Summary
Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 election leaves no room for ambiguity or an “asterisk” in his legitimacy, as he won both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
This outcome represents a clear mandate from American voters, who knowingly chose Trump’s policies and approach.
The anticipated results include pardons for January 6 participants, attacks on the press, and an administration filled with controversial figures.
By voting for Trump, Americans prioritized divisive rhetoric over democratic values, accepting the resulting turmoil.
I am American, and I have always loved my country. Until now, I’ve never been ashamed to call myself patriotic. My thought has always been than there will always be uninformed, uneducated assholes that vote against their own self-interests and the interests of their own country.
This election is different, though. We knew exactly what we were getting if we re-elected Trump. We responded by not only electing him in a landslide election, but handing the House and the Senate over to the Republicans, too. It was a clear message. America is not a nation of mostly good people with a few vocal “bad apples.” We are a nation of hateful, scared bigots, and we proved it in a big way.
This was a turning point in American history, and the majority of us sent a clear message to their fellow citizens and to the world. America is not a nation of mostly good people being overshadowed by a media that covers the loudest assholes in the room. America is a nation of people who by a majority support exactly what the “crazy” Republicans are saying. I would feel better if Trump lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote, but that’s not what happened.
This isn’t an election where I’ve lost only lost faith in the democratic process or my fellow citizens, although both are true. This is an election where I’ve lost faith in my country as a whole. I have never been proudly Republican or proudly Democrat, but I’ve always been proudly American. Now I’m just… sad. I don’t expect I’ll see a day any time soon where I can honestly say I’m proud of my country. The best I can do is retreat into my own personal bubble, live my life, and watch the world burn around me until the flames consume everything I care about.
How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking? I’m 40, started paying attention to politics in the Clinton years and then really paying attention with Bush v Gore in 2000. America was full on neolib vs neocon bullshit back then, a quarter of a century ago. The 2nd Iraq War was a big moment for me of realizing that the only thing America stands for is corporate hegemony. Project 25 is no different than the Project for a New American Century, and the “opposition” from the “left” isn’t fundamentally against any of it, they just pay a bit more lip service to culture issues (which are of course important if you aren’t a cis white christian male, but they are clearly not enough).
Tl;dr
I am close to the same age and something feels different now. The Trump administration is many levels of degenerate beyond the Bush administration. Even Dick fucking Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris FFS. I think Trump is pretty far beyond neocon, unfortunately. Just straight up Fascist.
The Neocons may have started rolling this snowball back then, but it is an avalanche now.
The majority of modern Republican presidents lost the popular vote, for one thing. This time that isn’t the case.
Project 25 is no different than the Project for a New American Century,
This is so wrong. Stop posting disinformation.
The situations are not at all comparable.
I’m with you. It was absolutely soul crushing to watch the worst person to run for president get elected on no qualifications and give us reasons to despise him deeply every day for 8 years. But even worse was that people cheered him the fuck on. Then demanded more. This country is lost. We have no reason to hope anymore. Everything good is in danger and everything dangerous is a possibility. We’re fucked. I’ll never have another warm and fuzzy feeling about this country or its institutions.
Thanks for writing this for me.
I’m in the same boat. I’m a white straight guy. So, I guess I’m not in immediate danger, although I am an academic. So, I guess my choices are: fight, flee or essentially hide.
Fighting seems infeasible although I think violence is justifiable.
Fleeing would require leaving the country. I dunno if I can swing that.
So…I guess I just live my life and hope it’s not quite as bad as I fear? I dunno. I’m open to advice.
I do now hate this country and the bulk of the people who live here. Fuck them.
Do you have any advice for a trans woman who is probably in immediate danger?
I’m not familiar with any organizations so I don’t have much advice, but this web search has a lot of resources that look like they may be helpful.
Sorry I can’t be more helpful. Stay safe!
America is not a nation of mostly good people with a few vocal “bad apples.” We are a nation of hateful, scared bigots, and we proved it in a big way.
A big chunk of the rest of the world have telling you that for decades, but you guys believed the lie about some “shining city upon a hill”. The American dream was always built on the misery of others.
Take heart. Our fellow citizens are slow learners, and few of them have paid close attention to Trump and his shit forsaken privilege in escaping consequences since he left office.
It will be a long wait, but four years of unbridled trump will open a lot of eyes. Let them get a healthy, sustained dose of exactly what they didn’t realize they asked for and then we rebuild.
And don’t give away the House like that. It’s not over yet, and with any luck that guardrail will remain.
We had that the last time he won. Apparently we forgot how bad it was. Hell, he probably would have won in 2020 if it hadn’t been for COVID.
Honestly yeah. My hopes are at this point our electoral process does exactly what it just did. It’s clear a lot of people went out and voted for him. Not a small group but a ton. And my resignment has just been “Okay, this is what you asked for, buckle up”.
It’s gonna suck ass and I really hope they don’t start some bullshit that makes them squeak out of the mess they’re about to step in. (They’ll definitely try to) But let’s give the American people exactly what they asked for and just try to stop the house from catching on fire while they realize what a bad idea it was.
I dont think Ill be alive in four years, if theres even an election
I feel the exact same way…I’m disgusted with us for letting this happen.
If you truly consider yourself a patriot, you will do what you can to help the people who will actually be in danger during this administration. Find orgs near you that help the marginalized and underrepresented. Volunteer. Educate others. Do whatever you are able to.
This is not the time to retreat. This is a time for action.
They also solidified this form of political campaigning. Its only going to get more hateful from here on out. We are watching Nero burn Rome.
We are watching Nero burn Rome.
Watching? Hell, a third of us fucking gave Nero a match while spraying the city with gasoline, and another third said “You know, I do like s’mores…”
That horse sailed 8 years ago.
Something to keep in mind.
Trump didn’t win a significant number of new voters. He kept his base, which is roughly the size of what it was in 2020.
The problem was that Harris lost voters. In droves. Nationwide. And she took a lot of winnable downballot candidates with her. And I’m not even saying that to blame her. She ran a magnificent campaign while Trump was most noted for saying “They’re eating the dogs!”. So why did she still lose, and lose so hard? Because Democrats stayed home. Roughly about 10% of them overall, nationwide. Sure, some of them stayed home or voted 3rd party to protest Gaza, especially in Michigan. But the real story is that she underperformed so badly nationwide. I mean, for the love of God, New Jersey was competitive. That call about Iowa possibly going blue is going to be up there with “Dewey defeats Truman” in terms of political misfires. She severely underperformed with men and Latinos, especially Latino men. Which means this: 8-10 million people couldn’t stomach voting for Trump, but they’d rather passively hand over the country to Trump vs. voting for a black woman. Whether the problem they have is the fact that she’s black, female, or both is irrelevant. But the message they sent was clear. “We don’t want Trump, but we’d rather step back and just let Trump take the country rather than vote for her.”
The problems with bigotry in this country go much deeper than some people are willing to admit, and Harris just found that out the hard way. As far as the voting base is concerned, voting for Obama was a mistake that they will not repeat again, and they just proved that by handing Trump everything he wanted on a silver platter instead.
We can’t even say that it’s an outsized minority any more. A majority of the people in this country just spoke up and said that they either want the racism and bigotry or are at least willing to put up with it.
Trump won the election not because Democrat voters said “Trump!”, but because they said “Not Harris.”
This honestly cements my view that America is a racist nation, no question.
You don’t get 15 million missing votes without a solid chunk of those being Democrats, bog standard Democrats, that didn’t want to vote for a black woman.
Trump won because the DNC underestimated the sexists, racists and the idiot woke who think they somehow did something with this for palestine.
Editorial note:
i know woke is a poisoned word but I like to use to describe idiots who think they are so smart and better than others that they would rather let trump elected than admit that voting for the lesser evil is the right thing to do
Nailed it. People are still mad that Obama made it into the White House and we’re forever going to pay for it. And a black woman running for president? Americans all saw Trump’s serious cognitive decline — I don’t doubt that any outside of a hardcore few didn’t — but America made for damn sure it wouldn’t be Kamala.
Trump won because Harris ran a dog shit campaign.
And Trump didn’t? It’s always very telling when you all love shouting BOTH SIDES from the mountain tops, but when it comes to blame-
Well that’s different.
Trump had nothing to campaign on. He insulted and threw temper tantrums. Yet…. Harris Rand a dog shit campaign…
Got it.
Because his dogshit campaign doesn’t matter to his supporters, but Kamala’s less dogshit but still quite shit campaign does matter to her supporters. What you’re doing now is attempting to use Trump’s supporters as a benchmark for how the DNC supporters should act against, and that’s the stupidest thing you can do after seeing the result of this election. You guys really are trying your hardest to not look at the real problem just so you can avoid taking the slightest blame for this election result.
I called it back in July when I said Democrats should have run Fetterman. Only appearance matters to the majority of Americans.
Trump won because Harris was a shitty candidate who never won a primary for the president.
I was hoping she’d pull off a victory anyways but the lesson we should take away is that if a sitting president needs to step down from running for another term we need to have a snap election.
This all went to hell when Harris was appointed as our candidate.
You made the point yourself: the majority did not speak up. The majority of voters spoke up, and they’re a minority of Americans.
Magnificent campaign 🤣🤣🤣
How did we lose Latino votes? I don’t see how they can possibly relate to Trump for all his rhetoric.
I haven’t read the whole article so I can’t say I agree with anything it says, but I just found this:
“From the beginning of the election to its final days, Latino voters in interviews and polls consistently named the economy, inflation or higher costs as their No. 1 issue and gave Trump the advantage on them.”
I don’t mean to sound stereotypical and I know not all Latinos feel this way, but Latino men tend to have a very strong sense of male dominance and a very strong mistrust of the police. For a lot of them, there was never a chance you were going to get them to vote for a black, female former prosecutor.
If Kamala lost because racial bigotry — then how did Obama win? It probably has more to do with misogyny and single issue voters than it does race.
You guys just allergic to admitting her policy and campaign were shitty? She really didn’t propose anything progressive whatsoever. I’m a Bernie guy and I reluctantly voted Harris. I knew it’d be another 4 years of stagnation, not progress.
I have a friend. His mother is an undocumented immigrant. He admitted today that he voted for Trump due to concerns about inflation.
I just don’t even know what to say anymore: he’s college educated, but he still thinks Trump wasn’t talking about his mom.
Also, even if it was for “inflation”, just what policy do these people think donnie has that will “fix” inflation?
The thing about mental illness is it’s not logical, and will never make sense. Cults, religion, and political ideology all indoctrinate — spread a mental illness — in the exact same way; they all attack the same psychological vulnerabilities.
If someone knows the sky isn’t red, but chooses to believe it anyway, there’s not a whole lot that can be done.
Yeah, I’m no expert but won’t Trumps tariffs on everything under the sun be much much worse than the inflation?? Manufacturing won’t come back to the USA, it’ll just shuffle around any of dozens of countries that will still be cheaper to operate out of. Also, retalitory tariffs are a thing which will harm what manufacturing IS in the USA. Also, Trump promised his rich buddies 3 trillion dollars in tax breaks. He’s going to slash health budgets (and more besides) to fund it. What are people thinking!? They’re going to fund the ultra rich from their own pockets AND pay massively more for goods while damaging local industry?! I mean there’s a million other things to worry about including mass-deportation but cost of living is about to increase BIGLY!?
I’m pretty convincing he’s being encouraged to outright collapse the us by Putin
They are also gonna grab him. Stephen Miller doesn’t fucking care if you are legal or not. Your friend is about to find out after he fucked around
Trump’s stated plan is to deport 20 million people. There are only around 11 million undocumented immigrants. Both the dude mentioned in the comment above and his mom are definitely on the list. It’s staggering that he didn’t take that seriously.
I wouldn’t mind being deported to Ireland.
Be a shame to wind up in the land of whiskey.
Right? How many generations we going back? Send me to Germany please
“America is for Americans!”
He deserves to have her deported, and she deserves not to be punished for him being a dipshit.
Fuck him. Also, that poor woman.
That also seems to be an issue that keeps happening. Single issue voters. People get so locked in to one issue and will just straight up toss salad of the person that says they are going to make their issue their #1 priority.
Only problem is that #1 priority is on the same scale as 20+ other #1 priorities and the official is going to take on those issues that will benefit themselves the most.
My only solace is that he’ll take part in the insane suffering that’s coming.
I’m glad your man will get what’s coming to him.
With attitudes like this, you guys really do deserve Trump.
You too.
I made these so when things start going bad, we could put these up as a reminder.
The only reason this isn’t the best idea ever is I would have to have his face on my phone to use them. But I don’t know what the solution to that is.
I’ve bookmarked and maybe I can remember.
Thank you for your service
Bravo, I had been just thinking about getting some of these made up
Same! I started working on a couple but had to run off. These are what i was going for!
Thanks op!
The leopards are about to have a face buffet.
I just want fucking Healthcare and not-extinction.
Healthcare is going away for most people as are women’s rights and rights, really, for anyone who isn’t a rich white Christian man. You guys really fucked yourselves, and to a great extent everyone else, this time. Get ready for the biggest deficit in global history followed by a depression for the ages.
sorry, best i can do is fascism
Throw in a side of pollution to make sure our health care costs rise further, we need to feed those middle men companies, well… At least their board members. We can lay off all the workers in between and fight with an automated system for 6 hours while never being able to get through. That’s my dream.
The Democratic Party repeatedly expressed the need for a strong Republican Party. They sure got it.
Joe Biden said as much, out loud, several times.
More immigration! Turbo immigration! You think it’s bad now? Wait until the equator starts suffering wet bulb events
There won’t be more immigration. Quite the opposite. Get ready to see your friends, neighbors, and relatives deported. Get ready to see crops dying in the fields.
Yes there will, because you missed what he was saying about “wet-bulb” events.
If you wrap a wet cloth around a thermometer, and place it in air that has less than 100% relative humidity, the thermometer will read a lower temperature than an equivalent one without a wet cloth. This is because the evaporation of water wicks heat away from the thermometer; the lower the RH the faster the water will evaporate the heat from the thermometer and thus the lower the temperature will read. This is called the “wet-bulb temperature” and is how the human body cools itself when you sweat.
However, when the RH is 100% the wet-bulb and dry-bulb temperatures are the same, and the human body stops being able to cool itself by evaporation (since your sweat won’t evaporate because the air can’t hold any more moisture). In fact, thanks to physics not giving a fuck about how conservatives feel, there’s a point - thought to be above a wet-bulb temperature of 35 degrees C - where your body works in reverse and starts absorbing exterior heat.
This is fatal to the human.
The point is, the higher the RH, the less effective sweating is to cool humans down. Now what do you think will happen when people in equatorial regions- areas that have high humidity and temperatures to start with- see those temps go even higher thanks to climate change? They won’t have any choice but to move to higher latitudes, because just being outside for long periods of time will be lethal as their bodies slowly cook themselves.
And Trump will fucking gun them down at the border if we’re at that point.
You silly person, the climate crisis coming doesn’t care, and neither will the climate refugees. We are going to see unprecedented suffering in the next two decades
I didn’t say we wouldn’t see suffering. I said that they will arrive and the Trump administration will deport them or something worse.
There’s no blaming the Russians this time around. There’s no blaming media malpractice. There’s still some blame to attribute to voter suppression, but majorities elect the people who suppress the votes…
what a stupid fucking article. why carve out exceptions for shit you don’t understand and then double down on the politico.
fuck i hate journalists.
Christ - because it’s not as though the media contributes massively to voter suppression.
Journalistic malpractice is one of the main causes - if not the main cause of this result.
what will the rest of the world get from this? the obvious one would be higher emissions and more fucked weather…
Second hand fascism
American conservatives wouldn’t understand personal responsibility, especially the ones that crow about others not taking it, if it was literally rage fucking their assholes without lube.
And it absolutely will be once Trump’s policies are in effect.
But somehow it will still be Obama’s fault because the poor, ignorant fools consider critical thinking to be a librul plot like climate change and gravity.
Had a friend that took the conspiracist road to Nazism, and this isn’t an exaggeration - the dictionary is a Jewish plot, so is any empirical evidence, the existence of qualified experts, observable phenomena…
The small mercy is that the idiots and monsters that voted for Trump and the dipshits that couldn’t be bothered to vote to stave off fascism will drown in the river of shit alongside the well-meaning folk that did their best (or anything at all) to stop this.
Americans always say the 2nd amendment is there to prevent dictatorships. How about you proof it this time?
How did you get a jpeg of the dream I had last night?
they don’t know what they want because the campaign was all about a dude saying bad words instead of any sort of real plan to fix anything. I’m tired of the spin. Harris adopted all the far right framing on immigration and bent over backwards for like half a dozen centrist republicans which lead to low turnout for like the obama voter crowd
Edit: Also apparently now there’s a large sector of people who simply aren’t online and don’t watch tv. Reaching them should be the #1 goal of any future election campaign
He’s the punishment America deserves, but not the one it needs right now.
