There is nothing that God, man, or the Constitution can do about the fact that we elected Trump, because we did it to ourselves.
Summary
Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 election leaves no room for ambiguity or an “asterisk” in his legitimacy, as he won both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
This outcome represents a clear mandate from American voters, who knowingly chose Trump’s policies and approach.
The anticipated results include pardons for January 6 participants, attacks on the press, and an administration filled with controversial figures.
By voting for Trump, Americans prioritized divisive rhetoric over democratic values, accepting the resulting turmoil.
I am American, and I have always loved my country. Until now, I've never been ashamed to call myself patriotic. My thought has always been than there will always be uninformed, uneducated assholes that vote against their own self-interests and the interests of their own country.
This election is different, though. We knew exactly what we were getting if we re-elected Trump. We responded by not only electing him in a landslide election, but handing the House and the Senate over to the Republicans, too. It was a clear message. America is not a nation of mostly good people with a few vocal "bad apples." We are a nation of hateful, scared bigots, and we proved it in a big way.
This was a turning point in American history, and the majority of us sent a clear message to their fellow citizens and to the world. America is not a nation of mostly good people being overshadowed by a media that covers the loudest assholes in the room. America is a nation of people who by a majority support exactly what the "crazy" Republicans are saying. I would feel better if Trump lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote, but that's not what happened.
This isn't an election where I've lost only lost faith in the democratic process or my fellow citizens, although both are true. This is an election where I've lost faith in my country as a whole. I have never been proudly Republican or proudly Democrat, but I've always been proudly American. Now I'm just... sad. I don't expect I'll see a day any time soon where I can honestly say I'm proud of my country. The best I can do is retreat into my own personal bubble, live my life, and watch the world burn around me until the flames consume everything I care about.
Trump didn't win a significant number of new voters. He kept his base, which is roughly the size of what it was in 2020.
The problem was that Harris lost voters. In droves. Nationwide. And she took a lot of winnable downballot candidates with her. And I'm not even saying that to blame her. She ran a magnificent campaign while Trump was most noted for saying "They're eating the dogs!". So why did she still lose, and lose so hard? Because Democrats stayed home. Roughly about 10% of them overall, nationwide. Sure, some of them stayed home or voted 3rd party to protest Gaza, especially in Michigan. But the real story is that she underperformed so badly nationwide. I mean, for the love of God, New Jersey was competitive. That call about Iowa possibly going blue is going to be up there with "Dewey defeats Truman" in terms of political misfires. She severely underperformed with men and Latinos, especially Latino men. Which means this: 8-10 million people couldn't stomach voting for Trump, but they'd rather passively hand over the country to Trump vs. voting for a black woman. Whether the problem they have is the fact that she's black, female, or both is irrelevant. But the message they sent was clear. "We don't want Trump, but we'd rather step back and just let Trump take the country rather than vote for her."
The problems with bigotry in this country go much deeper than some people are willing to admit, and Harris just found that out the hard way. As far as the voting base is concerned, voting for Obama was a mistake that they will not repeat again, and they just proved that by handing Trump everything he wanted on a silver platter instead.
We can't even say that it's an outsized minority any more. A majority of the people in this country just spoke up and said that they either want the racism and bigotry or are at least willing to put up with it.
Trump won the election not because Democrat voters said "Trump!", but because they said "Not Harris."
There’s no blaming the Russians this time around. There’s no blaming media malpractice. There’s still some blame to attribute to voter suppression, but majorities elect the people who suppress the votes...
what a stupid fucking article. why carve out exceptions for shit you don't understand and then double down on the politico.
American conservatives wouldn't understand personal responsibility, especially the ones that crow about others not taking it, if it was literally rage fucking their assholes without lube.
And it absolutely will be once Trump's policies are in effect.
But somehow it will still be Obama's fault because the poor, ignorant fools consider critical thinking to be a librul plot like climate change and gravity.
they don't know what they want because the campaign was all about a dude saying bad words instead of any sort of real plan to fix anything. I'm tired of the spin. Harris adopted all the far right framing on immigration and bent over backwards for like half a dozen centrist republicans which lead to low turnout for like the obama voter crowd
Edit: Also apparently now there's a large sector of people who simply aren't online and don't watch tv. Reaching them should be the #1 goal of any future election campaign
Unpopular Opinion: Trump represents a demographic transition in the U.S. as the old people go into retirement new young people emerge. The retiring and now dying people had the following properties:
did not use social media, reads popular newspapers
extrovert, wanted to dominate international institutions and create new international rules
pro free markets, wanted to achieve global systems dominance, containment of enemies (Soviet Union)
unionized working class (example: Boeing employee)
majority Protestant, Catholic or Mormon
Meanwhile Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and other Silicon Valley emperors captured a new demographic:
uses social media, isolated in select bubbles
introvert, isolationist
pro tariffs, local markets, walls as a symbolic and total solution to societies openness, what I would describe as "self containment protectionism"
not in a union, does not even dream of a union. (example: Fruit picker in Florida/Texas)
Catholic, majority is atheist now
This might represent the final shift away from the old cold war era to a new war(?) era. To my understanding South America is majority introvert conservative catholic in its foreign policy and North america is (was) majority extrovert unionized protestant in its foreign policy. And now North America starts to look more like an isolationist version of Argentinia or Brazil to me with heavy protestant tones (think of Milei of Argentinia or Bolsonaro of Brazil, who are ironically more protestant than catholic in their support base). I am not american so proudly correct me where I am totally wrong in my analysis.
It seems like the problem was turnout. In the last election liberals decided to come out and vote to remove Trump from office. This time they didn’t bother to vote.
Yep. I would say, let them wallow and burn in what they voted for. The problem is that the rest of us will be suffering along with them. Most of the world's incumbents have been voted out of office and the countries' voters have shifted right. I think the flood of immigrants to the U.S., England, Italy, and Germany is one of the main reasons that has caused the shift in voters, along with the economies. Although U.S. has the best economy in the world currently & voters have no memories. Trump was the one that killed the immigration bill so he could campaign on the issue. Fuck, he even to every one to blame him. AND, the Biden administration has pulled off a soft landing on inflation. Which is something 99.9% of economist said couldn't be done. I've been hearing people voted for Trump because the price of eggs was too high. SERIOUSLY! WTF! No one remembers that the avian flu wiped out most of the farms??? One bird gets sick, they had to destroy the whole stock in that particular coop. They bitch about egg prices while the drive around in their V-8 trucks or suburbans. Also, under Biden, American has been out producing oil/gas than any other country. So, yea, the dumb fucks got EXACTLY what they wanted. Wait until those tariffs kick in and see if they bitch.
In a sane world this would make the Democrats turn to introspecting and move leftward. In our billionaires world they're just going to keep pursuing the "moderate" and move more and more right....