The day after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Afghanistan’s Taliban offered its congratulations to the American people for “not handing leadership of their great country to a woman.”
"If men had raised their voices we might also be in a different situation now."
So many men in the US did raise their voices, but we were unable to drown out the voices of Trump, social media and the corporate media.
Thank you Heather for continuing the fight. Trump had 4 years to build his coalition and he is a master at marketing--hate, anger, revenge, resentment and misinformation. The uneducated fall for it every time.
It looks to me like Ukraine will have no choice without US aid but to surrender to Russia. Once Trump takes us out of NATO, I don't imagine Russia will stop there. Perhaps the Trump wing of the Republican party could be more accurately called the MRGA party.
O would hope that some members of Congress even Republicans could see taking the USA out of NATO would be wrong for so many reasons. And my biggest hope is that poor health Trump does not survive past the midterms. We must arm ourselves with hope and fight strategically for better outcomes then. And surely some of the more fiscally responsible on both sides will send him many resounding NOs.
Carol - well said! Heather reported that 12% of Trump voters in Missouri also voted for abortion rights. I believe that a large number of last minute Trump voters had no understanding of the issues and will be dismayed to see the consequences of what they voted for. That raises hopes for the midterm elections.
My hope is that the current Congress awards Ukraine enough aid in money and weaponry to end the war on their terms before Dumpster takes office, David. It will be a heavy lift with MAGA Mike still in charge of the House, but worth the attempt. Maybe an Exec Order is preferable to a battle in the House, which Johnson is likely to dismiss until Jan 3. Ditto with judges, which only relies on the Senate. Get as much of a holding wall up as possible before the flood comes.
I have to say - too bad Pres.Biden wont reach out and take advantage of the "Presidential immunity" which does NOT specify which president - thanks SC! I know - pretty far fetched, huh?
The Ukrainian people will never surrender to the enemy -- they've already experienced what that means: certain horrible death and destruction. Shche ne vmerla Ukraina!
I do mind if Ukraine has no choice and we leave NATO. The EUROS have leverage with Trump..transactionally they can buy weapons and then provide Ukraine with them. They might not limit their usage as Biden fearfully did. I don't think Trump will leave NATO so easily either.
I don't think Biden was being 'fearful'. We really don't want a hot war with Russia. I don't want Putin the sociopath to decide to start lobbing nukes everywhere if he feels cornered. This was supposed to be about getting the Russians out of Ukraine, not going into Russia for 'regime change'. In this nuclear-armed world, that just sounds like a bad idea to me.
My throat is sore from raising my voice while MAGA plugged their ears chanting “Nanny, nanny foo foo, I don’t want to hear you.”
Previous channels are ineffective against Teflon Don. Fox will counter all truths with louder lies.
As an Advertising exec, one strategy I recommend is this: we must ask how can Dems make headlines?
Repeating yesterday’s news won’t work. To adjust Michelle Obama’s advice (while maintaining Democratic values) “When they go low, we go hire better PR firms.”
Another strategy, Dems (and Heather Cox Richardson) should follow Pete Buttigieg’s example and flood Fox News with appearances. We have to beat them on their home turf.
I do not see enough people understanding this idea. It took a combination of two things for Trump to win this election, a group of misogynistic, bigoted, self involved people and also a group of under and misinformed people. We can't change the first group much in one election cycle but we can change the second
You're being kind about who voted for Trump. They were overwhelmingly high school graduates and below. Most were either lazy or stupid. Many think that Trump will magically fix the economy too dumb to remember 2020.
Moat of the MAGAs are not smart people and a large percentage would welcome a theocracy.
I would prefer if we referred to them as poorly educated and easily manipulated. This process has been going on since the atrocious days of newt Gingrich, his dumbing down of America and the slow transformation of the Republican Party. With the planned destruction or elimination of the department of education the battle will be harder than ever to win. But that does not mean we don’t fight at every level we can.
We also have strong economic power. We can choose where to spend our money and where not to spend it. Who is more likely to want an EV, a democrat or a magashite? If Dem EV buyers start boycotting Tesla it will send a message. The same tactic applies to other goods where we have a choice. Watch how fast those fat cat CEO’s step back from trump.
I am trying to start a financial boycott of businesses and business owners who financially supported Trump by: 1) Emailing my friends and relatives, 2) Posting on NextDoor, and 3) Posting on Reddit. My friends and relatives are very supportive, NextDoor deletes my posts without telling me why, and there is definite interest on Reddit where I got this idea. Here is the guts of my email and posts.
I just read on Reddit that someone in Grand Rapids, Michigan is starting a list of businesses that financially supported Trump and is asking people to boycott the businesses. My first thought was this would be easy to do. I already boycott Amazon due to their poor treatment of employees that I read about in the WSJ. (I have stopped my subscriptions to WSJ and Washington Post.) Some may think this is hard, but I have found better deals on Walmart.com and Target.com, although if I continue this I or someone will have to find out which businesses or owners of a business financially supported Trump. (probably Walmart) This information is in the public record (FEC) and needs to be disclosed by law
The advantages of a financial boycott are:
1) Money speaks to those people who donated to Trump. This hits them where they are sensitive.
2) About half the country would probably support this boycott.
3) There would be many who would like to find out who supported Trump and use the public records to identify businesses and business owners who have financially support Trump.
4) All that is needed is one website that could be called "DoNotSupportTrump.com." There is likely a better name.
There are other advantages, but to keep this short let's list possible disadvantages.
1) Does this divide the country more?
2) Will there be retribution?
3) Will there be an opposite website for those that support Trump businesses and business owners? Probably, but so what.
4) How would we control false information getting on the website and the likelihood that the website would be hacked.
5) The need for money to run and maintain the website. I think the bang for the buck would be great.
I would be interested in your thoughts on this matter.
You know which company CEO would support your idea financially? Penny's Spices. Their CEO has repeatedly said he hates Trump with a passion. We ONLY buy Penny's Spices. They are also the best.
And boycott Walmart too. They have put thousands of small businesses out of business by undercutting their prices and when the businesses fail, they raise their prices.
The county that Walmart is headquartered in in AR has one of the highest child poverty rates in the country, which the Waltons could solve with a few million a year. But they just don't care. They are the richest family in America and take in 1 out of every 3 dollars spent on groceries in the US.
I’m sure it was autocorrect that gave you Pennys. So people can find this merchant the correct name is Penzey’s. Sign up for their newsletter and get weekly specials that are awesome and they do mail orders. https://www.penzeys.com/
Perhaps a BOYCOTT site similar to or maybe even using Change.org or that model. The force of the boycott is being able to Accurately Demonstrate that the Action Being Boycotted is what is causing a hit to the bottomline.
Piss of the shareholders, not just the Billionaires in Teflon suits.
Pick an Easy target first, one that people don't like anyway lol.
(not WaPo. Don't shoot the messenger, in spite of Bezos's recent interference, it's one of the last organizations in the US that can actually DO extensive investigative journalism. Let's see how it performs under the new Corporatocracy.)
Then if we get the boycott site up and running, and make sure it's for Democratic Ideals by blocking all others,
(who decides?)
THEN GO FOR A PRIME BOYCOTT.
And can everyone Please drop X right now, Loudly? #freefromX? #dropMusk #eXit ??
(I could use a tip on How to quit X. I have a personal and a biz account and had trouble figuring out how to get off the platform!)
FYI Walmart (the Walton Family of Multi Billionaires) was Evil Long before Amazon started selling books. Waltons are theocratic "god made us successful so we can rule over the least among us" Oligarchs, who built there biz Gutting small businesses and the towns that still had any.
Now Walmart is losing billions to Bezo's ever growing empire, since he's just as ruthless and more tech savvy, he leveraged his $$ to wipe out competition with the "Prime shipping," adding dopamine to our "consumer economy" and has branched into Everything in from "handmade artisan goods" to Groceries, pharmacy, and of course, Chinese crap unlimited. He is also destroying Ebay, ironically. Etsy, too.
Still, Americans Love Amazon. Not wanting to think about consequences is our national trait.
Re: your point #4. Just thinking out loud here but perhaps a starting point might be this site and good old fashioned talking to like minded friends and family. A small start could balloon out once someone in the free press takes notice. Dr King didn’t have social media but look back at the 10’s of thousands of people who responded to him.
Marge, I think Obama started a policy to ignore and reject Fox (And with good reason.) Denying them legitimacy seems like a sound strategy. But Dems have to re-engage with Right Wing Media or we are just agreeing with ourselves in the comments of HCR. I don't know how Fox invites work. Maybe they would box out democratic leaders. Or maybe Gretchen Whitmer, Mayor Pete, Elizabeth Warren, Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Hubbell can elbow their way on air and spar with hostile media. We need a strategy to reach beyond our bubbles.
Agreed. I just wonder if their bubble will let our bubble get a word in edgewise! Hasn’t happened so far. That’s how they keep their people unaware of the less attractive doings on the right.
It in't hust the Fox, Newsmax and social media lies....and you are right it is constant. It is also what they choose not to report that would make them and the annointed one look bad.
Dems need to BUY WHOLE MEDIA at this point. We've been screaming at them to buy better PR/Marketing/Ad teams since Clinton! Some of us since Nixon! We need the Soros's and Pritzgers and Khosla and Reid Hoffmans (especially) and young experts like YOU to create the New Media that will bolding represent Democracy Vs Fascism and Corporatocracy. But ah, there's the rub. Dem leaders are Always too hesitant to talk about the Corporate Takeover of America. Saying "I will stop price gouging" means NOTHING. Touting Lina Kahn and the Real Nitty Gritty of breaking up the monopolies of the new Guilded Age (what is it now, the Bitcoined Age?)
We need to find Every Upcoming Maddow, Hayes, Coates, Robinson etc and give them an MSNBC on steroids, fanning out on all existing platforms (esp Youtube) and creating new twitters and TicToks etc.
if we will ever have a hope of creating the polity we need to save life on earth.
AND THAT is the GOAL. We Must Stop The Climate COllapse,
and we must Manufacture Consensus on the that face ASAP.
Everything else, even abortion rights and positive immigration and anti-racism freedom to be and love, is Meaningless if we don't take action to keep our children from Hell On Earth.
The "PR" we need is Media Itself. The Medium Is the Message, and it needs to be GLOBAL.
Go Shawn! Start networking! I'm writing to ALL the good guys, but I'm no longer in the game.
thank you for seeing through to the MESSAGING as key, but we also need ACCESS to reach Above the Silos.
Us men need to do more. I'm trying to figure that out right now.
The Republicans have built a strong coalition in many of the red states. We need to reverse. this trend. And that is going to take a monumental effort.
Young men are notoriously rebellious, at least when I worked at high school. Their brains are beyond susceptible to opposition in some form. Can older men verify or argue that point?
A majority of males, esp white, have been voting Republican / Trump all along. The vote for both males and females shifted in Trump's direction in 2024. Dems suffered big losses from 2020.
Although I don't want to cast doubt on the Democrats, I think we missed the clarion call of social media and online gaming to young men. We know there was Russian influence, to say nothing of Musk's manipulations. One of the tenets of Authoritarianism is dominant masculinity and, for some, cruelty toward women. (Have you ever seen how women are portrayed in video games!)
Patricia, many of them like the idea that women are property and love the idea of your body, my choice. I did read the Nick has run to his momma and is hiding out in her house, this after he was doxxed.
Good Emily! We are a distracted lot of people, we Americans. The sense of urgency needed now in America is just not there enough to bend the arc sufficiently, I fear. I use my own word, "WOMENTORS" to sing my praises for the wall of women who got us this far in the election. In our world of perpetual impermanence we must comprehend fully, this is not going to be like anything we've known. Stronger, wiser, more empathic toward the needs of others. Breathe deeply, and repeat as needed.
Agree, but I’m done! As soon as a MAGA complains and we know they will, I’m going to speak their language and say “Well You Voted for Him” “I hope you are happy… you got what you wanted”. And when they say “I didn’t know” my response is going to be “being a basement dweller is not excuse”. Trump said on Fox News he was going to be a dictator day one what part of that don’t you understand.
Pro Publica has done a lot of damage by their constant criticism of Biden. And NPR has so much airspace to fill that they have become vacuous. And much the same false equivalency…they desperately need content!
Like it or not, the Gop/Right have a much more disciplined set of voices, hate to use that word, but the Dems are far short of that, and... they are too honest!
Harris' campaign was the first Dem campaign I've seen to enter the "social media" phase of campaigning....I especially liked the very quick response to outrageous Trump/Vance statements on social media. They didn't miss a beat. Her campaign had some really sharp people working for it. Now we need to build on that effort and find some Dem personalities with big enough personalities/megaphones to equal people like Joe Rogan.
We’re a big tent; anyone can come in and voice their opinions. Republicans have gatekeepers scrutinizing folks’ loyalty before they can come in and speak.
Surety and dogma helps, don’t they…they learned it in their churches, Noah, the arc, Adam and Eve, fear of science and technology, fear of the other, the devil…it makes it so easy! They have primed the pump! For the Chump. At what point do thinking, feeling Christian’s rise up and say, enough is enough! He is the Devil in all facets!
Mark Cuban said he would like to buy Fox. I don't know why some liberal billionaires don't get together and do this. Elon bought Twitter. Bezos bought WP.
But wapo was the paper which covered the insurrection the best. Maybe get Cuban to buy it and make it a truly power paper for our Democratic message. I live in Maryland and it is our local paper not the Baltimore paper. Stupid people canceled their subscription to the Wapo and it hurts the people who live from the production of the paper, certainly not Bezos as I in IT know his biggest revenue source is AWS.
With all the money spent on ads that people just assumed were fake ... it seems Dems could buy up some Media. The Inside game is to keep the rage, but start to channel it towards the real causes.
In rural Iowa where there are some large/enormous egg producers, I can guarantee you the owners are both Rs and dependent on immigrant labor. So DonOld needs to jawbone them to get prices down while he wants to deport their labor force. I will watch to see how this works out!
I think the issue of who's labor force is going to be gored is very overlooked. A large number (possibly a majority) of undocumented workers are employed "under the table" by large agri businesses and farm co-ops which need them to pick crops and process food for the stores at low wages. I am really interested what they are going to say if/ when Trump actually attempts to deliver on his "deport then all!" promise. This will very likely wreak havoc in the food supply chain for domestic groceries and other foods processing. It will of course create price issues but it may even cause serious food shortage s the likes of which this country hasn't seen since the depression. This will be grist for the mill in Russia which was subjected to that kind of indignity by the actions of the US during the cold War. I expect Putin to be joyfully applauding.
William, my feeling is that the large R employers of the undocumented will fight mass deportation. Otherwise, where will they get their workers to exploit.
I see this whole expulsion threat as a another Trump Show that's not going to happen as advertised. However, that is not in any way meant to say that the trauma, distress, and terrible uncertainty it is creating right now is anything but real. I see many being technically expelled, but allowed to be granted re-entry visas' without leaving the country. Could a 'fee' be involved. Oh yeah. Money to be made. Privately run 'containment facilities' from which farmers can obtain labor (for a price). The egg-producers will keep their egg prices and the Biden administration will foot the blame. Don't worry. You're a citizen.. right? Don't worry there will be new roads. We're not Europe. We are far from a bunch of ethnically, culturally, religious aligned countries. We're the United States of America, and we're under Cash.
Anne-Louise, who cuda thunk it….that this whole election came down to betting on Humpty-Dumpty’s great fall? Let’s see, finally, if the “king” & his horses (Musk?) can put him together again.
Humpty Dumpty is scrambled, fried, poached, and runny. Muskrat is a destroyer, not a builder. Unless he can steal others ideas. He even allowed Tesla’s name on what he stole.
Take photos of egg and other grocery prices to post on FB. No words... just photos of prices beside photos of prices you take now as a baseline. My campaign will include eggs and 2 or 3 other items.
I've suffered the same situation, Gigi. Our once award winning and locally owned, operated, and published newspaper that routinely ran four sections a day now runs maybe two, with a smattering of local stories (maybe 2 a day). It disgusts me.
Citing: "As a whole, Kamala Harris won voters between the ages of 18 and 29 by six points. But preliminary exit polling indicates that Donald Trump opened up a 16-point gender gap between young men and young women: 56% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Trump while just 40% of their female peers did so.
Even more surprisingly, Trump managed to improve on his 2020 performance among young women, despite that gap. In 2020, 33% of young women voted for him.
Polls and exit polls are incomplete unless they give some important statistics about how many were polled, how polling was done and what were the questions. Is the country moving in the right direction is the stupidest question ever. I say NO yet it has been interpreted as anti- Democratic in the media. Donnie and his devils can’t ever be trusted.
Gary, I posted a few days ago that I wish there was a liberal billionaire who could create a new social media site to take on Musk. Trump tried with his, when he was banned, but it didn't grow to what he wanted. There needs to be a social media website that follows the guidelines that Twitter used to. I've never had any social media accounts, but I'd sign up for one.
Also, we have LFAA, but the left needs someone along the lines of Rogan to get viewers. I'm unsure who that would be. Brian Tyler Cohen comes to mind, but I think he'd be viewed as an elitist (not that I think he is, but that is what has been going around about Democratic voters.) I think either David Pakman or Ben Meisales might be good, but I think, even better would be "Tennessee Brando" as he I think he'd attract more attention from the right. (Beau or Belle of the Fifth Channel do attract many right-wing, as they get comments from the left. Not sure they'd want to do a radio/streaming show. They should!)
They took their frustrations out by voting for a monster. They will soon live to regret it. As I have said repeatedly, many do not use reason but emotion when voting.
Bill, they are carefully conditioned to fear and anger - which override their thinking prefrontal cortex. And the dopamine rush of anger makes it addictive.
Back in the seventies there was a movement to “express your anger” as a means of countering depression, particularly among women. More recently, now that more is known about the brain, we know that anger just begets anger.
I prefer the Bonobo method: Females rule and when males act up, females deny them sex and food and it calms the males down. I’m a perfect specimen for inclusion in the Bonobo clan. Please help me escape the human variety.
The left uses emotion when voting too! While our fears are a bit more reality-based than those that on the right, emotions are why we voted for Kamala.
Frankly, the women are in the majority and THEY did NOT get out and vote in droves as they needed to. Yes, I "blame" the young, mostly uneducated, men who were caught up in Trump's message. But it is clearly on the shoulders of the women. The real men I know, voted for Harris. The young men, my grandsons, voted for Harris.
Penny, I’d love to know if the majority of trump-voting women happen to live in southern states and happen to go to churches where the pastor thunders trump’s lies and happen to have husbands who demand they vote Red. Brainwashing works on both genders.
Probably do. Not every Southern church has a Trump preacher, but some do. Also while driving in NC, I turned the radio to a station labeled "Religion." It was not religion, it was politics -- reading Bible verses and talking about how they apply to voting for Trump.
While listening to one evangelical station, my stomach turned as I heard the “pastor” quite seriously advise his listeners—“yes, we understand that Trump is really not a Christian nor does he live by Christian values, but he has promised to be “a friend” to Christians and put our agenda into place so it is OK with God to vote for him.” Blech. So much for valuing character.
Ah yes, Republican Christianity, where every Democratic candidate is either "the Devil" or "the AntiChrist" and every Republican candidate is "the second coming of Christ" or if not that, then at least a new minor prophet.
Where the End Times come on the back of humanitarians and not the person who tweeted "Novus Ordo Seclorum" (lit. "a new order for the ages").
Where the Bible tells us to make a theocratic state rather than make churches.
Where we are told "truth and compassion cannot coexist; always pick truth".
Where we are told our politics should inform our religion and not the other way around.
Where we are told to force converts through brute force because free will and the power of choice is obviously NOT something God wants us to give nonbelievers.
Where the believers have become so comfortable that they've become pharisees, content in their traditions and power.
I am so sick of this perversion of my faith. This is NOT Christ-like behavior and this is NOT the Church I read about in any of Paul's letters (except how it is like the churches that Paul wrote).
One does not have to be “educated” in the formal sense to be smart. Uneducated used this way is demeaning and adds to the “elitist” divide. The “uneducated” are more ignorant and lazy as far as information consumption and more turned into their own needs rather than the whole of society. That is Both selfish and limits thinking and clearly supports the thinking that elected the felon.
And calling them "lazy" or "ignorant" is somehow less elitist? They ARE uneducated, at least in this realm. They're in no way STUPID (they know plenty of things I don't) and I think that's what's getting confused.
Uneducated people aren't (necessarily) stupid people. There's a difference, and we do people no favors by not explaining, recognizing, or using the difference. Uneducated just means you need to learn, not that you are incapable of learning.
I am uneducated in realms of machinery, unlike my brother. I am uneducated in the deeper realms of IT, unlike my mother. I am uneducated in the realm of speech pathology, unlike my grandmother. There are plenty of things I don't feel comfortable speaking on because I am not EDUCATED in them.
We are ALL uneducated about something, but that's why we have experts. It becomes stupidity when people denounce experts for their favorite Podcaster, who likely isn't any more educated in the topic than they are but CERTAINLY caters to their bias.
As for being "tuned into their own needs rather than the whole of society" this is a socialization AND an education problem. Thinking about others isn't a human's natural state of being, thinking about the self is. That's why humanities, social studies, and ethics/philosophy are so important in a formal education. We NEED to be confronted with things like the Trolley Problem at a young age and talk about why people reach their conclusions, if there is a RIGHT conclusion, and what the Trolley Problem might look like in our everyday lives.
There's the social aspect as well, though, because desperate people think about themselves first not out of any malice, but out of survival. They CANNOT think about what is good for others because they themselves aren't secure - this is a failure of community and is a vicious cycle. What is good for the community should be good for the individual IN the community, but because we've been focused so long on the individual, many of us don't HAVE a community to better us.
But yeah. They are uneducated. They AREN'T stupid. There's a difference.
Absolutely -- why would young women vote against so many of their own interests? The Scrambled Egg offers them nothing. Republican support for paid leave, abortion rights, and minimum wage as well as the demented felon is a head scratcher.
You ask “… why would young women vote against so many of their own interests? ”. They were affected by an avalanche of mis- and disinformation from the Trump-Putin-Musk axis of evil.
And the media fascination with the evil ones and Ignoring Democrats made it seem like the candidates were equals. January 6 was a festival of love? I’m sick of seeing that ugly smarmy orange face spouting lies.
Media reports that 5 swing states had bomb threats at local polling places but it did not affect the vote. Seriously??? Was that part of the secret plan Donnie was so proud of??
I read that the xitter traffic decreased noticeably day after election--the bots closed up shop. Saw a graphic that of those who got their news mostly from social media, great majority supported Dump
One of our local brewpubs had little signs on their tables about how bad it would be to not tax tips (which both candidates were for, BTW). Did a little research and what they were ACTUALLY afraid of losing was the Tip Credit business get for reporting to the IRS the tips their employees receive so that the employees can't say "I didn't get any tips" without getting in trouble with the IRS.
TheFatElectrician on YouTube has a great video on it.
US women are used to being oppressed, US men are not. It may get down to US men finding out they can be oppressed too..in the meantime, we have to reach the Mama Bear in women. If the women for Trump have such a thing.
Yes, women do have a slight majority. But women do most of the child raising, all of the child bearing, work for wages and provide most of the care or oversight of the care given to the disabled among us. Oh, and we're supposed to save the world too.
Penny, I don't think 'Men' have a problem voting for a woman, but cultural background, I believe, is in play. It was for Niki Haley. The perception (my view) that calling Harris 'Black' was of such great importance was overplayed IMHO. I felt she needed to put forth a less friendly image. A 'my way or the hi-way' image. As for the male gender.. I'll bet the "only fans" girls did pretty well. You think 'they' might have voted for Trump. They've got us "men' right by the nuts, soda-speak. Well, maybe not me. I'm not sending them any cash, but it's sure coming into their bank accounts from somewhere. How about 'unfluencers'..oops, I meant IN-fluencers? How did they vote? I mean the ones old enough 'to' vote. I wonder. Nobody is talking about that indu$try. I'm disappointed that Harris and Waltz didn't carry the day.
During the Khmer Rouge Pol Pot’s rule, cities were forcibly evacuated, intellectuals and educated people were often executed, and families were separated.in order to maintain control need to rid the country of the educated who he targeted to murder. He too, like trump loved the uneducated.
Harvey, Mao did the same. I have visited Cambodia and China; the effects still remain. The most heartbreaking: Pol Pot taught the children to turn in their parents for voicing opposition. And the children were taught to execute Pol Pot Enemies of the State. I was told by my guides in 2008 that parents are still afraid of their children.
That is a super-important point. A lot of analysts were saying "Trump can't raise his vote count from 2016, 2020" in part because the old white guys who voted for him then have died. Turned out he didn't have to ... he just needed the other side not to show up in the same numbers.
So you can kill a country by inaction as much as by action, apparently.
I think the Dems who did not show up refused to believe in a woman for president once again AND calculated that their tax situation would be marginly better under His few fiscally responsible GOP FOLKS. THEY did not believe that he would proceed with Project 2025 at all and thought he was bluffing to get votes. They along with the MAGA CRAZIES are going to be really surprised.
who knows for sure? but i'm inclined to believe Harris' very leaning "feminine" presentation, there were times when i asked, "where are the men"... well that's an exaggeration of course, but it may have turned away a number of women. AND some men.
Gary Loft, I do agree that many men were in alliance with women and voted for Harris. Indeed, I thank them. What they did fail to do, which was the critical piece that could have changed everything, was that they needed to raise their voices to their bros, co-workers, brother-in-laws, neighbors, uncles, sons. This was not done. Men raised their voices in solidarity with the women in their lives, but not with other men at the office, the bar, online gaming sites, sports functions, deer hunting camp, vacationing, etc. etc. etc. Nothing pierced the maga-iron-dome of misogyny because men failed to see “women’s issues” as human issues. Women’s reproductive freedom helps ALL of us. Women’s equality helps ALL of us. Thank you voting with us, but we need more from you. We need you to fight they are YOUR issues too.
My sons (Gens X and Millenial) and my grandsons (Gen Z) all voted for Harris and strongly support the women in their lives as equal partners. In fact, my daughter’s oldest son told her that she and I were the strongest influence in developing his ideas about politics, etc. Admittedly, all of these men are college educated, but they certainly have some bro-culture influences in their lives. Not sure what the difference is with the young men in their generations who have succumbed to such racism and misogyny, but I think we need to figure this out soon, both for their sakes, and for the future of our country.
Gary what has broken my heart are the women who voted for trump. Women turning against women is mind boggling when it comes down to actually saving lives. Women's healthcare is a broad spectrum. Women have intricate systems that require medical care from qualified gynecological physicians for a woman's complete life, not just in childbearing years.
Wait until the magas tout that educated citizens as "elitism" and the enemy. This boils down to "the human cannot be good if cognitively inclined. This occurred in the 1930s.
Gary, other men raised their voices and some of the vote for death star was surely misogyny. I think we can forget about a woman becoming president unless by a death. I found an interesting article about the outspoken D Rep from NYC, Cortez ( I think, I am just up) who has asked her constituents about voting for death star and her. Got some interesting answers....including they are both real, I think meaning genuine. Also they are both interested in bettering these voters. All I can say is eek.
IMO, we failed miserably to tout the success of Bidenomics. The Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2024: "The U.S. economy is the envy of the world." It drove me crazy that the Democrats failed to make this point, but I am not surprised. Jaime Harrison was a terrible choice as Chair of the DNC. As soon as he was selected I knew that we were in for trouble. The takeaway? "It's the economy, Stupid."
Gary, we women applaud you men who stood up for us, and all you did. (I probably shouldn’t, but I feel a little bit of glee that the Afghan men are learning what it feels like.)
Gary I don't know about you, but for me, this forum/site is about the only site where I can kinda express what I see, amongst others whose minds are open to others points of view. It's an education and the subscription is certainly one of my better investments.
Linda H: Your comment reminded me of this quote found at the Boston Holocaust Memorial. So timely!! It is an excerpt from Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem, which reflects on the dangers of staying silent in the face of oppression. Here is the complete text:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
This poem serves as a powerful reminder of the consequences of remaining silent in the face of injustice and the importance of standing up for the rights of others.
It would be less impact full if we were not dealing with the se and coming of Hitler.
So the antidote is to find like minded groups, organizations and movements with which to align, snd immediately snd loudly push back at the first signs of oppression. Resistance is a strong force and joining your voice to others amplifies it. Standing up to hatred, division, unbridled greed and power grabbing will be exhausting but knowing that there have been many smart, committed people working for the past year on what our response needs to become might ease the depression and paralysis that the MAGA crew are relying on in order to push their agenda
I’m old and have been screaming for years. Even had a friend tell me I sounded like his Fox friend nuts. Nobody seemed to be able to tell truth from the most egregious (but entertaining) propaganda. He was a man who didn’t watch Fox but he had military reservist friends who did.
Thank you, madame. I have been thinking about Pastor Niemöller’s words but have been too busy to find the quotation so totally appropriate to this moment.
Linda, it is going to be imperative to both raise our voices in forums where they can be heard, and to make sure that we document what we believe is important in our government and our society, so that it will not be forgotten in the future. We also need to support democratic media, and other institutions. In this article on Backsliding democracies from the Journal of Democracy, the authors are telling us that the research shows that we need to shore up our institutions.
I think we need to be reaching out internationally to democratic governments, global democratic media and the democrats in other countries in alliance for help getting our story out, and informing people. Andra Watkins also raised the question of us being silenced and whether we will be able to continue on Substack. We shall see. We do not know what kinds of censorship media might be facing. With Elon Musk helping Trump make decisions that is not boding well for true freedom of speech. I am wondering if Musk is taking on the Chief of Staff role that is defined as the gatekeeper for everyone else in Project 2025 in the first chapter.
That is a priority as is securing trusted news sources for local, state, national, and global news. We’ve been watching mainstream/corporate media change before our eyes closer to being state controlled media. It won’t be long before independent media and influencers will be forced into toeing the line.
We need to consider getting VPN’s (Virtual Private Networks) and finding secure, non-intrusive, internet search engines, and social networking sites.
People like Heather Cox Richardson should start now in finding safe ways to ensure her readers have access to her work, as places like this are not likely going to be allowed to share non-party line voices at some point.
Agreed. I am also recommending that everyone get a VPN so that if media is blocked or US access to it, one can go around it. Then the Democratic party needs to start their own social media platform to rival Truth Social and X, so that we have control of our messaging. Actually, it should be international democratic networks, but shunning oligarchs, so that the control remains with the people, not the oligarchs.
Please read this story Prof. Timothy Snyder wrote today. He was making an analogy of the upcoming White House and Gilligan's Island a popular tv show from the 60s or 70s.
He is using humor to illustrate what is going on. If you have never seen Gilligan's Island, which is a very stupid sitcom, here is a link to the movie.
I am reaching out to the Belgian Greens and Petra De Sutter. Belgium knows a thing or two about where we are. Heather will you be Censored? If so what is the alternative? How can we read you if that happens?
The big difference is in Total Ballots Counted (TBC), with estimates for 155,391,700 for 2024 and 159,738,337 counted in 2020 (lower in 2024 than 2020 by 4,978,637).
Convinces me more clearly that massive more or less Total popular votes really don't matter if they aren't in just the right states to win the Electoral College. I believe as little as 80,000 votes difference in Biden's popular vote (real landslide) could have cost him the EC.
It's happened, to the best of my research, 5 times. 1824 Adams (tho there were 4 candidates so no one really got a majority); 1876 Hayes (some nonsense there it seems like); 1888 Harrison; 2000 Bush (there was some FUNKY stuff in that one); 2016 Trump (more suspect by the day).
(What happened in the '90s??)
Reading about the history of the Electoral College, I can understand why Founders chose to create it at the time, but it has long outlived it's usefulness.
All the things they were worried about happening if Congress or the public were able to chose the president has happened. Namely, collusion of legislative and executive branches, a populist admin being elected, the public lacking the ability/desire to fully educate themselves on each candidate, and a "headstrong democratic mob" running roughshod over everything.
Time for the Electoral College to go; there's no purpose for it to serve that cannot be circumvented in this day and age.
I have commented about this often but thought I would add what I know.
1. Yes those are the five times it has happened. I tend to focus on the 2000 and 2016 votes because the country was so different in the 1800s.
2. 2000 was a very close race with only one state really in contention, Florida. When the SCOTUS stopped the recounts in Florida, Bush was ahead by about 700 votes in Florida but was losing by a few hundred thousand across the nation. A tough loss for Al Gore but he was really the stand up guy conceding to Bush.
3. Prior to 2000, the fear of a popular vote winner losing the electoral college was possible but hadn't happened and never really all that close although 1960 might have flipped in the EC for Nixon of Illinois vote was recounted and then Nixon would have been another case of EC defeating the popular vote but the count in Illinois which was allegedly rigged by Mayor Daley of Chicago made that a non issue and Kennedy won both the popular vote and the EC.
4. The 2016 count was a little stunning because Clinton won the popular vote by several million but lost in all the key swing states by very thin margins.
As for the demise of the Electoral College, good luck with that. To amend the Constitution requires no passed in both houses of Congress and then ratification by 3/4 of the states (no silly 2/3 majorities this time!) That's 38 states. In case you hadn't noticed we are pretty closely divided by states as a country and "the good guys" are behind right now 27 states to 23. So getting even 2/3 of the states to ratify a change in the Constitution is unlikely let alone 3/4. Especially when it will take away the power of the small states to hold away over elections (precisely as was intended).
So while I agree with you 100% that it SHOULD be changed, I seriously doubt ANYTHING will happen. Certainly not in my lifetime (I am 73).
Keep in mind that is been almost 50 years and they are still figuring out If they have ratified the ERA.
The EC is here to stay at least for a pretty long while. If get used to it. Sorry for the bad news!
I don’t expect it to change, never did. Repubs have a strangle hold and I don’t even want to envision what would pry it loose. Not in My lifetime either; a good time to be old.
I do appreciate the point I wasn't previously aware of regarding the alleged rigging of Chicago votes to make the Popular Vote winner the Electoral Vote winner in 1960. If it was rigged, it seemed to come out the way I would have liked in allowing the PV and EC match. Can anyone save me the trouble of trying to find out how many votes it took in Chicago to make the two match in the win column?
Florida went the opposite direction with the certification of 538 votes more for Bush
If we can't get rid of the EC, should we cheer on any time they both end up in the same column (even if it was like Gore getting 271 more PV and Bush getting 269 fewer)?
And it appears just 250,000 votes in the right states could have given Harris the win:
Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) Trump won by 30,000 votes
Michigan (15 electoral votes) Trump won by 75,000 votes
Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes) Trump won by 125,000 votes).
If Harris won those three states, she would have 270 electoral votes to Trump's 268 and she like Trump in 2016 would have been the electoral college winner despite losing the popular vote by 3 million, just as Trump did in 2016.
This was a REALLY close election. Not a landslide by a long shot.
Jim, thanks for this! I know this is purely speculation but I can’t help but wonder if some of the stay-at-home voters were democrats who feared retribution for their votes if Trump won.
I was in Greece during the faux “election” of dictator Papadoupolis. When voters went to the polls they were handed a ballot that simply said YES. If they wanted to vote against him, they had to ask for a NO ballot and their name was taken down. Many in Athens were courageous enough to vote against the military dictatorship, though it was not enough. A young man about to be inducted into the Greek army said “you go back America and tell people this day the Greek people very sad.”
Marge, the non-voters I know, are well off millennial males who have never voted because they were raised to believe their votes don't count. Or, so they say. I personally see them as feeling that whoever wins, they will still be comfortable, and so, they don't want to make a decision. Perhaps they are afraid to lose, so don't risk it. All of them are conflict averse.
That's quite right. A slight general shift either way in first past the post can generate massive electoral shifts . This is just what happened, apart from a fallback in Dem voters overall, by several million i believe
The Democratic vote loss was almost NINE million Frank. Biden got 81 million, Harris barely 72 million. Trump got only 1 million more this year than he did in 2020 whereas he got 8 million more in 2020 than in 2016.
What I think this shows is that major events play a huge part in how the electorate votes. 2020 we were in the midst of the pandemic and voters clearly hated what Trump was doing to try to solve it. This year, they hated what Biden was doing for the economy at least as they saw it. But far more people were affected in 2020 by the covid pandemic than the economy in 2024. So Trump got the same votes almost but Harris lost big time. And if course there is the racism and misogyny that made it worse. And yet it was still Very close.
"This year, they hated what Biden was doing for the economy at least as they saw it."
It is no secret that the voters did not see "it". The legacy media and the massive right-wing media developed over decades convinced voters to actually vote against their best interests. It is extremely important to note that the Biden Administration and the Harris campaign were saying and doing all the right things. How many times did they say, "best economy in fifty years?!"
They were shouting into the wrong megaphones.
We must. must, must develop a communication apparatus that out speaks the existing media in the United States today.
Exactly. In the Journal of Democracy, an article on Backsliding Democracies, which included the USA among 12 countries, concluded that,
"But our findings point the primary finger of blame for democratic backsliding at the politicians and political parties that have acted antidemocratically and the weakness of democracy’s institutional guardrails in these countries."
So, we have to strengthen our weak guard rails. Our corporate and social media are oligarchially owned. We need to stop allowing them to amplify certain messengers, and twist others, as happened in this election. In fact, I am convinced that the Democratic Party needs to do what Trump did, and that is start their own Social Media. Or, NATO does, or the UN, or some global democratic organization that can be paid into by private democratically minded people, as well as democratic governments, when they are democratic. Or, something. I am just starting to think this through, and I already ran it by my political discussion group which mentioned problems with it, but I still feel we need a place to amplify the Truth, but not use that word. Use some more populist sounding term. We the People, or something like that.
I live in Germany and we all pay a monthly broadcast fee of 18€. The thing is that no matter what party most people do pay attention to one main news station gets 80% of the public listening. That is whether we use it or not. We will have to be willing to support such an endeavor without getting big oligarchic money involved. That is what is important. Meanwhile, let the oligarchs who will be running the White house devour each other.
See what Prof. Timothy Snyder has to say about our upcoming government. He is making an analogy to a 1960s sitcom. It is called Oligarchs' Island.
Sorry I think you are wrong. If you look CAREFULLY at the mainstream media (NOT the right wing media) their coverage was for the most part pretty even handed. The MAGA voters just didn't listen to it. But it is absolutely wrong to suggest that they (MSM) had a hand in this result. Trump got the same vote this year he did in 2020 but Harris lost 9 million of Biden's votes. That wasn't the media. G that was bigotry combined with arrogant elitism, as common problem of the Democrats (and yes, a lot of us here who think we are better than the opposition). If you really think we need "new media" you will spend a long time until you notice that no one in the opposition cares.
It seems Trump has improved a bit more than my earlier calculation, up from 0.129% to a whopping (to him), 1.25% with 926,471 more votes than last time.
2020 saw him get 74,216,728 vs 2024 (so far), at 75,143,199.
It is tempting to hold him to the votes received by midnight on the 5th (like what time he wanted counting to stop).
P.S. I forgot to include that the VEP increased 1.65% so he may not be keeping up with the increase in Voter Eligible Population when is all said and done.
I feel like it's been very little mentioned, but all around the world, admins that over saw COVID recovery are being ousted whether they did a good job or not. Incumbents are NOT beating their "fresh" competitors because people want a change. The grass is always greener, right?
Add to that the nostalgia of "before COVID" and how Trump was the "before COVID" president, and people might not want to go back to the 1950s, but they certainly want to go back to 2018.
The fault is with the illiberal politicians, and the weakening of democratic girders, like our media, which we let the most greedy selfish people on the planet take over. They amplified some messages and twisted others. I have spent 2 years reading examples of it, until I could not take it any more. So, I no longer employ them.
Thanks Jim, I like looking at these stats, my input is minuscule anyway it’s looked at , but my dedication to fair is ..’just me’ and always will be. That ‘we’ have to bite our tongue more, or bide our time won’t deflect intent , patience provides ….the turtle said so 😉
They saw plenty, their perception was their reality.
They were told that cost increases were due to inflation (though it's obviously more than that now) and when prices didn't come down even though inflation supposedly did, then what are they to think? Obviously someone is lying to them, obviously it's the people saying inflation is down, obviously they must have ulterior motives or be profiting from it. They should definitely not vote for someone who is complicit in lying to them.
President Biden and admin could have shouted the truth about the economy from whatever megaphone they wanted, and it wouldn't have been enough.
People already believe that inflation is the cause of risen costs, not anything else, and that's the way corporations want it. At this point, any alternate explanation looks like an excuse and smells like blood in the water.
Not all that invisible. They told us in pretty stark terms what they are going to do. You just had to believe it. Many Trump voters didn't believe it, called it posturing. I think they will be unpleasantly surprised when most of it turns out to be real.
Linda and others, last night I heard Amanda Tyler, speak in Minneapolis. She is the lead organizer of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, and initiative of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty for which she serves as executive director. She is a lawyer and a lifelong American Baptist.
She defined Christian Nationalism (CN) as a twisted confusion of Christian and U.S. identities and urged the large audience (gathered in a big Methodist church) to keep a sharp focus on what happens locally and nationally in order to stand with anyone who is threatened by the goals of CN and to push back whenever and however possible. There was sustained applause.
The reason to resist the goals of this new Trump era: CN the state by destroying democracy, threatens the church by promoting a completely wrong view of God, and threatens the individuals and communities who adherents to CN designate as unacceptable. At this point that list would include immigrants, lgbtq+ and trans folk, people of color, and women. Her book: "How to End Christian Nationalism" (Broadleaf Books) is a call to action.
Understanding will be too little, too late, but I am pretty sure that if the planned educational changes are made, which are only designed to benefit Venture Capitalists and Home Schooling Christian Nationalists, most parents of school aged children will be upset, and most college bound, or in college students will be upset too. In fact, higher education is discussing what the changes might mean for it in many, many articles.
"Well at least our army will be increased when the undecided understand what a mistake they made in falling for DonOLDs false and misguided promises."
My bet is most of the military will be privatized and Eric Prince will be a Trump advisor. Many of our military contractors were BTW foreign mercenaries.
Trump did not do one damn thing in his first term to help improve the lives of the people who voted for him. There were tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations, which were used to manipulate the companies’ stock prices, known as stock buybacks. The funds were not invested in the businesses or their employees, just the shareholders. Then about a million people died needlessly due to how the Trump administration handled Covid. The Trump supporters never admitted to themselves that they had been lied to and taken advantage of. I don’t know how this situation changes.
Vance is already touting their plans for school vouchers. Private and Christian schools will proliferate, just like the private, “Academies” did when the Supreme Court ordered desegregation. There will be an initial dash out the public school doors by those who will now be able to afford non-public education using their tax dollars. The drain on public school funding will mean cuts in programs, which will spark a second, slower exodus of families who had initially stuck with the public school system. It is an open question whether public school education will survive at all in some parts of the country.
🤬I am child-free, but I am a strong proponent of our public schools and have always voted that my tax dollars support this system. I rue the years-long chipping away at the support and efficacy of this bedrock educational institution which generations of my family benefited from.
There are so many people whose lives are better because they got an education, a public education. The private schools, especially religious ones, don’t educate so much as they indoctrinate.
And...... when you take resources away from public schools, when you take away the population most active in wanting educational change by having them get paid to go eslewhere it results in a higher concentration of under achieving schools and a larger population of underachieving students. The poor, lower middle, class and some middle class will loss the most ... it becomes a wider socio-economic underachieving outcome with bad cultural consequences. We need to rethink education, reform education, not make it a socio-economic disaster. When people are poorly educated the consequences to the culture are dramatic and long lasting. We are as great, as our skills for work prepared population, and our poorest educated persons.
Suzanne, I saw first hand, as a long time Cal State college staffer, the impact two-term Gov Reagan had on my state’s educational system (and health & welfare systems too). Then he went national….when (to my horror) he was elected POTUS…also twice. With recent events, it’s clear we didn’t learn our lesson the first time….
It all starts at the local level! Contact school board members and local legislators NOW and let them know you don’t want your state to become Florida where the majority of vouchers is going to private, religious schools with no requirements for teacher cert/school accreditation.Also, I kid you not, parents are able to purchase big screen TV’s, stand-up paddle boards and theme park tickets with voucher 💲.
In a rural state like mine vouchers, which our governor is planting his flag on, will not help. In other words what good are vouchers in a state where many counties have one (or two) elementary schools and one high school, period. No choice available.
I wonder how many female college bound high school students will decide to forego Florida, Texas, South Dakota and a few other states' previously highly regarded colleges?
If only that were the case. Voting with your feet still sends a powerful message. De Santis, for example, needs a powerful brush-back to his diabolical (and weird) desire to control women's bodies.
Linda, The Intercept describes the plan to muzzle universities. It proscribes DEI and would have monitors checking universities for compliance. Violations by the elite universities with huge endowments can result in increasing the tax on endowment income from 1.4% to 35%. Continued violation could result in SEIZURE of the endowment. This would, if enacted, certainly cause universities to change their policies and practices.
Trump's "Freedom of Speech" EO goes into effect. His followers-- those who lack critical thinking skills-- don't have the sence to understand that we already have Freedom of Speech that is so strongly preserved, Trump was allowed to lie to his constituents over 33,000 times in his first term on Twitter alone. They don't realize that it doesn't ADD freedoms, it takes them away-- from saying anything negative about him or labeling or calling out any lies that he or any of his people might say as "disinformation" or "misinformation" punishable.
Then, there are those who clearly want this kind of Unfreedom of Speech.
My friend in the Natl Guard said that he and his platoon, (the majority of it) and the military will defend this country. Again, there are MAGA within, and 45's going to fire any 4 Star Generals who won't do his bidding.
Professor Richardson-- we need the military to stand up to him, but they can't announce it yet, or he will fire them all.
I hate to say it, but the Taliban are another cultural world, where American politics simply backed the "wrong horses" and finally conceded the loss. The Taliban belong to Afghanistan's largest by far ethnic group, and it was telling. Once Trump undercut the government, it was doomed, and when Biden's admin began pulling out, it imploded, far far faster than "military intelligence" ever thought. They continue to pursue their arch conservative agenda. Why is anything Heather just wrote a surprise?
It is not a surprise to me. Seeing it in print from a reputable source 4+ years after the event and having some people see it for the first time is the surprise. I've been calling MAGA the "Christian Taliban" for many years.
More than anything, I hadn't thought to make the connection. I saw the parallels to Nazi Germany quickly, but the HATE that most of my "Christian" relatives have for the Islamic faith and Muslim people made me blind to idea that they could still model their behaviors.
It was a bit of a shock to read it so plainly, and hard to stomach the full implications of such likeness. For so many of my formative years, the Taliban WERE the Nazis to me - I grew up during the War on Terror. I watched the silencing of journalists and detractors by beheading on the news. I think this got a more visceral reaction out of me than the Nazi similarities.
It means more to me, I think, since my dad and our family was stationed in Germany during the Nuremberg Trials and Berlin Airlift . Though only 4 years old when we left (and not speaking a word of German now, though it was more of my first language learned from the maids), I seem to have paid more attention to how Germany fell into following Hitler .
My mother often pointed out the fallacy of "It could never happen here," with reminders that Hitler was more "popular" in Germany than FDR was in the United States throughout the 1930s.
Now it makes me think of simple popularity as being sometimes too much like wrestling "entertainment" popularity.
Exactly, and now our cultural go to is wrestling. The best measurement of how far we have fallen. Betcha the stars of the horror shows of wrestling will be stars of the Met Gala next year.
The USA had quite a cadre of Nazis in the 30’s. Japan shut them up in 41.
And please remember that at that time Germany was a beacon for the arts, psychiatry, and education. It was the most educated country in the world.... and it voted for Hitler.
While that all is true, Germany was also devastated by WWI and the devastating economic impacts of the Versailles Treaty. It was fertile ground for Hitler to plow. Economic uncertainty, particularly among young men, was an important factor in THIS election.
Yes, Linda. But on what issues? We must be focused and selective. I suggest we begin with (1) making sure Biden gets his judges approved as many as possible and (2) the DEM Senators never agree with free pass of cabinet members. It is the constitutional duty of the senate to make sure voters know what kind of individuals are governing voters. If they fail to do so, they will lose another election. Best to stick to keep reminding Trump and voters that DEMs are faithful guardians of the Constituion.
The Taliban provide an important warning about the direction the US is going. So far I haven't seen a red line that Trump wasn't willing to cross. Perhaps there is a red line that a Republican majority won't cross.
Haven’t we just learned our voices don’t matter? They laid it all at our feet instead of solving the problem themselves. I called my reps today and left messages. But I don’t believe it will do anything.
And yet. The next Democratic candidate will have to be male, White, and with some degree of TV presence & charisma - if he is to win. That’s now a fact, given the makeup of American voters now.
Who would have thought the abusive Catholic Church and its misogynistic practices would make a come back in the SCOTUS and Vice filled Vice Presidency.
Heather is the gift that keeps on giving. As do so many others - like Joyce Vance, Robert Reich, Jennifer Rubin, Thom Hartmann to name a few.
We need to speak out against the patriarchy especially the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic Church. The religious right controls SCOTUS and this needs to stop.
I agree- I left the Catholic Church years ago because hundreds or thousands of pedophile priests ran rampant and destroyed thousands of children’s lives and not thrown in jail where they belong. I have family members and friends who are devout Catholics, all praying for a Trump win, because of abortion, LGBTQ rights, etc. The extreme court is heavily weighted to religious extremists and with Trump elected, the Senate and House (probably) going to the GOP, we’re fu&ked. I seriously doubt if there will be another election.
I am a cradle Catholic. I left because we lit one too many candles for victims of gun violence. The Catholic Church condemns birth control and abortion because it is prolife. So if it's wrong to take a pill or use a device to prevent a pregnancy, then why isn't it wrong to own a gun and ammunition?
I'm sick of the Catholic Church preaching and urging their congregations to vote against reproductive rights. While the Bishops remain silent on supporting gun regulation and the morality of gun ownership among Catholics or The Second Amendment.
Gary, We are only as controlled as we allow ourselves to be. There are laws that are seen and unseen...laws within and laws outside of us that protect us and fellow human beings who dwell along with us in this, our physical earthly home. I too am so grateful for wonderful heroes and heroines. If we notice there is a great respect for the law....for the Constitution...for the recognition of justice and injustice among these great ones.
I have never witnessed these women or this man using the law to injure or control anyone's life in a way that would harm them. I have seen the law used to protect our citizenry from wrong and cruel behavior. I have witnessed fair justice administered.
Gary , sadly , I agree that religious organizations have taken over the minds and hearts of too many due to the lust for power and control of various (not all) church leaders/pastors.
I believe from experience and from God's Word that His word is written on our hearts. He is with me as a guide. God allows me to choose. When making wise or unwise choices, He never leaves me....and that says a lot. He is a God of justice as well as compassion.
I have seen the work of these women and this man. The law is written on their hearts and within their brilliant minds as expressed in their life's work. We need more like them.
Control was the word that stood out Emily, as always I ruminate for better/more accurate answers . We don’t HAVE to control everything… but making sure truth is available. We have to educate well enough that critical thinking is done sufficiently .
Not sure this is in the educational plan; or even current .
I’d venture fiction sells in any format more than reality. A tall hurdle .
It's remarkable that people voted for a man who was open about his intent to be a dictator and his fascist leanings - a man who promised to process 20,000,000 people through concentration camps - and they think the government is still going to care what they want!
Exactly. Heather’s question “How can Trump deliver the national abortion ban MAGAs want when sixty-five percent of voters want abortion rights?” implies that he would somehow worry about what the American people want. Reality check: He doesn’t give a flying f*ck.
I don't think Trump gives a damn about abortion, whether it's banned or not, nor any of the other hard line policies he's threatened to put into action. All he cares about, is that he's avoided jail and can now start to amass billions of American tax payer dollars. I think he'd turn his back on anyone, even Putin, if it suited him to do so. He's going to be a loose canon everywhere he turns I reckon - totally running his own psychopathic race. In this sense, I think there's a chink in the amour.
Totally agree with you. This whole circus was all for one person: Trump himself. For him it's just one big "get out of jail free" card.
But I'm curious if he would turn his back on Putin. The Russians made it quite clear, all out in the open, that they helped him win the election and that they demand payment for that. The Russians have their... methods to show that you should return their favours, and Rump's a coward, so he will obey them.
Who else thinks Trump is now nearly expendable to his sponsors? An early 25th Amendment seems possible if they want a better "face" seeming to run the show. Maybe history will repeat, though, as in when a certain German's sponsors thought they could keep using him instead of the other way around.
Last night I watched the new extended version of, "The Story - and Lessons - of Fascism in Europe with Rick Steves," well worth a look while it is still available
He will pay up before any 25th amendment. But really, chump’s supporters are on Putin’s side as are those in the party who want him gone anyway. It’s the green side
Lawrence O’Donnell noted that trump outsourced almost all of actual leadership to Musk and the cabal of evil (Steve Miller, etc). The only thing Trump wanted to keep for himself is “the liquid gold” - oil and gas - the area with the most potential for enriching himself. So he keeps the Get-out-if-jail title but spends his time golfing and grifting. MAGA won’t let their savior be removed so he’ll just be sidelined to babble incoherently off camera while the oligarchs run the show.
The 25th amendment REQUIRES 2/3 vote in BOTH House and Senate to permanently oust a President. I doubt they can get even close to that number in support between the MAGA masses who love Trump and Democrats who will fear Vance in power even more. Unless Trump dies ("naturally" or otherwise) he will be in office for 4 years.
Of course given Putins ability to make things happen I would not bet against a "natural" demise when he visits Russia.
He’s shown he’s not afraid of the rule of law in America, not afraid to steal classified documents and store them in his out house, not afraid to swear on public TV that ‘they’re eating the pets’ and he could be far more powerful than Putin, especially if he’s cozying up with the Taliban. When the iron curtain is drawn back Putin could well be exposed as a little old Wizard of Oz character with a big megaphone.
Can't really happen unless he dies (one way or another). The 25th amendment takes 2/3 vote in BOTH houses of congress and that would require Democratic support. That won't happen. We fear Vance more than Trump. Difference between really bad and outrageously terrible.
One thing to be grateful for is that T doesn't want to rule the world. (Putin does.) His wishes are smaller and more petty but still very destructive. He wants to feel like a King, have total control over his people, and receive endless supplies of fawning praise. Oh, and he wants a parade with big guns like the big boys have.
He doesn't give 2 hoots about the rest of the world except for his autocratic pals. He never travels to other countries,, his comfort zone is Mar-a-lago where he is indeed King.
.Thank goodness his visions of glory are so childish.
The world building will have to come from his circle of sycophants, who are smart and wily but utterly without charisma. Musk, Vance, Miller- some of the creepiest guys around. He never picks other appealing charismatic figures to grace his inner circle, he wants no heir. Its all about him, always and forever.
perhaps photos he can use. Of course, he saw diaper boy’s weaknesses as a former KGB officer, and has milked him steadily ever since. Quite the duo until now…. That more than almost anything else has my attention as the orange smear turns away from NATO and turns toward nit nit et al. Meanwhile Heather’s posts provide deeply thoughtful historically accurate info
that stimulate growth to my shrinking brain, plus a growing resolves to do more pushing against my personal
We’ve lost control of our government with this election. It’ll never be the same. Trump will put in a national abortion ban because that’s what the extremists who wrote project 2025 want - control over women’s reproduction, along with getting rid of all climate policies, eliminating the Fed, etc, etc. Fox, Newsmax, and all other right wing media literally brainwashed tens of millions of Americans and helped to get him elected. WTF.
I also think that states’ rights are something the fetid citrus-fruit-colored lump and his ilk will completely ignore, so so much for enshrining the right to abortion in state constitutions.
The thing I don't get about pushing for "returning power to the states" is that it literally undermines the federalization of the USA. Could the government be smaller, less intrusive? Sure, but not the way DT et al want it to be.
Without a central, federal government able to hold states accountable, then we really are just 50 countries in a trench coat pretending to be taller than we are.
Without a central, federal government, who is going to stop states from seceding if they feel they can do better by themselves? What's to stop the Union from falling apart, patriotism? Nationalism? Moral obligation to a government that doesn't exist and they don't believe in?
And secession looks like a pretty good option these days for California, Oregon and Washington. "Pacificland", home of the still free Americans. I know it sounds crazy but if Gavin puts it on the ballot, I'd vote for it.
"Could the government be smaller, less intrusive? Sure, but not the way DT et al want it to be."
DJT and Republican leaders since Reagan have used Orwellian claims to hide their hidden agendas. Even when they have had a pretty open opportunity, they don't make the impact of government smaller. except for abandoning the common good and making "Robber Barons" "great" again. Read between the lines of (there's Orwell again) "Supply Side Economics". Also, except for protecting the whims of the powerful, they have certainly not made government less intrusive.
As for dismantling the overall influence of the Chief Executive branch? That's the LAST thing Trump wants. He will wink at lawless stuff when he chooses (with $COTUS's blessing) but pull rank whenever he wants; rather pushing it in fact.
Maybe this is another one of the things I need to disassemble from my Republican upbringing.
I don't have the experience or education necessary to speak further on this topic, so I'll take your thoughts and see what I can do to substantiate them.
Thank you for bringing this subliminal biases to me attention.
He (the felon elect) can’t have it both ways. State rights on some issues and then his way on others. State rights create divisions and destroy the “United” in United States of America. One’s rights and liberties should not be different from state to state. That just doesn’t make sense to me. You are either a citizen with rights and liberties or you are not.
trump's mandates will all be accomplished by force.
Every morning since 11/05/24 I wake up (if I've even gone to sleep) to the realization that this is a nightmare we can't shake. It continues to take a downward spiral. 11/12 MSNBC Morning Joe has joined the pathetic mantra about all the things the dems need to do differently in communicating their message about road construction, better jobs, health care; we need to assess what we did wrong . . . are they freakin' kidding me???? trump and his minions spewed vitriolic hate and lies every single moment of every single day and the dems have a communication problem?? MSM normalized a psychopathic felon and it is the dems fault??
None of this makes sense which is why, to keep a shred of sanity and protect any semblance of brain health, I now read only a couple of Substack authors (friends have thanked me profusely for "introducing" them to HCR) and the Economist, listen to HCR's podcasts, and Boston NPR stations. The TV and computer are for only watching movies, British shows, DryBar (clean) Comedy.
I used to care and now I can't and don't. My voice and those of millions of like-minded good people who have spent a lifetime of being involved politically, socially, locally, nationally have been shut down and time is no longer on our side. My heart breaks for my kids, grands, and those I assisted in becoming naturalized U.S. citizens.
Kamala Harris was the best thing (besides Heather!!) to come our way in decades. Barack Obama was an inspiration but Kamala saw him one and raised him by two! Such a positive, smart, compassionate, energetic, inclusive woman who spoke of opportunities and Americans elected a vitriol spewing, lying, mentally ill convicted felon to the highest position in the world who will have the nuclear codes on top of everything else! Good luck with that and God help us all.
In the meantime, I'm going back to the sixties and mellowing out. While the temps have been unseasonably warm (still playing golf 3 times a week in November!!) I will have to smoke "mellow" inside as MA is now under a wild fire watch (acreage has started burning)- oh, that's right climate change is hoax!!
Ah, Janet, you write some of my feelings so well. It isn't democratic messaging, it is trying to address the propaganda, disinformation, and easy emotional outrage that so many people seem attuned to. The complete abdication of our "legacy" media's responsibility for accurate reporting coupled with the "anything goes" "information" of social media got us here. If we all listen to the same unbiased and accurate news sources we would get startlingly different results than we get with the garbage that MAGA is currently supping up like my cats lap up tuna juice.
You are so right. Kamala lost and the "blame the Dems" game immediately started. I was also thinking: wait, wut? Y'all forgot about how the Russians so heavily influenced the election by social media, they basically handed the election to the COF?
I really, really wished Kamala would have been president - the first woman ever! But alas, the people that did vote apparently preferred an orange pus bag over a decent black woman...
I could have written your comment! I feel the same way! Every time I hear the press blaming Democrats, I think “oh no, this is all on you.” No one worked harder than the press to make the US go full fascist. We all saw the campaign. We all saw how they worked to present Trump as an acceptable candidate. He didn’t even run a campaign himself unless we consider whining about how unfair everything is and grifting crap to rubes to be a campaign. Meanwhile Harris ran one of the best campaigns in history. I just can’t listen to this latest attempt on their part to make us see something that is so contrary to reality. Your idea of going back to the 60s sounds mighty appealing.
The joy and progress for this country and all of its people lead by Harris coming off of a strong building economy to be shut down by a literal cloud of doom is treacherous… I have a daughter in college and a son in middle school and that is what makes my heart break most… I did not prepare them for the cruelty they will see and their future already feels changed to me and it’s heartbreaking. Yes we will absolutely get through this, I am not throwing in the towel, but this is a seismic shift for sure… I’m glad I live in a “safe” state for now and have some time to prepare for how to move forward and how to guide my kids through, it’s certainly rough times ahead :’(
That said, and I know I say this often, the whole concept of voting in this country, is presented far more as a matter of personal choice than of personal responsibility. That's how you get "protest votes" that don't begin to have the focused impact that focused, disciplined and directed protest has, and can result in in worse than nothing. Self-governance, collectively shaping the quality and outcomes of our own society, is serious, adult stuff, and yet how do we as a society reinforce that? In the schools and in our national conversation? Isn't taking the wheel of our own collective destiny something to prepare for? To be knowledgeable and prepared to take our share of responsibility seriously and not expect any elected official to take completely over for us. That's not what democracy is.
Nailed it again Dutch Mike. As chump said, loud and clear. Whether you like it or not. Who will fight back. Those of us who will have the power of the White Roses…
And a man (i refer to Elon)who told all those voters BEFORE the election that electing DonOLD (and Elon) was going to hurt EVERYBODY financially but the suckers voted for him because they didn't think they were part of everybody.
Yeah, incredible, right? He's just like the Southern slave owner, who tells the people that they should be poor and work hard because it's good for them - while sitting in his mansion, smoking a big cigar and sipping his expensive whisky in a big leather arm chair. And STILL they voted for him!!
"President-elect Donald Trump is already flexing raw power, showing he may try to subvert Washington’s checks and balances and leaving foreign leaders scrambling to come to terms with his victory.
Early signs from Mar-a-Lago, the Florida club and estate where Trump is building his new administration, suggest that when he moves back into the White House in January, bolstered by a thumping win and a democratic mandate, he will act with maximum force.
He’s showing he plans to rule a GOP monopoly on power — if Republicans win control of the House, which CNN has not yet projected — with unchallenged authority. He sees
Congress as a rubber stamp rather than a separate, co-equal branch of government."
Wiki calls him a politician - he's not, never has been. Takes more than a golden escalator. He's completely outwitted by the fancy footwork of Congress, so he's going to try brute force.
DJT's Minions provided him the Millions of $$$ to Outwit the Legal System... As a Businessman DJT went Bankrupt 5-6 times... DJT will Ruin this Country... Elon Musk, and Putin will Cash-In on their Investments in DJT....
We have yet to see who will control the House and by what margin. Trump has already tapped Elise Stefranek for US Ambassador and me could tap a few others. This could leave the House in the hands of Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker for a time.
His likely tap for AG will activate the goon squads looking for “left-leaning white women that he can kill and drag their bodies through the streets.” Or words to that effect.
It's likely that many of HCR's readers have gardens and even livestock. As crops rot in the fields we will need to make an effort to feed those less fortunate than ourselves.
Elon Musk calls Trump's election, "A New World Order." Indeed, let's help each other by supporting our local food banks and other charitable organizations.
I agree that it is shocking. Robert Hubbell said 93 mil eligible voters did not vote, in addition to those who voted for Trump or someone else. A lot of people did not get that message about Trump. They don't know what fascism is, and they didn't listen to the discussions of what he was going to do with understanding. As a former teacher I can just imagine how baffled people who do not avidly read the news are about anything. There are deserts of good information in the US. My husband's colleague who comes from Texas told us that there are rural towns where people watch tv, and listen to the radio for music and have no idea who their mayor is. That is a travesty. It is one of the institutional pillars mentioned in the Journal of Democracy on Backsliding democracies that is important. They say,
"Overall, however, it was a wide range of factors, not just economic and governance grievances, that led voters in these countries to elect leaders who ended up eroding democracy. These factors include broader sociocultural anxieties, the impressive electoral and narrative skills of some of the leaders in question, specific features of electoral laws, the new fluidity and corruptibility of media environments in many democracies, and the frequent appeal to voters almost everywhere of change for change’s sake."
For everyone defending the NYT and WaPo, there are plenty of us that lay a lot of blame at the feet of their oligarchic owners. Still, Fox, Sinclair and Newsmax have a lot of blame. The Spanish language stations did not get a strong enough message out either, although last minute they tried.
Forums that were unused to serious politics that had Harris on, such as Call Her Daddy, were filled with comments from young women complaining about politics being interjected into their show. I was shocked, and realized how insular my life is where I am just not around people like this. I am realizing more and more just how many people are either ill informed, disengaged or both. The daily stuff of survival has perhaps taken its toll. Or, they are grappling with too many problems.
The Journal of Democracy Article goes on to say,
"But our findings point the primary finger of blame for democratic backsliding at the politicians and political parties that have acted antidemocratically and the weakness of democracy’s institutional guardrails in these countries."
What are our institutional guard rails and how can we strengthen them. I feel that should be our focus in the coming years. If our government does process people through the prisons that we hear are gaining in stock value, and other elements, we should be reaching out to institutions outside our country for help with shoring them up and stopping attrocities.
Yesterday the Guardian had a video embedded in an article in which Michiganders were interviewed who at both Harris and Trump rallies. The impression I got is that the Trump voters are misinformed on who Trump is and what he stands for, and the Harris voters are misinformed on how many people support Trump for whom it is not in their self interest.
What we need it to try to keep community, and to hope that we can inform people over the next 4 years, and present alternatives to what they are going to be experiencing, even if we have to do it through forums like The Guardian, which has promised to report on Democracy.
After recently finding out that about half of Americas read at a 6th grade level or less, and while listening and reading to so many well-educated, thoughtful Americans (and others) expound on the evils of the citrus-hued lump (CHL), it struck me that there are literally millions of us that simply cannot take in this information on a very, very basic level, let alone think critically about anything. And now with the CHL planning to decimate/delete the DOE, education in this country is going to be even worse, and the effects of this, if nothing else, will have years’-long repercussions. 🤯
The implications are that we need to be formatting information on TikTok, or whatever platforms arise that people listen to in bite sized chunks that they can manage. Also, it will be important to repeat the same messages over and over and over again. That has been a key to Trump's success. So, picking 3 big messages to make very relatable and hit it over and over and over again. While we are at it, we might try making them in Russian too. Got to go after Putin as well.
I agree that the low education level/lack of "executive" thinking of so many is a big, big problem. But, it is even more basic - moral vs. immoral! I have S. Sudanese folks whose lives I have been involved with for 2 decades . . . they are naturalized citizens (kids born here), some have little to no formal education and/or are semi-illiterate, are Black in America (facing abject racism and most likely blocked from many economic opportunities) yet, they are profound thinkers (their kids are sharp as tacks!!) and totally understand the evil that is trump. They understand horror and the dismantling of democracy - they survived a genocide and saw autocracy first hand. They are the salt of the earth, are as nice, good, hard working people as you'll ever meet. However, they do not understand how any American (who by world standards have so much!!) could vote for trump. We cried together.
The MAGAts I know, are not ignorant or uneducated. Ideological to the extreme, educated (more than a few), and Fox watchers, at fire stations, mechanic shops, and any place where is public has waiting rooms. We’ve all been there…
Same here, as I am unfortunately in Florida. You describe the people well, JD. They all need deprogramming, in my view. I have walked out of restaurants that play Fox News and I tell them why as I leave. I have told doctors that I will not continue to be their patients if they do not stop forcing us to have to hear Fox New in the waiting rooms. In one case, I told the receptionist that I would be in my car and when the doctor is ready to see me, she could call me on my cell phone. But, of course, I am in the minority. But one doctor did heed my advice, and told me I wasn't the only one who complained. Little steps...that don't make much difference here.
Propaganda worked its magic and swing states (and Texas) had enacted numerous “voter integrity” laws and put chump people in critical positions. They had four years and did’t waste a minute.
His voters are likely to be some of the people who get processed. His voters think they will be spared the negative consequences. They will be wrong. As long as Trump is in office, it will be “government” by whim, which was how kings ruled.
I think for many people the realization that there WON’T be another regular election when they catch on that they’ve been duped is going to be swift and painful.
Somewhere, (I simply cannot now locate it) in the recent comments was a recommendation to look at:
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Win and What’s Next w/ Heather Cox Richardson | The Weekly Show
I did, and really, Prof Heather gives such a clear eyed and calm commentary on what is going on, I encourage anyone who hasn’t seen this to take a look. It is an hour long, but I think well worth it. My sincere thanks to whomever first put it up for us.
Excellent interview and information. What happened, where do we go from here? It stirred up some hope in my old and tired mind. Please click the link and listen to every word.
Folks will also appreciate Heather's Facebook Chat of 11/04/24 (near the end):
"Our job will be simply to do the next right thing, no matter how hard it is. And if the majority of us keep doing the next right thing, we're going to be okay."
Eventually, maybe. But the road to okay is worse than a stagecoach trail through Indian territory, with bandits and snakes around every bend and under every rock.
John Oliver's latest episode on MAX may be comforting in a weird ranting sort of way to some. It's more of a misery loves company show, but we felt better after watching it.
The billionaire boys, who became powerful via their daddy’s money, think they can rule the world. Women are just part of their domain. They have no idea, maybe because they slept through history class, that Putin like all the world’s tyrants, will dominate them. They gave up our beautiful democracy for 30 pieces of silver. I don’t blame the ignorant uninformed voters as much as I blame the greed of these pampered boy-men, who never became human.
Power (and money is very much a form of power) tends to corrupt. History and folklore is replete with that motif. Some people can be entrusted with a great deal more power than others, but it is said that even good intentions may lead to hell, and certainly unaccountable power, absolute power, is a disaster waiting to happen, if not already in progress. There are societies even in the present day where a few families have nearly all the money and all the political power, while most others scratch for subsistence. At some point extreme domination sinks any trace of democracy unless it is actively and consistently resisted.
Putin is a murderous “tough guy.” Trump is an ass who and a faux “tough guy.” Putin will use his useful idiot until the useful idiot dies and is replaced by a younger, even more pliable one. By denying the phone call, Putin sent Trump a message and the weakling caved by declining to push back. Putin 1, Trump 0.
I think that tfg isn't motivated that way; he just lusts for what Putin has, and believes that Putin can give it to him.
<sidebar. Now I have to come up with a new way of referring to that (insert profanity here). fpotus was my go-to. I don't think I can get away with my usual go-to here because it is profane and vulgar. Guess I'll go with "tfg" where the "f" does not stand for "former"...>
What could Putin have that would be damaging to Trump? He’s impervious. We all already know he’s a vial, immoral, selfish criminal but the majority of voters still voted for him.
Brilliant essay Heather! The implied comparison of the Taliban to the incoming maga regime is so fitting and terrifying. It will always end up badly for those who don’t stick up for and protect their neighbors and loved ones. They are always next.
Karen, I have been referring to MAGA as the Christian Taliban for probably 10 years now; initially, all my MAGAt friends said resounding "nu-uh" to that. I haven't trundled into their world much since the election, but I am biding my time...
Hi Ally, I agree. They are the Christian Taliban. Not only their beliefs and values, they look just like them in their trucks with the trump flags flapping in the wind.
They way things have been going I wonder who paid the Taliban to make that statement. It's all about the money. Musk could have authored the Talibans congratulatory statement. Divide and conquer..
''In September, as the Taliban enforced new rules on women in Afghanistan, they also began to target Afghan men.''
Lesson? No one is safe in a fascist state. Remember the Brown shirts MAGA. And:
“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.” - Martin Niemoeller
Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men (sic) , in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. " -Lincoln
How can the same voters who voted to guarantee a woman’s right to choose, vote to elect a dictator who promises a nationwide ban on a woman’s right to choose?
Cognitive dissonance. Putin did a very effective job creating national schizophrenia in the US. It will take generations to cure.
I don't think schizophrenia is the right term, as just denigrates those who hear voices. Speaking as someone with a mental health disability, bipolar disorder. No need to use silly analogies!
Heather's today hurts more -- its truths do -- much more than any other I can recall.
The whole world can celebrate as U.S. racists can hate, and hate more than just the undocumented.
The convicted criminal’s fans do hate black and brown people – categorically. Even U.S.-born neighbors are never individual persons to the racists rallying more-than-50%-electorally triumphant criminality and vulgarity in the U.S., their fav dictators abroad, winning demagogues and oligarchs at home.
We have today news, too, of Greg Palast’s new documentary, “Vigilante: Georgia’s Vote Suppression Hitman,” and an interview between him and Mark Thompson also today on how the clandestinely organized white racists have recently suppressed millions of black, brown, and college town votes not just in George, but across the U.S.
So much hatred from so many across America – not just against different skin colors, but also and more piquantly that, in hurting them the racists want further to own the libs. As if at war not only on skin color, and votes, our environment, and democracy, but against verily decency itself.
It hurts. "They" are winning -- & united in calumny, in obeisance to the worst of priests and moneyed.
And we can thank Senators Manchin and Sinema for sabotaging the Voting Rights bill requiring disclosures of dark more, limiting gerrymandering, and again giving the Federal Govt authority to intervene in State voter suppression tactics which SCOTUS had scuttled. Their egotism and the quack SCOTUS may likely have even lost this election and imperiled any hope of a return to democracy.
I have no affection for Manchin or (worse) Sinema, but in the end I expect the SCOTUS would have given us the same results. They are hell bent on destroying any semblance of sanity in Federal election rules and laws. We will just have to wait to see if they succeed.
Maybe they should have spoken up and supported women?! Of course they should have! Now they’re on the downhill slippery slope. Americans should speak up now. Beyond frustrating to watch republicans vote for a false narrative and not get it!
Thank you, Heather! Hope you’re getting some much deserved rest! So appreciate you!
How can Trump do X when his voters want Y, seems to me though, part of the whole point of Putin's desire to keep the US divided. It appears to me similar to the Romans "divide and conquer", in which competing interests are kept divided by a single source of power (in this case Russia and not Rome) as different interests are variously granted or denied to various parties.
The US will now be in a perpetual state of non-governance thanks to the overthrow of our standing system of nearly two and a half centuries in favor of a very dark authoritarianism. The question is at what point will the entire system simply break, and what will that look like? Or will people acquiesce to misery and despair?
One thing is clear, the Russian assessment is likely right - for the moment. The Visigoths have now poured through the Salarian Gate. But it was the American electorate who betrayed the city and allowed them in. Will American democratic-republicanism and the rule of law be restored peacefully by mass strike and protests? Or through blunt force? Or will it simply never be restored and will France and England and Spain and a handful of smaller countries remain a feeble bastion for self-determination and free governance?
One shred of hope: tyrannical Russians speaking ex-cathedra about the new world order are not the gods of history, and history will know no never until the last of our species is gone. This is just one round. Barring nuclear annihilation we fight on.
Putin owns DJT... It was inevitable.... For Putin, it was easier, and cheaper to buy DJT, then to Defeat the Ukrainians... Putin also wants the collapse of the American-Led World Order... DJT may give him that as well... The Trump Organization has been floated by Russian $$$ as an Investment that Putin wants to collect on... The Visigoths pouring into Rome is a Good Analogy... First there was Roman Ruling-Class Corruption, and Enfeeblement, and then Lower Classes Corruption & Despair... The Plebes became obsessed with Bread & Circuses... Question, what does Elon Musk ultimately want? He is Chummy with Putin, and DJT...
Or else they could do the unthinkable. I truly believe that if Hitler had managed to get his scientists to build functional nuclear weapons (and they were VERY close to achieving it) before the Allies had invaded Europe successfully, the world might not even exist today. Trump and Musk seem to me deranged enough to actually decide to inflict a first strike on some major opponent and the resulting retaliation would escalate out of control.
After all, as Janis once sang, "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
Thank you for this depressing update, Dr. Richardson. I wonder how much the Taliban will like the trumpster when the National Christian Authoritarian regime which helped elect him closes down all mosques and the people are ordered to attend the fundamentalist Christian churches.
I think the Christian Nationalists and the Taliban will figure out how to work in concert. Their theologies may differ but their political goals are quite similar.
Once we get over the shock. There will be so much work to do and it will be daunting. I still can't believe this happened. So much worse than 2016 with the really hard core extremism, the Maga influence on all three branches and the proposed cabinet at play here.
Get ready for the American Taliban, coming to a State or Region near you! The Fascists in charge now will mix and match their policies to suit our Oligarchs. Resist, Resist, Resist! Our forefathers, and foremothers, fought for individual freedom and Liberty, so we must take up the cause again...
Thank you Heather for always keeping us educated, enlightened and informed...Especially during these very dark times!! Loved seeing you on John Stewart too. ❤️🇺🇸💙
Not just ripple effects but the ripple of influences are now crystallizing. Not only can the domestic damage not be contained to the ‘red states,’ the impact will be world-wide (and visa versa, as Putin comes knocking for his payback.).Under Trump 1.0 not only did he specifically empower the Taliban in its anti-woman-andgirl agenda, women and girls worldwide were negatively impacted by the foreign aid policies, including a family planning ‘gag’ order.
We see you drawing parallels between the Taliban and the incoming administration. Raise your voices, everyone who can, before you too are silenced!
"If men had raised their voices we might also be in a different situation now."
So many men in the US did raise their voices, but we were unable to drown out the voices of Trump, social media and the corporate media.
Thank you Heather for continuing the fight. Trump had 4 years to build his coalition and he is a master at marketing--hate, anger, revenge, resentment and misinformation. The uneducated fall for it every time.
"If men had raised their voices...." - rhymes with Germany circa 1935
My fear…for many years to come, we too will be saying, “If only...”
It looks to me like Ukraine will have no choice without US aid but to surrender to Russia. Once Trump takes us out of NATO, I don't imagine Russia will stop there. Perhaps the Trump wing of the Republican party could be more accurately called the MRGA party.
O would hope that some members of Congress even Republicans could see taking the USA out of NATO would be wrong for so many reasons. And my biggest hope is that poor health Trump does not survive past the midterms. We must arm ourselves with hope and fight strategically for better outcomes then. And surely some of the more fiscally responsible on both sides will send him many resounding NOs.
Carol - well said! Heather reported that 12% of Trump voters in Missouri also voted for abortion rights. I believe that a large number of last minute Trump voters had no understanding of the issues and will be dismayed to see the consequences of what they voted for. That raises hopes for the midterm elections.
Carol, mostly I agree, however if tffg goes away, in whatever manner, we’re stuck with JD, who is young, healthy, and horrible.
If DJT does not survive past the midterms, Vance would replace him. Going from the frying pan into the fire here.
Let's feed him up! Chocolate cake! lots of it!
My hope is that the current Congress awards Ukraine enough aid in money and weaponry to end the war on their terms before Dumpster takes office, David. It will be a heavy lift with MAGA Mike still in charge of the House, but worth the attempt. Maybe an Exec Order is preferable to a battle in the House, which Johnson is likely to dismiss until Jan 3. Ditto with judges, which only relies on the Senate. Get as much of a holding wall up as possible before the flood comes.
I have to say - too bad Pres.Biden wont reach out and take advantage of the "Presidential immunity" which does NOT specify which president - thanks SC! I know - pretty far fetched, huh?
The Ukrainian people will never surrender to the enemy -- they've already experienced what that means: certain horrible death and destruction. Shche ne vmerla Ukraina!
Slava Ukraini!
David Ukraine will not "surrender". Full Stop.
I do mind if Ukraine has no choice and we leave NATO. The EUROS have leverage with Trump..transactionally they can buy weapons and then provide Ukraine with them. They might not limit their usage as Biden fearfully did. I don't think Trump will leave NATO so easily either.
I don't think Biden was being 'fearful'. We really don't want a hot war with Russia. I don't want Putin the sociopath to decide to start lobbing nukes everywhere if he feels cornered. This was supposed to be about getting the Russians out of Ukraine, not going into Russia for 'regime change'. In this nuclear-armed world, that just sounds like a bad idea to me.
I hope that the other NATO will step up to the plate and come to the aid of Ukraine.
And what if…..?
Has rhymed for many years, just not so perfectly.
1935 would have been already too late. You'd have been quickly silenced by that point.
Spring 1930 was "too late".
Right? Good thing Heidegger is dead??
My throat is sore from raising my voice while MAGA plugged their ears chanting “Nanny, nanny foo foo, I don’t want to hear you.”
Previous channels are ineffective against Teflon Don. Fox will counter all truths with louder lies.
As an Advertising exec, one strategy I recommend is this: we must ask how can Dems make headlines?
Repeating yesterday’s news won’t work. To adjust Michelle Obama’s advice (while maintaining Democratic values) “When they go low, we go hire better PR firms.”
Another strategy, Dems (and Heather Cox Richardson) should follow Pete Buttigieg’s example and flood Fox News with appearances. We have to beat them on their home turf.
I do not see enough people understanding this idea. It took a combination of two things for Trump to win this election, a group of misogynistic, bigoted, self involved people and also a group of under and misinformed people. We can't change the first group much in one election cycle but we can change the second
You're being kind about who voted for Trump. They were overwhelmingly high school graduates and below. Most were either lazy or stupid. Many think that Trump will magically fix the economy too dumb to remember 2020.
Moat of the MAGAs are not smart people and a large percentage would welcome a theocracy.
I would prefer if we referred to them as poorly educated and easily manipulated. This process has been going on since the atrocious days of newt Gingrich, his dumbing down of America and the slow transformation of the Republican Party. With the planned destruction or elimination of the department of education the battle will be harder than ever to win. But that does not mean we don’t fight at every level we can.
We also have strong economic power. We can choose where to spend our money and where not to spend it. Who is more likely to want an EV, a democrat or a magashite? If Dem EV buyers start boycotting Tesla it will send a message. The same tactic applies to other goods where we have a choice. Watch how fast those fat cat CEO’s step back from trump.
I am trying to start a financial boycott of businesses and business owners who financially supported Trump by: 1) Emailing my friends and relatives, 2) Posting on NextDoor, and 3) Posting on Reddit. My friends and relatives are very supportive, NextDoor deletes my posts without telling me why, and there is definite interest on Reddit where I got this idea. Here is the guts of my email and posts.
I just read on Reddit that someone in Grand Rapids, Michigan is starting a list of businesses that financially supported Trump and is asking people to boycott the businesses. My first thought was this would be easy to do. I already boycott Amazon due to their poor treatment of employees that I read about in the WSJ. (I have stopped my subscriptions to WSJ and Washington Post.) Some may think this is hard, but I have found better deals on Walmart.com and Target.com, although if I continue this I or someone will have to find out which businesses or owners of a business financially supported Trump. (probably Walmart) This information is in the public record (FEC) and needs to be disclosed by law
The advantages of a financial boycott are:
1) Money speaks to those people who donated to Trump. This hits them where they are sensitive.
2) About half the country would probably support this boycott.
3) There would be many who would like to find out who supported Trump and use the public records to identify businesses and business owners who have financially support Trump.
4) All that is needed is one website that could be called "DoNotSupportTrump.com." There is likely a better name.
There are other advantages, but to keep this short let's list possible disadvantages.
1) Does this divide the country more?
2) Will there be retribution?
3) Will there be an opposite website for those that support Trump businesses and business owners? Probably, but so what.
4) How would we control false information getting on the website and the likelihood that the website would be hacked.
5) The need for money to run and maintain the website. I think the bang for the buck would be great.
I would be interested in your thoughts on this matter.
You know which company CEO would support your idea financially? Penny's Spices. Their CEO has repeatedly said he hates Trump with a passion. We ONLY buy Penny's Spices. They are also the best.
And boycott Walmart too. They have put thousands of small businesses out of business by undercutting their prices and when the businesses fail, they raise their prices.
The county that Walmart is headquartered in in AR has one of the highest child poverty rates in the country, which the Waltons could solve with a few million a year. But they just don't care. They are the richest family in America and take in 1 out of every 3 dollars spent on groceries in the US.
I’m sure it was autocorrect that gave you Pennys. So people can find this merchant the correct name is Penzey’s. Sign up for their newsletter and get weekly specials that are awesome and they do mail orders. https://www.penzeys.com/
Perhaps a BOYCOTT site similar to or maybe even using Change.org or that model. The force of the boycott is being able to Accurately Demonstrate that the Action Being Boycotted is what is causing a hit to the bottomline.
Piss of the shareholders, not just the Billionaires in Teflon suits.
Pick an Easy target first, one that people don't like anyway lol.
(not WaPo. Don't shoot the messenger, in spite of Bezos's recent interference, it's one of the last organizations in the US that can actually DO extensive investigative journalism. Let's see how it performs under the new Corporatocracy.)
Then if we get the boycott site up and running, and make sure it's for Democratic Ideals by blocking all others,
(who decides?)
THEN GO FOR A PRIME BOYCOTT.
And can everyone Please drop X right now, Loudly? #freefromX? #dropMusk #eXit ??
(I could use a tip on How to quit X. I have a personal and a biz account and had trouble figuring out how to get off the platform!)
FYI Walmart (the Walton Family of Multi Billionaires) was Evil Long before Amazon started selling books. Waltons are theocratic "god made us successful so we can rule over the least among us" Oligarchs, who built there biz Gutting small businesses and the towns that still had any.
Now Walmart is losing billions to Bezo's ever growing empire, since he's just as ruthless and more tech savvy, he leveraged his $$ to wipe out competition with the "Prime shipping," adding dopamine to our "consumer economy" and has branched into Everything in from "handmade artisan goods" to Groceries, pharmacy, and of course, Chinese crap unlimited. He is also destroying Ebay, ironically. Etsy, too.
Still, Americans Love Amazon. Not wanting to think about consequences is our national trait.
Raise your hand if you use a Keurig
Re: your point #4. Just thinking out loud here but perhaps a starting point might be this site and good old fashioned talking to like minded friends and family. A small start could balloon out once someone in the free press takes notice. Dr King didn’t have social media but look back at the 10’s of thousands of people who responded to him.
I like this site, but it doesn't have as many view, I think, as Reddit. I will be on the site more in the future.
Shawn, how many Dems does FOX invite to their State TV? Few in the past and likely fewer in the T47 years.
Marge, I think Obama started a policy to ignore and reject Fox (And with good reason.) Denying them legitimacy seems like a sound strategy. But Dems have to re-engage with Right Wing Media or we are just agreeing with ourselves in the comments of HCR. I don't know how Fox invites work. Maybe they would box out democratic leaders. Or maybe Gretchen Whitmer, Mayor Pete, Elizabeth Warren, Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Hubbell can elbow their way on air and spar with hostile media. We need a strategy to reach beyond our bubbles.
Agreed. I just wonder if their bubble will let our bubble get a word in edgewise! Hasn’t happened so far. That’s how they keep their people unaware of the less attractive doings on the right.
It in't hust the Fox, Newsmax and social media lies....and you are right it is constant. It is also what they choose not to report that would make them and the annointed one look bad.
Dems need to BUY WHOLE MEDIA at this point. We've been screaming at them to buy better PR/Marketing/Ad teams since Clinton! Some of us since Nixon! We need the Soros's and Pritzgers and Khosla and Reid Hoffmans (especially) and young experts like YOU to create the New Media that will bolding represent Democracy Vs Fascism and Corporatocracy. But ah, there's the rub. Dem leaders are Always too hesitant to talk about the Corporate Takeover of America. Saying "I will stop price gouging" means NOTHING. Touting Lina Kahn and the Real Nitty Gritty of breaking up the monopolies of the new Guilded Age (what is it now, the Bitcoined Age?)
We need to find Every Upcoming Maddow, Hayes, Coates, Robinson etc and give them an MSNBC on steroids, fanning out on all existing platforms (esp Youtube) and creating new twitters and TicToks etc.
if we will ever have a hope of creating the polity we need to save life on earth.
AND THAT is the GOAL. We Must Stop The Climate COllapse,
and we must Manufacture Consensus on the that face ASAP.
Everything else, even abortion rights and positive immigration and anti-racism freedom to be and love, is Meaningless if we don't take action to keep our children from Hell On Earth.
The "PR" we need is Media Itself. The Medium Is the Message, and it needs to be GLOBAL.
Go Shawn! Start networking! I'm writing to ALL the good guys, but I'm no longer in the game.
thank you for seeing through to the MESSAGING as key, but we also need ACCESS to reach Above the Silos.
Looks like Buttigieg needs a job, no?
I've honestly considered jumping parties and vote from within at the primary level.
Susan Collins encouraged us voters in ME to do just that in the primary and vote for Niikki Haley.
Much depends on state rules regarding party ID and/or "declined to state" voting rights during primaries. No need to "jump" but strategize yes.
Three hours of Rogan?
Thank you and men like you who raised your voices.
Us men need to do more. I'm trying to figure that out right now.
The Republicans have built a strong coalition in many of the red states. We need to reverse. this trend. And that is going to take a monumental effort.
Mentor younger men — even in small ways. Doing the next right thing builds up.
Absolutely...I'm shocked at the support Trump had from young male voters. How could they find him appealing?
Young men are notoriously rebellious, at least when I worked at high school. Their brains are beyond susceptible to opposition in some form. Can older men verify or argue that point?
A majority of males, esp white, have been voting Republican / Trump all along. The vote for both males and females shifted in Trump's direction in 2024. Dems suffered big losses from 2020.
Although I don't want to cast doubt on the Democrats, I think we missed the clarion call of social media and online gaming to young men. We know there was Russian influence, to say nothing of Musk's manipulations. One of the tenets of Authoritarianism is dominant masculinity and, for some, cruelty toward women. (Have you ever seen how women are portrayed in video games!)
Patricia, many of them like the idea that women are property and love the idea of your body, my choice. I did read the Nick has run to his momma and is hiding out in her house, this after he was doxxed.
Good Emily! We are a distracted lot of people, we Americans. The sense of urgency needed now in America is just not there enough to bend the arc sufficiently, I fear. I use my own word, "WOMENTORS" to sing my praises for the wall of women who got us this far in the election. In our world of perpetual impermanence we must comprehend fully, this is not going to be like anything we've known. Stronger, wiser, more empathic toward the needs of others. Breathe deeply, and repeat as needed.
Agree, but I’m done! As soon as a MAGA complains and we know they will, I’m going to speak their language and say “Well You Voted for Him” “I hope you are happy… you got what you wanted”. And when they say “I didn’t know” my response is going to be “being a basement dweller is not excuse”. Trump said on Fox News he was going to be a dictator day one what part of that don’t you understand.
Gary, the only way to reverse the trend is by purchasing a tv and radio network system to rival the propaganda machine already in place
There is no “appealing to the masses unless they can hear you. Those masses are already in “obey” mode
I'm concerned for the future of NPR and PBS, as well as Pro Publica. Will the Scrambled Egg try to create his own government news source?
Since I refuse to say his name as much as possible both scrambled egg and rotten egg are his real names now
Pro Publica has done a lot of damage by their constant criticism of Biden. And NPR has so much airspace to fill that they have become vacuous. And much the same false equivalency…they desperately need content!
History and context would be wonderful!
Like it or not, the Gop/Right have a much more disciplined set of voices, hate to use that word, but the Dems are far short of that, and... they are too honest!
Harris' campaign was the first Dem campaign I've seen to enter the "social media" phase of campaigning....I especially liked the very quick response to outrageous Trump/Vance statements on social media. They didn't miss a beat. Her campaign had some really sharp people working for it. Now we need to build on that effort and find some Dem personalities with big enough personalities/megaphones to equal people like Joe Rogan.
We’re a big tent; anyone can come in and voice their opinions. Republicans have gatekeepers scrutinizing folks’ loyalty before they can come in and speak.
Surety and dogma helps, don’t they…they learned it in their churches, Noah, the arc, Adam and Eve, fear of science and technology, fear of the other, the devil…it makes it so easy! They have primed the pump! For the Chump. At what point do thinking, feeling Christian’s rise up and say, enough is enough! He is the Devil in all facets!
Nope, crickets…
Mark Cuban said he would like to buy Fox. I don't know why some liberal billionaires don't get together and do this. Elon bought Twitter. Bezos bought WP.
But wapo was the paper which covered the insurrection the best. Maybe get Cuban to buy it and make it a truly power paper for our Democratic message. I live in Maryland and it is our local paper not the Baltimore paper. Stupid people canceled their subscription to the Wapo and it hurts the people who live from the production of the paper, certainly not Bezos as I in IT know his biggest revenue source is AWS.
With all the money spent on ads that people just assumed were fake ... it seems Dems could buy up some Media. The Inside game is to keep the rage, but start to channel it towards the real causes.
First wait and see if the price of eggs has gone down as promised.
In rural Iowa where there are some large/enormous egg producers, I can guarantee you the owners are both Rs and dependent on immigrant labor. So DonOld needs to jawbone them to get prices down while he wants to deport their labor force. I will watch to see how this works out!
I think the issue of who's labor force is going to be gored is very overlooked. A large number (possibly a majority) of undocumented workers are employed "under the table" by large agri businesses and farm co-ops which need them to pick crops and process food for the stores at low wages. I am really interested what they are going to say if/ when Trump actually attempts to deliver on his "deport then all!" promise. This will very likely wreak havoc in the food supply chain for domestic groceries and other foods processing. It will of course create price issues but it may even cause serious food shortage s the likes of which this country hasn't seen since the depression. This will be grist for the mill in Russia which was subjected to that kind of indignity by the actions of the US during the cold War. I expect Putin to be joyfully applauding.
William, my feeling is that the large R employers of the undocumented will fight mass deportation. Otherwise, where will they get their workers to exploit.
I see this whole expulsion threat as a another Trump Show that's not going to happen as advertised. However, that is not in any way meant to say that the trauma, distress, and terrible uncertainty it is creating right now is anything but real. I see many being technically expelled, but allowed to be granted re-entry visas' without leaving the country. Could a 'fee' be involved. Oh yeah. Money to be made. Privately run 'containment facilities' from which farmers can obtain labor (for a price). The egg-producers will keep their egg prices and the Biden administration will foot the blame. Don't worry. You're a citizen.. right? Don't worry there will be new roads. We're not Europe. We are far from a bunch of ethnically, culturally, religious aligned countries. We're the United States of America, and we're under Cash.
No doubt they voted for Trump anyway.
Anne-Louise, who cuda thunk it….that this whole election came down to betting on Humpty-Dumpty’s great fall? Let’s see, finally, if the “king” & his horses (Musk?) can put him together again.
Humpty Dumpty is scrambled, fried, poached, and runny. Muskrat is a destroyer, not a builder. Unless he can steal others ideas. He even allowed Tesla’s name on what he stole.
I am keeping my grocery receipts.
Take photos of egg and other grocery prices to post on FB. No words... just photos of prices beside photos of prices you take now as a baseline. My campaign will include eggs and 2 or 3 other items.
Ha, wish that were funny.
First check your passport...
lol-never gonna happen…
I thought that’s what we had been doing. I sure donated my arse off in The attempt. The propaganda machine is still going full blast.
Let’s hope Substack remains free. Our local paper was bought by USA Today and it’s sad.
I've suffered the same situation, Gigi. Our once award winning and locally owned, operated, and published newspaper that routinely ran four sections a day now runs maybe two, with a smattering of local stories (maybe 2 a day). It disgusts me.
Citing: "As a whole, Kamala Harris won voters between the ages of 18 and 29 by six points. But preliminary exit polling indicates that Donald Trump opened up a 16-point gender gap between young men and young women: 56% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Trump while just 40% of their female peers did so.
Even more surprisingly, Trump managed to improve on his 2020 performance among young women, despite that gap. In 2020, 33% of young women voted for him.
Polls and exit polls are incomplete unless they give some important statistics about how many were polled, how polling was done and what were the questions. Is the country moving in the right direction is the stupidest question ever. I say NO yet it has been interpreted as anti- Democratic in the media. Donnie and his devils can’t ever be trusted.
If they don’t the magas will whine ‘it’s not his fault’!
Gary, I posted a few days ago that I wish there was a liberal billionaire who could create a new social media site to take on Musk. Trump tried with his, when he was banned, but it didn't grow to what he wanted. There needs to be a social media website that follows the guidelines that Twitter used to. I've never had any social media accounts, but I'd sign up for one.
Also, we have LFAA, but the left needs someone along the lines of Rogan to get viewers. I'm unsure who that would be. Brian Tyler Cohen comes to mind, but I think he'd be viewed as an elitist (not that I think he is, but that is what has been going around about Democratic voters.) I think either David Pakman or Ben Meisales might be good, but I think, even better would be "Tennessee Brando" as he I think he'd attract more attention from the right. (Beau or Belle of the Fifth Channel do attract many right-wing, as they get comments from the left. Not sure they'd want to do a radio/streaming show. They should!)
Musk and Rogan are both liberals. Rogan was a Bernie Bro.
Fortuitously, NPR reported on young men later this morning! Young men helped Trump retake the White House -- a trend years in the making
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/12/nx-s1-5181804/young-men-helped-trump-retake-the-white-house-a-trend-years-in-the-making
They took their frustrations out by voting for a monster. They will soon live to regret it. As I have said repeatedly, many do not use reason but emotion when voting.
Bill, they are carefully conditioned to fear and anger - which override their thinking prefrontal cortex. And the dopamine rush of anger makes it addictive.
Back in the seventies there was a movement to “express your anger” as a means of countering depression, particularly among women. More recently, now that more is known about the brain, we know that anger just begets anger.
I prefer the Bonobo method: Females rule and when males act up, females deny them sex and food and it calms the males down. I’m a perfect specimen for inclusion in the Bonobo clan. Please help me escape the human variety.
That explains the lack of kissing practice with Melanie for sure…is she the real power? god help us!
The left uses emotion when voting too! While our fears are a bit more reality-based than those that on the right, emotions are why we voted for Kamala.
Frankly, the women are in the majority and THEY did NOT get out and vote in droves as they needed to. Yes, I "blame" the young, mostly uneducated, men who were caught up in Trump's message. But it is clearly on the shoulders of the women. The real men I know, voted for Harris. The young men, my grandsons, voted for Harris.
Penny, I’d love to know if the majority of trump-voting women happen to live in southern states and happen to go to churches where the pastor thunders trump’s lies and happen to have husbands who demand they vote Red. Brainwashing works on both genders.
Scapegoating women is easy but patriarchal, too.
Probably do. Not every Southern church has a Trump preacher, but some do. Also while driving in NC, I turned the radio to a station labeled "Religion." It was not religion, it was politics -- reading Bible verses and talking about how they apply to voting for Trump.
While listening to one evangelical station, my stomach turned as I heard the “pastor” quite seriously advise his listeners—“yes, we understand that Trump is really not a Christian nor does he live by Christian values, but he has promised to be “a friend” to Christians and put our agenda into place so it is OK with God to vote for him.” Blech. So much for valuing character.
!!!!!
What is that!!! That is a special kind of "close your eyes and hold your nose".
What agenda! Christian agendas don't belong in the government! That isn't the government's job!
I'm just incoherently screaming over here and...just...WHAT!!!
OMG (just kidding; I’m agnostic)
Ah yes, Republican Christianity, where every Democratic candidate is either "the Devil" or "the AntiChrist" and every Republican candidate is "the second coming of Christ" or if not that, then at least a new minor prophet.
Where the End Times come on the back of humanitarians and not the person who tweeted "Novus Ordo Seclorum" (lit. "a new order for the ages").
Where the Bible tells us to make a theocratic state rather than make churches.
Where we are told "truth and compassion cannot coexist; always pick truth".
Where we are told our politics should inform our religion and not the other way around.
Where we are told to force converts through brute force because free will and the power of choice is obviously NOT something God wants us to give nonbelievers.
Where the believers have become so comfortable that they've become pharisees, content in their traditions and power.
I am so sick of this perversion of my faith. This is NOT Christ-like behavior and this is NOT the Church I read about in any of Paul's letters (except how it is like the churches that Paul wrote).
Barf
One does not have to be “educated” in the formal sense to be smart. Uneducated used this way is demeaning and adds to the “elitist” divide. The “uneducated” are more ignorant and lazy as far as information consumption and more turned into their own needs rather than the whole of society. That is Both selfish and limits thinking and clearly supports the thinking that elected the felon.
And calling them "lazy" or "ignorant" is somehow less elitist? They ARE uneducated, at least in this realm. They're in no way STUPID (they know plenty of things I don't) and I think that's what's getting confused.
Uneducated people aren't (necessarily) stupid people. There's a difference, and we do people no favors by not explaining, recognizing, or using the difference. Uneducated just means you need to learn, not that you are incapable of learning.
I am uneducated in realms of machinery, unlike my brother. I am uneducated in the deeper realms of IT, unlike my mother. I am uneducated in the realm of speech pathology, unlike my grandmother. There are plenty of things I don't feel comfortable speaking on because I am not EDUCATED in them.
We are ALL uneducated about something, but that's why we have experts. It becomes stupidity when people denounce experts for their favorite Podcaster, who likely isn't any more educated in the topic than they are but CERTAINLY caters to their bias.
As for being "tuned into their own needs rather than the whole of society" this is a socialization AND an education problem. Thinking about others isn't a human's natural state of being, thinking about the self is. That's why humanities, social studies, and ethics/philosophy are so important in a formal education. We NEED to be confronted with things like the Trolley Problem at a young age and talk about why people reach their conclusions, if there is a RIGHT conclusion, and what the Trolley Problem might look like in our everyday lives.
There's the social aspect as well, though, because desperate people think about themselves first not out of any malice, but out of survival. They CANNOT think about what is good for others because they themselves aren't secure - this is a failure of community and is a vicious cycle. What is good for the community should be good for the individual IN the community, but because we've been focused so long on the individual, many of us don't HAVE a community to better us.
But yeah. They are uneducated. They AREN'T stupid. There's a difference.
Well discerned!
Thank you
Absolutely -- why would young women vote against so many of their own interests? The Scrambled Egg offers them nothing. Republican support for paid leave, abortion rights, and minimum wage as well as the demented felon is a head scratcher.
You ask “… why would young women vote against so many of their own interests? ”. They were affected by an avalanche of mis- and disinformation from the Trump-Putin-Musk axis of evil.
And the media fascination with the evil ones and Ignoring Democrats made it seem like the candidates were equals. January 6 was a festival of love? I’m sick of seeing that ugly smarmy orange face spouting lies.
Media reports that 5 swing states had bomb threats at local polling places but it did not affect the vote. Seriously??? Was that part of the secret plan Donnie was so proud of??
I know, right?! Nothing screams "festival of love" like "Hang Mike Pence".
I read that the xitter traffic decreased noticeably day after election--the bots closed up shop. Saw a graphic that of those who got their news mostly from social media, great majority supported Dump
Axis of assholes.
as a few said, no tax on tips (short term bread and butter issue) ...no understanding of the long term.
One of our local brewpubs had little signs on their tables about how bad it would be to not tax tips (which both candidates were for, BTW). Did a little research and what they were ACTUALLY afraid of losing was the Tip Credit business get for reporting to the IRS the tips their employees receive so that the employees can't say "I didn't get any tips" without getting in trouble with the IRS.
TheFatElectrician on YouTube has a great video on it.
Sort of a modern version of Rome’s “Bread and Circus” (read gladiators fighting each other or lions to the death)
US women are used to being oppressed, US men are not. It may get down to US men finding out they can be oppressed too..in the meantime, we have to reach the Mama Bear in women. If the women for Trump have such a thing.
Dem voters overall pulled back by the tune of several million. Both male and female.
Most recent numbers - about 11 million
In this period of massive disinformation, how do we know women voted for him? Your votes are anonymous. Exit polls? I'd screw with an exit poll.
Yes, women do have a slight majority. But women do most of the child raising, all of the child bearing, work for wages and provide most of the care or oversight of the care given to the disabled among us. Oh, and we're supposed to save the world too.
Penny, I don't think 'Men' have a problem voting for a woman, but cultural background, I believe, is in play. It was for Niki Haley. The perception (my view) that calling Harris 'Black' was of such great importance was overplayed IMHO. I felt she needed to put forth a less friendly image. A 'my way or the hi-way' image. As for the male gender.. I'll bet the "only fans" girls did pretty well. You think 'they' might have voted for Trump. They've got us "men' right by the nuts, soda-speak. Well, maybe not me. I'm not sending them any cash, but it's sure coming into their bank accounts from somewhere. How about 'unfluencers'..oops, I meant IN-fluencers? How did they vote? I mean the ones old enough 'to' vote. I wonder. Nobody is talking about that indu$try. I'm disappointed that Harris and Waltz didn't carry the day.
Women have sorely let us down, and I’m devastated
Yes he got pretty much the same number as the last two times, the difference is who didn’t show up! And the biggest missing group is…?
During the Khmer Rouge Pol Pot’s rule, cities were forcibly evacuated, intellectuals and educated people were often executed, and families were separated.in order to maintain control need to rid the country of the educated who he targeted to murder. He too, like trump loved the uneducated.
Harvey, Mao did the same. I have visited Cambodia and China; the effects still remain. The most heartbreaking: Pol Pot taught the children to turn in their parents for voicing opposition. And the children were taught to execute Pol Pot Enemies of the State. I was told by my guides in 2008 that parents are still afraid of their children.
Plenty of educated people too.
Remember, Gary, Trump won because Dem turnout fell from 2020 by 9 (edit) million votes. Give that a long hard thought.
That is a super-important point. A lot of analysts were saying "Trump can't raise his vote count from 2016, 2020" in part because the old white guys who voted for him then have died. Turned out he didn't have to ... he just needed the other side not to show up in the same numbers.
So you can kill a country by inaction as much as by action, apparently.
Exactly, and for all the enormous energy the Harris campaign put into turnout, to paraphrase Trump, "What the hell happened"?
I think the Dems who did not show up refused to believe in a woman for president once again AND calculated that their tax situation would be marginly better under His few fiscally responsible GOP FOLKS. THEY did not believe that he would proceed with Project 2025 at all and thought he was bluffing to get votes. They along with the MAGA CRAZIES are going to be really surprised.
who knows for sure? but i'm inclined to believe Harris' very leaning "feminine" presentation, there were times when i asked, "where are the men"... well that's an exaggeration of course, but it may have turned away a number of women. AND some men.
Dem voting for President didn't fall "several million" Frank, it was almost TEN million.
2020 (final count)
Biden - 81 million
Trump - 74 million
2024 (current count)
Trump - 75 million
Harris - 72 million
Harris support dropped over 9 million votes compared to 2020 Biden count. That's more than 10 percent.
And Trump support didn't grow much at all, especially compared to 2016 vs 2020 where his support grew by almost 11 million from 63 mil in 2016.
And a switch of only about one million votes in Harris favor in the swing states could have given her the election.
Truth hurts when it comes a bit too late.
Gary Loft, I do agree that many men were in alliance with women and voted for Harris. Indeed, I thank them. What they did fail to do, which was the critical piece that could have changed everything, was that they needed to raise their voices to their bros, co-workers, brother-in-laws, neighbors, uncles, sons. This was not done. Men raised their voices in solidarity with the women in their lives, but not with other men at the office, the bar, online gaming sites, sports functions, deer hunting camp, vacationing, etc. etc. etc. Nothing pierced the maga-iron-dome of misogyny because men failed to see “women’s issues” as human issues. Women’s reproductive freedom helps ALL of us. Women’s equality helps ALL of us. Thank you voting with us, but we need more from you. We need you to fight they are YOUR issues too.
My sons (Gens X and Millenial) and my grandsons (Gen Z) all voted for Harris and strongly support the women in their lives as equal partners. In fact, my daughter’s oldest son told her that she and I were the strongest influence in developing his ideas about politics, etc. Admittedly, all of these men are college educated, but they certainly have some bro-culture influences in their lives. Not sure what the difference is with the young men in their generations who have succumbed to such racism and misogyny, but I think we need to figure this out soon, both for their sakes, and for the future of our country.
Gary what has broken my heart are the women who voted for trump. Women turning against women is mind boggling when it comes down to actually saving lives. Women's healthcare is a broad spectrum. Women have intricate systems that require medical care from qualified gynecological physicians for a woman's complete life, not just in childbearing years.
...and we KNOW that R's don't care if women die as a result and don't respect women or their abilities.
Apparently there enough Democrats who are aligned with Republicans. I am curious to see concrete data on these election results.
Just exactly how many women voted for trump?
Wait until the magas tout that educated citizens as "elitism" and the enemy. This boils down to "the human cannot be good if cognitively inclined. This occurred in the 1930s.
Seems like many educated fell for it too...
Gary, other men raised their voices and some of the vote for death star was surely misogyny. I think we can forget about a woman becoming president unless by a death. I found an interesting article about the outspoken D Rep from NYC, Cortez ( I think, I am just up) who has asked her constituents about voting for death star and her. Got some interesting answers....including they are both real, I think meaning genuine. Also they are both interested in bettering these voters. All I can say is eek.
IMO, we failed miserably to tout the success of Bidenomics. The Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2024: "The U.S. economy is the envy of the world." It drove me crazy that the Democrats failed to make this point, but I am not surprised. Jaime Harrison was a terrible choice as Chair of the DNC. As soon as he was selected I knew that we were in for trouble. The takeaway? "It's the economy, Stupid."
Gary, we women applaud you men who stood up for us, and all you did. (I probably shouldn’t, but I feel a little bit of glee that the Afghan men are learning what it feels like.)
Gary I don't know about you, but for me, this forum/site is about the only site where I can kinda express what I see, amongst others whose minds are open to others points of view. It's an education and the subscription is certainly one of my better investments.
You can on other sites. We need to find and develop a massive counterpunch to the legacy media and the MAGA media that elected trump.
The answer lies in supporting Substack writers and the podcasters such Brian Tyler Cohen. I haven' t even looked at the headlines of legacy media.
They did raise their voices. Black men, Hispanic men, Asian Men, & White Men
raised their voices. They said hell NO. We don't want four more years of Harris
Biden and the Democratic party.
Apparently you didn't get the memo?
Linda H: Your comment reminded me of this quote found at the Boston Holocaust Memorial. So timely!! It is an excerpt from Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem, which reflects on the dangers of staying silent in the face of oppression. Here is the complete text:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
This poem serves as a powerful reminder of the consequences of remaining silent in the face of injustice and the importance of standing up for the rights of others.
It would be less impact full if we were not dealing with the se and coming of Hitler.
So the antidote is to find like minded groups, organizations and movements with which to align, snd immediately snd loudly push back at the first signs of oppression. Resistance is a strong force and joining your voice to others amplifies it. Standing up to hatred, division, unbridled greed and power grabbing will be exhausting but knowing that there have been many smart, committed people working for the past year on what our response needs to become might ease the depression and paralysis that the MAGA crew are relying on in order to push their agenda
Seen that posted many times, apparently on sites with no magats
I'm with you, JDin TX! Your cynicism mirrors mine. STinTN 🤧😖
I’m old and have been screaming for years. Even had a friend tell me I sounded like his Fox friend nuts. Nobody seemed to be able to tell truth from the most egregious (but entertaining) propaganda. He was a man who didn’t watch Fox but he had military reservist friends who did.
Different versions of that exist because Niemoller himself spoke and wrote it with differences for decades. It's fine.
Bears repeating, thanks Veronica
Thank you, madame. I have been thinking about Pastor Niemöller’s words but have been too busy to find the quotation so totally appropriate to this moment.
Linda, it is going to be imperative to both raise our voices in forums where they can be heard, and to make sure that we document what we believe is important in our government and our society, so that it will not be forgotten in the future. We also need to support democratic media, and other institutions. In this article on Backsliding democracies from the Journal of Democracy, the authors are telling us that the research shows that we need to shore up our institutions.
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/misunderstanding-democratic-backsliding/
I think we need to be reaching out internationally to democratic governments, global democratic media and the democrats in other countries in alliance for help getting our story out, and informing people. Andra Watkins also raised the question of us being silenced and whether we will be able to continue on Substack. We shall see. We do not know what kinds of censorship media might be facing. With Elon Musk helping Trump make decisions that is not boding well for true freedom of speech. I am wondering if Musk is taking on the Chief of Staff role that is defined as the gatekeeper for everyone else in Project 2025 in the first chapter.
That is a priority as is securing trusted news sources for local, state, national, and global news. We’ve been watching mainstream/corporate media change before our eyes closer to being state controlled media. It won’t be long before independent media and influencers will be forced into toeing the line.
We need to consider getting VPN’s (Virtual Private Networks) and finding secure, non-intrusive, internet search engines, and social networking sites.
People like Heather Cox Richardson should start now in finding safe ways to ensure her readers have access to her work, as places like this are not likely going to be allowed to share non-party line voices at some point.
And for her own safety as well.
Agreed. I am also recommending that everyone get a VPN so that if media is blocked or US access to it, one can go around it. Then the Democratic party needs to start their own social media platform to rival Truth Social and X, so that we have control of our messaging. Actually, it should be international democratic networks, but shunning oligarchs, so that the control remains with the people, not the oligarchs.
Please read this story Prof. Timothy Snyder wrote today. He was making an analogy of the upcoming White House and Gilligan's Island a popular tv show from the 60s or 70s.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/oligarchs-island?utm_source=substack&publication_id=310897&post_id=151527054&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=f0qfn&triedRedirect=true
He is using humor to illustrate what is going on. If you have never seen Gilligan's Island, which is a very stupid sitcom, here is a link to the movie.
https://youtu.be/DtPnUOO-5UU?si=JZYMbIgfhEJiJ2oe
We need to have a safe source of truth for all. No more echo chambers.
I am reaching out to the Belgian Greens and Petra De Sutter. Belgium knows a thing or two about where we are. Heather will you be Censored? If so what is the alternative? How can we read you if that happens?
The Trump "Landslide" is tiny, 0.129% (little over 1/8th% more votes in 2024 than in 2020). -
Voter Eligible Population increased 1.65% from 240,628,44 to 244,666,890.
See:
https://election.lab.ufl.edu/voter-turnout/2020-general-election-turnout/
and
https://election.lab.ufl.edu/2024-general-election-turnout/
The big difference is in Total Ballots Counted (TBC), with estimates for 155,391,700 for 2024 and 159,738,337 counted in 2020 (lower in 2024 than 2020 by 4,978,637).
Convinces me more clearly that massive more or less Total popular votes really don't matter if they aren't in just the right states to win the Electoral College. I believe as little as 80,000 votes difference in Biden's popular vote (real landslide) could have cost him the EC.
We have the only election in the world in which the person with the most votes is likely to lose. Over and over.
It's happened, to the best of my research, 5 times. 1824 Adams (tho there were 4 candidates so no one really got a majority); 1876 Hayes (some nonsense there it seems like); 1888 Harrison; 2000 Bush (there was some FUNKY stuff in that one); 2016 Trump (more suspect by the day).
(What happened in the '90s??)
Reading about the history of the Electoral College, I can understand why Founders chose to create it at the time, but it has long outlived it's usefulness.
All the things they were worried about happening if Congress or the public were able to chose the president has happened. Namely, collusion of legislative and executive branches, a populist admin being elected, the public lacking the ability/desire to fully educate themselves on each candidate, and a "headstrong democratic mob" running roughshod over everything.
Time for the Electoral College to go; there's no purpose for it to serve that cannot be circumvented in this day and age.
I have commented about this often but thought I would add what I know.
1. Yes those are the five times it has happened. I tend to focus on the 2000 and 2016 votes because the country was so different in the 1800s.
2. 2000 was a very close race with only one state really in contention, Florida. When the SCOTUS stopped the recounts in Florida, Bush was ahead by about 700 votes in Florida but was losing by a few hundred thousand across the nation. A tough loss for Al Gore but he was really the stand up guy conceding to Bush.
3. Prior to 2000, the fear of a popular vote winner losing the electoral college was possible but hadn't happened and never really all that close although 1960 might have flipped in the EC for Nixon of Illinois vote was recounted and then Nixon would have been another case of EC defeating the popular vote but the count in Illinois which was allegedly rigged by Mayor Daley of Chicago made that a non issue and Kennedy won both the popular vote and the EC.
4. The 2016 count was a little stunning because Clinton won the popular vote by several million but lost in all the key swing states by very thin margins.
As for the demise of the Electoral College, good luck with that. To amend the Constitution requires no passed in both houses of Congress and then ratification by 3/4 of the states (no silly 2/3 majorities this time!) That's 38 states. In case you hadn't noticed we are pretty closely divided by states as a country and "the good guys" are behind right now 27 states to 23. So getting even 2/3 of the states to ratify a change in the Constitution is unlikely let alone 3/4. Especially when it will take away the power of the small states to hold away over elections (precisely as was intended).
So while I agree with you 100% that it SHOULD be changed, I seriously doubt ANYTHING will happen. Certainly not in my lifetime (I am 73).
Keep in mind that is been almost 50 years and they are still figuring out If they have ratified the ERA.
The EC is here to stay at least for a pretty long while. If get used to it. Sorry for the bad news!
I don’t expect it to change, never did. Repubs have a strangle hold and I don’t even want to envision what would pry it loose. Not in My lifetime either; a good time to be old.
I do appreciate the point I wasn't previously aware of regarding the alleged rigging of Chicago votes to make the Popular Vote winner the Electoral Vote winner in 1960. If it was rigged, it seemed to come out the way I would have liked in allowing the PV and EC match. Can anyone save me the trouble of trying to find out how many votes it took in Chicago to make the two match in the win column?
Florida went the opposite direction with the certification of 538 votes more for Bush
If we can't get rid of the EC, should we cheer on any time they both end up in the same column (even if it was like Gore getting 271 more PV and Bush getting 269 fewer)?
And it appears just 250,000 votes in the right states could have given Harris the win:
Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) Trump won by 30,000 votes
Michigan (15 electoral votes) Trump won by 75,000 votes
Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes) Trump won by 125,000 votes).
If Harris won those three states, she would have 270 electoral votes to Trump's 268 and she like Trump in 2016 would have been the electoral college winner despite losing the popular vote by 3 million, just as Trump did in 2016.
This was a REALLY close election. Not a landslide by a long shot.
Jim, thanks for this! I know this is purely speculation but I can’t help but wonder if some of the stay-at-home voters were democrats who feared retribution for their votes if Trump won.
I was in Greece during the faux “election” of dictator Papadoupolis. When voters went to the polls they were handed a ballot that simply said YES. If they wanted to vote against him, they had to ask for a NO ballot and their name was taken down. Many in Athens were courageous enough to vote against the military dictatorship, though it was not enough. A young man about to be inducted into the Greek army said “you go back America and tell people this day the Greek people very sad.”
Is this our future?
That's terrifying.
What's more terrifying is I can see it happening.
Sadly, so can I.
Marge, the non-voters I know, are well off millennial males who have never voted because they were raised to believe their votes don't count. Or, so they say. I personally see them as feeling that whoever wins, they will still be comfortable, and so, they don't want to make a decision. Perhaps they are afraid to lose, so don't risk it. All of them are conflict averse.
That’s an insight I haven’t heard before. Thank you!🙏
That's quite right. A slight general shift either way in first past the post can generate massive electoral shifts . This is just what happened, apart from a fallback in Dem voters overall, by several million i believe
The Democratic vote loss was almost NINE million Frank. Biden got 81 million, Harris barely 72 million. Trump got only 1 million more this year than he did in 2020 whereas he got 8 million more in 2020 than in 2016.
What I think this shows is that major events play a huge part in how the electorate votes. 2020 we were in the midst of the pandemic and voters clearly hated what Trump was doing to try to solve it. This year, they hated what Biden was doing for the economy at least as they saw it. But far more people were affected in 2020 by the covid pandemic than the economy in 2024. So Trump got the same votes almost but Harris lost big time. And if course there is the racism and misogyny that made it worse. And yet it was still Very close.
"This year, they hated what Biden was doing for the economy at least as they saw it."
It is no secret that the voters did not see "it". The legacy media and the massive right-wing media developed over decades convinced voters to actually vote against their best interests. It is extremely important to note that the Biden Administration and the Harris campaign were saying and doing all the right things. How many times did they say, "best economy in fifty years?!"
They were shouting into the wrong megaphones.
We must. must, must develop a communication apparatus that out speaks the existing media in the United States today.
Exactly. In the Journal of Democracy, an article on Backsliding Democracies, which included the USA among 12 countries, concluded that,
"But our findings point the primary finger of blame for democratic backsliding at the politicians and political parties that have acted antidemocratically and the weakness of democracy’s institutional guardrails in these countries."
So, we have to strengthen our weak guard rails. Our corporate and social media are oligarchially owned. We need to stop allowing them to amplify certain messengers, and twist others, as happened in this election. In fact, I am convinced that the Democratic Party needs to do what Trump did, and that is start their own Social Media. Or, NATO does, or the UN, or some global democratic organization that can be paid into by private democratically minded people, as well as democratic governments, when they are democratic. Or, something. I am just starting to think this through, and I already ran it by my political discussion group which mentioned problems with it, but I still feel we need a place to amplify the Truth, but not use that word. Use some more populist sounding term. We the People, or something like that.
I live in Germany and we all pay a monthly broadcast fee of 18€. The thing is that no matter what party most people do pay attention to one main news station gets 80% of the public listening. That is whether we use it or not. We will have to be willing to support such an endeavor without getting big oligarchic money involved. That is what is important. Meanwhile, let the oligarchs who will be running the White house devour each other.
See what Prof. Timothy Snyder has to say about our upcoming government. He is making an analogy to a 1960s sitcom. It is called Oligarchs' Island.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/oligarchs-island?utm_source=substack&publication_id=310897&post_id=151527054&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=f0qfn&triedRedirect=true
Sorry I think you are wrong. If you look CAREFULLY at the mainstream media (NOT the right wing media) their coverage was for the most part pretty even handed. The MAGA voters just didn't listen to it. But it is absolutely wrong to suggest that they (MSM) had a hand in this result. Trump got the same vote this year he did in 2020 but Harris lost 9 million of Biden's votes. That wasn't the media. G that was bigotry combined with arrogant elitism, as common problem of the Democrats (and yes, a lot of us here who think we are better than the opposition). If you really think we need "new media" you will spend a long time until you notice that no one in the opposition cares.
It seems Trump has improved a bit more than my earlier calculation, up from 0.129% to a whopping (to him), 1.25% with 926,471 more votes than last time.
2020 saw him get 74,216,728 vs 2024 (so far), at 75,143,199.
It is tempting to hold him to the votes received by midnight on the 5th (like what time he wanted counting to stop).
P.S. I forgot to include that the VEP increased 1.65% so he may not be keeping up with the increase in Voter Eligible Population when is all said and done.
Agreed.
I feel like it's been very little mentioned, but all around the world, admins that over saw COVID recovery are being ousted whether they did a good job or not. Incumbents are NOT beating their "fresh" competitors because people want a change. The grass is always greener, right?
Add to that the nostalgia of "before COVID" and how Trump was the "before COVID" president, and people might not want to go back to the 1950s, but they certainly want to go back to 2018.
Those are not the conclusions of Journal of Democracy in this article on Backsliding Democracies of which the US is one.
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/misunderstanding-democratic-backsliding/
The fault is with the illiberal politicians, and the weakening of democratic girders, like our media, which we let the most greedy selfish people on the planet take over. They amplified some messages and twisted others. I have spent 2 years reading examples of it, until I could not take it any more. So, I no longer employ them.
Thanks Jim, I like looking at these stats, my input is minuscule anyway it’s looked at , but my dedication to fair is ..’just me’ and always will be. That ‘we’ have to bite our tongue more, or bide our time won’t deflect intent , patience provides ….the turtle said so 😉
They saw plenty, their perception was their reality.
They were told that cost increases were due to inflation (though it's obviously more than that now) and when prices didn't come down even though inflation supposedly did, then what are they to think? Obviously someone is lying to them, obviously it's the people saying inflation is down, obviously they must have ulterior motives or be profiting from it. They should definitely not vote for someone who is complicit in lying to them.
President Biden and admin could have shouted the truth about the economy from whatever megaphone they wanted, and it wouldn't have been enough.
People already believe that inflation is the cause of risen costs, not anything else, and that's the way corporations want it. At this point, any alternate explanation looks like an excuse and smells like blood in the water.
I guess losing is expected to motivate us more than the prospect of winning did.
Winning generally leads to complacency. Losing brings fear. Pretty common in politics. That's often why the pendulum swings in both directions.
Indeed, but so many invisible fingers on the scale this time…
Not all that invisible. They told us in pretty stark terms what they are going to do. You just had to believe it. Many Trump voters didn't believe it, called it posturing. I think they will be unpleasantly surprised when most of it turns out to be real.
They have already said that it’s real and gearing up. The net won’t be too selective
🤷♀️
Linda and others, last night I heard Amanda Tyler, speak in Minneapolis. She is the lead organizer of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, and initiative of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty for which she serves as executive director. She is a lawyer and a lifelong American Baptist.
She defined Christian Nationalism (CN) as a twisted confusion of Christian and U.S. identities and urged the large audience (gathered in a big Methodist church) to keep a sharp focus on what happens locally and nationally in order to stand with anyone who is threatened by the goals of CN and to push back whenever and however possible. There was sustained applause.
The reason to resist the goals of this new Trump era: CN the state by destroying democracy, threatens the church by promoting a completely wrong view of God, and threatens the individuals and communities who adherents to CN designate as unacceptable. At this point that list would include immigrants, lgbtq+ and trans folk, people of color, and women. Her book: "How to End Christian Nationalism" (Broadleaf Books) is a call to action.
I love this. There are true Christians in our country, and Trump is the opposite of what they believe.
Was this at Westminster? They put on wonderful speakers and post the lectures. I will look for this!!
It was Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church. You're right, tho. Westminster regularly has important programs and speakers who deserve to be heard.
Well at least our army will be increased when the undecided understand what a mistake they made in falling for DonOLDs false and misguided promises.
Understanding will be too little, too late, but I am pretty sure that if the planned educational changes are made, which are only designed to benefit Venture Capitalists and Home Schooling Christian Nationalists, most parents of school aged children will be upset, and most college bound, or in college students will be upset too. In fact, higher education is discussing what the changes might mean for it in many, many articles.
Trump doesn't want an educated society. MAGA hates people with critical thinking skills.
"Well at least our army will be increased when the undecided understand what a mistake they made in falling for DonOLDs false and misguided promises."
My bet is most of the military will be privatized and Eric Prince will be a Trump advisor. Many of our military contractors were BTW foreign mercenaries.
Some say that Trump looks forward to incarcerating as many people as possible to the benefit of the private jail industry. Whether he gets a piece of the action is within the realm of possibilities. Before he would deport illegals he'll "concentrate" them. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/11/private-prison-stocks-jump-on-trump-appointment-of-immigration-hardliner-tom-homan.html Reminds me of internal exile, gulags.....
Trump did not do one damn thing in his first term to help improve the lives of the people who voted for him. There were tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations, which were used to manipulate the companies’ stock prices, known as stock buybacks. The funds were not invested in the businesses or their employees, just the shareholders. Then about a million people died needlessly due to how the Trump administration handled Covid. The Trump supporters never admitted to themselves that they had been lied to and taken advantage of. I don’t know how this situation changes.
In a nutshell, but for Russian intervention, we wudda won bigly.
Most Trump votes came from fear of "the other" not because they liked his policies, appearance, and demeanor.
Jenn, they probably still don’t know and won’t believe. Their State TV and social media will withhold the info or blame it on Democrats.
The GEO group is the largest private prison contractor.Their headquarters is (of course) in Boca Raton,Florida. They are a major GOP donor.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/geo-group/summary?id=D000022003
And perhaps special “showers”
The republicans have never wanted and educated society and have never wanted to fund it…going back decades. And it paid off for them.
Vance is already touting their plans for school vouchers. Private and Christian schools will proliferate, just like the private, “Academies” did when the Supreme Court ordered desegregation. There will be an initial dash out the public school doors by those who will now be able to afford non-public education using their tax dollars. The drain on public school funding will mean cuts in programs, which will spark a second, slower exodus of families who had initially stuck with the public school system. It is an open question whether public school education will survive at all in some parts of the country.
🤬I am child-free, but I am a strong proponent of our public schools and have always voted that my tax dollars support this system. I rue the years-long chipping away at the support and efficacy of this bedrock educational institution which generations of my family benefited from.
There are so many people whose lives are better because they got an education, a public education. The private schools, especially religious ones, don’t educate so much as they indoctrinate.
And...... when you take resources away from public schools, when you take away the population most active in wanting educational change by having them get paid to go eslewhere it results in a higher concentration of under achieving schools and a larger population of underachieving students. The poor, lower middle, class and some middle class will loss the most ... it becomes a wider socio-economic underachieving outcome with bad cultural consequences. We need to rethink education, reform education, not make it a socio-economic disaster. When people are poorly educated the consequences to the culture are dramatic and long lasting. We are as great, as our skills for work prepared population, and our poorest educated persons.
Also cuts to public higher education.
Suzanne, I saw first hand, as a long time Cal State college staffer, the impact two-term Gov Reagan had on my state’s educational system (and health & welfare systems too). Then he went national….when (to my horror) he was elected POTUS…also twice. With recent events, it’s clear we didn’t learn our lesson the first time….
The plan is to destroy it, they want to privatize everything that Franklin created as a public service. There is money in them there services
It all starts at the local level! Contact school board members and local legislators NOW and let them know you don’t want your state to become Florida where the majority of vouchers is going to private, religious schools with no requirements for teacher cert/school accreditation.Also, I kid you not, parents are able to purchase big screen TV’s, stand-up paddle boards and theme park tickets with voucher 💲.
I live in Florida. You are assuming that those in power are themselves educated and rational.
I cannot like this comment, Dave. It is chillingly accurate.
In a rural state like mine vouchers, which our governor is planting his flag on, will not help. In other words what good are vouchers in a state where many counties have one (or two) elementary schools and one high school, period. No choice available.
They will come, if enough vouchers (tax money) are available and the regulations for establishing a private school are not too burdensome.
I wonder how many female college bound high school students will decide to forego Florida, Texas, South Dakota and a few other states' previously highly regarded colleges?
None.
If only that were the case. Voting with your feet still sends a powerful message. De Santis, for example, needs a powerful brush-back to his diabolical (and weird) desire to control women's bodies.
Yes, he does Swbv ! Just ordered my reproductive rights t-shirt from Etsy. I plan on having many conversations between now and the ‘26 midterm.
And they will bow, what else can they do.
Linda, The Intercept describes the plan to muzzle universities. It proscribes DEI and would have monitors checking universities for compliance. Violations by the elite universities with huge endowments can result in increasing the tax on endowment income from 1.4% to 35%. Continued violation could result in SEIZURE of the endowment. This would, if enacted, certainly cause universities to change their policies and practices.
Against us all if Kevin Robert’s has his way…
That’s the hope….🫶
JAN 20
Trump's "Freedom of Speech" EO goes into effect. His followers-- those who lack critical thinking skills-- don't have the sence to understand that we already have Freedom of Speech that is so strongly preserved, Trump was allowed to lie to his constituents over 33,000 times in his first term on Twitter alone. They don't realize that it doesn't ADD freedoms, it takes them away-- from saying anything negative about him or labeling or calling out any lies that he or any of his people might say as "disinformation" or "misinformation" punishable.
Then, there are those who clearly want this kind of Unfreedom of Speech.
My friend in the Natl Guard said that he and his platoon, (the majority of it) and the military will defend this country. Again, there are MAGA within, and 45's going to fire any 4 Star Generals who won't do his bidding.
Professor Richardson-- we need the military to stand up to him, but they can't announce it yet, or he will fire them all.
Project 2025 has a plan, man
I hate to say it, but the Taliban are another cultural world, where American politics simply backed the "wrong horses" and finally conceded the loss. The Taliban belong to Afghanistan's largest by far ethnic group, and it was telling. Once Trump undercut the government, it was doomed, and when Biden's admin began pulling out, it imploded, far far faster than "military intelligence" ever thought. They continue to pursue their arch conservative agenda. Why is anything Heather just wrote a surprise?
It is not a surprise to me. Seeing it in print from a reputable source 4+ years after the event and having some people see it for the first time is the surprise. I've been calling MAGA the "Christian Taliban" for many years.
More than anything, I hadn't thought to make the connection. I saw the parallels to Nazi Germany quickly, but the HATE that most of my "Christian" relatives have for the Islamic faith and Muslim people made me blind to idea that they could still model their behaviors.
It was a bit of a shock to read it so plainly, and hard to stomach the full implications of such likeness. For so many of my formative years, the Taliban WERE the Nazis to me - I grew up during the War on Terror. I watched the silencing of journalists and detractors by beheading on the news. I think this got a more visceral reaction out of me than the Nazi similarities.
Voices of racist and mysoginistic Dems MUTE on Election Day evidenced by millions of Dems who sat out the election compared to Biden’s votes in 2020!
I was about to say the same thing.
Y'all....I am literally visualising concentration camps, ovens and smoke.........this is apocalyptic!
It means more to me, I think, since my dad and our family was stationed in Germany during the Nuremberg Trials and Berlin Airlift . Though only 4 years old when we left (and not speaking a word of German now, though it was more of my first language learned from the maids), I seem to have paid more attention to how Germany fell into following Hitler .
My mother often pointed out the fallacy of "It could never happen here," with reminders that Hitler was more "popular" in Germany than FDR was in the United States throughout the 1930s.
Now it makes me think of simple popularity as being sometimes too much like wrestling "entertainment" popularity.
Exactly, and now our cultural go to is wrestling. The best measurement of how far we have fallen. Betcha the stars of the horror shows of wrestling will be stars of the Met Gala next year.
The USA had quite a cadre of Nazis in the 30’s. Japan shut them up in 41.
And please remember that at that time Germany was a beacon for the arts, psychiatry, and education. It was the most educated country in the world.... and it voted for Hitler.
While that all is true, Germany was also devastated by WWI and the devastating economic impacts of the Versailles Treaty. It was fertile ground for Hitler to plow. Economic uncertainty, particularly among young men, was an important factor in THIS election.
Yes, Linda. But on what issues? We must be focused and selective. I suggest we begin with (1) making sure Biden gets his judges approved as many as possible and (2) the DEM Senators never agree with free pass of cabinet members. It is the constitutional duty of the senate to make sure voters know what kind of individuals are governing voters. If they fail to do so, they will lose another election. Best to stick to keep reminding Trump and voters that DEMs are faithful guardians of the Constituion.
Word! Heather Cox Richardson started this!! (JUST kidding.) (She did though.) 8^)
Yes I was just going to say the same thing... not a subtle morality tale.
If everything that trump promised is implemented we will be one step away….
The Taliban provide an important warning about the direction the US is going. So far I haven't seen a red line that Trump wasn't willing to cross. Perhaps there is a red line that a Republican majority won't cross.
Haven’t we just learned our voices don’t matter? They laid it all at our feet instead of solving the problem themselves. I called my reps today and left messages. But I don’t believe it will do anything.
And yet. The next Democratic candidate will have to be male, White, and with some degree of TV presence & charisma - if he is to win. That’s now a fact, given the makeup of American voters now.
Who would have thought the abusive Catholic Church and its misogynistic practices would make a come back in the SCOTUS and Vice filled Vice Presidency.
These are trying days for many of us, and I especially think of you during this time. Thank you for giving so much of yourself.
Heather is the gift that keeps on giving. As do so many others - like Joyce Vance, Robert Reich, Jennifer Rubin, Thom Hartmann to name a few.
We need to speak out against the patriarchy especially the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic Church. The religious right controls SCOTUS and this needs to stop.
I support Americans United for the Separation of Church & State - au.org . They've been working for 80 years.
I agree- I left the Catholic Church years ago because hundreds or thousands of pedophile priests ran rampant and destroyed thousands of children’s lives and not thrown in jail where they belong. I have family members and friends who are devout Catholics, all praying for a Trump win, because of abortion, LGBTQ rights, etc. The extreme court is heavily weighted to religious extremists and with Trump elected, the Senate and House (probably) going to the GOP, we’re fu&ked. I seriously doubt if there will be another election.
I am a cradle Catholic. I left because we lit one too many candles for victims of gun violence. The Catholic Church condemns birth control and abortion because it is prolife. So if it's wrong to take a pill or use a device to prevent a pregnancy, then why isn't it wrong to own a gun and ammunition?
I'm sick of the Catholic Church preaching and urging their congregations to vote against reproductive rights. While the Bishops remain silent on supporting gun regulation and the morality of gun ownership among Catholics or The Second Amendment.
That’s an interesting subject Gary , how does autocracy/SBC/Catholicism perpetuate like mindedness and why
Gary, We are only as controlled as we allow ourselves to be. There are laws that are seen and unseen...laws within and laws outside of us that protect us and fellow human beings who dwell along with us in this, our physical earthly home. I too am so grateful for wonderful heroes and heroines. If we notice there is a great respect for the law....for the Constitution...for the recognition of justice and injustice among these great ones.
I have never witnessed these women or this man using the law to injure or control anyone's life in a way that would harm them. I have seen the law used to protect our citizenry from wrong and cruel behavior. I have witnessed fair justice administered.
Gary , sadly , I agree that religious organizations have taken over the minds and hearts of too many due to the lust for power and control of various (not all) church leaders/pastors.
I believe from experience and from God's Word that His word is written on our hearts. He is with me as a guide. God allows me to choose. When making wise or unwise choices, He never leaves me....and that says a lot. He is a God of justice as well as compassion.
I have seen the work of these women and this man. The law is written on their hearts and within their brilliant minds as expressed in their life's work. We need more like them.
Thank you Gary for "lifting up their names".
Control was the word that stood out Emily, as always I ruminate for better/more accurate answers . We don’t HAVE to control everything… but making sure truth is available. We have to educate well enough that critical thinking is done sufficiently .
Not sure this is in the educational plan; or even current .
I’d venture fiction sells in any format more than reality. A tall hurdle .
It's remarkable that people voted for a man who was open about his intent to be a dictator and his fascist leanings - a man who promised to process 20,000,000 people through concentration camps - and they think the government is still going to care what they want!
Exactly. Heather’s question “How can Trump deliver the national abortion ban MAGAs want when sixty-five percent of voters want abortion rights?” implies that he would somehow worry about what the American people want. Reality check: He doesn’t give a flying f*ck.
I don't think Trump gives a damn about abortion, whether it's banned or not, nor any of the other hard line policies he's threatened to put into action. All he cares about, is that he's avoided jail and can now start to amass billions of American tax payer dollars. I think he'd turn his back on anyone, even Putin, if it suited him to do so. He's going to be a loose canon everywhere he turns I reckon - totally running his own psychopathic race. In this sense, I think there's a chink in the amour.
I am not sure that there is anyone Trump would not betray if he saw enough personal advantage in it.
Between the cognitive decline and being drunk on power, I think he might.
Trump worships money. Musk has more money than God. Trump thinks Musk is his God
It’s the green
Totally agree with you. This whole circus was all for one person: Trump himself. For him it's just one big "get out of jail free" card.
But I'm curious if he would turn his back on Putin. The Russians made it quite clear, all out in the open, that they helped him win the election and that they demand payment for that. The Russians have their... methods to show that you should return their favours, and Rump's a coward, so he will obey them.
Who else thinks Trump is now nearly expendable to his sponsors? An early 25th Amendment seems possible if they want a better "face" seeming to run the show. Maybe history will repeat, though, as in when a certain German's sponsors thought they could keep using him instead of the other way around.
Last night I watched the new extended version of, "The Story - and Lessons - of Fascism in Europe with Rick Steves," well worth a look while it is still available
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2ELvxuKMUQ
He will pay up before any 25th amendment. But really, chump’s supporters are on Putin’s side as are those in the party who want him gone anyway. It’s the green side
Lawrence O’Donnell noted that trump outsourced almost all of actual leadership to Musk and the cabal of evil (Steve Miller, etc). The only thing Trump wanted to keep for himself is “the liquid gold” - oil and gas - the area with the most potential for enriching himself. So he keeps the Get-out-if-jail title but spends his time golfing and grifting. MAGA won’t let their savior be removed so he’ll just be sidelined to babble incoherently off camera while the oligarchs run the show.
The 25th amendment REQUIRES 2/3 vote in BOTH House and Senate to permanently oust a President. I doubt they can get even close to that number in support between the MAGA masses who love Trump and Democrats who will fear Vance in power even more. Unless Trump dies ("naturally" or otherwise) he will be in office for 4 years.
Of course given Putins ability to make things happen I would not bet against a "natural" demise when he visits Russia.
He’s shown he’s not afraid of the rule of law in America, not afraid to steal classified documents and store them in his out house, not afraid to swear on public TV that ‘they’re eating the pets’ and he could be far more powerful than Putin, especially if he’s cozying up with the Taliban. When the iron curtain is drawn back Putin could well be exposed as a little old Wizard of Oz character with a big megaphone.
Putin IS little, that's for sure. I always wonder if he is secretly gay.
Putin is the powerful one, chump is on a leash
That’s why I feel certain he will be quickly sidelined and Vance placed in the Oval.
Can't really happen unless he dies (one way or another). The 25th amendment takes 2/3 vote in BOTH houses of congress and that would require Democratic support. That won't happen. We fear Vance more than Trump. Difference between really bad and outrageously terrible.
I think Vance was a pawn. A loyal attack dog who would sell his soul. He doesn’t have enough wealth and star quality to be given the top job.
Vance is a hand puppet. It's easy for the billionaires to shove their hand up his ***.
And fixing his damaged ego by getting even with his so-called enemies.
He has probably paid for some. That’s caring.
Given how notorious he is for paying for nothing, I would not count on it.
One thing to be grateful for is that T doesn't want to rule the world. (Putin does.) His wishes are smaller and more petty but still very destructive. He wants to feel like a King, have total control over his people, and receive endless supplies of fawning praise. Oh, and he wants a parade with big guns like the big boys have.
He doesn't give 2 hoots about the rest of the world except for his autocratic pals. He never travels to other countries,, his comfort zone is Mar-a-lago where he is indeed King.
.Thank goodness his visions of glory are so childish.
The world building will have to come from his circle of sycophants, who are smart and wily but utterly without charisma. Musk, Vance, Miller- some of the creepiest guys around. He never picks other appealing charismatic figures to grace his inner circle, he wants no heir. Its all about him, always and forever.
These are a few of the silver linings.
He does travel. He went to Korea during first term. Also to the Middle East.
Kazz McKnight, Putin owns the orange smear now. Blackmail I’m quite sure;
perhaps photos he can use. Of course, he saw diaper boy’s weaknesses as a former KGB officer, and has milked him steadily ever since. Quite the duo until now…. That more than almost anything else has my attention as the orange smear turns away from NATO and turns toward nit nit et al. Meanwhile Heather’s posts provide deeply thoughtful historically accurate info
that stimulate growth to my shrinking brain, plus a growing resolves to do more pushing against my personal
limitations and habits.
We’ve lost control of our government with this election. It’ll never be the same. Trump will put in a national abortion ban because that’s what the extremists who wrote project 2025 want - control over women’s reproduction, along with getting rid of all climate policies, eliminating the Fed, etc, etc. Fox, Newsmax, and all other right wing media literally brainwashed tens of millions of Americans and helped to get him elected. WTF.
You are 100% right, except for one thing. He won’t turn his back on Putin, not without a tea party as a result.
Don’t you mean tee party?
Well, pee or Polonium. I prefer Polonium. He might enjoy a tee/pee party.
Ew. I'm getting pictures in my head now, JD. Thanks a lot - NOT! ;)
I also think that states’ rights are something the fetid citrus-fruit-colored lump and his ilk will completely ignore, so so much for enshrining the right to abortion in state constitutions.
"States rights" is just another "GOP" BS phrase to legitimize bullying. They totally ignore states rights when it pleases them.
Which underscores the importance of national elections, so that state governments feel the squeeze, not just individual citizens.
National elections have screwed us with the propaganda onslaught, and the electoral bs
The thing I don't get about pushing for "returning power to the states" is that it literally undermines the federalization of the USA. Could the government be smaller, less intrusive? Sure, but not the way DT et al want it to be.
Without a central, federal government able to hold states accountable, then we really are just 50 countries in a trench coat pretending to be taller than we are.
Without a central, federal government, who is going to stop states from seceding if they feel they can do better by themselves? What's to stop the Union from falling apart, patriotism? Nationalism? Moral obligation to a government that doesn't exist and they don't believe in?
Good questions, TJB. I seem to recall that "states rights" was the popularly utilized explanation for southern secession in 1860.
Fabulous point, yes it was.
And secession looks like a pretty good option these days for California, Oregon and Washington. "Pacificland", home of the still free Americans. I know it sounds crazy but if Gavin puts it on the ballot, I'd vote for it.
Thank you.
"Could the government be smaller, less intrusive? Sure, but not the way DT et al want it to be."
DJT and Republican leaders since Reagan have used Orwellian claims to hide their hidden agendas. Even when they have had a pretty open opportunity, they don't make the impact of government smaller. except for abandoning the common good and making "Robber Barons" "great" again. Read between the lines of (there's Orwell again) "Supply Side Economics". Also, except for protecting the whims of the powerful, they have certainly not made government less intrusive.
As for dismantling the overall influence of the Chief Executive branch? That's the LAST thing Trump wants. He will wink at lawless stuff when he chooses (with $COTUS's blessing) but pull rank whenever he wants; rather pushing it in fact.
Maybe this is another one of the things I need to disassemble from my Republican upbringing.
I don't have the experience or education necessary to speak further on this topic, so I'll take your thoughts and see what I can do to substantiate them.
Thank you for bringing this subliminal biases to me attention.
He (the felon elect) can’t have it both ways. State rights on some issues and then his way on others. State rights create divisions and destroy the “United” in United States of America. One’s rights and liberties should not be different from state to state. That just doesn’t make sense to me. You are either a citizen with rights and liberties or you are not.
trump's mandates will all be accomplished by force.
Every morning since 11/05/24 I wake up (if I've even gone to sleep) to the realization that this is a nightmare we can't shake. It continues to take a downward spiral. 11/12 MSNBC Morning Joe has joined the pathetic mantra about all the things the dems need to do differently in communicating their message about road construction, better jobs, health care; we need to assess what we did wrong . . . are they freakin' kidding me???? trump and his minions spewed vitriolic hate and lies every single moment of every single day and the dems have a communication problem?? MSM normalized a psychopathic felon and it is the dems fault??
None of this makes sense which is why, to keep a shred of sanity and protect any semblance of brain health, I now read only a couple of Substack authors (friends have thanked me profusely for "introducing" them to HCR) and the Economist, listen to HCR's podcasts, and Boston NPR stations. The TV and computer are for only watching movies, British shows, DryBar (clean) Comedy.
I used to care and now I can't and don't. My voice and those of millions of like-minded good people who have spent a lifetime of being involved politically, socially, locally, nationally have been shut down and time is no longer on our side. My heart breaks for my kids, grands, and those I assisted in becoming naturalized U.S. citizens.
Kamala Harris was the best thing (besides Heather!!) to come our way in decades. Barack Obama was an inspiration but Kamala saw him one and raised him by two! Such a positive, smart, compassionate, energetic, inclusive woman who spoke of opportunities and Americans elected a vitriol spewing, lying, mentally ill convicted felon to the highest position in the world who will have the nuclear codes on top of everything else! Good luck with that and God help us all.
In the meantime, I'm going back to the sixties and mellowing out. While the temps have been unseasonably warm (still playing golf 3 times a week in November!!) I will have to smoke "mellow" inside as MA is now under a wild fire watch (acreage has started burning)- oh, that's right climate change is hoax!!
Ah, Janet, you write some of my feelings so well. It isn't democratic messaging, it is trying to address the propaganda, disinformation, and easy emotional outrage that so many people seem attuned to. The complete abdication of our "legacy" media's responsibility for accurate reporting coupled with the "anything goes" "information" of social media got us here. If we all listen to the same unbiased and accurate news sources we would get startlingly different results than we get with the garbage that MAGA is currently supping up like my cats lap up tuna juice.
Love the cats and tuna juice!!!
You are so right. Kamala lost and the "blame the Dems" game immediately started. I was also thinking: wait, wut? Y'all forgot about how the Russians so heavily influenced the election by social media, they basically handed the election to the COF?
I really, really wished Kamala would have been president - the first woman ever! But alas, the people that did vote apparently preferred an orange pus bag over a decent black woman...
I could have written your comment! I feel the same way! Every time I hear the press blaming Democrats, I think “oh no, this is all on you.” No one worked harder than the press to make the US go full fascist. We all saw the campaign. We all saw how they worked to present Trump as an acceptable candidate. He didn’t even run a campaign himself unless we consider whining about how unfair everything is and grifting crap to rubes to be a campaign. Meanwhile Harris ran one of the best campaigns in history. I just can’t listen to this latest attempt on their part to make us see something that is so contrary to reality. Your idea of going back to the 60s sounds mighty appealing.
The joy and progress for this country and all of its people lead by Harris coming off of a strong building economy to be shut down by a literal cloud of doom is treacherous… I have a daughter in college and a son in middle school and that is what makes my heart break most… I did not prepare them for the cruelty they will see and their future already feels changed to me and it’s heartbreaking. Yes we will absolutely get through this, I am not throwing in the towel, but this is a seismic shift for sure… I’m glad I live in a “safe” state for now and have some time to prepare for how to move forward and how to guide my kids through, it’s certainly rough times ahead :’(
Nothing that does not personally appeal to him. That's what an autocrat is. Hard to fathom why so many people want that.
Their grammar ain't strong. Obama won with "Yes we can". This one's version is "Only I can". Appeals to the lazy.
It sure ain't what what democracy is about,
That said, and I know I say this often, the whole concept of voting in this country, is presented far more as a matter of personal choice than of personal responsibility. That's how you get "protest votes" that don't begin to have the focused impact that focused, disciplined and directed protest has, and can result in in worse than nothing. Self-governance, collectively shaping the quality and outcomes of our own society, is serious, adult stuff, and yet how do we as a society reinforce that? In the schools and in our national conversation? Isn't taking the wheel of our own collective destiny something to prepare for? To be knowledgeable and prepared to take our share of responsibility seriously and not expect any elected official to take completely over for us. That's not what democracy is.
He hates the same people.
Nailed it again Dutch Mike. As chump said, loud and clear. Whether you like it or not. Who will fight back. Those of us who will have the power of the White Roses…
And a man (i refer to Elon)who told all those voters BEFORE the election that electing DonOLD (and Elon) was going to hurt EVERYBODY financially but the suckers voted for him because they didn't think they were part of everybody.
Yeah, incredible, right? He's just like the Southern slave owner, who tells the people that they should be poor and work hard because it's good for them - while sitting in his mansion, smoking a big cigar and sipping his expensive whisky in a big leather arm chair. And STILL they voted for him!!
Like slaves voting for more of the same. And they likely would if they had Rupert piped in to tell them about what a benevolent guy he was.
I would turn "think" into "understand."
That's a whole different ballgame.
From CNN:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-already-wielding-power-causing-050048064.html
"President-elect Donald Trump is already flexing raw power, showing he may try to subvert Washington’s checks and balances and leaving foreign leaders scrambling to come to terms with his victory.
Early signs from Mar-a-Lago, the Florida club and estate where Trump is building his new administration, suggest that when he moves back into the White House in January, bolstered by a thumping win and a democratic mandate, he will act with maximum force.
He’s showing he plans to rule a GOP monopoly on power — if Republicans win control of the House, which CNN has not yet projected — with unchallenged authority. He sees
Congress as a rubber stamp rather than a separate, co-equal branch of government."
WE ARE GOING TO BE IN FOR A ROUGH TIME....
Wiki calls him a politician - he's not, never has been. Takes more than a golden escalator. He's completely outwitted by the fancy footwork of Congress, so he's going to try brute force.
Brute force is what is coming
DJT's Minions provided him the Millions of $$$ to Outwit the Legal System... As a Businessman DJT went Bankrupt 5-6 times... DJT will Ruin this Country... Elon Musk, and Putin will Cash-In on their Investments in DJT....
It's like looking through a microscope - what looked like a couple of tiny spots on a slide turns out to be a squirming mass.
A plague just waiting to be loosed…
And the brute power will increase as their profits rise.
We have yet to see who will control the House and by what margin. Trump has already tapped Elise Stefranek for US Ambassador and me could tap a few others. This could leave the House in the hands of Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker for a time.
Stefanek as Ambassador sounds harmless enough, and Jeffries as Speaker sounds very good indeed. A chink of light.
She is dangerous and smarter than chump
His likely tap for AG will activate the goon squads looking for “left-leaning white women that he can kill and drag their bodies through the streets.” Or words to that effect.
Taking Stefranek and Rubio out of the majority might make for a whole new ballgame.
The dye was cast a while back. Just took a while to color us all hoodwinked.
It's likely that many of HCR's readers have gardens and even livestock. As crops rot in the fields we will need to make an effort to feed those less fortunate than ourselves.
Elon Musk calls Trump's election, "A New World Order." Indeed, let's help each other by supporting our local food banks and other charitable organizations.
I agree that it is shocking. Robert Hubbell said 93 mil eligible voters did not vote, in addition to those who voted for Trump or someone else. A lot of people did not get that message about Trump. They don't know what fascism is, and they didn't listen to the discussions of what he was going to do with understanding. As a former teacher I can just imagine how baffled people who do not avidly read the news are about anything. There are deserts of good information in the US. My husband's colleague who comes from Texas told us that there are rural towns where people watch tv, and listen to the radio for music and have no idea who their mayor is. That is a travesty. It is one of the institutional pillars mentioned in the Journal of Democracy on Backsliding democracies that is important. They say,
"Overall, however, it was a wide range of factors, not just economic and governance grievances, that led voters in these countries to elect leaders who ended up eroding democracy. These factors include broader sociocultural anxieties, the impressive electoral and narrative skills of some of the leaders in question, specific features of electoral laws, the new fluidity and corruptibility of media environments in many democracies, and the frequent appeal to voters almost everywhere of change for change’s sake."
For everyone defending the NYT and WaPo, there are plenty of us that lay a lot of blame at the feet of their oligarchic owners. Still, Fox, Sinclair and Newsmax have a lot of blame. The Spanish language stations did not get a strong enough message out either, although last minute they tried.
Forums that were unused to serious politics that had Harris on, such as Call Her Daddy, were filled with comments from young women complaining about politics being interjected into their show. I was shocked, and realized how insular my life is where I am just not around people like this. I am realizing more and more just how many people are either ill informed, disengaged or both. The daily stuff of survival has perhaps taken its toll. Or, they are grappling with too many problems.
The Journal of Democracy Article goes on to say,
"But our findings point the primary finger of blame for democratic backsliding at the politicians and political parties that have acted antidemocratically and the weakness of democracy’s institutional guardrails in these countries."
What are our institutional guard rails and how can we strengthen them. I feel that should be our focus in the coming years. If our government does process people through the prisons that we hear are gaining in stock value, and other elements, we should be reaching out to institutions outside our country for help with shoring them up and stopping attrocities.
Yesterday the Guardian had a video embedded in an article in which Michiganders were interviewed who at both Harris and Trump rallies. The impression I got is that the Trump voters are misinformed on who Trump is and what he stands for, and the Harris voters are misinformed on how many people support Trump for whom it is not in their self interest.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/10/donald-trump-the-left-social-media-rightwing-propaganda-progressives-woke?utm_term=673192d530aecb9f87cd92cebb58cc28&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email
What we need it to try to keep community, and to hope that we can inform people over the next 4 years, and present alternatives to what they are going to be experiencing, even if we have to do it through forums like The Guardian, which has promised to report on Democracy.
After recently finding out that about half of Americas read at a 6th grade level or less, and while listening and reading to so many well-educated, thoughtful Americans (and others) expound on the evils of the citrus-hued lump (CHL), it struck me that there are literally millions of us that simply cannot take in this information on a very, very basic level, let alone think critically about anything. And now with the CHL planning to decimate/delete the DOE, education in this country is going to be even worse, and the effects of this, if nothing else, will have years’-long repercussions. 🤯
The implications are that we need to be formatting information on TikTok, or whatever platforms arise that people listen to in bite sized chunks that they can manage. Also, it will be important to repeat the same messages over and over and over again. That has been a key to Trump's success. So, picking 3 big messages to make very relatable and hit it over and over and over again. While we are at it, we might try making them in Russian too. Got to go after Putin as well.
Just check out Goebbels rules for propaganda, and Mein Kampf, repubs did.
I agree that the low education level/lack of "executive" thinking of so many is a big, big problem. But, it is even more basic - moral vs. immoral! I have S. Sudanese folks whose lives I have been involved with for 2 decades . . . they are naturalized citizens (kids born here), some have little to no formal education and/or are semi-illiterate, are Black in America (facing abject racism and most likely blocked from many economic opportunities) yet, they are profound thinkers (their kids are sharp as tacks!!) and totally understand the evil that is trump. They understand horror and the dismantling of democracy - they survived a genocide and saw autocracy first hand. They are the salt of the earth, are as nice, good, hard working people as you'll ever meet. However, they do not understand how any American (who by world standards have so much!!) could vote for trump. We cried together.
The MAGAts I know, are not ignorant or uneducated. Ideological to the extreme, educated (more than a few), and Fox watchers, at fire stations, mechanic shops, and any place where is public has waiting rooms. We’ve all been there…
Same here, as I am unfortunately in Florida. You describe the people well, JD. They all need deprogramming, in my view. I have walked out of restaurants that play Fox News and I tell them why as I leave. I have told doctors that I will not continue to be their patients if they do not stop forcing us to have to hear Fox New in the waiting rooms. In one case, I told the receptionist that I would be in my car and when the doctor is ready to see me, she could call me on my cell phone. But, of course, I am in the minority. But one doctor did heed my advice, and told me I wasn't the only one who complained. Little steps...that don't make much difference here.
I have done the same but mostly ears have no filters. Which means brains often have none either.
WaPo has suddenly got very readable and engaged. It can't just be because I've sent them an unsubscribe...
Many people believe Trump/musk rigged the election
Many good people …
On both sides, they're all saying that.
Voting machine are owned by Republicans. Musk has the know how
Propaganda worked its magic and swing states (and Texas) had enacted numerous “voter integrity” laws and put chump people in critical positions. They had four years and did’t waste a minute.
The Russians did.
Non-stop. The bots never get tired or resist…
Oh, dear! Surely not? s/
His voters are likely to be some of the people who get processed. His voters think they will be spared the negative consequences. They will be wrong. As long as Trump is in office, it will be “government” by whim, which was how kings ruled.
That’s so true! And he’s never shown a bit of loyalty to any of his supporters! Why do people keep believing they’ll be treated any differently?
I think for many people the realization that there WON’T be another regular election when they catch on that they’ve been duped is going to be swift and painful.
Or maybe they will cheer for their team permanently in possession of the ball?
What a revolting development this is!
Ah well, I guess it's nice when your expectations are met.
Angela, this is the demonstrable result of the propaganda and disinformation machine (courtesy of Russia) that MAGA bought into.
Yes I keep saying, it took a while but Russia won the Cold War.
Somewhere, (I simply cannot now locate it) in the recent comments was a recommendation to look at:
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Win and What’s Next w/ Heather Cox Richardson | The Weekly Show
I did, and really, Prof Heather gives such a clear eyed and calm commentary on what is going on, I encourage anyone who hasn’t seen this to take a look. It is an hour long, but I think well worth it. My sincere thanks to whomever first put it up for us.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-show-with-jon-stewart/id1583132133?i=1000676185735
I got it from my daughter. I highly recommend it.
Beat me to it; thanks, Carol! Here it is on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7cKOaBdFWo
Excellent interview and information. What happened, where do we go from here? It stirred up some hope in my old and tired mind. Please click the link and listen to every word.
I did and it helps
I think I'll listen again when I play it for my wife; she hasn't heard it yet.
Thank you Carol C and Lynell for this link. I just finished watching. Heather left me teary and hopeful. Onward we go.
Folks will also appreciate Heather's Facebook Chat of 11/04/24 (near the end):
"Our job will be simply to do the next right thing, no matter how hard it is. And if the majority of us keep doing the next right thing, we're going to be okay."
https://fb.watch/vOTajBOUeE/
Eventually, maybe. But the road to okay is worse than a stagecoach trail through Indian territory, with bandits and snakes around every bend and under every rock.
Yeah and don't forget the Native Americans had every RIGHT to attack our stage coaches. It was, after all, THEIR land first.
Never forget that, but still a rough ride
It was excellent!
John Oliver's latest episode on MAX may be comforting in a weird ranting sort of way to some. It's more of a misery loves company show, but we felt better after watching it.
Love that John, introduced to us years ago by that other Jon
Absolutely - and my half-sister has written back saying the same thing - it's brought her a degree of calm.
Thanks, Carol and Lynell, for the links!
The billionaire boys, who became powerful via their daddy’s money, think they can rule the world. Women are just part of their domain. They have no idea, maybe because they slept through history class, that Putin like all the world’s tyrants, will dominate them. They gave up our beautiful democracy for 30 pieces of silver. I don’t blame the ignorant uninformed voters as much as I blame the greed of these pampered boy-men, who never became human.
Or Men...
Civilized men at any rate. Emotional Adults.
Power (and money is very much a form of power) tends to corrupt. History and folklore is replete with that motif. Some people can be entrusted with a great deal more power than others, but it is said that even good intentions may lead to hell, and certainly unaccountable power, absolute power, is a disaster waiting to happen, if not already in progress. There are societies even in the present day where a few families have nearly all the money and all the political power, while most others scratch for subsistence. At some point extreme domination sinks any trace of democracy unless it is actively and consistently resisted.
I am fascinated by the Putin angle. It seems like he does have something the dirty old man does not want exposed.
Putin is a murderous “tough guy.” Trump is an ass who and a faux “tough guy.” Putin will use his useful idiot until the useful idiot dies and is replaced by a younger, even more pliable one. By denying the phone call, Putin sent Trump a message and the weakling caved by declining to push back. Putin 1, Trump 0.
Ginny and Dave A, I totally agree. Putin is the shadow that wants to take over this country. I fear that we may be facing another ice age.
I think that tfg isn't motivated that way; he just lusts for what Putin has, and believes that Putin can give it to him.
<sidebar. Now I have to come up with a new way of referring to that (insert profanity here). fpotus was my go-to. I don't think I can get away with my usual go-to here because it is profane and vulgar. Guess I'll go with "tfg" where the "f" does not stand for "former"...>
What could Putin have that would be damaging to Trump? He’s impervious. We all already know he’s a vial, immoral, selfish criminal but the majority of voters still voted for him.
"Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” - Trump Jr.
All guilty of evil or stupidity
Brilliant essay Heather! The implied comparison of the Taliban to the incoming maga regime is so fitting and terrifying. It will always end up badly for those who don’t stick up for and protect their neighbors and loved ones. They are always next.
"They are always next." Very true.
So Boo freaking Hoo to all the Afghan men who sat by & let this happen.
Chump set up the current situation, as well as the withdrawal. He only knows destruction.
Karen, I have been referring to MAGA as the Christian Taliban for probably 10 years now; initially, all my MAGAt friends said resounding "nu-uh" to that. I haven't trundled into their world much since the election, but I am biding my time...
Hi Ally, I agree. They are the Christian Taliban. Not only their beliefs and values, they look just like them in their trucks with the trump flags flapping in the wind.
I wonder if the Taliban like Orbàn? and Bibi? In a dark street, I know who I'd rather not meet.
We are next.
They way things have been going I wonder who paid the Taliban to make that statement. It's all about the money. Musk could have authored the Talibans congratulatory statement. Divide and conquer..
I can use my voice, but our Commander-in-Cheat will have all the guns. Hard to watch a dictatorship develop in real time.
- Pulled Quote -
''In September, as the Taliban enforced new rules on women in Afghanistan, they also began to target Afghan men.''
Lesson? No one is safe in a fascist state. Remember the Brown shirts MAGA. And:
“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.” - Martin Niemoeller
Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men (sic) , in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. " -Lincoln
You need an opening quote mark. I was about to yell that you shouldn't use "men" until I realized that it was a quote from Lincoln.
Sorry (but please fix the punctuation!)
Always expect that those who screw unto others will screw unto you. In a society of backstabbers, life is nasty, brutish, and short.
How can the same voters who voted to guarantee a woman’s right to choose, vote to elect a dictator who promises a nationwide ban on a woman’s right to choose?
Cognitive dissonance. Putin did a very effective job creating national schizophrenia in the US. It will take generations to cure.
Or maybe never.
I don't think schizophrenia is the right term, as just denigrates those who hear voices. Speaking as someone with a mental health disability, bipolar disorder. No need to use silly analogies!
I apologize if you were offended. Perhaps you could suggest a less silly metaphor that aptly describes what is happening in this country.
Dirty media influence? I think we should look at sources not effects right now.
"National discord" instead of the medical term? Just a suggestion cause I certainly agree with you on this.
Cognitive brain rot.
"Putin did a very effective job creating a national schism based on disinformation".
I suggested national discord.
Heather's today hurts more -- its truths do -- much more than any other I can recall.
The whole world can celebrate as U.S. racists can hate, and hate more than just the undocumented.
The convicted criminal’s fans do hate black and brown people – categorically. Even U.S.-born neighbors are never individual persons to the racists rallying more-than-50%-electorally triumphant criminality and vulgarity in the U.S., their fav dictators abroad, winning demagogues and oligarchs at home.
We have today news, too, of Greg Palast’s new documentary, “Vigilante: Georgia’s Vote Suppression Hitman,” and an interview between him and Mark Thompson also today on how the clandestinely organized white racists have recently suppressed millions of black, brown, and college town votes not just in George, but across the U.S.
So much hatred from so many across America – not just against different skin colors, but also and more piquantly that, in hurting them the racists want further to own the libs. As if at war not only on skin color, and votes, our environment, and democracy, but against verily decency itself.
It hurts. "They" are winning -- & united in calumny, in obeisance to the worst of priests and moneyed.
And we can thank Senators Manchin and Sinema for sabotaging the Voting Rights bill requiring disclosures of dark more, limiting gerrymandering, and again giving the Federal Govt authority to intervene in State voter suppression tactics which SCOTUS had scuttled. Their egotism and the quack SCOTUS may likely have even lost this election and imperiled any hope of a return to democracy.
Those “senators” were Trojan horses
I have no affection for Manchin or (worse) Sinema, but in the end I expect the SCOTUS would have given us the same results. They are hell bent on destroying any semblance of sanity in Federal election rules and laws. We will just have to wait to see if they succeed.
They had four years to set the stage and didn’t waste a nanosecond
Maybe they should have spoken up and supported women?! Of course they should have! Now they’re on the downhill slippery slope. Americans should speak up now. Beyond frustrating to watch republicans vote for a false narrative and not get it!
Thank you, Heather! Hope you’re getting some much deserved rest! So appreciate you!
How can Trump do X when his voters want Y, seems to me though, part of the whole point of Putin's desire to keep the US divided. It appears to me similar to the Romans "divide and conquer", in which competing interests are kept divided by a single source of power (in this case Russia and not Rome) as different interests are variously granted or denied to various parties.
The US will now be in a perpetual state of non-governance thanks to the overthrow of our standing system of nearly two and a half centuries in favor of a very dark authoritarianism. The question is at what point will the entire system simply break, and what will that look like? Or will people acquiesce to misery and despair?
One thing is clear, the Russian assessment is likely right - for the moment. The Visigoths have now poured through the Salarian Gate. But it was the American electorate who betrayed the city and allowed them in. Will American democratic-republicanism and the rule of law be restored peacefully by mass strike and protests? Or through blunt force? Or will it simply never be restored and will France and England and Spain and a handful of smaller countries remain a feeble bastion for self-determination and free governance?
One shred of hope: tyrannical Russians speaking ex-cathedra about the new world order are not the gods of history, and history will know no never until the last of our species is gone. This is just one round. Barring nuclear annihilation we fight on.
Putin owns DJT... It was inevitable.... For Putin, it was easier, and cheaper to buy DJT, then to Defeat the Ukrainians... Putin also wants the collapse of the American-Led World Order... DJT may give him that as well... The Trump Organization has been floated by Russian $$$ as an Investment that Putin wants to collect on... The Visigoths pouring into Rome is a Good Analogy... First there was Roman Ruling-Class Corruption, and Enfeeblement, and then Lower Classes Corruption & Despair... The Plebes became obsessed with Bread & Circuses... Question, what does Elon Musk ultimately want? He is Chummy with Putin, and DJT...
Musk wants power! Money is not enough...
He's had a taste; it's intoxicating. I can't help feeling that this bunch could self-destruct before they do the harm they are planning.
🤞
Or else they could do the unthinkable. I truly believe that if Hitler had managed to get his scientists to build functional nuclear weapons (and they were VERY close to achieving it) before the Allies had invaded Europe successfully, the world might not even exist today. Trump and Musk seem to me deranged enough to actually decide to inflict a first strike on some major opponent and the resulting retaliation would escalate out of control.
After all, as Janis once sang, "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
There are others in the wings, with staying power and the long view
We committed national suicide, with the weapons provided by entertainment media, Putin’s bots, and the indefatigable greenbacks
Thank you for this depressing update, Dr. Richardson. I wonder how much the Taliban will like the trumpster when the National Christian Authoritarian regime which helped elect him closes down all mosques and the people are ordered to attend the fundamentalist Christian churches.
I think the Christian Nationalists and the Taliban will figure out how to work in concert. Their theologies may differ but their political goals are quite similar.
A pitiful laugh early in the am…
Once we get over the shock. There will be so much work to do and it will be daunting. I still can't believe this happened. So much worse than 2016 with the really hard core extremism, the Maga influence on all three branches and the proposed cabinet at play here.
Get ready for the American Taliban, coming to a State or Region near you! The Fascists in charge now will mix and match their policies to suit our Oligarchs. Resist, Resist, Resist! Our forefathers, and foremothers, fought for individual freedom and Liberty, so we must take up the cause again...
Putin also put Bounties on American Personnel in Afghanistan during DJT's first Administration... DJT knew of this, and did nothing about it...
Tfg gave him names…,
True to form... He is all about Trump and nothing else.
Thank you Heather for always keeping us educated, enlightened and informed...Especially during these very dark times!! Loved seeing you on John Stewart too. ❤️🇺🇸💙
Not just ripple effects but the ripple of influences are now crystallizing. Not only can the domestic damage not be contained to the ‘red states,’ the impact will be world-wide (and visa versa, as Putin comes knocking for his payback.).Under Trump 1.0 not only did he specifically empower the Taliban in its anti-woman-andgirl agenda, women and girls worldwide were negatively impacted by the foreign aid policies, including a family planning ‘gag’ order.
You paid attention