Dear Noah, I cant thank you enough for this article, that puts a great perspective on what the world/US is facing now as a result of the election bringing Trump and his acolytes into power. You bring up extremely important points that I hope all your readers take to heart. I dont live in US, nor am I an American, but the consequences of this election will be felt everywhere. Public Notice is by far the very best, unbiased newsletter I am reading.🤗🤗🤗.
OK, all of the above, and a few more things: Many, many, probably most, USians don't know how "government" works, even in theory. Civics classes died out in most places decades ago. Without that big picture, it's very hard to interpret day-to-day news coverage, even if you have access to decent day-to-day news coverage, which many of us don't.
Even more important -- most of us have no idea how "the economy" works or what forces affect it. Since at least the late 19th century, talking about economic justice of any kind has been trashed as socialist, communist, anarchist, etc. (Robber barons, oligarchs, and wannabe plutocrats encouraged this. Eventually we got stuck with Milton Friedman and the Chicago School.) Through the 20th century and up to the present day, the Democratic Party has been cowed all along, pretending that the New Deal and the Great Society had nothing in common with socialism. So-called moderates still keep labeling, e.g., Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the "far left." A few short decades ago, *Josef Stalin* was the "far left."
Trump didn't come out of nowhere. The U.S. has been headed in this direction since at least the Reagan administration, with a strong assist from Nixon's "southern strategy." There's serious work to be done, and I doubt that the Democratic Party as currently constituted is capable of leading the way.
P.S. Wonkette just noted in a headline that Americans like left-wing policies and right-wing politicians. I'm going to be pondering this in coming days . . .
Yes indeed. "Left" is a shifty word. I use it to try to describe political tendencies, e.g., "left" usually includes awareness of economic factors. But for so many Americans it's an insult or a way to dismiss beliefs and the people who hold them. Like "communist" or "socialist," except the people who get called leftists are often just liberal Democrats.
We should not allow this. The MAGAGOP tries to define, to name-call. The GOP moved the country to the right politically, then the center, and center left apparently moved more right with it, triangulated. A *correction* (which people wanted) moved left (Biden) was then called socialism and communism and opposed in Congress. Kamala Harris they feared would be worse. The real far left is blamed for more than it deserves or has accomplished even though some of far left meets with some of the far right.
The country is so divided that the real enemy within is this deep division; It's tearing us apart. When they say "make America great", what do they mean? They keep saying this. It's all general "liked it used to be" meaning what?
Good questions! Curious, though, about what you mean by "far left." I don't think the U.S. has one. I do think that "far left" is regularly used to demonize and ostracize Democrats of color, especially women, who dare to talk about economic justice. The subtext is to equate them with people like Stalin.
They don't really mean anything that is defined specifically as "Make America Great Again" because... it's a rallying cry and you can fill in what you like or want that to mean. In the meantime it's a power grab i.e. a con.
I'm pretty sure that "Make America Great Again" means "let's get back to a world where white men were in charge and "family" meant one man + one woman + two or more kids. Dad went to work in the morning, Mom kept house, and the kids rode a yellow bus to school.
My Democrats Abroad Project 2025 Book Club group has read and discussed 20 of the 30 chapters and the Forward. We were not reading in order, just the ones that interested us the most. We realized that we learned a lot about how the government works that way, as well as what the Christian Nationalists at the Heritage Foundation envision for the US.
I was a high-end wedding photographer from 1996-2020. As I got older, my clients stayed the same age. About 2014, just as smartphones made social media instantly accessible, I saw a huge decline in my clients' mental health and life satisfaction. Half of them were kind, but the other half were mean and only in it for themselves. I began to get sued over frivolous matters about twice a year for the first time. When the pandemic hit, I knew that many of my already-booked wedding clients would hold their wedding during the pandemic anyway, despite regulations against it. They would demand that I photograph the event, not caring if I lived or died. Due to my age, I returned their deposits and quit. Despite the massive financial hit, I was relieved to be done. (My friend, a wedding DJ who worked through the pandemic, suffered panic attacks about weddings she had to work that were held on the down-low.)
I think the smartphone brought a toxic, steady diet of social media, which drove this nosedive to narcissism among my well-off clients. I began to see narcissistic characters celebrated in TV shows. Unlike in the past, where the narcissist or sociopathic character would be the bad guy, these TV shows had no morally sound characters - Succession, The White Lotus, and reality shows like The Bachelor, or Love Is Blind -- where the participants get engaged to be married to people that they can't see.
We've also had twenty years of foreign adventures that considered our soldiers to be cannon fodder in unnecessary wars, and 40 years of loosening business regulations to enrich the top 1% at the expense of the bottom 99%. Capitalistic vultures take over stalwart American companies like JC Penney and Red Lobster restaurants, sell their land, rent the land back to the franchises, thus bankrupting the companies and putting thousands out of work, all to line their own pockets. This is no way to run a morally healthy society.
I am deeply saddened and frightened by Tuesday's election result, but I can't say I'm surprised.
I see our sad trajectory in a lot of the same ways. And it's been heading this way for decades. The Greed is Good decade really helped remove any sense of social responsibility (I went to college right in the middle of this loathsome time). The neo-liberals kept it going by shifting right to win elections. I honestly don't know how we get out of this doom loop.
Even a perfect Democratic campaign was doomed to fail. America isn't about to elect a Black woman, or any woman. If she was a White male and did all the same things, Dems still would have lost. Because the perception is the President runs EVERYTHING, sets prices, sets mortgage rates, real estate prices, and gasoline. Woe be the rural Americans when their lot in life is even harsher in a year or 18 months. Because Republicans told us exactly what they would do. And we didn't listen.
One of your last sentences gives me a modicum of hope- “ When they win, so can they lose “. We need to have a strong slate of candidates ready for the midterms to throw whatever wrenches we can at him!
'It’s also true, though, that anti-incumbent sentiment is fickle. People who lean into their hatred one day don’t always do so the next, and people who voted for Trump are not necessarily, or permanently, enthusiastic about the entire MAGA agenda.'
Very possible, sure. Won't change the fault that everything that happens during Trump's next reign will be their fault, and I for one will be more than happy to remind them of that as much as I can.
I wasn't going to read this (post-election disappointment nihilism), but am glad I did.
"As they won, so they can lose — which is why one of MAGA’s core goals going forward will be to subvert free and fair elections. Fighting for democracy, as well as helping each other survive the coming fascist assault, will be key in the years ahead."
Just wondering how much suffering and death will have to occur before the zeitgeist worm turns against the baked-in racism, misogyny, and authoritarianism (including religious fanaticism here).
We'll find out, of course. Will it take WW3? Or merely a deadly bird flu epidemic, more climate disasters, or impoverishing economids that finally hit the middle class hard?
Noah, Thank you for your voice of reason and your perspective.
I realize this is a time to make plans. It might be a plan to leave the US. For people that tell me they cannot afford it, I wonder what they think they have to have to leave. I think it takes a lot less than you think, if one is willing to live somewhere were one has to learn a new system and perhaps. language, and way of doing things, and will take time to get into the system. There are countries where this is easier and countries where this is less easy. Probably why so many people have been doing searches of moving to Canada.
Another tactic is to see how one is going to protect oneself and one's family. Jessica Valenti of Abortion, Every Day Substack is suggesting things people can do to take care of themselves which is targeted to women, but there are some things that are true of everyone.
Then one has to decide what one needs to work on to prepare for a day when we can, like Brazil did with Bolsonaro, oust either Trump or JD Vance if JD takes over.
I can never leave, no matter how much money I amassed. No country in the world wants Disabled immigrants. At best I could be a refugee. And even then… still doubtful. So people like me are in for it. No if Medicare, Medicaid, and/or social security is cut, then I’m in for it too.
I hear what you are saying. We are planning on collecting social security, and with Biden it would have been more money, now the first problem will be that there won't be enough people working for them, and the people who are will not know what they are doing. So, accessing it will be a problem. Don't know what is going to happen to my mom's diabetes medicine. I hope that the price does not go back up. I hope this does not happen, but it is not clear. I cannot see putting Kennedy in charge as a good thing.
Linda, you are getting way ahead of things now trying to make such plans or worrying about this even. Going down one road of possibly many more what if's before it/anything has happened. Wait and see at least a bit. Trump is not even in yet.
I think Trump does not have the support to do drastic things, if he legally could, if he lasts. Not in the Congress, and not in the people despite his win.
Hi Linda, looks like you did not finish the last line...
Anyway, we also depend on social security as part of our income. I think it's good and necessary to keep aware of what is happening. There will be a lot happening before Social Security is attacked or destroyed. *Many people*, Trump voters, are depending on it too, plus Medicare and Medicaid. Living under Trump did not bring those drastic changes. They might come now for sure but...I need to see more evidence of that happening. So many things can change that it's hard to plan. But it's always good to have a plan B.
Trump is deteriorating, a man of whims, "unserious" and I doubt he can handle the job. So the thing to watch is who he is able to put in place that will pull the strings and how much he (or they are) is able to actually do. We are not moving to another country. Best Wishes.
I do not like this analysis even though I might have before reading what Noah Berlatsky said yesterday on this Substack. I am turned off by blaming democrats. Who do I blame. The horrid USA press, like the NYT. Sulzberger reminds me of Alfred Hugenberg, the conservative media mogul who backed Hitler for chancellor along with other titans of industry in Weimar Germany.
Robert Hubbell pointed out that 93 million people eligible to vote did not. I know a few of these eligible non-voters. They are all millennial men. They tell me that they do not vote because their vote doesn't count. I consider that belief poor upbringing because they show no responsibility to participate in a democracy. I also see them as people who are well off and they believe that no matter what happens, they belong to a group that will be alright, so just live through it. It is selfish. Their wives and girlfriends vote, so have a different sense of responsibility to society.
So, I resent blaming democrats for putting Trump into power. They, and the Republicans who were wise enough to see the problems with Trump are the only people who are not responsible for Trump coming back into power. I blame the MAGAs, who do not make the effort to rise above themselves, and the 93 million who did not vote.
Tonight I had friends over to commiserate. We were discussing the people we have talked to or read about since the election. One was saying that a Muslim man, who had not voted for Kamala Harris out of protest about Gaza was expecting everyone else to succeed in voting for her. Instead of having his cake and eating it too, he took a stand, perhaps egged on by Putin's bots, against the Biden-Harris administration feeling like he could not vote for her, yet still have her win. Now he has no cake. Instead, he might be facing deportation if he has been actively and openly protesting. I am curious where all of these Americans who protested will be sent. Just make up a country or are we going to just be imprisoning people? I am glad Blue State governors are taking a stand not to participate. Of course that will mean no federal dollars.
Another type of person, is the type that voted for abortion rights in their state, but also for Trump. I am convinced that the US is filled with people who have no idea whether their wishes are realistic. Clearly they are not helped out by the media or their own common sense. Wanting to do better one should understand that constantly switching governments does not allow time for things to work. One should pay attention to which party is consistently voting for things that make your life hard.
I taught in the school John Dewey founded. He believed that people learned best by experience. Unfortunately, people who lack the imagination to see how things can play themselves out without going through those exact things are who voted for Trump. We do not believe that they wish for most of the consequences that they voted for. The question is, will they recognize when they don't get these things that they do not have them?
The Ben Rhodes NYT article was excellent. I am not getting from it that he is blaming Democrats alone. But there are plenty of lessons to take from this result and the Democrats have to take some of them on board or else this result cannot be overcome. That means looking at the various reasons for this failure, pretty resounding. I have already heard and read all sorts of good criticism.. including from Howard Dean tonight on his push for a 50 state strategy. We do have to go forward after we come out from under the bed or start making our own plans for survival in a some cocoon.
I cannot blame the media, not the NYTimes, not Washington Post for this result. Fox etc. yes. Blame those. This is about ignorance and the electorate, not caring, complacency.. I am having reservations about whether our democracy can work if all do not engage in it and think, rather than react.
I am reading piece after piece that show that people who voted for Trump don't want his policies, and not all of them are white. A lot of people live in an information vacuum. They have neither the time, know how, or resources to access different media than they are locally fed. Those who voted did care, so I agree with you on looking at the 93 mil eligible voters who did not vote, but they are missing information too.
All of the people who are looking at policy to understand what went wrong are heading in the wrong direction and wasting time blaming. I think that Jonathan V. Last of the Bulwark made an interesting point. A point that would not be necessary to make with people if our media could help feed their understanding of how things can be under Trump, which they did not really do. In fact, they did the opposite. They normalized him and made first Biden and then Kamala look bad. The NYT asked Biden to step down not Trump. One ran the country well, the other was in the process of destroying it before and is a convicted felon.
People are responsible for the media they ingest. I do blame Fox. The other right wing media too.. media that lies that passes mis and dis information regularly, and seem to exist for that purpose. I blame them. But people are responsible for what they choose to believe.
I read or listen to HCR every day she posts. She uses some of the sources that I read regularly as well so I get this info twice.
Locally fed? I don't think just or even locally. People have their favorite channels.
And many don't tune in until late and don't have a deep understanding because of that. Ignorance. I disagree about the NYT, which I have criticism of as well, but they did not *normalize* Trump. They did focus on him. I say they used two different standards of judgement- which was infuriating. As well, Biden, though he was doing well, was deteriorating for months and it was obvious he was not going to be able to go another 4 years or beat Trump. It was never either or.. one was clearly bad for us. Actually Biden's deterioration was being hidden a lot by his administration. When it came time to campaign, this became obvious. Then everyone was realizing that he could not be Trump. In the end the NYT was very strongly against Trump and for Harris.
I don't understand why Harris lost.. still reading about that. L'esprit du Temps ?
Ignorance .. the electorate.
Ishaan Tharoor at the Washington Post "World View" ( Nov 8) is good.. if you can get it. (can't link it)
Trump's victory here is the latest of the right wing gains around the world and notably in Europe
..."Not only has Merkel departed the scene, but her legacy is in tatters. The center-right politico’s move to welcome asylum-seeking migrants in 2015 is reviled by many, even among her own Christian Democrats, and seen as one of the triggers for the ascent of far-right populists across the continent. And Germany in 2024 is in no state to serve as any sort of bulwark against Trump: Its unpopular government, composed of three flagging parties led by the center-left Social Democrats, collapsed Wednesday.
The far right in Europe, meanwhile, has seen notable gains since Trump’s last win. Far-right parties comprise the biggest parliamentary factions in the Netherlands, France, Austria and Italy; they are ascendant in Germany and Portugal, kingmakers in Sweden and Finland. Further to the east, in countries like Slovakia and Hungary, right-wing nationalism fuels the governments in power...."
One thing that the left lacks in this fight is mega churches bringing in millions of compliant people every Sunday to listen to a sermon on the evils of the other side. Churches have become political turnout machines, mostly for the GOP. (They're not supposed to be political due to tax rules, but no one is stopping them.) I haven't seen near enough about the significance of these grifting pastors who tell enormous congregations that Democrats are literal demon baby killers and Kamala is the anti-christ. They were told this election was really about spiritual warfare and Donald Trump was the hero who was saved from assassination by god himself. What sort of mass movement does the reality-based contingent have to counter this mass psychosis?
While the minor party voters didn't have the effect on the main contest that racist misogyny did, they did seem to have an effect on many of our down-ballot results.
Most voters only focus on 1-2 issues that are important to them and overlook everything else that the candidate stands for when they cast their vote. In their mind, they rationalize their vote thru that narrow lens and reject all of the other things that they don’t believe as strongly in. In their minds, they’re not racists and TBF to them, they might actually not be. So generalizing them as a monolith only reinforces their decision in their mind to reject what the Democratic Party is pushing
I have to disagree about the Dems ability to win elections. They botched this one by sticking with Biden too long so the only candidate that they could coalesce around quickly was Harris and she got two major issues pinned to her as the incumbent (i.e. - inflation and the border). Harris did about as well as she could have given those circumstances. Her campaign also went all in focusing in on abortion and to many groups, that wasn’t the most important issue in this election to them. They went narrow on the wrong issue for most of the nation, TBH.
From the article: "some on the left argued that Harris lost progressive voters by refusing to come out in favor of ending military aid to Israel as it commits war crimes in Gaza"
Trump admitted that he spoke to Netanyahu frequently (as a private citizen), as did Musk, and I don't think it was to tell him to stop doing war crimes. How is this better??
Dear Noah, I cant thank you enough for this article, that puts a great perspective on what the world/US is facing now as a result of the election bringing Trump and his acolytes into power. You bring up extremely important points that I hope all your readers take to heart. I dont live in US, nor am I an American, but the consequences of this election will be felt everywhere. Public Notice is by far the very best, unbiased newsletter I am reading.🤗🤗🤗.
OK, all of the above, and a few more things: Many, many, probably most, USians don't know how "government" works, even in theory. Civics classes died out in most places decades ago. Without that big picture, it's very hard to interpret day-to-day news coverage, even if you have access to decent day-to-day news coverage, which many of us don't.
Even more important -- most of us have no idea how "the economy" works or what forces affect it. Since at least the late 19th century, talking about economic justice of any kind has been trashed as socialist, communist, anarchist, etc. (Robber barons, oligarchs, and wannabe plutocrats encouraged this. Eventually we got stuck with Milton Friedman and the Chicago School.) Through the 20th century and up to the present day, the Democratic Party has been cowed all along, pretending that the New Deal and the Great Society had nothing in common with socialism. So-called moderates still keep labeling, e.g., Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the "far left." A few short decades ago, *Josef Stalin* was the "far left."
Trump didn't come out of nowhere. The U.S. has been headed in this direction since at least the Reagan administration, with a strong assist from Nixon's "southern strategy." There's serious work to be done, and I doubt that the Democratic Party as currently constituted is capable of leading the way.
P.S. Wonkette just noted in a headline that Americans like left-wing policies and right-wing politicians. I'm going to be pondering this in coming days . . .
Yes! Just don't call it left. The right has succeeded in defining, labeling, messaging.
Yes indeed. "Left" is a shifty word. I use it to try to describe political tendencies, e.g., "left" usually includes awareness of economic factors. But for so many Americans it's an insult or a way to dismiss beliefs and the people who hold them. Like "communist" or "socialist," except the people who get called leftists are often just liberal Democrats.
We should not allow this. The MAGAGOP tries to define, to name-call. The GOP moved the country to the right politically, then the center, and center left apparently moved more right with it, triangulated. A *correction* (which people wanted) moved left (Biden) was then called socialism and communism and opposed in Congress. Kamala Harris they feared would be worse. The real far left is blamed for more than it deserves or has accomplished even though some of far left meets with some of the far right.
The country is so divided that the real enemy within is this deep division; It's tearing us apart. When they say "make America great", what do they mean? They keep saying this. It's all general "liked it used to be" meaning what?
Good questions! Curious, though, about what you mean by "far left." I don't think the U.S. has one. I do think that "far left" is regularly used to demonize and ostracize Democrats of color, especially women, who dare to talk about economic justice. The subtext is to equate them with people like Stalin.
They don't really mean anything that is defined specifically as "Make America Great Again" because... it's a rallying cry and you can fill in what you like or want that to mean. In the meantime it's a power grab i.e. a con.
I'm pretty sure that "Make America Great Again" means "let's get back to a world where white men were in charge and "family" meant one man + one woman + two or more kids. Dad went to work in the morning, Mom kept house, and the kids rode a yellow bus to school.
My Democrats Abroad Project 2025 Book Club group has read and discussed 20 of the 30 chapters and the Forward. We were not reading in order, just the ones that interested us the most. We realized that we learned a lot about how the government works that way, as well as what the Christian Nationalists at the Heritage Foundation envision for the US.
H/T Aaron Rupar.... and regarding your comment about how the country has moved right.
Consider this:
https://www.salon.com/2024/11/08/americas-political-discordance-the-want-progressivism/
I was a high-end wedding photographer from 1996-2020. As I got older, my clients stayed the same age. About 2014, just as smartphones made social media instantly accessible, I saw a huge decline in my clients' mental health and life satisfaction. Half of them were kind, but the other half were mean and only in it for themselves. I began to get sued over frivolous matters about twice a year for the first time. When the pandemic hit, I knew that many of my already-booked wedding clients would hold their wedding during the pandemic anyway, despite regulations against it. They would demand that I photograph the event, not caring if I lived or died. Due to my age, I returned their deposits and quit. Despite the massive financial hit, I was relieved to be done. (My friend, a wedding DJ who worked through the pandemic, suffered panic attacks about weddings she had to work that were held on the down-low.)
I think the smartphone brought a toxic, steady diet of social media, which drove this nosedive to narcissism among my well-off clients. I began to see narcissistic characters celebrated in TV shows. Unlike in the past, where the narcissist or sociopathic character would be the bad guy, these TV shows had no morally sound characters - Succession, The White Lotus, and reality shows like The Bachelor, or Love Is Blind -- where the participants get engaged to be married to people that they can't see.
We've also had twenty years of foreign adventures that considered our soldiers to be cannon fodder in unnecessary wars, and 40 years of loosening business regulations to enrich the top 1% at the expense of the bottom 99%. Capitalistic vultures take over stalwart American companies like JC Penney and Red Lobster restaurants, sell their land, rent the land back to the franchises, thus bankrupting the companies and putting thousands out of work, all to line their own pockets. This is no way to run a morally healthy society.
I am deeply saddened and frightened by Tuesday's election result, but I can't say I'm surprised.
I see our sad trajectory in a lot of the same ways. And it's been heading this way for decades. The Greed is Good decade really helped remove any sense of social responsibility (I went to college right in the middle of this loathsome time). The neo-liberals kept it going by shifting right to win elections. I honestly don't know how we get out of this doom loop.
Even a perfect Democratic campaign was doomed to fail. America isn't about to elect a Black woman, or any woman. If she was a White male and did all the same things, Dems still would have lost. Because the perception is the President runs EVERYTHING, sets prices, sets mortgage rates, real estate prices, and gasoline. Woe be the rural Americans when their lot in life is even harsher in a year or 18 months. Because Republicans told us exactly what they would do. And we didn't listen.
One of your last sentences gives me a modicum of hope- “ When they win, so can they lose “. We need to have a strong slate of candidates ready for the midterms to throw whatever wrenches we can at him!
'It’s also true, though, that anti-incumbent sentiment is fickle. People who lean into their hatred one day don’t always do so the next, and people who voted for Trump are not necessarily, or permanently, enthusiastic about the entire MAGA agenda.'
Very possible, sure. Won't change the fault that everything that happens during Trump's next reign will be their fault, and I for one will be more than happy to remind them of that as much as I can.
I wasn't going to read this (post-election disappointment nihilism), but am glad I did.
"As they won, so they can lose — which is why one of MAGA’s core goals going forward will be to subvert free and fair elections. Fighting for democracy, as well as helping each other survive the coming fascist assault, will be key in the years ahead."
Just wondering how much suffering and death will have to occur before the zeitgeist worm turns against the baked-in racism, misogyny, and authoritarianism (including religious fanaticism here).
We'll find out, of course. Will it take WW3? Or merely a deadly bird flu epidemic, more climate disasters, or impoverishing economids that finally hit the middle class hard?
Noah, Thank you for your voice of reason and your perspective.
I realize this is a time to make plans. It might be a plan to leave the US. For people that tell me they cannot afford it, I wonder what they think they have to have to leave. I think it takes a lot less than you think, if one is willing to live somewhere were one has to learn a new system and perhaps. language, and way of doing things, and will take time to get into the system. There are countries where this is easier and countries where this is less easy. Probably why so many people have been doing searches of moving to Canada.
Another tactic is to see how one is going to protect oneself and one's family. Jessica Valenti of Abortion, Every Day Substack is suggesting things people can do to take care of themselves which is targeted to women, but there are some things that are true of everyone.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jessica/p/five-things-you-can-do-right-now?r=f0qfn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Then one has to decide what one needs to work on to prepare for a day when we can, like Brazil did with Bolsonaro, oust either Trump or JD Vance if JD takes over.
I can never leave, no matter how much money I amassed. No country in the world wants Disabled immigrants. At best I could be a refugee. And even then… still doubtful. So people like me are in for it. No if Medicare, Medicaid, and/or social security is cut, then I’m in for it too.
If Medicare and Medicaid or Social Security are cut there will be a lot of screaming.
I hear what you are saying. We are planning on collecting social security, and with Biden it would have been more money, now the first problem will be that there won't be enough people working for them, and the people who are will not know what they are doing. So, accessing it will be a problem. Don't know what is going to happen to my mom's diabetes medicine. I hope that the price does not go back up. I hope this does not happen, but it is not clear. I cannot see putting Kennedy in charge as a good thing.
Linda, you are getting way ahead of things now trying to make such plans or worrying about this even. Going down one road of possibly many more what if's before it/anything has happened. Wait and see at least a bit. Trump is not even in yet.
I think Trump does not have the support to do drastic things, if he legally could, if he lasts. Not in the Congress, and not in the people despite his win.
Hi Linda, looks like you did not finish the last line...
Anyway, we also depend on social security as part of our income. I think it's good and necessary to keep aware of what is happening. There will be a lot happening before Social Security is attacked or destroyed. *Many people*, Trump voters, are depending on it too, plus Medicare and Medicaid. Living under Trump did not bring those drastic changes. They might come now for sure but...I need to see more evidence of that happening. So many things can change that it's hard to plan. But it's always good to have a plan B.
Trump is deteriorating, a man of whims, "unserious" and I doubt he can handle the job. So the thing to watch is who he is able to put in place that will pull the strings and how much he (or they are) is able to actually do. We are not moving to another country. Best Wishes.
Linda, FYI, post election analysis by Ben Rhodes:
I Study Guys Like Trump. There’s a Reason They Keep Winning.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/opinion/republicans-democrats-trump.html
Also https://jabberwocking.com/what-a-depressing-night/ by Kevin Drum
I do not like this analysis even though I might have before reading what Noah Berlatsky said yesterday on this Substack. I am turned off by blaming democrats. Who do I blame. The horrid USA press, like the NYT. Sulzberger reminds me of Alfred Hugenberg, the conservative media mogul who backed Hitler for chancellor along with other titans of industry in Weimar Germany.
Robert Hubbell pointed out that 93 million people eligible to vote did not. I know a few of these eligible non-voters. They are all millennial men. They tell me that they do not vote because their vote doesn't count. I consider that belief poor upbringing because they show no responsibility to participate in a democracy. I also see them as people who are well off and they believe that no matter what happens, they belong to a group that will be alright, so just live through it. It is selfish. Their wives and girlfriends vote, so have a different sense of responsibility to society.
So, I resent blaming democrats for putting Trump into power. They, and the Republicans who were wise enough to see the problems with Trump are the only people who are not responsible for Trump coming back into power. I blame the MAGAs, who do not make the effort to rise above themselves, and the 93 million who did not vote.
Tonight I had friends over to commiserate. We were discussing the people we have talked to or read about since the election. One was saying that a Muslim man, who had not voted for Kamala Harris out of protest about Gaza was expecting everyone else to succeed in voting for her. Instead of having his cake and eating it too, he took a stand, perhaps egged on by Putin's bots, against the Biden-Harris administration feeling like he could not vote for her, yet still have her win. Now he has no cake. Instead, he might be facing deportation if he has been actively and openly protesting. I am curious where all of these Americans who protested will be sent. Just make up a country or are we going to just be imprisoning people? I am glad Blue State governors are taking a stand not to participate. Of course that will mean no federal dollars.
Another type of person, is the type that voted for abortion rights in their state, but also for Trump. I am convinced that the US is filled with people who have no idea whether their wishes are realistic. Clearly they are not helped out by the media or their own common sense. Wanting to do better one should understand that constantly switching governments does not allow time for things to work. One should pay attention to which party is consistently voting for things that make your life hard.
I taught in the school John Dewey founded. He believed that people learned best by experience. Unfortunately, people who lack the imagination to see how things can play themselves out without going through those exact things are who voted for Trump. We do not believe that they wish for most of the consequences that they voted for. The question is, will they recognize when they don't get these things that they do not have them?
The Ben Rhodes NYT article was excellent. I am not getting from it that he is blaming Democrats alone. But there are plenty of lessons to take from this result and the Democrats have to take some of them on board or else this result cannot be overcome. That means looking at the various reasons for this failure, pretty resounding. I have already heard and read all sorts of good criticism.. including from Howard Dean tonight on his push for a 50 state strategy. We do have to go forward after we come out from under the bed or start making our own plans for survival in a some cocoon.
Did you read Kevin Drum I linked above?
Also similar to what you are saying is this: https://www.salon.com/2024/11/08/americas-political-discordance-the-want-progressivism/
I cannot blame the media, not the NYTimes, not Washington Post for this result. Fox etc. yes. Blame those. This is about ignorance and the electorate, not caring, complacency.. I am having reservations about whether our democracy can work if all do not engage in it and think, rather than react.
You don't blame the media I do. Did you read HCR today.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-8-2024
I am reading piece after piece that show that people who voted for Trump don't want his policies, and not all of them are white. A lot of people live in an information vacuum. They have neither the time, know how, or resources to access different media than they are locally fed. Those who voted did care, so I agree with you on looking at the 93 mil eligible voters who did not vote, but they are missing information too.
All of the people who are looking at policy to understand what went wrong are heading in the wrong direction and wasting time blaming. I think that Jonathan V. Last of the Bulwark made an interesting point. A point that would not be necessary to make with people if our media could help feed their understanding of how things can be under Trump, which they did not really do. In fact, they did the opposite. They normalized him and made first Biden and then Kamala look bad. The NYT asked Biden to step down not Trump. One ran the country well, the other was in the process of destroying it before and is a convicted felon.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/a-modest-proposal-let-trump-be-trump
You and I have different ideas of what is excellent or useful in this time. That is fine. We are still allowed to have free speech.
People are responsible for the media they ingest. I do blame Fox. The other right wing media too.. media that lies that passes mis and dis information regularly, and seem to exist for that purpose. I blame them. But people are responsible for what they choose to believe.
I read or listen to HCR every day she posts. She uses some of the sources that I read regularly as well so I get this info twice.
Locally fed? I don't think just or even locally. People have their favorite channels.
And many don't tune in until late and don't have a deep understanding because of that. Ignorance. I disagree about the NYT, which I have criticism of as well, but they did not *normalize* Trump. They did focus on him. I say they used two different standards of judgement- which was infuriating. As well, Biden, though he was doing well, was deteriorating for months and it was obvious he was not going to be able to go another 4 years or beat Trump. It was never either or.. one was clearly bad for us. Actually Biden's deterioration was being hidden a lot by his administration. When it came time to campaign, this became obvious. Then everyone was realizing that he could not be Trump. In the end the NYT was very strongly against Trump and for Harris.
I don't understand why Harris lost.. still reading about that. L'esprit du Temps ?
Ignorance .. the electorate.
Ishaan Tharoor at the Washington Post "World View" ( Nov 8) is good.. if you can get it. (can't link it)
Trump's victory here is the latest of the right wing gains around the world and notably in Europe
..."Not only has Merkel departed the scene, but her legacy is in tatters. The center-right politico’s move to welcome asylum-seeking migrants in 2015 is reviled by many, even among her own Christian Democrats, and seen as one of the triggers for the ascent of far-right populists across the continent. And Germany in 2024 is in no state to serve as any sort of bulwark against Trump: Its unpopular government, composed of three flagging parties led by the center-left Social Democrats, collapsed Wednesday.
The far right in Europe, meanwhile, has seen notable gains since Trump’s last win. Far-right parties comprise the biggest parliamentary factions in the Netherlands, France, Austria and Italy; they are ascendant in Germany and Portugal, kingmakers in Sweden and Finland. Further to the east, in countries like Slovakia and Hungary, right-wing nationalism fuels the governments in power...."
and so on around the world.
One thing that the left lacks in this fight is mega churches bringing in millions of compliant people every Sunday to listen to a sermon on the evils of the other side. Churches have become political turnout machines, mostly for the GOP. (They're not supposed to be political due to tax rules, but no one is stopping them.) I haven't seen near enough about the significance of these grifting pastors who tell enormous congregations that Democrats are literal demon baby killers and Kamala is the anti-christ. They were told this election was really about spiritual warfare and Donald Trump was the hero who was saved from assassination by god himself. What sort of mass movement does the reality-based contingent have to counter this mass psychosis?
Is anybody going to talk about how corporations are stealing from people, and the government - including the courts - allow it. ???
Dems should have turbocharged the recent Union movement and ridden it all the way to the WH, a la FDR.
Consumer protections, food regulations, airline regulations, price protections, living wages, fully funded education & social security, healthcare, privacy … call out the equity firms buying up housing!
THINGS THAT AFFECT MOST PEOPLE!
A Sears mannequin could run on these issues and win. The US should be leading the charge on this, not following the rest of the world.
While the minor party voters didn't have the effect on the main contest that racist misogyny did, they did seem to have an effect on many of our down-ballot results.
Most voters only focus on 1-2 issues that are important to them and overlook everything else that the candidate stands for when they cast their vote. In their mind, they rationalize their vote thru that narrow lens and reject all of the other things that they don’t believe as strongly in. In their minds, they’re not racists and TBF to them, they might actually not be. So generalizing them as a monolith only reinforces their decision in their mind to reject what the Democratic Party is pushing
I have to disagree about the Dems ability to win elections. They botched this one by sticking with Biden too long so the only candidate that they could coalesce around quickly was Harris and she got two major issues pinned to her as the incumbent (i.e. - inflation and the border). Harris did about as well as she could have given those circumstances. Her campaign also went all in focusing in on abortion and to many groups, that wasn’t the most important issue in this election to them. They went narrow on the wrong issue for most of the nation, TBH.
Yes to everything except about abortion. I don't think she focussed on it more than she should have.
I agree, but think that she should have had a more definitive and tangible plan for the border and inflation.
Biden beat inflation. It hasn’t been significant for months. Even gas prices are down. It’s hard to have a plan for something that’s not a problem.
I generally agree, but that message did not resonate with most voters.
Best explanation yet of this horrible election. Thank you!
From the article: "some on the left argued that Harris lost progressive voters by refusing to come out in favor of ending military aid to Israel as it commits war crimes in Gaza"
Trump admitted that he spoke to Netanyahu frequently (as a private citizen), as did Musk, and I don't think it was to tell him to stop doing war crimes. How is this better??
It’s good to read these cogent articles: so much better than listening (to my mind). Thanks!
And excellent analysis by Ben Rhodes: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/opinion/republicans-democrats-trump.html
"I Study Guys Like Trump. There’s a Reason They Keep Winning"