And it’s a big enough victory that we shouldn’t expect Lawfare to overturn it. He very likely even won the popular vote.
I thought Harris would pull it out based on abortion, but I was wrong. (I’m terrible at election prediction, as I warned.) What happened is that people voted for abortion at higher rates than for Harris. The numbers below aren’t final, but they’re indicative:
Men really showed up, as well.
It seems that running on:
- I wouldn’t do anything different than Biden did;
- I’ll keep the genocide going;
- Cheney and other neocons are wonderful;
- I’ll appoint Republicans to my cabinet.
wasn’t a winning strategy.
I suspect that we’ll find out it mostly came down to the economy, because no, people aren’t wrong that prices are too high.
I find it hard to be entirely certain what Trump will do as President because he’s, ummm, inconsistent and senile, but I’m sure it won’t be pretty. We’ll see how serious he was about huge tariffs, using the national guard against immigrants and ending the Ukraine war (which would be a good thing.)
We’ll also see whether he leads the US to war against Iran. The Resistance would be well advised to use the next two months wisely.
The biggest obvious loss will be Lisa Khan no longer leading the FTC. Anti-trust will take a big step backwards. Elon Musk has proved over the last few years that he’s an incompetent ideologue, whether he was sane and competent in the past or not, so that’s bad too. And RFK shouldn’t be in charge of anything.
Don’t expect Trump’s policies to improve the economy. Tariffs can work, but they require industrial policy and other steps he won’t take, as we’ve discussed often on this blog.
(This blog is for understanding the present, making educated guesses at the future, and telling truths, usually unpleasant ones. There aren’t a lot of places like this left on the Web. Every year I fundraise to keep it going. If you’d like to help, and can afford to, please Subscribe or Donate.)
Feral Finster
Holmes, with all due respect TheResistance# won’t learn jack diddly shit.
Expect them to blame everyone and everything, Russians, “ungrateful negroes”, men, deadbeat tomcats, everyone and everything but their worthless, entitled selves.
Ian Welsh
By “the Resistance” I was referring to Iran/Hezbollah/Hamas, not domestic “Resistance”, who will be worthless.
Feral Finster
No worries. I was having a 2016 flashback, when liberals, along with Big Corporations, Wall Street, the MSM, and the CIA, FBI and NSA all were cosplaying at being plucky underground warriors.
Net Neutrality
Thank you for the final note before going to bed. I appreciate it just as much as I did from you 8 years ago. Your writing tells it like it is without being hysterical. The world needs more of you.
mago
Woke up around 4 and opened this blog to read the news.
Carnival barker, snake oil salesman, film flan man, senile demagogue—Trump is the perfect representative of the USA.
I gotta go shovel snow soon, but we’re all gonna be shoveling shit for a long time to come.
Mark Level
I am so relieved that the Dems lost, more than a little shocked that Trump and the Rs got the popular vote as well as electoral!! The Dems could not be rewarded for a year plus of genocide in the Middle East. Also, the installed candidates (since the Dems allowed few primaries, no “Democracy”) Harris & Walz collectively have all the pizazz and charisma of roadkill. You gotta love that Harris still hasn’t (7:30 Central Time) acknowledged her loss; she’s channeling Hillary in ’16.
As my favorite podcast duo say, the Biden admin was “dogshit.” Despite the deranged Libs who pretended it was all milk & honey (maybe it was for them, entitled & clueless), the Bidinflation, failed wars, & refusal of the reactionary, hate-filled, senile old man to do anything in his promises to help ordinary people– only a smidgen of college debt relief for older people who’ve been paying 15-20 years already, no minimum wage rises, NO attempt to undo the Trump tax cuts for the richest, they ran on BLM but decided on MORE $$ for Cops, plus the Cop City Fascist project in Georgia, abandoning people hit by hurricanes & other natural disasters (just weeks before the election!), letting the people in East Palestine, Ohio get cancer & die, breaking strikes like the Railroad workers on behalf of plutocrats, meantime Billion$ thrown away to the corrupt, Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, and for the “Baby-buster” 2,000 pound bombs to exterminate Palestinians– I think that’s the gist, there’s more but no reason to beat that dead horse (whores, political type.)
I will love watching the Libs’ tears. They thought their NeoLiberal TINA Reich would rule forever & the “little people” would buy the Lesser Evil they pretended to be. Shockingly, this time the fact that 68% of the populace knows “The US is going in the wrong direction!” had the same outcome as in 2016. (27% think things are going well. I guess that’s the Biden-Kamala suburban, mainly white Normies group.)
Trump likely won’t be good for anybody but the Richest, the Zionists, and the religious wackos, and fetus fanatics– but the R’s are now the Party of the struggling underclass, since the Dems chose to represent the clueless “America is Already Great” PMC well-off. I doubt he will do much, if any for them, but we’ll see. At least flushing money down the Ukraine toilet might be stopped. (Though sadly, I hear Pompeo may be back, so maybe not. At least Bolton won’t return.)
His economic “remedies” are weird & I really doubt they will be good in the medium or long term. However, they might well not be worse than the Dem/ Obama policies of shoveling wealth up to Finance, the FIRE sector, etc. etc. & further increasing the horrible income inequality in this country. In 2016 his scotching of the horrid TPP Corporate dominance Treaty was a positive, even though it was only done to piss off Obama & Hillary.
Since the days of the Clintons, the Dem party has been the place where any possible Reforms go to Die. Now it needs to die!! It should go the way the Whig party went prior to the Civil War. It was & is utterly corrupt, craps on its voters. “The Republicans fear their base, & the Dems hate their base” has been axiomatic since the Clintons (maybe before). Could a genuinely Left major party arise? I am not naive enough at this point to believe the people running things in both Duopoly parties would allow that. But as things continue to worsen, it’s perhaps not impossible.
I know Trump may ramp up the genocide of the Palestinians (which something like over 70% of ‘Muricans are disgusted by & oppose, doesn’t matter to the Leadership class at all, of course), but Dems were already doing a great job on that. It will be good to see evil people like Netanyahu’s lawyer Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan (lost the election in 2016 & 24), Matt Miller (aka Count Smirkula), Neera Tanden, “Admiral Kirby” etc. leave the scene, & hopefully never return.
I’m listening to NPR right now to savor the Smug Elites’ confusion, did hear one clown bloviating about how “Russian troll factories” influenced this election!! Those morons can’t change their Narrative, even though their Elite Media (NYT & WaPo, etc.), basically everyone but Rachel Maddow has admitted that Russiagate had Zero influence on the 2016 results. But a Darwin award waits for that clown, & anyone stupid enough to invest in that old canard again.
But since things will continue to get worse under a 2nd Trump term, it is perhaps not impossible that a real Left emerges, though both Duopoly parties have killed that prospect for decades. I still think this country is doomed, & my plan to get out by next fall is viable, if I just carry it through. Truthfully I’ve waited too long.
In closing, Nina Simone called it in 1964 in “Mississippi Goddam”– “This whole country is full of lies, We’re all gonna die & we’ll die like flies.” But that’s the outcome when a country is dominated by 2 parties that share a right wing ideology, a love of institutional violence (Cops, Military, TSA, ICE, DHS, GWoT, etc.), Endless Wars, & service only to the wealthiest minority, & the only Ideal is “Make Money. The One Who Dies with the Most Stuff Wins!”
Mary Bennet
My daughter the LPN voted for all Democrats except for the top of the ticket because, as she said, she hopes Trump will keep us out of World War III. The Democrats need to understand that the public is fed up with expending our wealth and prestige, whatever might be left of those commodities, on overseas wars. The dual citizen billionaires might have money, but they each have one vote apiece.
I can’t stand the MAGA crowd, whom I see as a pack of grifters looking to play the angles in order to get rich on someone else’s work, but they are right about one thing. What they are right about, IMO, is their visceral understanding that the US is NOT a part of Europe. Even while refusing to understand that their cherished Free Market Capitalism is no less an imported European ideology than is Marxism.
Oakchair
Autism rates and chronic illness rates have increased from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 30 and 7% to 50% respectively.
Seriously at this point how can any one defend refusing to look at the evidence and engage in the topic beyond insults and logical fallacies?
How has chronic illness and disability become defined as good health?
Because our societies mantra is:
Following orders is ethics
Insults is critical thinking
Following the herd is truth
Looking at the evidence is insane
Anyone refusing to engage in a topic regarding the death, disability and illness of hundreds of millions of people might want to look in the mirror.
GrimJim
FWIW
Trump’s win is not unexpected, though his winning the popular vote is. A combination, I expect, of the “Brovelution” and voter suppression (this last alone was not enough, but it certainly helped his numbers look better).
So a few predictions…
I’d say Ukraine might be finished before he even takes office. I expect the Republicans to stall on any further assistance, maybe even pull back. With the loss of the US, Ukrainian morale might collapse, and so will their lines. If they hold out till Trump takes office, they might get a slightly better deal… they might be allowed to keep Odesa. Maybe. Depends on how much of a bribe they can afford to give Trump.
I’d expect that within two years you will hear, “Palestinians? There are no such things as ‘Palestinians.’ Never were. Nope. Gaza and the West Bank have always been part of Israel.” So, folks who voted Trump based on a kinder, gentler genocide, that will all be on you.
We may or may not go to war with Iran. Depends on the mix of War Hawks and Evangelicals in his Defense Department. If we do, Israel will take a lot of hurt, but Tehran will end up a radioactive glass crater. Trump is just itching to throw around a few nukes to show his power.
China will probably get Taiwan without so much as firing a shot. Depends on the size of the bribe.
NATO will be gone; Europe will have to form new alliances.
Wel will drop out of the UN. Then bully anyone we want to deal with to ignore anything about the UN that they agree with, such as human rights.
It is all about profit now, and the ever-growing wealth and overwhelming power of the oligarchs. The rest of us, we’re just mudsills, to be used up until we die, preferably somewhere in a ditch, quietly, so as not to disturb our betters.
Domestically, the middle and lower classes will be further immiserated by Trump’s complete wacko economic plan. 20% to 50% tariffs on most imported goods will out a LOT of companies out of business.
Expect basically any Federal department, division, law, regulation, or policy that helps anyone who is not a millionaire to just disappear.
If you think poisoned and diseased foods and shoddy products are bad now, imagine how bad it will be when there are no more regulations at all, not even a requirement to announce a recall, and you must go into corporate-sponsored arbitration to even try to get any sort of recompense.
Hell, they’ll probably even make it illegal to report on these kinds of things, make it some sort of libel or slander.
Further concentration of news, food, oil/gas, all into fewer and fewer ever richer and more powerful hands.
The return of outright lifetime chattel slavery, using the convict slave loophole in the 13th amendment. Nothing says the slaves can’t be sold.
Women again chattel, losing the right to file for divorce, eventually losing the right to vote, once again becoming the legal possessions of their fathers or husbands.
A Final Solution to “illegal immigrants,” starting as processing camps to send them home, then convict slave camps, and finally just outright death camps.
And worse…
I would have traded six months of absolute pissant cracker civil war to actually electing the boot stamping on our faces… but here we are.
NR
First, Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate who ran a terrible campaign. Just absolutely awful. “Joy” was always paper-thin and frankly an idiotic theme to base a campaign around in this day and age, and anyone who thinks that embracing neocons is going to win any votes on the right these days should be drummed out of politics for the rest of their lives. So don’t take what I’m about to say as defending her in any way.
All of that said, I don’t think Harris was the reason for Trump’s victory last night. I don’t think this was about Harris or even Biden. This was a vote from a lot of angry and frustrated people who have reached the point where they just want to burn it all down. This was a vote from people who have seen, in some cases for many decades, politicians side with big monied interests over them, and let those monied interests turn their lives increasingly to shit. They’ve lost hope of our current political system ever fighting them or working to make their lives better.
They didn’t vote for Trump because they think they’ll fix anything. They know he won’t. They voted for Trump because they want him to break things. They want him to punish someone. Anyone. And they’re past the point of caring about who.
This is always how fascism starts–with an angry populace that wants to see people punished and isn’t particular about who those people are. And the Democrats are running and governing as if this is just normal, just politics as usual. They ran on a return to the status quo when they just fundamentally don’t understand or care that the status quo is awful for many, many millions of people. They thought that Trump was so awful that it wouldn’t matter. Well, it did.
Kamala Harris didn’t lose, the Democratic party did. And while it was a deserved loss, the problem is they aren’t the ones who are going to suffer for it. I might see some reason to hope if I thought the Democrats were going to learn something from this defeat, but given their past track record, I don’t think that’s likely at all. Not much hope in at least the near future I’m afraid.
NR
Oh, and that Selzer Iowa poll has to be one of the biggest misses in the entire history of polling. It’s so bad that I seriously think she needs to get out of the business. I’m certainly not going to be paying attention to anything she says in the future, despite her almost spotless track record up until a few days ago.
Chris Smith
Khan was gone either way: neither Trump’s Billionaires nor Harris’s Billionaires would permit her to stay on.
elkern
Worse than I imagined – looks like Trump will win the popular vote by a wide margin. At least the professional Dems won’t be able to blame it on the Greens this time. It will be interesting to watch the linguistic contortions they go through while blaming it on “men”.
So, Trump & GOP will inherit an economy that is growing decently, and overheat it with More Tax Cuts [mostly] for the Rich and more Pork for the MIC. They will pretend to balance the budget by ripping up some Safety Net programs and Dem patronage havens (Education). US Cities will get poorer and meaner (get out while you can). I expect (all?) Markets to crash in 2028, which might give Dems a chance in the election that year.
I expect Trump to get his way on Ukraine (cease-fire on current lines), but the price would be US attacks on Iran. I view Trump as “not a real Mafia Don but plays one on TV” – he talks tough, but doesn’t have the guts to order hits. He is unlikely to order a ground invasion, but would have no qualms air or missile attacks (incl nukes? maybe). US Media will drool over video of Iranian cities burning. Israel seems hell-bent on testing their “Yahweh Dome” (“Powered by Prayer!”); I almost feel sorry for them. Closing the Straits of Hormuz will just make Texas Crude more profitable (and squeeze China for a couple years until they can build out more pipes from Russia). At least Europe will be forced to reset, but it won’t be pretty.
Well, that’s about all the optimism I can muster today.
marku52
I’m just happy the Dems got crushed. What happens next is a crap shoot but burning the FDA/CDC/NIH Pharma coalition to the ground and salting it would be a nice start.
There is a phenomenal YT of Weinstein and molecular genomics guru McKernan discussing all the myriad ways the covid public health response was mishandled. And The only way to make sense of it was to assume “they don’t care who they killed, it’s just money” Also the discovery of DNA contamination in the Pfizer vax, and what it might mean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORW2uPR24w
But then again, I think it was PJ ORourke who opined “Trump has the operational capability of a drunken hamster”
So we will see…….
Mel
“US is NOT a part of Europe…”
That wakes up a memory of something from John Ralston Saul. Maybe from _A Fair Country_. Some claim that in a way USA is the quintessentially European country — a final distillation of Europeanness. Maybe the same sense of national self-importance that kept modern Europeans at war with each other ever since 1500 or so when they became modern. What made USA colonize Europe the way Europe had coloniized the rest of the wold before.
different clue
Both Biden and Harris have no future, nothing left to win and nothing left to run for. That means they have no votes to lose by shifting policy direction on Israel.
That means that if they do not freeze weapons flows to Israel unless and until Israel lets aid through to UNRWWA’s satisfaction and accepts a permanent ceasefire, it is because they do not want to do so. And never did.
And so they won’t change a thing.
And when Trump takes office, he will help, or even push, Israel to drive the Gazacide forward faster and harder to get it done quickly, comprehensively and irreversibly. As the news story noted : ” Trump says Israel needs to ‘finish what they started’ and said war with Hamas is ‘taking a long time’” Trump will give Israel all the aid, cover and support needed to ‘wrap it up quick’.
But hey, that’s just a prediction and I am not always so good with predictions either.
different clue
In my comment, I forgot to give the link to the “Trump on Gaza” story. So here it is.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/04/politics/trump-israel-comments/index.html
different clue
Oh, and . . . here’s another prediction.
I have not yet looked at Naked Capitalism for today, so I predict that over the next days and weeks, Naked Capitalism and especially its commentariat will do their best to conceal their giggling glee and their happy dances. But their giggling glee and their happy dances will come shining through, despite their best efforts.
different clue
There is an interesting subreddit called mapporn. Here is their map of the US with arrows on it showing in many places whether the vote went more for Dem or for Rep this time as against last time.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1gkx22m/shift_in_votes_compared_to_the_2020_elections_the/
C. Teague
In 2016, the undemocratic leadership of the Democrats thought a majority of the people would obediently vote for a disagreeable, corrupt, cackling, pant-suited warmonger who was contemptuous of ordinary Americans…cynically perhaps because she was female. Didn’t work.
But they would learn from that mistake…no?
So in 2024 the undemocratic leadership of the Democrats sidestepped the democratic selection process of primaries, after Slow Joe was convinced to excuse himself, to promote a disagreeable, cackling, pant-suited, female warmonger who is contemptuous of ordinary Americans…again cynically who is a visible minority, albeit with less directly attributable corruption.
Any bets on how the Dem leadership will play 2028?
different clue
@C. Teague,
Who will be DemNom in ’28? If she is healthy enough, Hillary Clinton.
Hillary! Lessons learned. Tanned, rested and ready. Third time’s a charm.
I think that I remember Obama and some other Grand Poobahs of the Inner DemParty wanting an open convention so that someone could be decided upon. But I suspect that Clyburn extorted the Party into elevating Harris because Black! Woman! Her Turn! and also, how would it look to not elevate Biden’s VP? Was she never good enough to have become the fill-in President to begin with if Biden would have died, sicked out or gotten Article 25ed?
As to Biden’s role in all this, I have to wonder whether he wasn’t feeling a little bit vengeful over his treatment, and his supporting Harris for DemNom was maybe his last act of Vengeance . . . . his final Hate-Shit on the face of the Party on his way out the door.
mago
C. Teague. Hopefully the Dem establishment will be dead on the vine in the year 2028.
Progeny’s the problem then, the mutant spawn with their inherited toxic ideologies baked into their very genes (jeans?)
Who? The Hapsburgs, the Gates, the Khanate for all I know. Soros has spawn. Maybe they’re all related in an AI way.
All that aside I’m kinda sorta surprised at how many otherwise intelligent people I know shat their diapers and peed their pants over election results. Emotional intelligence failure among other things.
Clogged sewers and swamps stink.
Whatcha gonna do when the lights go out?
Soredemos
@GrimJim
Ukraine was already finished. There’s physically nothing left to send them, and all they themselves can offer up is their seed corn youth to fill the trenches for a bit longer before being blown up by guided bombs they have no defense against.
As for Gaza, strawman. No one was arguing that Trump would be better for the genocide. The argument, which is correct, is that the genocide will happen regardless. Kamala is number 2 in the administration literally funding and facilitating mass murder right now, not as a future theoretical. Gaza is doomed period, maybe a bit faster or slower, but starvation is starvation. That won’t change, just maybe some tweaking for the optics. This whole ‘he’s going to genocide worse than Biden’ stuff is possibly the worst and most asinine of a series of asinine arguments. Northern Gaza is likely going to be filled with a few hundred thousand starved corpses before inauguration day even arrives. It’s genocide already.
Directly related to that, the UN is less than worthless. It is a powerless, useless organization. In fact if the US were to withdraw from it, it might become functionally useful for something without a major Security Council member forever using its power to defend, for instance, genocide conducted by its client state.
China is welcome to Taiwan. Let China formally reunite; preventing such is not worth a single life, let alone risking WW3.
With NATO gone Europe will have to finally grow up and return to actually thinking about its own needs and independent policy. It can start by acting like adults and reaching a reasonable security arrangement with the super power it shares a landmass with to its east.
Everything was already about oligarchs and profit. Has been for decades. That’s how we got here in the first place. The Democrats lost because they no longer even pretend to represent anyone but a narrow elite. This caused a vacuum where the Rwpublicans can LARP as populists and at least some voters believe them.