Trump Sold Grievance and America Liked What He Was Selling
Once Trump got everyone hooked on his grievance drug, Merrick Garland was never going to make a difference.
I have tried, over and over, to explain how the investigation into Trump and his co-conspirators proceeded. More recently, I’ve explained how you couldn’t have charged Trump with insurrection — the only thing that would have disqualified him from running — until after May 2023, and had Jack Smith done so, it would have ended up exactly where we are here, with John Roberts delaying everything until after the election.
No effort to explain the process — the two years of exploiting phones, the months of January 6 Committee delay, the ten months of privilege fights, the month Elon Musk stole, or the eight months John Roberts bought Trump — none of that has mattered, of course. People needed an explanation for their own helplessness and Merrick Garland was the sparkle pony they hoped would save them.
But nothing Merrick Garland would have done would have mattered anyway.
That’s because since January 2017, since Trump learned that Mike Flynn had been caught undermining sanctions on the phone with Sergey Kislyak, Trump has used every effort to hold him accountable as a vehicle to sell grievance.
This is the core premise of the Ball of Thread podcast I’ve been doing with LOLGOP.
Rather than being grateful when learning that FBI was investigating four of his close campaign advisors had monetized their access to him — rather than imagining himself as the victim of the men who snuck off and met with Russian spies — Trump made himself the victim of the FBI. He invented a claim he was wiretapped, and then kept inventing more and more such false claims. And then he (possibly on the advice of Paul Manafort, whose associate Oleg Deripaska funded HUMINT before the Democrats did) used the dossier as stand-in for the real Russian investigation. It wasn’t the Coffee Boy yapping him mouth that led to the investigation into those trying to monetize access, this false story tells, it was the dossier Russia filled with disinformation, a guaranteed way to discredit the investigation. Once you convince people of the lie that the FBI really did investigate a candidate based off such a flimsy dossier, it becomes easy to target all those involved, along the way gutting the Russian expertise at FBI.
Then Bill Barr came in and used the authority of the Attorney General to lie about what the investigation found; almost no media outlets have revisited the findings once it became clear that Barr didn’t even bother learning what the report said. While trying to kill Zombie Mueller — the parts of the investigation that remained after Mueller finished — Barr’s DOJ literally altered documents in an attempt to put Joe Biden at the genesis of the investigation into Donald Trump, yet another attempt to replace the actual investigation, the Coffee Boy and campaign manager and National Security Advisor and personal lawyer and rat-fucker who were found to have lied to cover up the 2016 Russian operation, with a storytale in which Democrats are the villains.
John Durham never bothered to learn what the report actually said either. Had he done so, it would have been far harder to criminalize Hillary Clinton for being a victim of a hack-and-leak operation, along the way taking out still more expertise on Russia.
And while Barr was criminalizing people, he followed Rudy’s chase for dick pics in an effort to criminalize Hunter Biden and his father.
Do you see the genius of this con, Donald Trump’s most successful reality TV show ever?
Vast swaths of America, including at least half the Supreme Court, and millions of working class voters, really believe that he — the guy who asked Russia to hack his opponent some more — was the victim.
And that’s how a billionaire grifter earns the trust of the working guy.
For the most part, the press just played along, repeating Trump’s claims of victimhood as if they were true.
It’s also the problem in thinking that if only Trump faces legal consequences, he’ll go away, he’ll be neutralized.
We saw this every time he faced justice. The first impeachment. The second one. The New York trials. Each time, his grievance became a loyalty oath. Each time, he sucked more and more Republicans into the con. Each time he made them complicit.
The hatred of and for Trump by Rule of Law is what made him strong, because he used it to — ridiculously!! — place himself into the role of the little guy, the target of those mean elites.
We’ll have decades, maybe, to understand why Trump resoundingly won yesterday. Some of it is inflation (and the unrebutted claims it is bigger than it is), which makes working people angry at the elites, people they might imagine are the same people persecuting Trump.
For many, though, it’s the appeal of vengeance.
Trump has spent nine years spinning a tale that he has reason to wreak vengeance on Rule of Law. The greatest con he ever pulled.
So even if DOJ had charged Trump, two months before Merrick Garland was confirmed (though all three of the charges people imagine would be easy — incitement, the call to Brad Raffensperger, and the fake electors plot — have been unsuccessful in other legal venues), even if DOJ had convicted Trump along with the earliest crime scene defendant in March 2022, even if Trump hadn’t used the very same means of delay he used successfully, which would have still stalled the case past yesterday’s election, it still wouldn’t have disqualified him from running.
It still would be the centerpiece of his manufactured tale of grievance.
It still would be one of the elements he uses to make working people think he’s just like them.
You will only defeat Trumpism by destroying that facade of victimhood. And you will not achieve meaningful legal victories until you do that first.
I know we all need an easy way to explain this — an easy culprit for why this happened.
But it’s not Merrick Garland, because years before he came on the scene, Trump had already convinced everyone that any attempt to hold him accountable was just another attempt by corrupt powers to take him down.
Trump sold the country on grievance and victimhood. And in the process he made half the country hate Rule of Law.
Thank you. I imagine your work will become even more essential as we move into these dark days. Take care of each other, friends.
He won an election. Someone had to lose and Harris lost. We go from there.
That’s what privilege sounds like.
Reality. I took my dose when Bernie got flamed.
When Bernie “got flamed,” millions of Americans and residents didn’t suddenly worry about their continued existence.
It’s a luxury to think tomorrow’s another day. Last night I watched friends and acquaintances begin to panic about what to do to stay alive after Inauguration Day; to them there may be no tomorrow, and they just watched proof that more than half the country is determined to make them suffer until there is no tomorrow.
Delusional.
The Enabling Act of 1933 passed and we went from there.
That’s what scares me.
JFC
America has not felt uncomfortable enough to change for the good. We will soon enough, the next 4 years will be rough. Real rough.
I’ve also said this before. things evidently have to get much worse before people wake up.
Not sure how America is going to survive a Trump 2.0 Presidency that will be heavy with retribution and grievance, with John Roberts giving the president nearly absolute immunity and the ability to talk with the USAG office, and a R-House and R-Senate.
I’m not sure we won’t just get worse. And I don’t expect a free and fair election in 28.
As much as I agree with this, I think inflation doomed Harris. Every visit to the grocery store was a reminder that basic living cost substantially more than it did four years ago. The “why” part doesn’t matter when Fox News exists to blame Biden & Harris.
No. Inflation did not doom Harris.
You could point to official inflation statistics, or just look around. I do a lot of driving, and my gas prices are way down from a year ago. My local grocery store chain has had a huge sign on the front of their building for months saying “1000s of lower prices!” My own spending patterns tell me inflation is under control, and has been for a while.
But the perception of inflation, stoked by the lies of Trump, certainly were effective.
Inflation is tamed, gas prices are in a better place, but the prices in the grocery store haven’t declined. The pocket book damage is ongoing, as two bags of groceries can push $75 real quick, and that’s with coupon shopping and buying the store brands.
The perception is absolutely key. For instance, egg prices are up substantially right now. It’s because of bird flu, not any economic policy. “We can’t afford 4 more years of Bidenomics” on Fox News fixes the blame on Biden and Harris, and their low information voters absolutely lap up tariffs as Trump’s beautiful solution.
It’s not the inflation itself. It’s the way each camp used the inflation as a campaign issue.
Inflation was caused because of COVID. Because the huge amount of money that was printed by the feds (to save the market), most of it during Trump’s administration. And to a lesser degree because of supply chain issues, also caused by COVID (and to an even lesser degree because of the war with Ukraine and other reasons). The democrats did a lousy job in explaining this. Biden also did a lousy job in showing that he cares about it and prioritize it. He did sign the “Inflation Prevention Act”, but he didn’t manage to convince the public he really cares about inflation, and his campaign kept talking about how the economy is doing GREAT even though lot of people didn’t feel great. Harris did changed the democratic narrative, but it was too little, and too late.
In the meanwhile, the republicans effectively convinced people it was all Biden’s fault. That somehow, his policy brought inflation. And that Trump, who is a “businessman”, is better at fixing it. It was all a load of b/s, but the democrats failed at countering those messages, and for the most part, it felt as if (at least before Harris) they don’t really care.
Tariffs played a role in causing inflation too but I have yet to ever see any serious discussion of that.
Which makes the impending tariffs on all imports all that much scarier.
We can lay inflation at the feet of corporate greed.
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2024/10/greedflation-inflation-grocery-prices-corporate-greed/680432/
Alarm bells are going off. Can you hear them over the noise? The rule of law has been kneecapped and that’s gonna mess over way more people than the traditional “others.” That’s my takeaway.
I’ll add that Trump was successful in making many Americans believe they would soon face the same persecution that he did, from an unjust and over-reaching Justice department. IMO, that was a real motivator for many fence sitters.
TRANSCRIPT of TRUMP Post Arraignment REMARKS at BEDMINSTER 6/13/23
https://www.c-span.org/video/?528671-1/president-trump-remarks-court-appearance []
I agree inflation was the single critical factor, as viscerally experienced by every visit to the grocery store. Everyone is sensitized to it, so it begs the question how Trump and Vance are going to implement his economic proposals and their apparent detrimental effect on inflation. Mass deportation makes no economic sense. I sense Trump won’t care, but Vance will have some big challenges to explain any initiatives that are pro-inflationary.
Inflation was the stupidest reason to vote for Trump. The people who did so want more socialized government in order to regulate pricing.
They went and voted for a opportunistic capitalistic grifter to deliver this.
I guess this is what happens after the GOP systematically defunded and suppressed education for the last 2-3 decades.
This. But you won’t hear the press reflect on their own conduct.
This. But that’s no easy task. You have to make the distinction between victimhood and responsibility.
The CEO of a business is responsible for the company they run. Bring in customers, orders, and profits, and you get rewarded. Don’t do that, and you get bounced. That’s not victimhood; that’s responsibility.
Trump himself has made a life of accepting the cheers and avoiding responsibility. He sold that to his followers, encouraging them to live and vote in much the same way. Bringing responsibility back into the conversation is an essential first step.
We are at heart a very racist country. It is really just that simple.
Really racist, or really stupid?
I think lack of education and critical thinking is what will be our downfall. Racism has certainly been stoked by agitators, but people are too stupid to realize they are being played.
I am absolutely floored at my state AZ’s numbers. They said no to Lake, and yes to Trump. It doesn’t even make sense.
Once again I feel like the little girl in the Old El Paso ad who says, “Why not both?”
Carve it on my tombstone.
Racism is stupid. It breeds stupidity. IE, Florida and North Carolina felt a hint of the climate change reality which is in store for the planet, yet voted for those who deny it is happening.
We’ve had 400+ years of stupid in this country, and getting that out of the system is not a simple task — especially when a non-trivial segment of the country sees it as a feature, not a bug.
What is also worrisome is neutering the Department of Education which will lead to a greater population of Americans lacking critical thinking skills.
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Racist, stupid, and misogynist. All three, and a lot of each.
Misogyny. We elected Obama twice. No women yet though.
Women voted for him as well.stupidity is without gender.
Women can be misogynist as well.
There was still an element of racism, else Trump wouldn’t have attempted his bullshit about Harris’s mixed race identity.
And no one of the darker skinned was going to be allowed to get certain things done, thanks to Mitch McConnell.
I haven’t quite put this into a coherent theory. But I keep thinking about the repeal of slavery, and Reconstruction. African American men were voted into office around the country, including 16 to Congress. It lasted about a decade before White anger gave rise to disenfranchisement and worse. African Americans were shut out of Congress for decades.
Barack Obama broke through to become our first African American president, and it seemed like our country might be ready to confront its original sin. But instead here we are again, apparently ready to break the whole the damn system rather than allow everyone to have a place at the table.
Again, half-baked thoughts right now, from a fully-baked brain, but White grievance is a powerful animating force in this country.
Once you have a cult, there’s no amount of reason will make a difference. If Trump urged them to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid, many of them wouldn’t flinch. (And which may yet come, in one form or another.) That pic of all those fawning heretical religionists with their hands on The Messiah at the centre. The exact same perverted phenomenon as in 1930’s Germany with their manufactured hero. As before, it won’t end well.
I know that The People was supposed to be the last and surest guardrail, but like any disasters, there was a chain of failures. Not least to my mind a Supreme Court packed with partisans who, by an egregious delay of justice, denied it. A deliberate betrayal of the Rule of Law they swore to uphold and protect, leaving the door open for a felon to resume the infamy where he last left off.
Marcy, ( Blue Suede Shoes),
What is the new hat for the Nov 9 2016 Pussy-hat march sequel?
The Merrick Garland haters always conveniently forget that Trump was impeached twice & both times Mitch McConnell refused to let him be convicted. Which could have prohibited Trump from running again.
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I’ll buy all that about using the courts but the rot set in with Iran-Contra, in which senators chose to protect the establishment. None more culpable that that open crook and woman abuser Dan Inouye.
On a longer view, when trump was elected I started reading on McCarthyism. I already knew that the government stopped being anti-fascist at noon on April 12, 1945. It didn’t become actively pro-fascist in foreign affairs — which it has remained till today — until after June 1950. It was insane to think that the United States could support fascism around the world but never have it come here.
We will have the president the press wanted.
WE live in oligarchy now with the oligarchs goal of control of all governments. The insane person would not have won without the insane amounts of unknown money from an insane richest person on earth.
More important is a heartfelt Thank You Marcy & Rayne for this incredible website. The work you’ve done has been stellar and hopefully someday recognized.
WE all recognized the oligarch owned MSM attack on Biden. Unfortunately IMO, rather than wait for Biden to have won then retired early and passed the Presidency we now will have chaos in a climate gone berserk.
I just want to reiterate so many of us on this site saw the oligarch owned MSM attack on Biden and intellectually understood what was going on. The Democratic Party when it makes mistakes, the mistakes are HUGE. An example: Just my theory; Obama not shutting down the government until he got to rightfully appoint a Supreme Court Justice after Antonin Scalia’s death. The thinking IMO was that Hillary was promised to run for backing off so Obama could win his original primary. Biden being a super good person acquiesced to the promise. That people would vote for Hillary because a Supreme Court appointment was on the line.
I just have to add that North Carolina would not vote for Democrats and the help they need after the hurricane ???
One vs. the many. Who will win eventually? Sadness and resolve until WE accomplish the good.
I remember going with my family as a kid to Jimmy Carter’s inauguration party in Plains, GA. I’ve been a Democrat my whole life. You’ll read a lot of comments about how disappointed “right thinking” Democrats are with the country. They’re right to be disappointed, to see an openly fascist, criminal like Trump elected President in full knowledge. It’s in full knowledge of the people, the Will of the People that the law doesn’t matter, to self-immolate, to burn down the Constitution, to tacitly agree to return to racism and dehumanize ourselves. The tokens Democrats hold up, the Soul of America, Civil Rights, human dignity turn out like the lanterns Nietzsche’s madman has long pointed out were gone out. Gaza showed that was true, Iraq, the War on Terror, so does this election. Democrats will be disgusted with their fellow Americans. Trump’s politics of grievance acts out the nihilistic rebellion of a society without a future where everything has gotten lost.
Judge Merchan, (half of) America turns its lonely eyes to you.
Who am I kidding. His lawyers will get it pushed off until next year
and/or the Supremes will wipe the slate clean.
Marcy, (blue suede shoes),
Trump’s grievance 2016 win was met Nov 9th 2016 by Women’s pussy-hat national protest. What will 2024’s grievance hat shape be?
Women’s March on Washington was January 21, 2017.
Ms JennyMD,
Thank you for the correction. I mistakenly referred to the publishing on Facebook Nov 9 2016 planning begins for Women’s march as the event itself.
This is privilege, to worry about hats when many Americans and residents are now worried for their lives, not just their rights.
Worry less about hats and more about what we do to shelter the targets of hate. Think Anne Frank’s family as an example; what could have been done to keep them alive.
It’s pretty obvious to me that Yogarhythms is a troll.
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Thank you Rayne! Yes, I’m thinking about what I can do to help, even if in small ways. So many things to think about, but one that’s top of mind for me, given how many young men follow the Rogans of the world, is that my soon-to-be-9-year-old son needs to learn that masculinity doesn’t have to be toxic, or aggrieved, that he’s not a victim for being a white male. I’m very worried about what’s in the culture for pre-teen and teen boys.
Been there with my son. He’s now 27; he’s butted heads with friends since his tween years about their toxic masculinity a number of times. In hindsight I think the videogaming world hasn’t helped — not because of the games because many are just fine, but because there’s an ecosystem of interaction which encourages hypercompetitive behavior which is often out of sight of parents if they aren’t engaged. There’s confusion between the sense of belonging gaming communities can create and the hyper-competitiveness which too often rewards the wrong elements in those communities.
Increasing use of AI which draws on a wealth of toxically masculine content across the internet will only make things more challenging.
Thank you Dr Wheeler, the culture of grievance and victimhood has spread everywhere. I see it, and it’s so ironic, with some of the richest and most powerful people, who think of themselves as victims not winners.
I can’t help but notice this: in 2020, Trump got 74m votes and Biden 81m. In 2024, fewer people voted for Trump (71m) but WAY fewer people voted for Harris at 66m. Obviously, the population shifted during these 4 years, with people dying and others turning 18, etc. So it’s not just that his grievance story worked to get him votes, it worked to make people less willing to vote for Harris. And, as my wife said to me last night, I’m sure some of those missing 15m votes that didn’t show up this time just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a woman of color.
I agree with your wife.
Don’t underestimate voter suppression efforts.
And also some may have decided to punish Biden/Harris for the Gaza-Israeli mayhem by not voting or voting 3rd party.
We don’t KNOW how many people voted in 2024 yet- a lot of the votes on the West Coast haven’t been counted.
appreciate your thoughts. I will never, ever understand how people will overwhelmingly vote against their best interests.
I feel empty
Republicans have been very good at convincing voters that Democrats are to blame for everything, including things that Republicans caused. And they are also quite adept at marketing policies that will end up hurting people. And they lie unabashedly.
Anger, Fear and Victimhood won.
Stupidity won. Racism and misogyny won.
The U.S. corporate media ecosphere relies on these to continue its existing business models.
Agree. And social media can be toxic.
WTF, America?
From the son of a good friend, still reeling after losing his wife in childbirth a few months ago:
“This is just who we are. Proud bigots and oblivious fools “
After Trump’s inauguration in 2017 I turned to my husband and said, “He just won a presidential election and he’s spewing grievance”….that’s always been his political calling card. And it resonates with a sizable portion of the population. In truth I think most people are afraid. I know a Polish woman, whose husband hardly speaks any English, who likes Trump (I live in a blue state). She (a hard working immigrant) wants “other” immigrants deported. Go figure.
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My apologies about the name issue. I’ll do it right from now on. Sorry.
I think this Polish immigrant means that she wants those immigrants who can’t be considered White to be deported.
Yep, always the ‘other’ guy. When we talk about deportations to come under whatever titles Miller and Homan hold, it will not be the Russian birth tourists but the ones who don’t look like them.
As I noted in the last post, some of the conservative-minded males considered voting for a woman worse than the risk of deportation.
My brother is married to a dreamer. She came to the U.S. from Mexico at age six with her family – illegally.
Now she wants “immigrants” deported. I can’t wrap my head around that. I can only see this as “ladder-pulling.”
Thank you for all the great articles you’ve all done here, I don’t comment often but I’ve always read your articles, I worry about the ripple effects it’ll have world wide with all the right wing fascists popping up in here in Europe:/ Plus Elon gutting all the protections will have massive ramifications on the weather systems going forward
The one constructive thought I’ve had thus far is this:
At this point, Trump will have lost votes from 2020, but Harris will have lost 5x as many votes from Biden’s total.
Who stayed home? What are the demographics, and why did they stay away from the race?
Anyone with a link to hard numbers (a stretch right now, granted), I would appreciate it.
Crosstab analysis will be extremely useful to the Ds post-mortem. The question would be how the obvious enthusiasm gap was flipped for actual voting.
Yes you are thinking in the direction of how we arrived at this outcome.
Very eager to see lotsa data.
A big tell to me is N Carolina where they turned down Lt. Robinson but went for the orange version for prez.
Lotsa people not thinking clearly enough to act in their own interests up at the fed executive level.
NC voters were okay with a Nazi, just not a Black Nazi.
That is the obvious simple immediate conclusion that popped up to me.
There were probably other factors too, like how much power each office has.
Trumthp now has waaaayyyy more power to screw those voters over now than Lt R. And its way more obvious how shitty and drained their lives will be for that.
So yeah, their cognitive dissonance for their fail. And other bad tendencies like the weakling choice to be racist and simpleminded, when they were clearly headed in a more resilient and better direction at state level.
And I suspect their was also media manipulation that we hadn’t thought of. Yesterday as I was streaming some of Prime’s election coverage, it was periodically interrupted by advertising because it was freevee.
There was a particularly alarming ad by a young black woman who was enthusiastically urging people to sign up for free government money. I believe it was designed to anger and motivate racists. I wondered if LaCivita had a hand in it. Or Russia. Or Bibi. Or Bezos. Or Musk.
Hmm. Quite possible. I’ve wondered about the content in gaming environments which never seems to be discussed outside of gaming.
A particular thanks on this day for your continuing work.
Few words seem more apt than what you wrote today about the effect of the ceaseless pumping of unchallenged false victimhood into today’s information realm — which then fed into the ever-primal and widespread appeal of vengence.
And indeed, in actuality it was vengence against the Rule of Law.
This geezer worries whether the significance of the latter is understood.
First things first. Thank you emptywheel esp. Dr. Wheeler for trying. I appreciate you.
I think we all here know the reasons people picked him. I’m just at a loss at what we could’ve done differently to flip a few million minds that those reasons are not worth the irreversible damage he’ll cause.
I am scared shitless.
If there was some part were we could blame Garland, it was his decision to appoint special counsels to investigate Biden’s documents and Hunter Biden. His attempts at appearing “impartial” just played into Trump’s hands and helped creating fake “whataboutism”. But this had effect only in the margin.
The more important factors are the big comeback of demagogy and lies due to social media on one hand, and the ineffectiveness of the democrats to counter those lies.
Many more faces will need to be eaten before this gets better; there’s no other way.
Mothers-to-be dying en route, or in the parking lot.
Hispanics who believed they weren’t the Hispanics Trump was going to deport, yet become collateral damage.
Who else?
You just described my hell.
This election probably killed the chances I will have grandkids. Why would either of my kids risk their lives or their partners’ lives to have a child?
I have family members who are brown — they have been mistaken for Hispanic. I have an in-law and niblings who are part-Hispanic. I worried throughout all of Trump’s first term they would be hurt in some way by Trump’s policies.
I’m sure I have counterparts who voted GOP and they just didn’t fucking care because inflation/Black Asian woman/taxes/pick any other stupid and selfish reason.
Too many didn’t want a woman President just my opinion because it wasn’t a landslide victory.
When I read about latino men going for Trump how ironic since they will most likely be part of his mass deportation
I’m not sure how to have any hope now. We tried so hard for nine years to fight this guy and it didn’t matter.
Democracy has come for the USA. We have done this to ourselves. I can’t listen to the news today. The audacity of hope can’t breathe.
Harris ran a good campaign, and she did address the cost of living – corporate greed (price gouging), housing, daycare – so it’s not as if it was ignored. Seems millions of people have selective hearing. Not to mention amnesia, what did Trump ever do for the working class in his previous term? He’s a fake populist, but people believe what they want to, despite facts.
Cognitive dissonance.
Trump IS a fascist – it’s not something Democrats made up to stoke fear – it’s the conclusion of the very people who worked for him day to day for years.
It’s sad, I really thought she had an excellent chance of winning.
Americans who voted for have made their beds etc
The courtier press just as routinely ignored Harris’ policies to complain she was a) not offering any details and b) not sitting for interviews with them. Never mind that Convict-1 would only offer vague ‘concepts of a plan’ for ACA replacement(never released BTW) and no medical (or financial) records at all. No policies at all from Convict-1 outside of claims he’s going to ‘fix’ things.
He will, but not in the way and objective person would consider ‘fixed’, but the courtier press will sane-wash it anyhow.
Agree, and they were all too obvious. Which to me means they don’t give a fuck anymore.
They must be resisted as well, because that’s where the ‘other half’ of America is now. In every small way and big way, people can resist what Trump will do. That’s fighting too.
Given the short time to enter the fray, Harris ran a GREAT campaign. But she had to go from 0 to 60 in no time flat. If it had been her/their plan before July, Biden/Harris could have done more to ease her into the public spotlight; instead, boom! suddenly the understudy appears. Nobody has an impression of who she is or what she’s about. That’s a lot of ground to cover in a short time.
Whereas people (especially average people) went through one Trump administration, and made it through, so likely feel it can’t be that bad. And Trump lies all the time, so all this deportation stuff is just talk, right? Trump being Trump…
Most telling seems to be Trump lost 3M votes from 2020; but Biden 2020 got 81M and Harris 2024 is 66M – quite the drop. Harris said “when we vote, we win” and not enough voted. Due to purges in voter lists? Bomb threats that turned people away? A “Bradley Effect” about voting for a woman? All of the above? It will take time to parse all that.
I have spent a good bit of my life immersed in what is MAGA culture. A white evangelical community that has been conditioned to see Satan behind every tree and equate Democrats with Satan, largely due to abortion, birth control, inter-racial marriage, sexual preference, etc. A libertarian community that has been conditioned to see socialists/communist behind every tree, and, realistically, when is the last time you actually met a socialist or communist? I mean the communists don’t even believe in communism anymore.
I have had ongoing conversations with three people in particular (all college educated, incidentally all with engineering or law degrees) – specifically about the lessons of The Enlightenment and the uncomfortable fact that empirical rationality is the only method that humans have discovered to determine truth. All three dodge and avoid, but over the course of time all three admit that they simply reject empirical rationality. Their thesis is “my theory/understanding is so obviously correct that anything that refutes it is either flawed data or flawed logic.”
A society like this will inevitably fail. The history of the past 500 years shows that societies that have had a greater embrace of empirical rationality progress and those that don’t regress and disappear. On the “positive” side, climate change is in the process of wiping both these useless political parties [and many more] into the dustbin of history.
Agreed. It’s the defenestration of reason — Enlightenment be damned.
I’m watching my county’s BOE press conference. County’s network had 1 million attempts at intrusion with 600,000 from Russia and Bulgaria. None were successful.
FUCK!!!
I didn’t think there were that many gullible (or stupid) voters in the country.
One thing I haven’t seen written about or commented on is that this is the third consecutive presidential election the candidate of the incumbent’s party has lost. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but Marcy’s main point, that grievance drove this particular result, is salient. In a world where people self select sources of information, grievances are amplified. Long term stability is a casualty of this trend, I fear.
My sincere thanks to Dr. Wheeler for her continued thoughtful, well researched and sometimes acerbic commentary on our politics.
The shock of this loss is so profound to me because I fell into the news silo which segregated me from other realities which I reject because I am a liberal thinker.
However, I anticipated trouble on an intuitive level when Biden was forced to step down.
Even his Primary season was flawed. Democrats had Harris foisted on them by the richest of the rich contributors. She was not chosen candidate by the process of Primaries, not by running against other Democrats. Although I voted for her, I resented the process of choosing, because it was obvious, the process was fueled by money; big money. She had one billion dollars worth of contributions. If that had reflected small donors, that would have won her the election.
In spite of all this, which troubled me at the beginning, I believed that we, as a Nation, were finally free of racial prejudice, and that women, enough women and young women, would support another woman to be their leader. I drank the Democratic Party cool-aid.
As an 84 year old woman, I am deeply disappointed; with Party, with the people of this country, and with the process, which is totally corrupted by too much money. How to save this democracy with such flimsy resources as the Congress-to-be and a flawed Supreme Court, without a Constitutional Convention to correct the structure of elections, seems a very hard task before us. However, I still believe in miracles. I just may not live long enough to see one.
I don’t have it in me to fight the massive wad of bullshit you just dumped in here. It’s not the first such bullshit you’ve dumped, either.
Go find something constructive to do elsewhere because your complaint boils down to “Why didn’t Democrats choose a younger white man.”
Over half of all Latinx voters in Texas voted for BOTH Trump and Cruz. Despite their rhetoric personally targeting in many cases family, extended family, or acquaintances. Nearly half of PA white female voters voted for Trump, despite the existential threat to autonomy. Despite one of the best run campaigns by numerous metrics in the modern era, likely only beaten by ’08. And your panacea was picking someone with less recognition, less available funds, less experience, and potentially more alienating policies after wasting time trying to create a brand new mini primary process out of thin air?
I have a knot in my stomach the size of Iowa and a very specific lens through which to focus my privileged rage and despair: the arrival of our first grandchildren (one of them imminently). What have we wrought?
A friend urged us via text to take the high road and try to understand these people blah blah blah (paraphrasing). To which I replied: check back in six months when their gloating has transformed into cruel vengeance that affects real people and families.
Still stuck in “mortem”: phase, can’t match the fierce passion of y’all to shift to clear-eyed postmortem analysis. Probably need a digital/political detox period.
((((punaise)))) <3 harpie
merci, harpie
Family who are non-white, non-cis/het, immigrants…sometimes more than one of these.
And people who are in poor health or living on SS/with Medicare.
I don’t expect to survive the next four years.