We can still push for positive climate policies on the local and state level. If Trump and his cronies try and say states can’t acknowledge the climate in their policy, then we double down and push for it anyways for the reasons of grid resilience and pollution/health instead
Be kind to the elderly and children and women. Most women. Okay I dunno that last one is tricky. Whatever.
That’s all it’s saying. Not “Hooray everything’s great”. Just - hey - we can figure it out. And in the meantime, be cool and take care of your people as best you can.
Or roubdhouse kicks a right wimger into the sun. Your choice
The first ballot I was old enough to cast was for John Kerry in 2004. After Bush lied about WMDs and got us into a pointless war, a torture program, mass surveillance of Americans, let alone shit conservative social policies. 4 years of that, and Americans knowingly reelected him by a wider margin than his initial election. This time he won the popular vote, which he didn’t do in his initial election. Any of this sound familiar?
But we survived, and we paid attention, and we organized, and by 2008 we had a (by the standards of the time) progressive candidate at the top of the ticket, offering “radical socialist” policies ideas like universal healthcare and just a general vibe of inclusiveness rather than division. The Democratic party rejected the establishment options and nominated the bold candidate, the black guy with the middle name huessain. And we worked our asses off, I was mostly working on local campaigns but did some door knocking for Obama in a swing state.
And we won. The same country that four years ago shrugged off concerns about a guy who lied to get us into a war, turned around and voted for the (comparatively) progressive black guy the right painted as an out and out socialist by a landslide.
It’s not just that we defeated Trumpism in 2018, and 2020, and to some extent in 2022. Democrats turned a country that voted for a moron with little to no respect for democratic norms and the rule of law by wide margins, into a country that voted for a progressive in 2008.
We can do it again. We can organize and fight and convince the working class Americans who are so fed up with the status quo that they are so desperate for change that they voted for Trump, that real change that actually benefits working people is progressive. We can do that.
Two conditions though. First, we can’t let the DNC force another moderate center right candidate on us. Second, we have to make sure elections are still a thing that happens in America come 2026 and 2028. Both are tall orders, but we can do it.
The Supreme Court ruled that he can do whatever he wants with no consequence and American voters handed him the key to the castle. There’s not going to be another election. Say hello to Supreme Leader Vance.
Yeah, I hope that’s not the case but I worry about it. I think the most hopeful take is Trump isn’t running again, he’ll be like 86, so he’s not going to give a shit what comes next. Why bother to use the power of the state to help dipshit Vance? If anything, Vance losing just reinforces how special and unique Trump was, inflates his own ego. In terms of elections, I’m more concerned with the midterms. Trump has an incentive to prevent Congress flipping.
But also remember, W. Bush also had a conservative supreme court willing to let him get away with war crimes. Fuck, he “won” in 2020 only because SCOTUS stepped in to hand him the win. W. Bush was more illegitimate than Trump. But we survived, and we got Obama after. So there’s hope here too.
Trump isn’t running again, he’ll be like 86, so he’s not going to give a shit what comes next.
He’s not planning on running again. He’s planning on being king until he dies. Even if the GQP didn’t plan on doing everything that they laid out to turn the country into a theofascist dictatorship (they do plan on it), the courts will be irreparably compromised for the lifetime of everyone currently alive. Optimism would be nice but the very real consequences of 15million people sitting out this election is that it is the last real one that this country will see and the last one under which many will have civil rights.
We need to get rid of the DNC. We need a different party, one that will fight and not concede the election the way Harris did. She didn’t even fight, she should have gone “wait a minute the Republicans said they were going to do election fraud, we should check those numbers” instead she gave up. The same way it always happens the DNC GIVES UP.
I’m not going to defend the DNC, and I know the “fight from the inside” line gets eye rolls. But look at what Trump did. He took over the Republican party. He represented what the grassroots activists and voters in Republican primaries wanted. It was ugly and gross, but that’s what they wanted. And Trump transformed the Republican party in his image. Traditional Republicans became refugees, “never trumpers”. The Paul Ryan’s and Elizabeth Cheney’s who were willing to go along, without adopting the new maga Republican line, were forced out. Now the old Reagan, country club, fiscal discipline, free trade Republican party is dead. The survivors are exciled to places like the Bulwark, like it’s Taiwan and they’re just waiting for the opportunity to take their party back, an opportunity that will never come because the grassroots won’t let them.
I’m not saying this is a model. It happened in large part because fox news let Trump run wild because he was good for ratings, and by the time they went to quash him with Megan Kelly as hitman during a Fox News debate, it was too late, the base was with him and it was Kelly who was sacrificed as appeasement. It was overall a hostile takeover of the party based on the force of personality of one person, not a takeover based on differing policy ideas or a general vision for the party and country. I don’t think we can, or should want to, replicate that. But still I think there might be something there, some nugget we can replicate, for the grassroots to force change from the inside.
It’s a whole lot easier to take over a party than to build a new one.
But… Do you want to? I don’t feel like this is a country I want to contribute to anymore. I’m not going to leave (because that’s very impractical) and I’ll still support myself, but the goodwill I had towards my fellow Americans is very much diminished.
It’s easy for me to say that because I could leave if I needed to. The situation is very different for the people who can’t. Maybe I should have more concern for them than I do right now, but instead I just keep thinking how one upside of Trump winning the popular vote is that whatever happens, most Americans will deserve it.
I hear you for sure, but keep in mind “all americans” is still barely a plurality of registered voters who voted so far as we know.
Sure, that number goes up the more cynical one is. Which. Yeah. But still.
Plenty of good people, kids, women who are married to assholes and so on need to have support because they didn’t ask for this and also it’s very wrong.
I’m right here with you. I have completely lost all faith in my fellow Americans. The facts to repudiate all of Trump’s lies are easily and readily available, and they are willfully ignorant. They deserve the misery Trump plans to bring to them.
The US adult population is something like 260 million, and Trump has like 73 million votes.
Tons of those people also had to deal with votor suppression, and I even had to manually cure my ballot this year because my “signature didn’t match” supposedly (as did 5 other people I know who dropped off at the same location).
We’ve also been under a huge amount of propaganda and some people are literally living in separate realitites where their enemies are ridiculous evil characatures.
Like… I get it. It’s hard to feel good towards America right now, and lots of those people who didn’t vote deserve a lot of this blame. But is it really that rational to throw the rest of America under the bus?
At the very least, just help the people around you. Just be a person and participate in your community. You don’t need to put a bunch of time and energy into political activism, but work done to help local communities is never wasted.
Yea, it is. This isn’t a normal election. The danger is incredibly high for all kinds of terrible outcomes: civil war, famine, a collapsed economy. All these things seem readily possible now in a way they have never felt before.
and by the time everyone realizes just how bad things are, it’s going to be too late to do anything about it. Canadas borders will be closed and Mexico is already a failed state. Get out now while you still can. Before they enact exist visas to try and stop the brain drain
Sorry, too late! I gave up yesterday morning. I’m going to focus on me and my family for a while.
It’s okay to start your resistance by just surviving. And helping your kids grow. And looking out for those dear to you. Sometimes you gotta just work on the “Outlive” part.