I highly doubt the left will do anything uncivil. How can they win back the country? Is it too late?
Democracy is just the tyranny of the majority.
I think that most of the Americans want this, even if people on the outside do not understand. So in that sense they are right now winning back their country, as confusing as it might sound.
Normally in Democracy the majority or popular vote wins, however due to the electoral college America has, it doesnt necessarily mean the majority voted for the winner. This was the case for Bush, and some other moments in the past.
Whether it’s 48 or 52 % is an immaterial difference. Every other American who voted, voted for Trump. The rest don’t seem to care either way. He has very broad popular assent and is as popular as Harris give or take a margin of error.
Everyone is lasered-focused on the EC because it makes all the difference for the practicalities, but if one is to make a broad judgement of whether Trump won fair and square the answer is “yeah, mostly”. Further proof is the fact that the House is probably going to be his as well.
Americans now bear the collective responsibility for the horrors of the next 4(+?) years. Do not make the mistake of blaming the popular will of outright fascism on institutional failures, because institutions didn’t force half of Americans to vote for the fascist, again.
I’ll wait 72 hours before settling with it, in case any shenanigans were involved. I expect it’s legitimate, but I want that window open if it’s needed.
Trump is winning the popular vote by a pretty decent margin. The electoral college isn’t the issue here.
They haven’t finished counting that’s why. Rural areas are faster to count and skew conservative.
A republican hasn’t won the popular vote in 20 years. Trump is projected to win but like last time he’ll lose the popular vote and win by virtue of the electoral college.
All the projections I’m seeing him show him almost certainly winning the popular vote. There’s a gap of 6 million votes and almost every state is over 90% reported in. That gap is going to likely shrink a bit, but unfortunately it almost certainly won’t be enough for him to even lose the popular vote.
Lets face it, we’re (assuming you’re american) apparently just a country of facists. It looks like GOP is going to have majority in both houses too so here comes project 2025 I guess.
Sorry bud, not a yank. You have my sympathies though.
If it turns out that he does indeed win the popular vote then yeah I’m sorry for your loss. A nest of at least 50% fascists or fascist enablers.
Heart aches for those that did their civic duty and yet have to suffer the repercussions :(
It looks like turnout is way down compared to last election. Trump is pulling about the same amount he did last time ( maybe a few million down, but there are still results to get). Harris is currently down 15M from where Biden was.
Trump’s support is no larger than it was last time. Harris’ supporters just didn’t show up
Harris’ supporters just didn’t show up
Anyone who didn’t show up is not a Harris supporter.
Wasn’t he ahead in 2016 around this time, but then once all was said and done he was a few mil behind?
But Trump won the popular vote this time
I believe the states responsible for those silly outcomes have since passed laws to prevent it happening again.
Could be wrong, but I listened to a podcast last week with an American professor who’s pretty much written the book, explaining the history of the Electoral College and how it really works. I’m sure he said those states since fixed those loopholes.
Either way, the damage is done today. Another four years of stupidity in charge.
This is not correct. The electoral college is exactly as susceptible to giving the win to the person with fewer votes as it was in 2000 and 2016. It’s also not an issue that’s due to any state in particular and is not an issue that can be solved by individual state action. The NPVIC would fix it but requires the cooperation of many states and is not in effect, and has stalled pretty hard in recent years.
Nah - it’s at least partly correct.
Faithless electors have never once affected the outcome of a US election.
Seriously - the whole thing is such a befuddling mess to us non-Americans.
How exactly can one win the popular vote but not the actual election? From the outside, the reporting I’ve seen always talks about the faithless elector problem (not in those words - just in describing the problems). Is it more to do with how many votes (electors) each state gets, based on population size?
That’s it, yes - each state gets as many electoral votes as it has congressmen, including senators. Most states award all of their electoral votes to whoever wins the state, with no proportionality to it at all - only two states (Nebraska and Maine, neither one large) do anything proportional with their votes.
With a system like that it’s easier to see how things can end up with the less popular candidate winning - they can, for example, sneak by with 50.1% of the vote in just enough states to win, but bomb it out with 20% of the vote in all the other states. That’s an extreme example specifically for the purpose of illustration, but less extreme versions of that are usually what happens.
The electoral votes also aren’t distributed entirely fairly - the number of electoral votes per person tends to be larger for less populated states. The less populated states also tend to be Republican states. So in a very real sense, each person’s vote counts for “more” in those states, and “less” in states with high populations. I don’t believe it’s really possible to fix this problem without vastly increasing the number of electoral votes, but congress currently has its size capped at 535 members for what I consider not very good reasons.
Yes, the whole system is trash from the ground up. But much of its structure is defined in the constitution itself, which is very difficult to change.
You think laws matter to the privileged?
u̇nfoṙtcėnetlı, H ſımz t bı ƿinıŋ ð pȯpyulṙ vot æz ƿel.
spoiler
Unfortunately, he seems to be winning the popular vote as well.
No, there is a concerted effort by conservatives to use voter suppression to subvert the will of the majority in the US.
conservatives are clawing back the country right now by hook and by crook.
can’t go on forever, but I don’t know which is going to last longer: the country or the aging frightened conservatives willing to subvert democracy to hang on to control.
Isn’t just the aging ones sadly. Lots of young people, especially young men, went for Trump. Andrew Tate has taught them well.
progressive policies are annually more popular and conservative policies and election results like 2016 and 2024 are won mainly by the old guard funding and utilizing their careful network of voting interference and collusion.
Andrew Tate is a vile exception amongst younger generations, not the rule.
Trump wins the popular vote and lemmy is still in denial.
I don’t get it, what are you in denial about?
I think that most of the Americans want this
Maybe, but none of the facts directly support this.
There have been large campaigns to disenfranchise several types of voters for decades in the country. The Electoral College was designed to be unfair to appease Slave states. Voter turnout is abysmal, only about 35% of eligible citizens vote. Out of those turnout is usually around the same percentage. The highest turnout recently was 2020 only because mail in voting was expanded so dramatically, and even then it was only 67% of registered voters, so it was still only 67% of that original 37% of eligible voters. So with the highest recent turnout, we’re looking at about 25% of eligible citizens actually voting.
I believe that the 67% number for the 2020 election is of eligible voters and not registered voters. While turnout is low, it’s not 25% low.
It was ~67% of eligible voters that were registered to vote. Over 94% of registered voters actually voted.
Dafuk are you talking about? Voter turnout is 67% of all eligible voters. It’s highest since it’s ever been. And Trump won the popular vote. At least look at the facts instead of crying “stolen election”.
That’s what the Germans thought in 1933
vote against this and save us all from this idiocy.
Nope. There was just more people lined up to vote for more idiocy. We failed the world. I’d say I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’ll help. This is America.
America needs to focus on decentralizing power. That way, when the other side wins, they can’t do much damage. Biggest problem America faces is too much centralized control.
Democracy really is the worst form of government, just not as bad as all the others…
Unfortunately in such polarized times like now, even though majority wants this, the ammount of people for which this is unacceptable is only slightly less than “the majority”. And besides, I believe a big part of “the majority” is just gullible enough to be persuaded they want this while it actually goes against their interests
And if the other candidate won, the other half would’ve been in the same state of “this is unacceptable”. Solutions?
Cuz lemmy seems to think if their party wins it’s all good and if the other wins it’s the end of the world. While in reality it seems there’s a 50-50 split with each side equally hating the other.
It is the limitation of democracy and why it is the worst (except all the others) - because it allows this.
How to fix this? These would be a good start: don’t polarize the society like this and create us vs. them mentality. In place of power hungry populists have people in charge who want the best for the country. Don’t enable fascists - they never should make it this far. Respect other people. Invest in education so people understand these basics.
And this is not just about US. It’s scary that this is wherr us got because they are such a big player on the world stage
The whole lemmy has been essentially about “us vs them” for the last few months. With zero discourse tolerated, only one opinion being allowed: trump bad, republicans fascist.
So, if you worry about polarization, you guys are the biggest echo chamber I’ve seen to date.
deleted by creator
Something can not be the worst and just not as bad as the others.
It’s a famous quote. The contradiction is intentional. It means democracy has a lot of problems and often looks terrible. However when you step back and consider the alternatives they are worse.
Take it up with Winston Churchil - I was just paraphrasing his quote.
The point is democracy is terrible, but we don’t have anything better.
As an American, I expected most Americans to be at least semi-rational and to recognize what a threat to democracy and our way of life that Trump is. I expected most Republicans to just vote for him out of reflex, but otherwise the rest of America would rise up in our hour of need to vote against this and save us all from this idiocy.
Nope. There was just more people lined up to vote for more idiocy. We failed the world. I’d say I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’ll help. This is America.
Agree, and sadly he won the popular vote too (so far). It’s really bleak how many people don’t vote at all.
They all voted with their wallets. It’s really simple. That’s how these people are able to come into power.
Except Trump isn’t here to help their wallets.
If they could read they would be very upset you said that
but…but…but…he said he would fix it! Sure he didn’t say how but he would, right? Right?!?
Trusting a con man…
The frustrating thing is that Trump didn’t even get more votes this election than he did last election. There wasn’t a bunch of new Trump voters that came out of the woodwork and turned the tide. He was absolutely beatable. He only won because 15 million of the people who voted for Biden last election just didn’t bother this time.
A lot of progressive people also moved out of red states after all of the different nonsense happening in them. We won’t know until the 2030 census if they actually do that accurately unlike the 2020 census.
Democratic voters just aren’t dependable, or the causes that Democrats tend to champion don’t provide them any benefits. Yes, it’s often the right thing to do to champion their rights or causes, but when the time comes and their help is needed, they’re seemingly nowhere to be found because things apparently weren’t interesting enough.
What do you mean? Trump won decisively. Electoral, popular, in the senate, etc…
You’re really asking, “how does a minority continue to exist in the face of a fascist majority?”
The answer is, generally, they don’t.
You forget that he won decisively… with less votes than he got last time
I think that is an oversimplification. He won the popular vote, but that’s the majority of voters, not the majority of people, right? So we cannot accurately say that the majority is fascist. We can only say that the voting majority is fascist.
And then we need to look at who was conned, and how. Of course people who got conned need to work harder to avoid that in the future. We all agree on that. At the same time, the con artists and the people who enable the con, we also need to identify them and figure out what’s making them successful. If we talk about major newspapers and TV networks failing to cover how bad Trump actually was, or putting Harris on unrealistic pedestal, newspaper owners refusing to allow newspaper editors to endorse a candidate, the way Fox News preys on people who grew up trusting TV news and now have only watched Fox for the last two decades, open lies about who’s eating cats and dogs, a DNC that pushes centrist candidates even after 2016 when the weakness was exposed, and it’s clear that many left-wing voters are wildly unhappy, those are all things that smaller groups have done to help create the situation that we saw yesterday. And that’s just a short list.
So what I hope we can do, is I hope we can avoid saying something trite like, this is what the American people wanted, full stop. If you want to make that a conversation starter, go for it. But it shouldn’t be a dismissive conversation ender, because it ignores what actually happened and What will continue to happen in the future.
He won the popular vote, but that’s the majority of voters, not the majority of people, right?
Right, the rest are just so lazy and consumed by apathy that they could not be bothered to vote when THESE were the stakes. I think we can confidently rule them out for any advocacy for our freedom.
But statistically, those who didn’t vote likely have a similar ideology distribution.
It is too late for a while now. Try to be safe, even if that means moving.
And move where?!
Pretty dystopic that you post this quote, because it is doctored to include catholics. Niemöller’s wife explicitly stated that he never included them in his poem. Source: https://martin-niemoeller-stiftung.de/martin-niemoeller/was-sagte-niemoeller-wirklich
Martin Niemöllers zweite Frau (seit 1971), Sibylle von Sell schreibt dazu am 23.4.2000 in h-holocaust https://www.h-net.org/~holoweb/ :.“ The trouble with Martin Niemoeller’s „famous quotation“ is that he never wrote it down – which enabled so many hitchhikers over the years to „put themselves on the waggon“. In his „Confession of Guilt“ (as he called it himself: Schuldbekenntnis in German) the Communists came first, then the Trade Unionists and then the Socialists and then the Jews. NO ONE ELSE.”
Just be grateful if you’re not in one of the first groups. I spoke up as loudly as I could.
If I had that answer I would be happy to share.
The problem is that nowhere is safe now. I’m Canadian, and I wish I had somewhere to go. And just imagine how the poor sods in Palestine, Ukraine, and so many other suffering countries, are feeling right now.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Vladimir Putin’s armies weren’t occupying large swaths of Eastern Europe by the end of this term.
“Americans” did win their country back. We aren’t welcome in it anymore.
Americans HAVE their country, this is what they want, this is what they voted for. Stop treating Americans as if this is something pressed upon them. They chose this. Now they will live with the consequences.
America has past the point of no return on education. Anti-intellectualism is the status quo now. It’s only gonna get worse now.
They won’t need it… they got people to think what it’s best for them, what books are good or bad, what values you should have, how you should live. And then they will also have chatgpt and AI that will answer their doubts and even do their work cause they won’t be capable of doing it. I wonder if the AI will get “less smart” because of their clients needs being more basic. We’ll see
Fisher price ai
Waves Bible they’ve never read
I think this is going to be the end of the USA as we know it. After this period, democracy will be significantly impacted.
The western world as a whole should be terrified. There has been a sharp dip towards conservatism that will only accelerate with Trump back at the helm in the US. Brexit didn’t occur in a vacuum.
Though this isn’t about conservatism, is it? Trump doesn’t like democracy and half of the things that shaped the USA. I mean there is some overlap but he should be opposed by any sane conservative. I think it’s more a dip towards fascism or something else.
Can be a bit of both. Everything is prompted by a desire to return to the “before” times. For Trump’s supporters, that is a hypothetical, undefined time when America was “great”. For the Brexiters in the UK, that was the pre-EU period when Britain was a global empire. For the conservatives in Russia, it is the yearning for the USSR days.
Fair enough. I always hope we’ll move towards a better future… And not backwards. But you’re right. You pick some random time in history and then make up some policies that supposedly get you back to that place. And an additional psychological factor is, most of us had our best time when we were young, life was easier, less work and less consequence. So we might want that back instead of our current, more complex life.
Who knows. Apparently half my country is full of legitimately hateful people who just want to watch the people they don’t like suffer.
How the fuck do we come back from that? Honestly, are we even worth redeeming?
For me, this is it. This is when America died. If you’re still “proud” to be an American after this, you’re brain-damaged.
By finally doing what it clearly needs to do, splitting in multiple countries so red States can finally become third world countries like they so want to be.
It’s funny that the last time this was floated by Republicans, they thought they were kicking the Democrat states out.
In other words, they thought they were keeping the Federal government.
Republican states need Democrat states far more than vice versa.
If Trump truly does win, Republicans won’t split the country. They’ll make it even more impossible to leave.
I mean, no matter who gets kicked out by who, there would be at least two federal governments… I think most people don’t realize that when a country splits, the (at least two) new entities both become independent countries with their own government…
So where do you think the lines would get drawn? West Coast and New England + New York are the obvious ones to do their own thing. Pennsylvania cuts off the DMV area from New York/New England, unless we go on a county level and excise just the area around Philly to keep the whole northeast Atlantic together.
Is Chicago just left as an island in the Midwest? The red staters certainly won’t want it, and without it Illinois basically is a red state. RIP to the other midwest and southern cities too.
Colorado and New Mexico together would be quite fucked being landlocked in a sea of red otherwise.
Congratulations to Hawaii on its regained independence I guess. Alaska would probably be offered up to Putin as a thank you gift from Trump.
Do you think all the red states stay together as a single entity? Texas is an obvious candidate to decide to fuck off on its own, possibly Florida as well. But would South Carolina really care all that much to stay tied to Montana, for example, or vice versa?
The average death age of any empire is 250 years.
Tick tock America. You’re proving that figure to be correct.
*proved
Realistically? It’s too late.
We now have an ultra-conservative SC for the rest of our lives. The Republican party openly stated and ran on making fundamental changes to our government if they won the House/Senate/Presidency and to “defeat the enemy within”.
It doesn’t even really matter if the suffering that is coming shocks our society into rebounding in 4 years. The locked in SC and fundamental changes to our government will have already been set in place. Government departments will be run by appointees with absolutely no experience. Entire departments could be re-staffed with partisan political appointees if we are to believe the words of some of the people Trump promised to appoint. We have been placed squarely on the path to decline. That decline won’t happen overnight, but in our lifetimes it will become undeniable. We will probably barely recognize this country by the end of our lives.
This election determined the political order we will live under for the rest of our lives.
Buy a gun. Try to find happiness within your immediate sphere. And stay safe, if you can. Very, very few people will come out on top in the scenario we now find ourselves in. Give it a few years and you’ll see. They have total control now, so there’s no one else to blame for the decline that’s essentially guaranteed to become apparent in the near future. But I’m sure if they do fail, immigrants will be at the top of the blame list.
It was a worthy experiment while it lasted.
Facism is capitalism in decay. America just proved that the decay is rapid.
Liberal institutions just paved the way for facism to take root.
I’d like to learn more about
Facism is capitalism in decay.
Is that just a think people say or are their studies or books about this?
Facism is a reaction to the institutional failures of capitalism brought about by many scholars. Mainly brought about by the working class left behind looking for a change to the system.
Places in history where it happened
italy (1920’s) voters wanted a stronger economy with trains to run on time germany (1920’s) voters wanted a stronger economy without a destabilization of currency
Is that just a think people say or are there studies or books about this?
But why male models?
So the way it looks now, Trump has won the presidency, and his allies will have the senate and house of representatives, and they already had the supreme court. The three branches of government will not be working as checks on each other’s power, unless we get very lucky and the various factions that make up the GOP split. This is obviously very, very bad, but there are still some checks on presidential power.
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Trump’s last term was a clusterfuck. Things may just be so disorganized that he struggles to actually get what he wants done.
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The states have limited power to defy the feds. While case law does state that federal law supercedes state law, that doesn’t mean all States will immediately cooperate wholeheartedly. Obviously a court battle will eventually get to the supreme court, but that takes time and requires a single panel of judges to beat multiple states into line on each new policy.
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Governments do have a small amount of caution when it comes to their people. One thing the crazy conservatives had right this whole time was that fundamentally, nobody was ever going to come for their guns because nobody wants to force a confrontation with a bunch of armed lunatics. In the same way, they’ll probably try to avoid massive riots and general strikes simply because it isn’t worth the fight to whoever is responsible.
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Citizens can resist. Go to protests, donate to political advocacy organizations (the ACLU will have its work cut out for it), and for Christ’s sake, go vote! Show up every year, just not every 4 years. Without the cooperation of congress, his power would be significantly curtailed.
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If nothing else, terms are limited. In 2 years we can swing congress. He isn’t going to be able to pass a constitutional amendment to do what he likes before that. If we swing congress in two years, it will slow him down significantly, and then we can replace him in 2028. Hopefully people will actually keep showing up long enough after that to reverse all the damage he’s likely to do in the next 4 years.
The states have limited power to defy the feds.
Case in point: legalized marijuana. That said, my fear in regards to states defying laws is:
- Targeted attacks by MAGA terrorists, particularly regarding anything LGBTQ+ or reproductive healthcare related.
- The fed withholding federal funds to punish states that don’t fall in line.
The former is particularly concerning as police and the national guard are predominately right-wing. My state passed the SAFE-T Act to address abuses in the police/justice system. Naturally, various police departments weren’t happy about this, and through obtuse interpretation of the act they’ll claim they can’t legally do vital parts of their job – something I’ve seen multiple times first hand. Refusing to do their job competently in response to MAGA terrorism isn’t hard to imagine.
The later gets tricky. Most of the states that would push back against unjust federal laws are also states that pay more in federal taxes than they receive in aid. The “obvious” solution withhold tax dollars going to the fed to make up the difference … which would be next to impossible in practice. Even if states mange to do it they’d be playing into Republican hands by defunding essential federal services.
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This isn’t sides anymore.
Until America wants to be tolerant of more than intolerance, it seems it will vote with its penises, wallets, and weapons.
Edit: unnecessary apostrophe
No, no, it’s fine. Americans don’t know how to use apostrophes properly.
