Election Season 2024 (United States)

[Jag]

I usually don't post in the PROC for my own reasons, but...my oldest asked this morning to stay home from school. They are scared and that just makes me angry. I'm not scared, sad, upset, felt let down...I'm just angry.

[Beguile's Mistress]

*sends all the hugs I can to help you both*

[Rayne]

I'm feeling so sick to my stomach and anxious today. I just don't know how to go forward from here.

[The Old Wolf]

I'm feeling so sick to my stomach and anxious today. I just don't know how to go forward from here.

Move forward best you can

[clonkertink]

I ran a lot of Fantasy Flight Star Wars games during the first Trump term. There was something very satisfying about letting a bunch of plucky rebels fight back against a fascist dictatorship.

I'm going to be rotating back into the GM seat in the next couple of months, and I'm going to be running the Savage Worlds conversion of Curse of the Crimson Throne. A campaign where a bunch of plucky rebels fight back against a fascist dictatorship.

So, if nothing else, I'm going to have an productive outlet for all these feelings I'm trying to process right now.

[Lingo]

I'm so sorry, everyone. I am despondent and ashamed to be an American.

My state kept blue and I had hoped at least there would be some wins with senate, but it appears to be a red sweep. And while I am really grateful to live somewhere and be mostly surrounded by people who value diversity and equality, I don't feel safe even in a very liberal state. This fucker and his cronies have made it clear they don't give a shit about proper legal process.

We still have each other, and that has to count for something.

[Lexandria]

I'm really... baffled. All evidence was pointing away from this result. He was literally bleeding suport from all demographics, there were millions of new genZ voters who lean heavily left. So many of the candidates he supported were impulse or defeated in recent years. There were a whole swath of Republicans against him.  They're no logical reason why he should have won the popular vote especially.

I was really hoping to wake up to find that something great had happened last night while I was asleep.

[LostInTheMist]

Well, 248 years was a pretty good run for American Democracy. *Sigh*

[clonkertink]

Yeah. I was totally caught off guard. I really felt Harris had a lot of momentum and enthusiasm - way more than there was for Clinton in 2016. That Trump won the popular vote is completely baffling to me.

[The Old Wolf]

. That Trump won the popular vote is completely baffling to me.

Yes & no , lots of people were not comfortable professing support of Harris so they stayed silent which emboldened the trumpers even more, which prevented reasonable discourse and here we are 

[Ollumhammersong]

There was plenty of evidence pointing in this direction. For starters Trump consistently outperforms polling data. In almost every state in both elections even if he didn't win he always got more support than the mainstream polls thought he would. Which really just goes back to the original problem from 2016, alot of people who support him don't bother responding to official polls and data collection requests because just suggesting Trump has a chance of winning, or even publicly mentioning his name without complete condemnation often just leads to an exhausting hour of being berated by those around you, and it's often impossible to have an actual conversation when he is involved.


Sure if you only go online things seemed rosey for the Democrats but really, the average American Joe just doesn't care about the same issues a lot of very online people are fixated on. They don't have the energy to really care about Trans issues when their grocery bills are going up. And as we saw from the black and latino groups, a fair chunk of people from minority communities don't actually care about a few off-colour racist jokes when energy and fuel prices are higher. If someone can promise to fix those everyday issues, that's all people really care about.

Me personally i'm not surprised this happened. I predicted he would win months ago and have been trying to tell my friends and family to expect this outcome since. But every time I bring it up i get laughed at, told my information is bullshit, i'm reading too many right wing sketchy sources. Well, turns out i'm the only one of my friend group who actually knew what the fuck was really going on.

As for those Gen Z voters, well sure young people tend to vote left. But there was so much evidence and polling showing a surge of conservative support among young men specifically, which the dems just didn't think was important enough to try and address I guess.

The US democracts have a very bad habit of just assuming people are going to fall in line and vote as they're told/expected, and if they don't want to or try to question why the dems just insult them. That clip of Obama berating black men for daring to not vote for Kamala was a prime example of this. And It clearly did not go over super well with black voters.

I'm sure just saying this is going to get some people here mad at me. But, well.... he won, and the college votes fell more or less how I thought they were going to.

Honestly the evidence of his victory was there all along. Alot of people just ignored it or were fixated on the polls/data that supported their candidate. I'm not even American, and i'm not saying i ncessarilywanted him to win, but from an outsiders prospective this outcome was obvious

[Beorning]

Speaking as a non-American...

WHAT THE HELL?!?

Seriously, I thought Americans had more sense than this.

[Lingo]

Yeah. I was totally caught off guard. I really felt Harris had a lot of momentum and enthusiasm - way more than there was for Clinton in 2016. That Trump won the popular vote is completely baffling to me.

That's what upsets me the most. I cannot believe he won the popular vote. I was prepared for an electoral college loss like in 2016 but... What the actual fuck are people smoking? How could the margin be so wide?

I don't know what remedy there is for this level of hatred, stupidity, and intolerance.

[clonkertink]

In case anyone needs a grim laugh, The Beaverton has you covered:

American Experiment ends in catastrophic laboratory explosion

[Rayne]

Yea the pipeline of Gen z men becoming radicalized by musk and Joe Rogan is no joke. Which I honestly don't know how you fix that brain washing. Social media has broken human empathy and everybody is in their own Echo chamber. 

[Caela]

Speaking as a non-American...

WHAT THE HELL?!?

Seriously, I thought Americans had more sense than this.

Sadly, not enough of us.

[Callie Del Noire]

Speaking as a non-American...

WHAT THE HELL?!?

Seriously, I thought Americans had more sense than this.

Oh most assuredly agreeing. I expected Florida to go hard red. Didn’t expect other states to do it. Only expected the pot and abortion protection amendments to pass. Well I’m utterly medical coverage from the VA soon.

[midnightblack]

Speaking as a non-American...

WHAT THE HELL?!?

Seriously, I thought Americans had more sense than this.

It might be just a touch far-fetched to assume that 70+ million people are irrational lunatics. Most of them are probably perfectly normal people, the kind who drop their kids to school and then go to work. I don't think they care quite as much about the kind of topics we muse over or our own local problems as they do about bills and groceries, and that was pretty much what Trump's campaign has been focused on, as far as I could see as an outsider myself. I don't think it's a good bet to go up against a speaker as charismatic as him (like it or not, the man knows how to make a show) who constantly addresses the main concerns of the majority of the population (bills and groceries, believe it or not) with someone who is at best incompetent, again at least in so far as I could make out, being an outsider.

Disgraceful a character as Trump is, I'd say he won with generous support from the Democrats themselves, starting from Biden's stubbornness to run for a second term in spite of the evident decline of his faculties, to the lacking preparation of a proper successor or of a candidate validated through the usual democratic procedures. You can try to weasel yourself and skirt around as much as you want as a politician, but in a democracy sooner or later you will have to face the vote. Like it or not, the people are always right, be it for better or worse.

Depressing as the situation is, I think it's extremely unlikely for American democracy to just vanish overnight. I'd say that Trump himself is probably not all that invested in some of the more dubious initiatives some of the genuine lunatics around him have. I highly doubt there's that much of a critical mass of insane people ready to begin implementing things like Project 2025 and I can't see everyone else simply rolling over and letting them go for it. While I don't really have the knowledge to go over domestic policies, in external affairs particularly connected to my part of the world I don't think he's actually that bad a choice at all. Though only time will tell. He's probably a disaster in the long to very long term in matters like fossil fuels and such, but then again everything is these days. Ultimately, I think people just want a better today and tomorrow for themselves and their children, and the day after tomorrow can go screw itself as they themselves won't be around anymore to put up with it. You'll have a rather difficult time explaining to them that they're wrong in that line of reasoning.

[IR Halcyone]

Speaking as a non-American...

WHAT THE HELL?!?

Seriously, I thought Americans had more sense than this.

This.

I don't understand how a convicted criminal who tried to overthrow the last presidential election was allowed to run in this election. Now I mostly feel afraid for people who are going to be persecuted arbitrarily within the country, and outside the US I mostly feel afraid for the Ukrainians, Palestinians, Syrians and for what's going to happen to climate policies.

[RedPhoenix]

I'm genuinely sorry to the people who didn't see this coming. I've been my biting my tongue about it because I didn't want to be negative or encourage apathy. But this is the America I've always known.

Biden/Harris won in 2020 off the energy of a wave of national protests about unhappiness with the state of america regarding issues that long pre-dated Trump, blown into overdrive by George Floyd's murder and the state of unrest over the coronavirus and lockdowns. Without that Trump was winning 2020.

The Biden/Harris ticket was tremendously unpopular amongst this movement but Trump was even more unpopular so a motivated voter base turned up for the biggest american election in history. They held their nose and voted for the guy who only got the nomination after a coordinated effort to ratfuck Bernie Sanders (again). That lightning bolt wasn't hitting twice, especially with how those voters have been treated since.

In the four years since those voices have been ignored, ridiculed, mocked, and distanced from by the democratic party. A party that had absolutely no plan other than to run an obviously failing Joe Biden again. It's really really hard to reconcile "this is the biggest election in history, freedom is at stake!" with "oh shit can our guy not speak in full sentences at a debate? sorry we weren't paying attention."

Did Kamala do the best she could after that switch out? Yes I think she did. But she did an awful job of being a decent human being for most of her life before that as she launched a political career off of locking people up using forced labor in her prisons. Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy Trump is president. I'm also not terribly unhappy that Harris isn't.

Look at what voters said mattered to them - the economy comes up over and over again. When blue collar voters say "the economy" they mean "i'm one higher than expected bill away from being evicted and nobody in Washington seems to give a damn." I've seen all this stuff about how Biden has been good for "the economy" but when these people say "the economy" they mean wall street and billionaires. You can publish all the articles you want about how x number or y number means the economy is good you guys, really, but when I have no money in my budget because everything on my grocery list cost half again what I have the funds for it doesn't matter. No, I'm not mad at people who felt like they had to vote for the guy who promised to make groceries affordable. I don't think he's going to do it, but I'm not mad at the people who felt like that was the only choice.

I'm also not mad at the people who stood on their principles and held back their vote over this regime's support for genocide. I think that was misguided but I'm not mad at them, I get that too. And if that really was a deciding factor in this election then it's the democratic party's fault for leaving those votes on the floor, not the fault of the voters for standing on their principles.

So when you've taken the 2020 results and you've abandoned the working class, actively discouraged progressives, told protesters you don't support them, and have done nothing to ensure that rest of us that there's a reason to vote for you other than 'not being Trump' what do you get? You get the 2024 election map. These mythical undecided center-right voters that were just waiting to find out who Dick Cheney was endorsing don't exist.

But like 2016, like 2020, they'll just start telling us how this was everyone else's fault rather than fix their broken house. Trans people will be the first ones under the bus. Like always.

Like, I really am sorry to everyone who is hurting today, but every time I heard "we're not going back" I just wanted to shake my head and say oh my poor sweet beautiful summer child - we never left.

[Gadifriald]

When people see a pig like the orange cheese puff get away with his hatred and vitriol they will vote him into power to validate their own sick souls.

Never underestimate the power of hate, the stupidity of American voters and how far billionaires will go to avoid taxes and give themselves power . . .

[LostInTheMist]

Unfollowing this thread. Can't deal with this today.

[TheGlyphstone]

It might be just a touch far-fetched to assume that 70+ million people are irrational lunatics. Most of them are probably perfectly normal people, the kind who drop their kids to school and then go to work. I don't think they care quite as much about the kind of topics we muse over or our own local problems as they do about bills and groceries, and that was pretty much what Trump's campaign has been focused on, as far as I could see.

Depressing as the situation is, I think it's extremely unlikely for American democracy to just vanish overnight. I'd say that Trump himself is probably not all that invested in some of the more dubious initiatives some of the genuine lunatics around him have. I highly doubt there's that much of a critical mass of insane people ready to begin implementing things like Project 2025 and I can't see everyone else simply rolling over and letting them go for it. 

How many people does it take to implement Project 2025, though? A few hundred, a few thousand? Like you said, the vast bulk of that 70 million is more concerned about groceries - they don't need to be actively on board, they just need to not care enough to get in the way. 

[Shekinah]

I'm genuinely sorry to the people who didn't see this coming. I've been my biting my tongue about it because I didn't want to be negative or encourage apathy. But this is the America I've always known.

Biden/Harris won in 2020 off the energy of a wave of national protests about unhappiness with the state of america regarding issues that long pre-dated Trump, blown into overdrive by George Floyd's murder and the state of unrest over the coronavirus and lockdowns. Without that Trump was winning 2020.

The Biden/Harris ticket was tremendously unpopular amongst this movement but Trump was even more unpopular so a motivated voter base turned up for the biggest american election in history. They held their nose and voted for the guy who only got the nomination after a coordinated effort to ratfuck Bernie Sanders (again). That lightning bolt wasn't hitting twice, especially with how those voters have been treated since.

In the four years since those voices have been ignored, ridiculed, mocked, and distanced from by the democratic party. A party that had absolutely no plan other than to run an obviously failing Joe Biden again. It's really really hard to reconcile "this is the biggest election in history, freedom is at stake!" with "oh shit can our guy not speak in full sentences at a debate? sorry we weren't paying attention."

Did Kamala do the best she could after that switch out? Yes I think she did. But she did an awful job of being a decent human being for most of her life before that as she launched a political career off of locking people up using forced labor in her prisons. Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy Trump is president. I'm also not terribly unhappy that Harris isn't.

Look at what voters said mattered to them - the economy comes up over and over again. When blue collar voters say "the economy" they mean "i'm one higher than expected bill away from being evicted and nobody in Washington seems to give a damn." I've seen all this stuff about how Biden has been good for "the economy" but when these people say "the economy" they mean wall street and billionaires. You can publish all the articles you want about how x number or y number means the economy is good you guys, really, but when I have no money in my budget because everything on my grocery list cost half again what I have the funds for it doesn't matter. No, I'm not mad at people who felt like they had to vote for the guy who promised to make groceries affordable. I don't think he's going to do it, but I'm not mad at the people who felt like that was the only choice.

I'm also not mad at the people who stood on their principles and held back their vote over this regime's support for genocide. I think that was misguided but I'm not mad at them, I get that too. And if that really was a deciding factor in this election then it's the democratic party's fault for leaving those votes on the floor, not the fault of the voters for standing on their principles.

So when you've taken the 2020 results and you've abandoned the working class, actively discouraged progressives, told protesters you don't support them, and have done nothing to ensure that rest of us that there's a reason to vote for you other than 'not being Trump' what do you get? You get the 2024 election map. These mythical undecided center-right voters that were just waiting to find out who Dick Cheney was endorsing don't exist.

But like 2016, like 2020, they'll just start telling us how this was everyone else's fault rather than fix their broken house. Trans people will be the first ones under the bus. Like always.

Like, I really am sorry to everyone who is hurting today, but every time I heard "we're not going back" I just wanted to shake my head and say oh my poor sweet beautiful summer child - we never left.

Pretty much this. I can't even repeat how many times on the news I heard an American say: I voted for Trump. Not because I like that guy, not at all, but I really can't stand behind what the Biden/Harris government has been doing that I refused to vote for Harris. 

Also yes things might get rough but acting as of America is going to seize to exist and democraty died is over board I think. Everyone acted exactly the same like that previous time he was ellected and everyone claiming they were moving to another country stayed just the same. It might be 4 though years it might not be. Nobody knows the future...

[Beorning]

Also yes things might get rough but acting as of America is going to seize to exist and democraty died is over board I think. Everyone acted exactly the same like that previous time he was ellected and everyone claiming they were moving to another country stayed just the same. It might be 4 though years it might not be. Nobody knows the future...

OK, an observation from someone whose country went through something similar 9 years ago: underestimating populist authoritarians is never a good idea.

Nine years ago, back when Kaczyński and his PiS party was on its way to taking power, we also had people saying: "Nah, don't be alarmist, these guys says awful things but, when in power, it'll be business as usual". Heck, we even had leftist journalists, as well LGBT activists, claiming that the previous government was so annoying that would be voting for PiS... because they can't be worse than the previous guys. "It'll be all right", a lot of these people said. "PiS does far right posturing, but it's just for election purposes."

You know what? For the next 8 years, things *were not* OK.

It turned out, Kaczyński and his people weren't just pretending. They really meant all the scary things they were saying. And they had some pretty good plan how to implement their authoritarian takeover. They had been in power once before, in 2005 - 2007 - back then, they really stumbled around and didn't achieve anything. But by 2016, they had it all worked out: solid ideas what to do take control and dismantle all the democratic safeguards. And they started doing that - one by one. By the end of their rule, they completely puppeteerized the Constitutional Tribunal, they turned the public TV into a propaganda machine North Korea would be proud of, they controlled most of the justice system and the police... Also, they banned abortions, stoked racism and LGBT-phobia. And they went quite close to dismantling independent media.

So, when I hear people in America say that Trump speaks a lot, but he won't act on what he threatens to do... seriously, pray that this is true. Because it might well be that, in this second term, he actually knows what he wants to do with his power, how to control the government - and this time, he will have people with him willing to do all the awful things he talks about.

Seriously... don't get complacent. Democracy *can* be dismantled from within. And if a politician suggests they are planning to do so... believe them. You can't afford to err on the side of "It'll be alright" here.