I’m confused what you find so confusing about this. Yes, the MAGA cult is here to stay. It’s altered the political landscape of the US for the rest of our lives. That’s precisely what’s filling us with terror and despair.
What I find confusing is that everyone is somehow acting like it’s the end of the world. Everyone KNEW there was a roughly 50/50 chance Trump would win, and everyone acted like “Well, Harris is a lock”, and is now wailing and gnashing teeth, rather than moving on to the plan for what would happen if Harris didn’t win.
I mean, even if she won this time around, it’s stupid to think that the Democrats would always win out and keep MAGA from being problematic in the future.
So why act like it’s a big deal, instead of an outcome that was eventually expected and planned for?
Join the Volksgemeinschaft and celebrate Kraft durch Freude! We will build an empire that will last for a thousand years! What could go wrong?
Trump has literally declared his intention to be a dictator (“only on Day One,” because auocrats commonly relinquish their power after achieving their immediate goals) and has surrounded himself with advisors who support or are adjacent to the Heritage Foundation fucks who wrote a game plan to turn Margaret Atwood’s fantastical religious dystopia in The Handmaid’s Tale into a reality under a Christian Nationalist government. But hey, why worry? When has an author’s speculative storytelling ever become a reality?
Stranger
You’re throwing “everyone” around a whole lot, without much backing for it. Virtually nobody thought Harris’ victory was a lock. Nobody thought that beating Trump now meant that Democrats would be in power forever and ever. There was, at most, some hope that a sound defeat for Trump would mean that saner elements on the right might take control of the GOP back, but I don’t know anyone who was counting on that happening.
This is such a fucking weird sentence, because you seem to be saying that something can’t be a “big deal” if you expect it to happen and can plan for it. Yes, a lot of people expected Trump to be re-elected. A lot of people are gearing up for a long, brutal fight that we very likely won’t win in any significant way. And even if we do win, whatever that might look like, a whole fucking lot of people are going to have their lives measurably degraded (if not completely destroyed) by the incoming administration. That’s a “big deal,” no matter how expected or prepared you are for it.
Being “confused” by that makes no fucking sense at all.
I for one never thought that Harris was a lock, but Harris was our last chance of keeping things on a relatively normal footing rather than falling into the abyss. If Harris had won we would have been on firm ground in terms of what to do at least until the next election. Now we are in totally uncharted territory, and what ends up being the best strategy will depend on how all of it turns out.
Trump has proposed a radical agenda involving the complete dismantling of the government with the return of the patronage system of the 1800’s, deportation of tens of millions of people, suppression of the free press, persecution of political enemies, and levels or corruption that would make Imelda Marcos blush. The question remains as to what extent he can realize this agenda.
Much of what he proposes is going to be wildly unpopular, with a populace who elected him primarily to reduce the price of eggs, and much of it will be bad for business and opposed by special interests with pockets no less deep than Musk’s. He has a very narrow margin in congress, and Meanwhile the backbiting and infighting within his administration has already begun.
So depending on how things go we can either be looking at forming a resistance against an authoritarian one party regime, or merely trying to mitigate the damage resulting from a chaotic and ineffective government. These require very different strategies. So for now ,as @Dr.Drake proposed, we are taking a wait and see approach.
It’s not of particular interest to me how some random person reacts to this. It is of interest to me of how all the people with some amount of power and/or influence --politicians and media, mostly–react. And as far as I can tell all the useless politicians are fine with it. The worthless pundits are fine with it. So clearly they don’t believe everything they were writing and saying the last year, or four years, or eight years.
In fairness, I did think Harris’ victory was a lock, as many Dopers have reminded me. I definitely didn’t see Trump winning.
I think “comfortable” may be the wrong word to use for the thread title. What I’m trying to convey is that Democrats spent many years warning everyone that Trump being reelected would be a 5-alarm fire for America, but now that Trump has been reelected, they treat it as a 1-alarm fire. I mean, many Democrats were even smiling quite genuinely during the Electoral College certification process a few hours ago, beaming as Trump was certified as president. That’s a strange way to behave if they think Trump is Hitler 2.0.
I think Dems are a little punch-drunk right now. We’re having trouble absorbing all this and figuring out a way forward. I hope that the inauguration is the smelling salt we need to wake us up out of this punch-drunk fog.
That’s a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. You’re complaining that they’re smiling, but had they been scowling, they’d immediately be made into memes about how triggered they are about Trump winning. Those would follow them for years, and no politician with any sense is willing to just hand their opposition a free opportunity to make them look foolish.
I think a lot of people are hoping that he’s as much of a bumblin’ stumblin’ fumblin’ fool as he was in 2017-2021. The best thing about Trump back then was that he wasn’t good enough at anything to be able to implement his worst impulses.
The problem with that line of thinking is that he was often stopped by advisors who weren’t as crazy as him. This time, they’re as crazy or even crazier than Trump…
So, we still have the stumblin’ bumblin’ fumblin’ guy, which will help keep the damage down some. But not enough without a few semi-crazies to tame his absolute worst impulses, because even a stumbler like him can do a ton of damage if left alone or assisted by people even crazier than him…
Being flustered is a state of agitation or confusion. I don’t think there’s any confusion about the level of harm the Trump administration is going to do to the United States. The only uncertainty is just how much harm the administration is going to do. So that leaves agitation which is just a state of anxiety. We’ve been through a Trump administration before. We understand how bad he was and how bad he’s going to be. There’s absolutely no reason for us to be flustered. What do you do when a category 5 hurricane is bearing down on your location and you can’t escape? You hunker down and hope there are enough pieces left over after the storm to rebuild.
In a sense it may be. The main factor being probaly the Supreme Court. It will be handy dismantling deep state.
But Trump does not have much energy anymore. After the revenge of opponents…his personal interests do not include achieving anything for working class MAGA.
I did think it would be closer than it was, and I was hoping for a Harris win. Same with the Senate- I thought it would be closer, and with luck a tie.
What exactly do you want here? Wailing, gnashing of teeth, rending of hair-shirts? Storming the Capitol?
Performative despair isn’t going to do anything except gin up talking points about “haha, Democrats sure hate democracy, don’t they?” And it provides more oxygen to “Democrats have no ideas, they just automatically oppose Trump before he even took office.”
Naturally I don’t agree with those narratives, but they resonate with some people. Until Trump starts governing, there’s not much to oppose, and not much to gain from waiting and crying. The thing for Democrats to do now is exactly what we demand of Republicans - respect the democratic process, and fight like hell within its lawful limits.
I would agree with this. I’d like to hope they’re too incompetent to stay out of each other’s way, once again. Trump of course is a stupid man, the real problems is the hangers-on who will have learned from last time.
And what I fear that they’ve learned is that since the courts and legal procedure will slow them down, they need to go right for the jugular on day one, keep smashing away at the civilian-military separation to the point where they can start ignoring court orders and even arresting people who get in their way. They’ll be kicking themselves for not having done it last time, and they won’t make the same mistake again.
I can’t imagine where the OP gets that impression; perhaps they’re just laughing at the clown show.
Where politics is concerned, the only smile that’s crossed my face is due to the schadenfreude.
It’s kind of hard to laugh at the clown show if the clowns are at the steering wheel and Democrats are also passengers in the car.
It’s nervous laughter, to be sure, but while we regroup and brace ourselves for the shit show to come, at least we can take pleasure in the dysfunction and infighting. Yes, we’re all fucked, despite how hard we all worked to warn what would happen. At least we can indulge in the small pleasure of “I told you so”.
Control what you can control. The playbook is simple: fund the resistance (ex. ACLU), win back the house in 2 years, then go after the Presidency. In the meantime, bureaucratic self-interest, Senate historically not wanting to cede power, and sheer incompetence of all the clowns being put forward as leaders will hopefully reduce the damage.
Eating the outrage of what Trump 2.0 might do, what the crazy nominees might do, what congress critters might do, ad nauseum and a quarter will be worth 25 cents. Silly me, I thought we killed off the moral majority in 1984 only to see the American Taliban come back stronger than ever.
IMHO, no Dems or independents are “comfortable” with Trump 2.0. Just keeping the useless outrage tamped down, and girding the loins for productive action is warranted.
At this point eight years ago, I thought that Trump would try fairly hard to do what he promised. Except for promises requiring unlikely congressional action, most new presidents do. So, for example, I thought he would use his power as commander in chief to intimidate (or force!) Mexico into paying for the wall — something he had promised dozens — probably hundreds — of times.
Wrong!
I now know Trump can be less a right wing extremist, and more a chaos agent. So it is hard to predict what will happen. This makes it hard to panic!
For example: Will he recognize Somaliland?. That’s important! Experts mostly think he will, and mostly think it dangerous to peace. I think he doesn’t know the difference between Somalia and Somaliland, and won’t want to learn. So it will depend on who talked to him last.