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naraburns  nihil supernum  28d ago (text post)   27007 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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Might be interesting to see how Democrats square the circle of "Trump is a fascist who will end American democracy if elected, but we are going to concede peacefully to him now".

I assume it's going to be by the standard method of just ignoring it and pretending there is no contradiction.

It seems to me that one factor why the liberal reaction has been subdued is that this time Trump won the popular vote too, and the swing to him was universal all around the country. Can't just argue that his presidency is only because the Clinton campaign made the error in not campaigning in a few specific states, can't argue Russian interference at least as well etc.

I just watched Kamala’s speech and was surprised that she told the crowd everything is going to be okay.

I guess she doesn’t believe Trump is a fascist or that we just had our final American election.

I will confess that this surprised me as well. The paranoid part of me expected her to do a coup and become president anyway. Like, Joe Biden is mysteriously dead offscreen on election night, which we only find out in what everyone had assumed would be Kamala's concession speech, suddenly Kamala Harris is the president, she openly refuses to transfer power to someone as dangerous as Trump, and she's putting out a call to kill him and all of his supporters, with pardons promised. It was kind of nutty. Glad to see everything going okay.

They're doing it so after communists leftists burn the Reichtag Capitol and Hitler Trump suspendeds civil liberties they can say we told you so.

I mean they will end up dealing with Trump the same way they have dealt with him in the past, as outlined by Scott in his recent post. They'll work within the system to change institutions over to their monoculture, stifling all opposition while still maintaining a veneer that they're not doing anything bad. This may include more drawn out trials to say that Trump's win, or even his candidacy, is completely invalid. But they won't go January 6th on the situation and try to handle it in any sort of immediate sense. It's always the long game.

It may be poetic justice for democrats to storm the capitol and refuse to certify the election results, but it wouldn't accomplish anything except guaranteeing that democracy ends. Somebody has to stop defecting.

I mean, there will almost certainly be mass violence. Democrats are just better about having plausible deniability, like claiming "Antifa is just an idea". Or "Fiery but mostly peaceful protest."

I don't know, this one seems more subdued than 2016. IIRC people were on the streets pretty much the day after 2016, and there doesn't seem to be too much of that this time around. People seem... exhausted? Defeated? I wonder if the popular vote result has something to do with it. Or how sure everybody seemed on both sides of the aisle that Hillary had it in the bag—complete with prepared victory theatrics about breaking a glass ceiling etc—making 2016 an almost traumatic shock, which we don't have this time around.

Frankly, the online left has sniffed its farts for far too long and crafted its own reality in leftist echo chambers like reddit. The popular vote is a key factor for sure, but Trump was a "phenomenon" in 2016. The media hysteria surrounding his first victory was quite a novel wave too, that would inevitably play a role in fragmenting society and its culture core. A lot has changed since then. People know what a Trump presidency looks like, it may not be very good, but he sure as hell isn't some fascist building para-military groups or rounding up gays and blacks in labour camps or turning America into the Handmaid's Tale. He is certainly not a war hawk either. Trust in media institutions is at a record low now. The left as a whole needs to reel in its media/social media game, it's giving them horrible PR at this point. The usual appeal to emotion and hysteria and "istophobic" shaming tactics are no longer working, not to mention they have COMPLETELY alienated young Gen Z men (the most lost generation of men by far) many of whom were in like 5th grade during Trump 1.0 and would spend the rest of their growing up years hearing the left demonise, blame and even mock men and downplay their issues. Basically, the left needs a platform that is more creative than anti-Trump.

Biden congratulated Trump and invited him to the White House:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-congratulates-trump-phone-call-invites-meeting-white-house/story?id=115560662

This happened hours before Kamala Harris concession speech. Which is starting right now in this second:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0ASIeYMfh14

Boy would I love to see some accountability from the people who insisted there was no way Trump would be allowed to win the election.

Judge Juan Merchan’s sentencing of Trump for his felony convictions happens later this month. And who’s to say that another Trump assassination attempt won’t happen between now and January?

Harris and Biden mouth the words required of them. Now they can have plausible deniability if the left’s shock troops act to stop Big Orange Hitler from taking office. We’ll see if Trump actually gets to January 20, 2025.

After January 20, will you say that Trump still wasn't allowed to win because the actors of the cathedral/deep state/institutions prevent him from enacting serious change? At what point will the goalposts have moved far enough?

Would you say that Republicans didn't allow Harris to win if a Trump voter unaffiliated with the party assassinated her after a win?

Even if what you say happens to be true, the people who said Democrats would steal the election through votes were, flatly, wrong.

Ill admit that I was one of those people and am finding myself pleasantly surprised to be (at first pass at least) eating crow.

Too soon to tell re: my alternate lower confidence prediction/conspiracy theory.

What sort of "accountability" did you have in mind?

Admitting to the error is a good start. Perhaps having a frank discussion in your conservative circles on how this belief came to be would be a good next step.

You were told over and over again by certain pundits that this was 100% going to happen. Maybe reevaluate whether those voices are trustworthy and worth listening to

I'm afraid the best you can expect is the goalposts moving to "the deep state won't let him do anything anyway". (Which, maybe, but why wasn't that the initial line?)

I've been arguing against the blackpill crowd for years now, but this is your reminder that Trump missed having his brainstem clipped by a sniper who his bodyguards studiously ignored until after he'd fired eight or so times.

I'm not sure I see the relevance. Obviously Trump isn't an immortal. Winning the election was not guaranteed, and neither is taking office, and neither is achieving any policy goals or staying in office very long. I only mean that I have seen a lot of introspection from the people who thought Kamala would win on the merits and zero introspection from people who thought that Kamala would win via subterfuge. They have simply moved to bailey.

Let me highlight the relevant part then: who his bodyguards studiously ignored until after he'd fired eight or so times.

Trump being alive right now is a low-probability event, and a significant part of the reason it is a low-probability event is conspicuous, inexplicable and extremely suspicious inaction on the part of federal agents in the face of a deadly threat. The events in Butler have not been remotely adequately explained, and one of the obvious potential explanations is that the deep state made a good try at having him killed.

(This being said, I also am waiting for the blackpill crew to update based on this new information.)

I think that would make for a good top-level post in the main thread. All this definitely may be a good reason for some people to, as the rationalists like to say, update their priors. On a more subtle level, the Trump presidency is going to be an interesting test for Curtis Yarvin's idea that even if a right-winger gets elected, he will not be able to significantly change things. But one thing is for sure, Trump did just win. He did not die at the last minute to a mysterious accident, and apparently there were no container trucks full of Harris votes showing up at the last minute to give Harris the election.

I honestly doubt that Biden is even disappointed by this outcome.

Its the best case scenario for him. He can go to his grave claiming that he would have won if they had let him race.

Nah, I'm hearing a lot of "if only he had stepped down sooner" in my extended circles.

Overheard in a Wilmington nursing home:

"Mr. Biden, we need you to tell us who you want making decisions for you."

"NO! I'm the only one... with the medicare... to defeat Donald Trump... and the maga..."

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