Where do we go from here?

[IncognitoJones]

At this point it's pretty clear in my mind that I live in a bubble and that this board is a super-bubble. As a group we are completely out of touch with the average American. I'm as guilty as anyone of this (actually moreso) but the condescention to conservatives isn't working. Liberals as a group have what I would call a "bad case of better than". This con man is likely going to win the popular vote and unfortunately just proclaiming that every single person that voted for him is an idiot is not a practical way of looking at it.

How good is the economy really? It's damn good if you have an IRA and a good job. It sucks if you live in a small town, have the same job you always had, and the extra $300 you had left over every month after paying all your monthly bills is now eaten up by the price of groceries. We're just out of touch. Not all the people who cast these votes are bad people but a lot of them are straight up "fuck you" votes. We all need to step back and take a look at ourselves. When I see a Trumper struggling my thought has typically been "he's struggling because he's not that bright to begin with and wants someone to blame other than himself for his predicament." And unfortunately many of us project that kind of arrogance which makes a lot of people hate us even more than we hate Trump.

I don't have time to write a novel right now. Maybe tonight when I'm drinking this off I'll come back and vent. But I'm pretty humbled by this and those are my initial thoughts.

i'm going to point and laugh when higher taxes and higher prices mean they don't have that $300 for food anymore

 

[finesse]

When my grandmother would say that about something or somebody, you could hear the pity for the benighted dripping from her voice.

 

[Icky Mettle]

The vast majority of this board realizes this. What I would love for anyone conservative to explain to me is how Democrats caused it or how Republicans are gonna fix it. You can't force people to want to move back to rural, dead-end towns. You can't force the entire country and economy backward just so jobs that were viable in 1980 can also be viable in 2025. We can't bring back a world where you can earn a middle class to upper middle class income running a mom and pop hardware store or record store on Main Street, unless you want to dismantle the entire internet economy. We can't bring back a world where 20% of the population can earn a middle class to upper middle class income working a low-skill job tat doesn't require a college education, unless you are OK with workers getting crushed to death in machines and/or consumer prices tripling. We don't need the proportion of mechanics or plumbers or appliance repair men we used to need because cars and pipes and appliances are made better and don't break as often as they used to. We're not bringing back coal mining jobs any more than we can bring back the jobs of chimney sweeps, milk men, or gas pump attendants. We don't need people to unload boxes or dig ditches or build car engines or bale hay; we need people to build and service the machines that can do all of those things more safely and cheaply.

What you can do is try to prepare these folks to move int a career that IS viable, with re-education, vocational, training, etc. Send them to community college and college cheaply and without debt so that they can do the jobs of the next two decades, not the jobs of the last two decades. But they don't freaking want it. They hate the Democrats who try to help them by proposing it. What they want is a world that no longer exists. And they want to drag everyone back there with them.

Republicans have won these voters by lying to them. Plain and simple. They lie to them about bringing back an America that doesn't exist. The lie to them about everything being the fault of immigrants or snooty liberals rather than the rich fucking tycoons that manipulate the poor for fractional tax cuts. They prey on their fears and insecurities with grievance politics that give them someone to blame. Now we can watch a unified conservative government completely fail to deliver jack shit for these people they've lied to for decades. They won't get more money or economic help for their small towns or better health care or anything else that might help them, but at least they owned the fucking libs.

While I very much enjoy the convenience of the internet economy, there is very much a part of me that would love to dismantle it and go back to brick and mortar. There are also many other aspects of the internet I’d like to dismantle. It’s a great invention that has wrought some horrible consequences.

 

[Peppers49]

I think where we really got screwed, in terms of recent history, was Bush II winning a second term in 2004, or perhaps Gore losing in 2000 (and therefore not having an opportunity to get re-elected). It would have changed the composition of the Supreme Court and made me feel a little bit better about being protected from the lunacy of the executive and legislative branches we will have beginning in 2021.

So many sliding door moments this century. Gore narrowly losing in 2000 I think was the worst. I still wonder what would have happened if Sanders had won the nomination in 2016.

 

[Lando]

I think the most important thing is figuring out the way forward in a post cable news world. The cable news crowd is gone, there’s no winning them over.

We’ll have to see how durable the social media fed incel mindset is, but even if those boys are lost forever there still isn’t the kind of unified political message that cable provides.

 

[LosPollosHermanos]

i'm going to point and laugh when higher taxes and higher prices mean they don't have that $300 for food anymore

Yeah that's exactly what most of this board is going to do. And that's why they'll vote against their own interest next time too. I don't think liberals are in touch with how much arrogance they project. As a group we're pretty insufferable frankly. We are not going to win many national elections with half of America hating us even more than we hate Trump.

 

[IncognitoJones]

Yeah that's exactly what most of this board is going to do. And that's why they'll vote against their own interest next time too. I don't think liberals are in touch with how much arrogance they project. As a group we're pretty insufferable frankly. We are not going to win many national elections with half of America hating us even more than we hate Trump.

it's not arrogance, it's anger. they voted to set fire to it all and i'll be happy to watch them burn

 

[rodoheel]

You mean, like if they cause a massive financial panic that shuts down the credit markets and necessitates a trillion dollar bailout for big banks?

There will be nothing that will immediately or quickly show them anything. They are going to have to learn it over years and years of hardship. Most of them will never change and we will have to wait for them to die.

I mean they got showed pretty quickly in 2008 when Obama swept to power in a landslide election with both houses of Congress. The big mistake Dems made was then trying to compromise and play nice with Republicans rather than ramming their legislative agenda down Republicans' throats. But that strategic mistake does not change the fact that it is still very much the case that if Republicans break the economy, voters will still punish them for it. It certainly just happened in the UK, though I'm sure the conservatives will come back into power when Labour fails the impossible task of rebuilding the social state in like two years.

 

[MOUNTAINH33L]

God bless America and God Bless Donald Trump…

Fuck Donald Trump, and fuuuuuuuuuck you.

 

[altmin]

There is no messaging to these people. This is what they want. They are bullies. They were bullies when they were 10 years old, when they were 20 and they are still bullies. And what bullies do is gather in numbers and take out their frustrations and their lust for power on the weaker.

Trump ran a completely substance free campaign. How did he message to working class people? Put Elon Musk in charge of everything and have RJK Jr take their vaccines and public health? What was he offering? America is a garbage can. Everything he says is a lie.

There are a lot of really smart people in the Democratic brain trust. They all have ideas how to message. The idea that we haven't thought about how to reach these folks is crazy. There just isn't any reaching them, at least not with logic or reason.

The lesson from this election is to not campaign on reality at all. What is our version of they are eating the dogs, eating the cats? That's what we need. But that's not who we are. And if we were, the media would fact check us while sane-washing the other side.

I'd like to say you are wrong, but....

 

[altmin]

We can't bring back a world where 20% of the population can earn a middle class to upper middle class income working a low-skill job tat doesn't require a college education, unless you are OK with workers getting crushed to death in machines and/or consumer prices tripling.

And the people being crushed to death are not going to be Americans anyway. Put all the tariffs you want on, corporations aren't going to pay someone $80,000 a year to do a job that someone in Vietnam will do for less than $5,000. They will just find different markets

 

[Lando]

Yeah that's exactly what most of this board is going to do. And that's why they'll vote against their own interest next time too. I don't think liberals are in touch with how much arrogance they project. As a group we're pretty insufferable frankly. We are not going to win many national elections with half of America hating us even more than we hate Trump.

Am I allowed to hope that they live the life they wish upon liberals or is that too arrogant?

 

[rodoheel]

Yeah that's exactly what most of this board is going to do. And that's why they'll vote against their own interest next time too. I don't think liberals are in touch with how much arrogance they project. As a group we're pretty insufferable frankly. We are not going to win many national elections with half of America hating us even more than we hate Trump.

Bullshit. I know plenty of insufferable liberals. I also know plenty of patient, kind, caring, thoughtful liberals who will patiently and thoughtfully talk with anyone of any background. Guess what? Conservatives shit on all of them the same. You think liberals project arrogance? Have you ever watched one second of Charlie Kirk or Elon Musk or JD Vance or Donald Trump or Ben Shapiro or Dave Portnoy or Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly? They're the most arrogant people on the fucking planet, and conservatives eat it right up. Why? Because that arrogance is being directed in their favor, not against them. Every MAGA troll thinks they are better, smarter, more important, and more of a "real American" than liberals who go to some fancy-schmancy college. They call us arrogant for having the temerity to point out to them that Donald Trump is lying to them every second of every day. They call us arrogant for saying that vaccines are safe and that Haitians aren't eating cats and dogs. They call us arrogant for explaining why some grainy video Rudy Giuiliani waves around isn't "ballot harvesting." They will call you arrogant for explaining any real-world fact that they don't understand to them. What should we do? Just put on our best Joe Rogan face and say "wow, that's crazy" as they explain how George Soros is using paid actors to fake support for Kamala? At what point do we have an obligation to not be complicit in whatever lie Trump wakes up and decides to tell because we refuse to correct it?

 

[Awinisawin]

As for foreign policy: the idea that we can simply withdraw from the rest of the world and let it burn around us is insane. Trump campaigned on keeping us out of WWIII, but removing the US from the global scene is what is going to be most likely to start WWIII. We have been the chief deterrent to the world's authoritarians for 80 years. When Putin and Xi and others get the message that we won't intervene against their territorial expansions, heaven help the rest of the world. I hope nothing drastic happens in the next four years, and still think that's somewhat unlikely. But we have to make the American people realize that we can't ensure peace by simply letting authoritarianism run unchecked elsewhere. No matter how much Trump preaches about "America First," there is no way to put the US in a position where it is unaffected by what happens in the rest of the world.

Xi will take Taiwan first opportunity. Putin the same in the former states. This ain’t rocket science. Mr strongman will just sit there with his thumb up his arse trying to keep it all in. So to speak

 

[Tar1978Heel]

Fuck Donald Trump, and fuuuuuuuuuck you.

Ain’t you special…Don’t worry snowflake it will be okay…

 

[superrific]

I mean they got showed pretty quickly in 2008 when Obama swept to power in a landslide election with both houses of Congress.

And then the GOP won back the House in the very next election. They didn't get showed. Obama's steady leadership saved us, and then they went back to their old bullshit.

 

[Calheel]

Democrats are going to need to move to low-population red states to flip the senate. Absent some demographical changes, it will be difficult for democrats to ever regain the senate again. I propose that we set up remote communes of 100k young democrats in each of the Dakotas, Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming and Alaska. They can all work remotely except for the ones manning the coffee shops.

Edit -- and we can get George Soros to fund it. We just need to make cold weather seem cool on Instagram.

 

[Paine]

Democrats are going to need to move to low-population red states to flip the senate. Absent some demographical changes, it will be difficult for democrats to ever regain the senate again. I propose that we set up remote communes of 100k young democrats in each of the Dakotas, Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming and Alaska. They can all work remotely except for the ones manning the coffee shops.

Even though Osborn didn’t win last night, I think the Democrats need to examine his candidacy closely. If we can pick up some seats in these prairie states by running populist working class candidates, things start to get a lot more interesting in the Senate.

Osborn outperformed Harris and the Democrat running in the other Nebraska Senate race by about ten points. There’s something to that.

It’s easier for independent candidates like Osborn to do this in places where the Democratic brand is in the garbage, but I could also see Democrats running this kind of campaign now that they are out of power.

 

[Peppers49]

While I very much enjoy the convenience of the internet economy, there is very much a part of me that would love to dismantle it and go back to brick and mortar. There are also many other aspects of the internet I’d like to dismantle. It’s a great invention that has wrought some horrible consequences.

If I had to distill down why Trump is going to be president again, it’s simply the internet. People are naturally reactive, they get constantly bombarded with a bunch of dumbed down content about grocery prices and inflation, and that’s all it takes.

 

[HeelInTheOzarks]

You mean, like if they cause a massive financial panic that shuts down the credit markets and necessitates a trillion dollar bailout for big banks?

There will be nothing that will immediately or quickly show them anything. They are going to have to learn it over years and years of hardship. Most of them will never change and we will have to wait for them to die.

We can't wait for them to die. It's not just the boomers.