“Signs increasing”? I’d laugh if anything about the situation we’re in was remotely funny.
If/when all your “don’t worry, she’s got it in the bag, she’ll win by 400 EV’s” posts become collosal dumpster-fires here in a couple of weeks, I want to put you on retainer to pick football and basketball games for me, so I can retire in my 50’s by betting the other way.
Early voting seems to be favoring the Republicans in swing states. I am trying to reassure myself that Trump has given his cult the OK to vote early this time so it may just mean there won’t be as big of a shift between counting of in person votes and early/ mail-in votes which is worse for the conspiracy theorists.
But with Tucker Carlson’s rhetoric and Trump saying he’ll put RFK in charge of health I feel the need to panic. I can’t believe that American democracy is going to die in less than two weeks and half the country including politicians who should know better are supporting it. I don’t want to live under a dictator, especially a really stupid and mentally unstable one. How is this our country? How is it that whether or not Harris worked at McDonald’s in college has any bearing at all on the election. How is it that a candidate can just make up whatever crap he wants and his surrogates and parts of the media will just repeat it over and over until people believe it to be true because they’ve heard it so often?
So I’m starting this post without a clear notion of what I actually want to say right now. But let’s see how this goes.
I get this so much. 100%. In my more despairing moments I just stop and look around and I wonder how we got to this point. I was born in 81. The America that I look around and see right now I do not recognize. This is not the country that I grew up in. When I look at Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and know that this election is going to be a coin toss, it boggles my mind. This country is not sane right now.
So why is it a coin toss?
This answer is going to sound flippant, but I truly think, in my best estimation, that the answer is that this stuff is always been with us. Racism, misogyny, entitlement, ignorance, corruption, etc… it’s baked into the American psyche. It’s why this country was founded as half slave and half free. It’s why we had to have the 3/5 compromise to even get the Constitution passed in the first place. It’s why the civil war happened. It’s why a significant portion of Americans sided with Nazis before, during, and yes after, WWII. It’s why there was an actual Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939.
1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden - Wikipedia.
It’s why the “America First” political movement of the early 20th century found traction.
America First (policy) - Wikipedia.
From the Wikipedia article.
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) used the phrase at the organization’s peak in the 1920s, when racist, xenophobic sentiment was widespread;[13][14] it informed many of their members who ran for political office.[15] The Immigration Act of 1924 sponsored by Washington U.S. representative Albert Johnson proved to legislate xenophobia and white supremacy, excluding immigrants on the basis of ethnicity and national origin in an effort to preserve white racial demographics.[16] Johnson’s leading role in the immigration restriction bill elicited strong support from the KKK.[17]
That political movement existed through world war II and into the 50s. It was championed by the likes of a young Joe McCarthy. Later on during McCarthy’s anti-communist crusades he brought on a young lawyer by the name of Roy Cohn. Much like McCarthy, Cohn was adept at demagoguery and wrapping himself in the flag while going after his perceived political enemies. Cohn was also a mentor in the 70s for a young Donald Trump. Every single thing Trump has learned about rat fucking the media and the legal system he learned from Cohn.
There is absolutely nothing new under the sun. During the 50s and 60s we managed to somewhat put a lid on this stuff, and tolerance and acceptance became mainstreamed. But before that it really wasn’t. Donald Trump is Joe McCarthy resurrected. And MAGA is the “America First” movement warmed over and updated for a social media and internet-powered world. 10 years ago when Trump entered the political stage he kicked that rock over. And all the cockroaches came scurrying out. We couldn’t see them, but they were always there. And Trump gave them a mainstream mouthpiece. Combine that with horribly misinformed and uninformed voters and what we are seeing is a repeat of something that happened 100 years ago.
The entire history of the United States of America is leveraged, pretty much, on the push and pull between pro-democracy and anti-democracy forces. For the latter half of the 20th century the pro-democracy forces were winning. And now it’s more 50/50. And that is freaking terrifying.
This is severely simplified, but I believe it’s accurate as far as it goes. Other parts of this have been discussed in previous threads, so I’m sure others will come along to fill in blanks. If I’ve gotten anything wrong I will gladly retract the mistake.
Anyone who is willing and able to listen to podcasts I would highly recommend searching out Rachel Maddow’s podcast “Ultra.” I was aware of various bits and pieces of this history before listening to that, but she connects the dots in a very linear and understandable way.
One more straight thought.
Pro slavery forces. The confederacy. The KKK. America first. Joe McCarthy. The house unamerican activities committee. Roy Cohn. MAGA. Donald Trump.
It’s all the same thing.
My “signs increasing” reply was to Bosda di Chi of Tricor who said there were yard lawn signs increasing for Harris and fewer yard lawn signs for Trump.
What the Harris campaign needs is a good bumper sticker/lawn sign.
Can we steal LBJ’s " In your guts, you know he’s nuts"?
Yes, this. Really it’s not nearly so much a matter of America suddenly getting worse as it is a lot of people who were in denial finally paying attention. These people have always been around; so have most of these specific individuals. It’s just that before around 2018 so much as mentioning them or their agenda people would start screaming “Godwin’s Law! You lose!” and accusing you of being crazy/bigoted/whatever for daring to mention any of that.
The insistence on pretending the Right is reasonable and well meaning has greatly encouraged their fanaticism by for decades making it so the worse they became, the more invulnerable to criticism or scrutiny they became. Since the crazies always got hit less than the moderates it just made sense to act crazy.
Great post, @Jihi. It’s thoughts like this that give me hope that the pendulum swings back and we come back from the brink. But then in my moments of pessimism, I think, “But what if we don’t this time? What if America sleepwalks itself into autocracy?” 
I am afraid you are very correct. Folk have been fooling themselves all along as to American exceptionalism.
As much as I like the thought, people have been telling me my whole life the “pendulum would swing back” any time now. Decades later, it hasn’t. Maybe in a generation or two when the present leadership on both sides is dead from old age & out of power and can’t keep fighting the same fight over and over.
To be clear, I would never argue that it’s in any way inevitable that the “pendulum will swing the other way.”
There’s the old saying that “arc of history bends towards justice.” Far be it from me to contradict MLK, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Political movements are born from people. Parties are made up of people. Governments are made of people. And people make choices. There’s nothing about history that necessarily mandates that those choices will be smart, informed, ethical, or moral. Look no further than the Weimar Republic giving rise to Nazism to see how how quickly and completely the wheels can fly off. There’s nothing that makes us all that different from pre-war Germany.
When people are given license to be there worst selves there will always be a number that will do so gladly. It’s also why I think discussion about “misinformed” voters is slightly misplaced. I have no doubt they exist, but that existence pales in comparison to the true believers who really do want want a Third Reich style dictatorship right here in America. They existed back in the 40s and they are still with us. Trump is out there literally mimicking Hitler rhetoric and there is a sizable portion of the electorate that is lapping it up with a spoon. Those are the ones driving the bus. The rest are just along for the ride. “Sleepwalking into autocracy” is a perfect analogy.
That’s why “don’t become complacent” is such an important mantra right now.
So here’s the thing. The reason that a direct line can be drawn from the confederacy, through America First and McCarthy, straight to MAGA and Trump is because these people have children. And families . And their own communities. These children are raised in environments where this thinking is encouraged and reinforced. The civil war did not stop them. WWII did not stop them. The civil rights movements did not stop them. They went underground for a few generations and came roaring back with Trump and MAGA.
The best, I think, we can hope for is to force them underground again for a little while. But there will be another Hitler/McCarthy/Trump that will come along and give them voice again. But that’s not a reason to stop fighting. Let’s not forget that Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Joe McCarthy, and Martin Luther King are all “real Americans” for however you choose to define that
This IS what America IS.
Eternal vigilance.
Maybe next time they’ll come up with something more original than a swastika, or a stupid fucking red hat.
Yeah. I think the longstanding insistence that the far right is merely ignorant or misled and would promptly switch sides if persuaded of the truth is a dangerous mistake. I think that most of them know perfectly well what they are fighting for and enjoy the thought of it.
The far right comes in various flavors, but I don’t agree with the idea that most know they are wrong and enjoy embracing the villain role. Some are just trolling, yes, but plenty of people of the most violent/genocidal/brutal types are fully convinced that they are the good guys. They don’t picture themselves as the villains.
What makes you think that they consider genocide and brutality to be “villainous” in the first place? Or that they consider “evil” to be “bad”? The idea that evil is superior to good is widespread; pretty much built into the idea that “good” is about self-sacrifice and resisting temptation.
I mean, just look at fiction; how often do you see villains who are weaker than the heroes? Villains are typically shown as stronger and smarter than the hero. It’s part of our culture that evil is stronger and more effective than good.
As for genocide; The Turner Diaries known as the “Bible of the racist right” includes the genocide of the majority of humanity. In their eyes killing everyone but them is good and just. They’re looking forward to it.
I think we sometimes underestimate how much of the country despises “permissiveness” and is aching for a chance to thump some heads and enforce obedience.
Early voting data is especially perilous to use for predictions, but something a bit unusual is happening:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-detail-in-the-data
Something I noticed in the first days of early voting was that most of the swing states that surfaced gender breakdowns for early voting showed around a ten point spread between men (~45) and woman (~55). There are more women than men and women vote more than men. So difference didn’t surprise me. But that spread still seemed pretty big. So I asked McDonald whether that was a signal of any sort. He said, no, that’s roughly the spread you see in early voting.
But over the last couple days, both in my exchanges with him and in a few of his tweet updates, something else has come out of this. That ~10 point spread is about what we should expect from other cycles. But we’re also seeing a lot more Republican early voting. All things being equal that high rate of Republican early voting should be compressing that gender divide. But it’s not.
If Republican women are voting early at a significantly increased rate (and more so than Republican men), then something may be motivating Republican women more so than usual. We’ll see, but that could be a sign that a lot of Republican women are turned off by Trump.
The early vote is going to Kamala.
The mail-in vote will go to Kamala.
The election-day vote may be a tie.
The absentee ballots may be a tie.
Not hard to see how this is going to pan out.
Yup, exactly.
And, as I’ve said before and will say again: the history of the USA can be seen as a long and convoluted argument about just what it means to say “all men [sic] are created equal”.
Nope. We’re all the same species.
And the lesson from that happening in Germany – as I’ve also said before, and will say again – isn’t that there was something particularly nasty about 1930’s Germany. It’s that if it could happen there, it can happen anywhere.
We are all the same species and we are not immune.
But sometimes, for a while, we get it relatively right. That’s part of the same species, also.
Some of those kids defect. Being born to racists and/or totalitarians doesn’t guarantee staying that way.
But there are also always converts from outside the group; sometimes to the horror of the rest of their families.
That is interesting. Not sure I am convinced of the hypothesis but it is definitely interesting. Huh.
What is the difference between mail-in vote and absentee ballots?