and what integrity entails, it’s also important to recognize that fascists like Trump count on the fact that liberal institutionalists are often conflict averse, and that they will sometimes even refuse to defend themselves for fear of the opinion of supposedly neutral arbiters like (say) Benjamin Wittes and Tim Miller. The most egregious example here is Merrick Garland’s decision to slow walk or stymie prosecution of Donald Trump for his 2020 coup attempt. Garland didn’t want to prosecute Trump because he feared that such a prosecution would look partisan; he delayed for two years until revelations by the January 6th commission and (I’d argue) revelations about Trump’s misuse of classified material post presidency forced him to belatedly recognize that Trump was not in fact going to disappear or stop criming. By then, it was too late, and Trump (with the help of the supine and criminal Republican party) was able to run out the clock.

Failures like this are enabled by the conventional Beltway/pundit wisdom that says that the real threat to democracy is partisanship—rather than, say, fascism. Garland (and presumably Biden in choosing a centrist equivocator for his AG) believed that you protect the Constitution by refusing to identify fascists as fascists or bad actors as bad actors. The goal is to be even-handed, and refuse to see the boot coming at your genitals. You avoid a constitutional crisis by pretending there is no constitutional crisis; as long as you pretend you can’t see them, then the emperor isn’t wearing jackboots. (Another disgusting variation on this is Congressman Jim Clyburn’s recent suggestion that Biden should pardon Trump.) Again, this approach has worked very badly. It has not protected the integrity of Garland or of Biden. It has made them look like weak fools, and it has made it look like liberal institutions are unable to handle fascism or to protect vulnerable people from fascism.

President Biden’s decision to use his pardon powers to thwart Donald Trump’s vengeance desires are smart and necessary.

[a-very-tired-jew]

Suffice to say this feels like 2016 again for me.

Many of us had said Hilary wouldn’t win against Trump then, and we said the same thing about Kamala.

Hilary was burdened by the fact that by 2015 the Clinton name was suffused in conspiracy. You couldn’t exist anywhere without some form of Clinton Conspiracy being present. Left, Right, Center, extremes… everyone had them. It didn’t matter how good Bill’s presidency was, the conspiracies were so prevalent and damaging that the writing was on the walls even before she was the official nominee. It was the “if she gets it, we’re fucked because of this”.

But the DNC chose Hilary because she was a safe candidate that they tried to sell as a good candidate. And arguably she was, if it wasn’t for all the baggage.

Kamala is Hilary 2.0. She doesn’t have the burden of Clinton dynasty level conspiracies, but she does come with the baggage of being the VP of the Biden administration. The current admin isn’t exactly the most liked and voter apathy and dislike can easily be exploited with a “weren’t things better under me?” by Trump (and they were because Presidential policies have an effect down the line, not immediately).

They tried to run what they thought was a safe candidate, and in the early days of her candidacy there was some talk that this was a bad idea. That just because she was younger didn’t mean she’d win. She didn’t have the benefit of being meme’d into the public consciousness like Biden did during the Obama years.

She didn’t have the benefit of being “not Trump” because she’s part of the current administration and Trump was a future possibility, not the now that voters dwell in. The now dictates that she and her policies were the issue if they were a continuance of the current administration.

She didn’t have the benefit of being “not Biden” because she’s just a safe continuation of Biden Presidency policies. None of these policies really made big splashes and many people are not aware of the benefits they have received from Biden’s term in office.

The gamble of a safe candidate of an honestly milquetoast presidency and a continuation of its policies did not pay off, and it’s exactly what many people were worried about.

To further elucidate this point, also think back to the 2016 election and the social aspects of the presidential campaigns and their candidates. As I said above, Hilary was burdened with the conspiracies about her and her family. Memes, jokes, and articles about her existed in a primarily negative stance, she had negative social capital. Conversely, Bernie had very positive social capital, very few negative memes and articles about him, and so many people wanted to vote for him across the political spectrum.

But he was not the “safe” candidate.

He was considered “risky” even though he polled better than Hilary routinely. Part of this is due to the differences in social capital.

Kamala’s campaign didn’t even have social capital until the debates.

Yes, there was some from previous years and we sort of knew what she did prior to being VP, but she wasn’t cemented in the public psyche. If there had been some effort to generate social capital over the course of the Biden administration then maybe there would have been a better chance. Biden’s campaign in 2020 benefited from his establishment in the public psyche through the memes about him during the Obama years. But we haven’t seen anything like that regarding Kamala at all. The only real meme to come out of the Biden admin is “Dark Brandon” and that’s it. As such, Kamala came into this race with negative social capital from her attachment to the current admin and its policies and no beneficial memes until it was too late.

Meanwhile, Trump has existed in the public psyche for over a decade and has a strong social media and meme presence. For as much negative social capital he has on one side, he has an abundance of positive on the other.

You can’t run a “safe” candidate against someone with Trump’s presence and social capital. You have to run someone on equal footing. If they had reran Biden and leaned into “Dark Brandon” there might have been a chance. If they had run Bernie there might have been a chance (yes, even with him being a Jew).

But Kamala? She was just a safe choice like Hilary was. All the warning signs were there and people pointed them out. But as it goes here in the States “If the Dems are so good, why do they lose so fucking much?” and it’s because they don’t listen. They only win when people are reminded how bad things are under right wing policies. They never listen to maintain their control or power because then they revert to outdated “safe” strategies that don’t work.

So idk if we’ll go full authoritarian government with no democratic future as Trump has wanted, but I do know we’ll repeat this in 8 years.

I’m tired as fuck as this pattern repeats so much that for once I’d like to not have a “I told you so” moment that didn’t come with a side of “we’re fucked”. But that’s the American experience for you.