Or: "Donald Trump was a test run. Worse than him is coming down the road within the decade. Get busy building. Movement activists who supported Biden emphasized that his presidency would give the movement breathing room. Okay. We have maybe two years, tops, to prepare for an even more vicious, popular wave of reaction. The next backlash is going to make the Tea Party look like a teddy bear’s picnic.

A Biden administration will enter into government with an even more tenuous majority in the House, a loaded right-wing judiciary, and an intransigent opposition securely ensconced within the “The House of the Undying” i.e. the Senate. This means any hope for progress on the movement’s priorities is dead in the water. Legislative failure will breed resentment (as it did under Obama). And because the left has, during the Trump years especially, become even more structurally, politically, and demographically wedded to the Democratic Party, we will (fairly or unfairly) have to answer for every mistake and insufficiency on behalf of our senior coalition partners.

The lesson the GOP is going to take from this election is that Trumpite politics can garner support from a near-majority of the electorate. Republicans can win larger margins with a fascist program than they will by running a moderate conservative (compare Trump's narrow loss to those of McCain and Romney). They have every reason to dive deeper into a morass of conspiracy theories, escalate the culture war, and encourage popular violence against the left. Further steps will be to try to consolidate and expand demographic inroads among communities of color, as well as doubling down on voter suppression tactics."

https://regenerationmag.org/among-the-ruins-of-victory/

The idea that the GOP is in a 'death spiral' is about the stupidist possible takeaway from what just happened. They just scored the second most votes ever in US politics, and given Biden's milquetoast, corporate pandering policies combined with the same (ridiculously effective) GOP stonewalling that they employed in Obama's second term - and a GOP-sympathetic judiciary to boot - Biden's likely total ineffectiveness will breed ever more electoral resentment with vicious populist backlash at most 2 years away. It's hard to imagine the GOP in a better position following this loss. Any notion of a coming GOP collapse is fantasy fueled by high moron vapour.

I'd guillotine them all.

I suppose. I'm just thinking that having elected the much-touted 'lesser evil', well, they've still elected evil.

Not convinced everyone should be this happy about a republican winning.

The notion of an emergent 3rd party in the US is something of a pipe dream I'm afraid. Strategically, the way forward is the expropriation of the democratic party appartus from under their own cowardly and oblivious noses. With the exception of the pathetic labour protection vote in California - pushed by a concerted corporate campaign with millions at its disposal - progressive politics under the democratic flag in fact had a pretty good time this week, at local and state levels. This article details things pretty well:

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/downballot-socialist-elected-election-day-dsa

Also, what an utter surprise that utter fucking trash runs in the Harris bloodline.

Real feels (still provisional).

Hadn't seen it - just watched about 10s of it then and noped the f out. Nope nope nope.

The thing I look forward to most if a Trump defeat comes to pass, is never having to be assaulted by the vomit-timbre of his voice retching out from whatever media that so often decides that whatever he is saying is worth the oxygen that it wastes on any particular day. And my God, the bloody imitations by 'comedians' - a job that now seems to require that one have a 'Trump voice' in the pocket - can stop. Or die off. Stephen Colbert will have to find a new line of work, presumably.

Violence has been more a characteristic of leftist groups. — Hanover

Fake news.

So - this would be incredible if not so predictable, but the democrats are already beginning to learn the exact opposite lessons from what they should be learning. First, on the democrat 'strategy' of trying to appeal to republican voters:

"Now survey data show the strategy epically failed, as Trump actually garnered even more support from GOP voters than in 2016. Indeed, Edison Research exit polls on Tuesday found that 93 percent of Republican voters supported Trump — three percentage points higher than in 2016, according to numbers from the same firm. The takeaway: There may be a lot of so-called “Never Trump Republicans” promoted in the media and in politics, but “Never Trump Republicans” are not a statistically significant group of voters anywhere in America. They basically do not exist anywhere outside of the Washington Beltway or cable news green rooms -- and after tonight’s results, we shouldn’t have to see them on TV or even see their tweets ever again".

https://www.dailyposter.com/p/six-takeaways-from-election-night

And yet:

"[Democratic] Party leaders had expressed certainty that Trump’s divisiveness and mishandling of the pandemic would help them expand their majority with wins in GOP-held districts — and yet they lost at least a half-dozen seats and failed to retake the Senate. The explanation laid out by centrists, according to multiple people who were on the call and spoke on the condition of anonymity, is that Republicans were easily able to paint them all as socialists and radical leftists who endorse far-left positions such as defunding the police."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-democrats-pelosi-election/2020/11/05/1ddae5ca-1f6e-11eb-90dd-abd0f7086a91_story.html [paywalled].

I.e. despite the results showing that trying to win over GOP voters is a complete failure, these fucking morons reckon the way to go is to push even harder in this direction.

Must be FoReIGn InTeRfErEnCe

It might, it might not, but the hysterical discourse around 'foreign interference' has been employed in every instance to deflect from the absolute wreckage of American internal dysfunction. It's an excuse not to address the fact that, I dunno, the democrats have run two dogshit candidates who, in the face of an electorate clamouring - violently - for change, stand for the opposite of that. Nearly 70 million American citizens have voted for Trump - and people want to talk about foreign interference? They can go fuck themselves.

There's a small part of me which would like to think that libs and dems will now be forced to see the vacuity of their 'Russian interference' bullshit and just recognize that no, tens of millions actively want and desire Trump in power, and that US politics is fundamentally warped through and through and cannot be attributed to some external, exogenous force.

But probably not.

Now Trump has descended into a vindictive burbling man child, some of Johnson's gloss will have tarnished and we can start to reign him in and possibly topple him now. — Punshhh

True. I hadn't thought too much about the internationalist dimension of a Trump loss. Interestingly, in my neck of the woods, alot of South East Asia has been hoping for a Trump win because of his utter indifference to human rights abuses, and moreover, China has been somewhat ambivalent about America's descent into full-blown dementia (favourite quote from the linked article: "I had a Chinese scholar say to me: If we could convince all the countries in the world to come together and damage those pillars of U.S. strength, we could not be as successful as Donald Trump has been single-handedly,” said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing").

From an internal US perceptive through, even these tight, undecided results already mark out a certain path of doom for the country.

Fair point.

Via political scientist Corey Robin:

"My four takeaways so far.

First, I hoped for better things.

Second, one Republican elected official after another is refusing to back Trump's efforts not to count the votes. The party has obviously decided that control over the Senate is more than enough to suit its purposes.

Third, with a party that many claimed always submitted itself to Trump's will (but was in fact more than happy to oppose Trump whenever it suited their purposes) not submitting to Trump's will, with tweets not having the intended effect, with street gangs not materializing on anywhere near a sufficient scale to implement the leader's will, it seems clear that Trump's only hope lies in the courts. Which may not be there for him either. But it's important to remember that, in the end, Trump's whole career now depends on what it has always depended on: not the apparatus of fascism but lawyers and judges. And that the Republicans are happy with the Senate.

Fourth, my biggest fear throughout the last four years has been that we would be facing an extended interregnum of back-and-forth, wherein an exhausted neoliberal Democratic Party trades power and office with an exhausted right-wing Republican Party. Last night's results (insofar as we know them) seem to confirm that that is where we are. Biden's presidency will be an awful lot like Obama's second term and even Trump's presidency: not in terms of content or substance, but in terms of having to rely, almost exclusively, on executive orders and action, and not being able to push a legislative agenda through.

In other words, four years of stuckness. Which is definitely better than the alternative of four more years of Trump, but not really moving us anywhere either."

---

4 years of an ineffective, frustrated government while the underclass of America (>60% of it) continues to rot? Trump, or someone like him, will be back in 2024, and US politics will continue to be dragged into the gutter that is right-wing neofeudalism - as anyone with a working brain knew would happen when Biden got nominated. The only relevant question defining the American path forward is how much its gangrenous decay can be insulated from the rest of the world, and at what rate.

A largely pyrrhic victory, if it comes to pass:

"If, as seems now probable, Joe Biden eventually takes office, we should expect an administration distinguished mostly by its torpor. Not only will the Democrats lack a Senate majority, they’ll almost certainly double down on their disastrous centrism, concluding that Trump’s unexpectedly strong showing means that much of America skews to the right. Obama spent eight years trying to collaborate with Republicans. Biden will, most likely, do the same, even with a GOP increasingly infected by Trumpism.

The ensuing policy paralysis will not necessarily be the worst outcome, if only because, as the late Alexander Cockburn used to say, ‘Gridlock keeps the bastards at bay’. ...More generally, the election means nothing has been resolved. Trump might be done but his defeat – if that’s what we’re seeing – wasn’t sufficiently crushing as to destroy his legacy. On the contrary, many would-be demagogues, both in the US and elsewhere, will see his surprisingly strong showing as evidence that the old culture war incantations still retain some of their magic."

https://overland.org.au/2020/11/the-incomplete-defeat-of-donald-trump/

And yet, everyone seems to want to come live here. They're all lined up and pounding on the door, begging to be Americans. The population of the US has doubled in my life time. — Hippyhead

Holding the whip is always more popular than being subject to it.

As for the rest - it would be my shame to be held 'credible' by people like you. Trust you to cite one of the most despotic and regressive of American institutions as an exemplar of behaviour.

Is China then a "shitty country filled with shitty people"? — jamalrob

If China isn't the most malignant country on the face of the planet right now, it's certainly in the top two. But fine, if it's the 'shitty people' quip from which the charge of bigotry comes, then consider it retracted and restricted to the state and those with power over it and the institutions which reproduce it and them.

What is with you people and whataboutisms? And yeah, if you hadn't noticed, the people among the most upset with Germany after WWII were the Germans themselves. It took, of course, a bloody holocaust and second world war to get there, but lets hope it doesn't come to that in the present, hey?

Look, if you're going to call me a bigot, here's where I'm coming from - all things you know - but if spelling it out is better than just a throw-away 'tumor' line, well, here it is:

The US - along with their lesser partner in the UK - has a been a laboratory for neoliberal policy which they have actively pushed upon and enforced - by threats, exercised in many cases - all throughout the world. It pioneered the pauperization and casualization of workforce - a model which it has exported globally - the explosion of the financial sector from which billions of people are excluded even as it continues to eat up the world economy, has actively destroyed entire swathes of the Middle-East through either active slaughter or via support of murderous regimes like Saudi Arabia - the chief exporter of the Islamic 'extremist ideology' which is now infesting Europe and South East Asia like an open wound, continues to intervene and undermine democratically elected governments in South America for the sake of resource acquisition, and this is to say nothing of it's systematic murder and imprisonment of it's own citizens based on both the color of their skin and their being an economic underclass.

The cultural values it exports - on the back of its near monopoly of English speaking media, of which, incidentally, it pioneered the art of turning news into infotainment - is toxic and continues to toxify under Trump, and is an absolute poison to everyone who touches it, including communities around me. It's co-option of both 'freedom 'and 'democracy' have turned both words into sludge, and has stained them both, perhaps irredeemably, for the rest of the planet. It is among the leading carbon emitters on Earth and when it all turns into literal fiery hellscape - a future not far off, and already here in some places, including my own backyard - it will have been responsible for a great deal of it. And none of this - or at least almost none of it - will be different if Biden wins. Which, Jesus, it's actually looking close, which is an insane indictment on it's own, even if he does. The only other country that deserves as much vitriol directed it's way is China, whom, of course, the US has enabled every step of the way for the sake of cheap shoes.

And man, this isn't even the half of it. I realize bashing Americans on a predominantly American populated forum isn't exactly the ticket to becoming homecoming queen, but it's not so wild to hold that the US has been and remains a predominant a force of enormous ill in the world - and a force that is accelerating.

So you must live in "a shitty country filled with shitty people who have made the world a worse place to be for everyone". How are you not one of the shitty people? — Bitter Crank

I don't happen to reside in a literal superpower state which has changed the course of the lives of billions for the worse.

u wut mate

Man who spent months sowing doubt and confusion about election continues to sow doubt and confusion about election. People shocked. More at 7.

Nowhere good. And getting worse precisely because of our aping Americanisms.

Nah you just want a little self-aggrandizing comfort, that you're 'one of the good ones' among 'bad apples' or some crap. Well no, everything about your country is wrapped in shit, including you, and faster you accept that the faster you might be able to extricate yourself from it. The first step to recovery...

People vote for Trump because people like you are unable to fathom the fact that people can and will vote for Trump.

In any case America has been a tumor for the last 100 years, it's a shitty country filled with shitty people who have made the world a worse place to be for everyone. Trump is an every sense an exemplary American and if he loses this vote, it'd be because Americans would prefer not to recognize themselves in the mirror.

:rofl:

I despise this but I think it's exactly right.

Woe, Obama is Trump's father. — frank

Yes this makes alot of sense given Trump's daddy issues.

Striking.

I think it would be better as a Jedi story. Like, Darth Obama and his padawan, Darth Biden, are to be vanquished by Jedi Master Trump, who wields the light side of the force. His small, nimble hands can manipulate lightsabres much better than his opponents. He is to bring balance to the force by draining the swamp, as it was foretold in the prophecies.

In many ways Joe's 'decency' is a bigger indictment on the system than the buffoonishness of Trump. A system which produces vile human beings who act like it is one thing; a system which produces vile human beings who are perfectly amicable is terrifying in a whole different register.

*stir*

Ugh, I read the damn thing, and holy damnation these people still think they're playing a giant game of DnD or something.

The only rational conclusion: sell all assets of the Catholic Church - and any other church for that matter - and redistribute them to their ex-parishioners. Or else turn them into museums for learning how primitive we can be.

Lol Trump can't read, why bother.

Catherine Malabou - Morphing Intelligence: From IQ Measurement to Artificial Brains
Alex Anievas and Kerem Nişancıoğlu - How The West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism

Everyone is entitled to a slice of Pie.

He's great. — Michael

Yeah! His whole vibe is my jam. When I am grumpy here I am Pie grumpy.