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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
@Julian: That's what I wrote. Even if they were trying to avoid unpopular opinion, (gay marriage should be legal) to secure the election I understand people still being mad about DOMA. Given that it led to over a decade of restrictions and was still felt up until gay marriage was legalized last year. If the thing you heard was "The best thing we could do at the time was throw all of you under the bus" it would probably piss me off too.
But voting for Trump as the alternative I don't get. Many people were "Gay's for Trump" which I guess make sense since the Log Cabin Republicans proudly declare themselves for the party that hates them.
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Yeah, but this year was supposed to be the Democrats' moment of glory, and instead it was snatched away. Now we're facing an insurmountable disadvantage in state legislatures, governors, the Senate, and the House, and the President, and the Supreme Court, and it'll only get worse. The Supreme Court is lost to us — we're never going to be able to use it to drag America into modernity again. The Senate caucus is defending 22 seats, some of which are in deeply polarized Republican states, which all but guarantees that they will fall to the GOP, and the advantage in governors, state legislatures, and the House will be synergistic in heightening gerrymandering. And with Pelosi and Schumer as the leaders of the party actually in government, we'll never be able to offer a meaningful opposition to Trump because they're hated. There's simply nothing that can be done. The Democrats are going to be in for a long winter in the minority, probably for a decade or more, and possibly forever.
edited 13th Dec '16 8:13:53 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."@Crimson Zephyr
Again can we stop with the hyperbolic Cultural Cringe? That is precisely the kind of attitude that the toxic anti-imperialistic far left hold and leads to political inaction or support for monsters like Castro because they're sticking it to the US. "America is fundamentally evil" soon becomes followed with "and that's why it's not worth saving" or accelerationism, which are disgusting attitudes to have from anyone who actually cares about social justice. No better than the other "let it burn"s of the right in practice.
Not to mention that again, a majority of people voted against Trump, a fair amount of people who did vote him in did so with reservations (even if there were a ridiculous amount of Skewed Priorities involved), and the main reason he won was, as Captain Caspase pointed out, unfortunate artifacting of an outdated political system.
edited 13th Dec '16 8:38:32 AM by AlleyOop
("Funny" might not be the right word. Also, the source for this is an Israeli news station, I don't think it's been double checked yet.)
In a bit of good news, after Trump's ominous rumblings of a purge in the Department of Energy, the department has basically told Trump to go screw himself. At least some of these people are going down swinging.
link: [1]
edited 13th Dec '16 8:43:11 AM by ViperMagnum357
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The advantage Clinton has in the popular vote came from California. In my lifetime (admittedly short as of yet), it has been a Democratic stronghold. Getting 3 million extra votes there is as useful as getting a mere handful. Of course the coasts are going to vote blue, that's Dem country. But elections are never decided there and never will be, and culturally, we're hated by the Middle America fetishists that dominate our discourse.
There's literally no possible advantage to exploit — the Democrats are in a state of terminal decline.
edited 13th Dec '16 8:46:17 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."I'd like to point out to Crimson Zephyr that only roughly half of the voting public actually ended up voting, and only roughly half of those voted for Trump.
Sooo.... one fourth of the voting public. Yeah. That's totally America as it really is, as opposed what one fourth of the public is. What actually happened seems to indicate that what America really is is too discouraged or disconnected to vote.
We really should talk more about how we can help either get those people polls as a practical matter (since voter suppression is very much a thing) or encourage those people to go to the polls to start with. Liberals to tend to do better with a higher turnout.
They're really fucking not. Going through a rough patch is not the same as a party dissolving. Hell, folks claimed the same about the Republicans after Bush, and they didn't actually break apart.
edited 13th Dec '16 8:48:02 AM by AceofSpades
If they couldn't bother to show up to vote in an election as important as this one, what hope do we have that they will give a damn in the future, when all of this becomes routine?
"They're really fucking not. Going through a rough patch is not the same as a party dissolving. Hell, folks claimed the same about the Republicans after Bush, and they didn't actually break apart."
Things work differently for Republicans. They'll always have a groundswell of support because they appeal to the darkest parts of our nature. Trying to appeal to the essential humanity of all and working towards a better, more justice, and more equitable future is always harder because enlightenment is hard.
edited 13th Dec '16 8:54:16 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."That's the same question that's asked every election, Crimson. There's entire organizations dedicated to this task, actually. (And it's really too big of a question for me to have a ready made answer right fucking now.)
You're miring yourself deliberately in a huge amount of pessimism. Very hyperbolic pessimism that declares nothing will ever get better. I get that right now things are discouraging, but nothing stays terrible forever. If you're really this worried maybe you should look into local volunteer opportunities for the Democratic party or ACLU. Figure out if there's something you can do where you are right now.
edited 13th Dec '16 8:54:40 AM by AceofSpades
There's literally nothing to be done — even in my own state, a Democratic stronghold if there ever was one, we have a Republican governor with a 65% approval rating who has the state party either terrified or kowtowing, and no one knows what to do. How are we going to defeat the GOP nationally if we can't even do it in our own backyard?
Plus, I'm of no use to the Democratic Party — I'm the very definition of the hated coastal liberal elite, and I live in Massachusetts. The party wants people in Michigan, Ohio, and Florida.
edited 13th Dec '16 9:00:04 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Zephyr I think you need to take a step back, you sound like you're falling into a nihilistic hole of despair and it's not healthy for you or the thread.
The Dems have a good chance of recapturing several governors mansions come 2018, in the senate a few seats may be lost but not that many, the house could be recaptured in 2018 if the Dems play it right and so far Trump has only a single SC seat to fill and that's one that was already held by the right. The court balance may not change under Trump at all, especially if the Dems somehow retake the senate in 2018 and strait up block any Trump nominees for two years.
edited 13th Dec '16 8:57:29 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIn some ways I don't think this is entirely inaccurate since fear of the other, tribalism, greed, etc are all part of what makes us human. There's nothing uniquely american about that.
Do you think the slaves, or the people living under Jim Crow would have made their lives better if they just laid over and accepted the white man's boot was going to be on their face forever no matter what they did? Or that they didn't have doubts over whether a world that wasn't like that was possible? They didn't have the benefit of historical hindsight to tell them that it was something that could happen.
The reason that people fought so hard is because...well, MLK put it best when he said he had a dream. They had to believe that a world better than the one they had was in fact possible.
I would agree with you that Trump does say something extremely unflattering about America in many ways, even besides the archaic political institutions. But no nation is so cartoonish that it can be exclusively vile or saintly.
In order for this to eventually fade, people have to believe that a post-Trump, post-GOP world is possible, even if it won't happen in our lifetimes.
edited 13th Dec '16 9:00:04 AM by Draghinazzo
@Crimson: Yeah, Silas is right. Also, no. No you're not actually useless? So what if you live in a stronghold? There's still things you can do, you just have to make the fucking effort to try instead of this heaping bunch of giving up you're doing right here. Or, you know, you can just donate money if you have the spare cash, I guess. Either way you're primed to be part of the problem you've set out in your posts with this attitude. Take a break from the internet for a while and recharge. Then come back and be prepared to think productively. Because this, what you're doing right now? Is the exact sort of thinking that inspires people to not even try and to help the worst things you've predicted come true.
Historically speaking, periods where one party controls everything have always been pretty short.
And considering how shitty Trump's approval rating are at point where, historically speaking, one would expect them to be high, it seems unlikely that will Trump be gaining any support- and, of course, remember there's a certain type of person who just hates whoever's in the White House at the moment. Plus demographic shifts are undoing some gerrymandering, and actual challenges to gerrymandered states have been going better than usual.
But really, what it all hinges on is that the Democrat voters continue to believe that things can change, and thus actually show up to vote in 2018. Indeed, it's not hard to imagine an unusually high turnout of Dem voters who want Trump to have actual opposition, as long as they don't just give up and stay home.
edited 13th Dec '16 9:07:08 AM by Gilphon
Eh, history shows that Dems mostly show up in presidential elections; the mid terms have a low turnout in general and seem to be mostly Republicans in recent decades because it's mostly older voters that go to vote in those. Now, it is possible if dems work on making the midterms a hell of a lot more visible. (And for some states that's also the election for governors.)
Yes, Wall Street stock traders are trying to short stocks based on what the Orange Ingrate tweets about next
. Well, every cent is going to count if they really are going to have to do this for the next 4-8 years.
Newsweek: How Donald Trump's Business Ties Are Already Jeopardizing U.S. Interests
. How much leverage do foreign governments have over Trump? How does all of the leverage sound to you?
Unpleasant thought: Even if he does a blind trust properly, Trump is probably still too invested in the Trump brand to let it founder because of foreign governments trying to pressure him.
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiotAgain with the hyperbole. Please stop with all this fatalistic crap about how the "Democrats are DOOMED FOREVER!!1!" It's childish and ironically kinda naive as Gilphon pointed out. And if anything your insistence will only make people less likely to resist tyranny if they learn to just accept it as an inevitability we can never escape from. And you're sincere about wanting justice to be done in the world, you don't want that do you?
edited 13th Dec '16 9:15:11 AM by AlleyOop
Even under the assumption that the Trump administration is only slightly worse for the average American (something I think is suspect) rather than disastrous, I don't think that's what most people had in mind when he said "Make America Great Again". According to what I understand one of the main things that Bill Clinton and the Dems used to campaign against H.W was the fact that a) the economy was shitty, b) he wasn't making that any better for them by going against his famous campaign promise of not creating new taxes or raising existing ones.
So if the economy is doing sufficiently bad the democrats might be able to unseat Trump with the proper plan even with voter suppression.
What kind of suppression was there, and can we prove it? If we can prove it, someone could file a class-action suit that disqualifies the man. If we can't prove it...
well
We're just circulating rumors at that point.
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

I know it may sound odd, but I think we need to be careful calling for the inevitable epic failure of Donald Trump and similar kinds of doomsaying.
I say this because it is possible that Trump and his system does not fail spectacularly. It may merely be 'bad', and given how low his threshold for success is already I'd rather not lower it further by proclaiming that his reign will be apocalyptic or similar kinds of rhetoric.
It's not very useful to indulge in that level of nihilism because it is actually contrary to reality. Trump's victory was not an inevitability, he won largely because the system and the environment was favored him and even then it was largely by technicality.
edited 13th Dec '16 8:01:21 AM by Mio