2024 Election Day Open Thread

Predictions:
Trump wins the presidency winning the 2020 Biden states of Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
Senate goes 51 R with Montana, and W Virginia being pick ups. Possible Independent upset in Nebraska and/or the Ohio senate seat going R.
House goes 221-214 in favor of the Democratic Party.

Same.

If Kamala wins it will be nice to show my daughter that in America women can grow up to be mediocre presidents too.

Guess it’s going to be an exciting Guy Fawkes day today.
“Remember, remember
the 5th of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot!”

I cannot grasp the calculus Revelo reports. Running off a cliff versus running into a ditch? Somewhat abstract metaphors for chaos and dysfunction either way.

I am watching the Due Dissidence podcast, & @ this point, they have 99 blue points for Pres, v. 188 for Trump. IF I am wrong to assume that Trump has a substantial lead (with mostly Libertarian/ Right Western states left), I apologize in advance.

If the Dems aren’t rewarded for genocide, I’ll be happy.

Let it be.

@Bruce Wilder: I rushed my comment as I exited the voting station, so it is indeed confused. Trump victory would not lead to insurrection. On the contrary, it’s a Trump loss that might lead to insurrection. On the other hand, Trump victory might lead to something worse than insurrection. It’s the radical unpredictability of Trump that frightens me. Ukraine is a fine example of what can happen with radicals in charge of a country. Ukraine was slowly sliding into the ditch for decades prior to radicals taking control. Then it suddenly drove off a cliff. I don’t want that in the USA.

Harris, if she wins, will be stymied by the Republican Senate. So I voted for gridlock, a predictable 4 years of continued slow sliding of the USA into the ditch, versus 4 years with increasingly mentally unstable Trump at the helm, possibly driving us off the cliff.

I don’t get it, for all of left’s lament about lack of consciousness in populace, you vote for establishment that bared its teeth for total domination of social life, that will guarantee a (possibly global) regress to neo-feudalism in 50 years time?
Yeah no “CEO” of America will be against interest of the Board, even FDR can’t claim to be against the Board, for all that the left can possibly want, even nudging people to be a little more conscious is too great a task?

The way i see it, if america can’t uphold standard of liberty, whatever class interest it actually serve, the chilling effect will make everything gray, there will only be a race to be least bad, while everyone spiral down, coincident with technology development in automation and ai, it will make everyone regress to feudalism, because the top won’t be needing the mass anymore, they will have their cottages and castles, without a technology leader to ensure in this transition the technology is not selectively developed to make the power gap between top and mass thrown into inbalance, this is the only outcome.

Seems like MAGA is gonna take the White House, and the Senate, and the House, and of course the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which pushed women towards Democrats. That has been widely known and reported. That is to be expected.

What is unexpected because it has been ignored and unreported: MEN.

Men have been abandoning Democrats in similar margins. Whatever female votes that have been gained by Democrats have been effectively neutralized and even overcome by the male votes gained by Republicans.

And in swing states, the gender gaps were enough to doom Democrats.

Blacks and Latinos are not moving away from Democrats. It is Black MEN and Latino MEN who are.

Now we are going to talk about why men are turning to Republicans.

@TimmyB

Based on what Iran has been saying I fear the war will start before Trump takes office. They are threatening a heavy strike, no more demonstrations, and are also threatening US bases in the ME.
If their capabilities are what people like MIT’s Ted Postol and former UK ambassador Alistair Crooke are saying then they can basically flatten Isreal in one go.
Which will invite either a nuclear response from Israel or a massive US intervention (which will be an epic disaster for the US).
If US fleets or bases get obviously undeniably hammered, I greatly fear Biden will go nuclear.

So it turned out that Kamala’s problem with men was much bigger and deeper than Trump’s problem with women. Democrats have made gains with women after the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade. However, those gains have been completely neutralized and overcome by the hemorrhage of men from Democrats.

Democrats should have dealt with their men problem a decade ago. Hillary lost the 2016 election also because of men. The warning signs were already loud and clear back then, but Dems chose to ignore the festering trouble because they have been (occasionally) made up with their (growing) male gender gale with women.

Over the eight years, Democrats continued to gradually lose more and more men, and the loss has been accelerating in the past five years. At some point, they simply cannot make up this continuous hemorrhage of male votes with the gains they have made with women.

By the time Kamala realized the problem, (like, LAST WEEK,) it was already too late. And then her campaign started to target men with ads and messages… only to tell men why they should care about abortion and women issues. None of her ads (not the one I’ve seen) mentioned any issues that were important or pertinent to men. That was certainly NOT helping, (certainly not after a decade of calling men toxic, deplorable and incel.) I think this anti-men is a culture thing and deep-seeded within the Dem Party, and it could be very difficult for Dems to adjust and overcome.

Hillary lost her election because of men? Really? I thought she lost it because of NAFTA, WTO, MFN for China, etc. I still think I voted for Trump in 2016 because I wanted revenge for NAFTA, WTO, MFN, etc. Also I wanted revenge for the Democrats not letting me have the Sanders I wanted. They wouldn’t let me have my Sanders so I wouldn’t let them have their Clinton. Plus I wanted to spare myself the further Free Trade Conspiracies which Hillary was going to advance.

Oh well . . . as Hirohito once said — ” The Presidential situation has developed in a way not necessarily to our advantage.”

I am going to attempt to do a summary of how humans got to where they are now from the very very very very begining. These are the miles markets on the yellow brick road.
800,000 years ago humans tamed fire. This was the first step on the path to both civilization and unavoidable extinction because human civilization is inherently completely unsustainable for many reasons. All of the steps that follow this first step are inevitable consequences of this first “advancement”.
250,000 years ago language begins to develope.
200,000 years ago there are languages. This gave humans super powers. Language is a force multiplier. Knowledge could not only be passed on it could develope much faster.
70,000 years ago humans develope the bow and arrow. Another super power is added to their capabilities.
15,000 years ago. Dogs are domesticated. Now humans can hear and smell 10 times better in a manner of speaking. And they get a visual second perspective in the bush. One that can see underneath vegitation that blocks the view of humans. While humans can see over vegitation that blocks the view of dogs. With this step human over population becomes inevitable, along with environmental degredation. Humans will be far to short sighted to see where they are now headed. With fire, and bow and arrows and dogs the natural world has become totally unbalanced. The fall really begins picking up speed at this time. Humans just had their fall broken all the way delaying their inevitiable death several times.
10,000 years ago agriculture begins to replace hunter gathering as the main way of life for human peoples. Over population and environmental degredation did not cause this transition but it eventually would have caused it if the transition did not happen sooner. With the developement of agriculture the carrying capacity of the planet increased. On the other hand an agricultural based life style made slavery possible for the first time.
8,000 years ago the first animals, sheep, are domesticated.
7,500 years ago the stone age ends with the manufacturing of copper tools.
7,500 years ago the first city in the world reaches a population of 10,000 people.
6,000 years ago the wheel was invented
5,000 years ago for better and worse the first empires arise
Humans were now on a plateu that would last for 4,400 years.
Setting the stage for what was to come;
1400 years ago Science started flourishing in the Islamic world
700 years ago science began flourishing in Europe
600 years ago the developement of fire arms began
These last two events did not determine what would happen next, They determined who would do what to who in the big picture. I mean that the victory of English over the French in the 1700s was not predetermined but that European colonial expansion was. But even that is only a small detail for the planet. Though it is of course a major detail for those who died on slave ships going to Brazil or the United States. Yet in another deminsion of the universe the shoe might be on the other foot.
300 years ago humans began transitioning from wood for energy to coal.
Although this step might not have been directly caused by a lack of wood for cooking and smelting and building such a shortage of wood would have eventually occured. This was the final nail in humanity’s coffin. Now we only have to lie down in it and accept our comming fate. We humans did not know back then that coal and latter oil and natural gas would cause the planet to warm when they were burned. But by the middle of the 19th century some people had discovered that. But even if we humans had collectively know what the consequences of this change would be I highly doubt that we would have done anything differently. This choice would have been between suffering rapidly declining standards of living very soon or taking a chance on a new offer that would allow a massive improvement in standards of living for an indefinate period in to the future. The choice is basically live well and die or live at the living standard of a chimpanzee on the savanah for all time. If you ask me that is an obvious choice.
Fossil fuels allowed for a massive population overshoot. They made us look like an intellegent species rather than the naked apes that we are. Very importantly fossil fuels greatly reinforced a foolish optomistic outlook in vast numbers of humans, specifically a foolish belief that tecnnology can solve all of our problems and deliver us to paradise.
60 years ago more or less, some intellectualls began rasing an alarm about human society being unsustainable. But for the most part they were ignored. And i guess it was a great thing that they were ignored. Because their warnings came 800,000 years to late. To have even tried to have transitioned to a more sustainable society would have required that someone like Joseph Stalin, but only with a sense of humor, to be a world dictator. If huge sacrifices were not made they would have not have had nearly enough impact to make any worth while delay in the inevitable collapse of industrial civilization.
55 years ago most people were oblivious as to what was instore for humanity in the comming century. But in at least one corner of the world the people were aware of what was comming. That corner of the world was a few rooms deep in the heart of the pentagon. That knowledge gave added impitus for creating their plans for war to achieve global domination. So that while others died they could survive.
But those ploting to survive were so naive it is astonishing. But we can thank our lucky stars that they were in charge. Because by plotting to dominate the world they accidently give the impression that there will be something left over to dominate. And on top of that it gives the rest of a motive to live as long as possible, the motive to torture and murder them for their massive betrayel of public trust.
In the mean time every person who understands where we are and how we got here is faced each day with a terrible decision. To pretend that we can get our solve our sustainability problems and keep hope alive, which murders the truth. Or to explain why we are way way way past the point of no return which defends truth but murders hope.

German elections on Feb. 23rd 2025. I wonder if the world’s temprature on that day will be 2.23° above the preindustrial average.