The 2020 elections, news, and discussions

Whelp. What the hell is going on now?

 
Wall of text incoming. I apologize in advance.

Biden's victory is remarkable in a number of ways. Not the least of which is that mismanagement from the Trump administration has been as such that the general consensus that a country seeks to retain its leadership in times of crisis has been bucked. It has also been remarkable on how close it was until the end (more on that in a minute) and the fact that the US in a slump the likes of which have not been seen since WWII. I expect that this election, more than the 2016 one, will be looked with great interest by future historians.

At present, however, the good news is that you have gotten Donald Trump out of office. The bad news is that you have replaced him with Joe Biden.

For all the documentaries that CNN has been sending my way and his memes as the sunglasses-wearing, Ice-cream loving right-hand of Obama memes that have been made about Biden over the years, the rather unfortunate fact of the matter is that the replacement is a 77-year old man who has been in the upper echelons of US Power since 1972.

This is better than the casino-bankrupting reality TV star, yes. But the people marching in the street expecting a revolution and a democratic equivalent of the revolution that Trump promised his followers and failed spectacularly at four years ago are in for a milquetoast neoliberal awakening a bit down the line. At best, you will get a continuation of Obama-era policies, which generally failed or made token at-best efforts to address the concerns outlined by the shrinking middle class (healthcare and education costs, increased control of media conglomerates of both the creation and distribution of content, labor offshoring, to name a few). This is true even on the years in which the Democratic party held the house, the senate, and the executive. I hope I may be wrong in this assessment, and that the Biden administration will find a reasonable compromise to bring it in line with other first-world countries while at the same time creating an environment in which business and job growth can continue to develop; this will be very important as the country recovers from COVID.

But that is a hope, not an expectation. It seems like this is not a punishment vote but once again people choosing the lesser of two evils. The US can not continue having elections like these much longer or you will end up with Ba’al vs. Cthulu in 20 years. I expected 2016 to have been a wake-up call for both parties, in which they realized that they not only need to have a more stringent vetting process for their candidates, but where they realized that the American people would gladly shoot themselves in the foot if it meant that they would get someone who at least has a shot of addressing the problems plaguing the country. This does not seem to be the case.

One final word. And it involves my earlier post of the business meeting and the people crying that they were not winning a “moral victory” based on some strange arbitrary rules which seemed to narrow done to an expectation that the candidate who could not win the California primary should’ve been able to win the entire country on a landslide. This unfortunately has to do with Echo Chambers, and how risky it is to fall on them and keep feeding them with an unnatural interest in politics. It’s getting more and more often that I cannot get to a social media site or image sharing one (imgur is particularly egregious in this regard) without literally being bombarded with political posts. It has also come to happen that I would be researching something and within the first five articles you would have Trump and what his (insert feeling here) about (insert literally anything here) and what it means for the fall of America. Not only is it tiring, but it makes it even easier for people to form fanatical, tribalistic opinions of one party or the other and make them even more unwilling to reach out, compromise, and try to fully understand one position or the other before making a decision. It devolves into “he said it, so it must fuck me over”. It is my opinion that the 2020s will be a decade in which we will be forced as a planet to solve the issues with engagement numbers over discourse on the internet much in the same way The Jungle addressed labor and food safety in the 1900s. It will be a lot more nuanced, but the ability to create insane conspiracy theories and, more worryingly, for users to be pigeonholed (by deed or omission) and sent down a rabbit hole of it just to increase the time looking at your ads is already a massive problem both on policy and mental health. I look forward to seeing how it will go.

I’m already at 800+ words so I better stop here. I also had some notes about how wishing for a single party system is a very bad idea and how both parties need completely new faces for the next presidential run, but that may be a convo for another fillibuster. Congrats to Biden again and I hope his presidency is very successful as I hope that he keeps coming clean as his presidency is as scrutinized as Trump’s was.
 


Live on French TV -
 
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Biden: "I think we can sum up America in 1 word. Possibilities."

could you be any more ambiguous?
 
PelicanHazard said:
Beaten to it. They appeared, did a little march, made a speech, then left. It's common in Pittsburgh to have little groups like this since we're one small sane city surrounded by complete morons for miles in all directions.
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WELCOME BACK. <3
 
PelicanHazard said:
Thanks. Took a mental break waaaaay back when I was having trouble loading the forums, then just kind of lurked so I wouldn't be goaded into arguments.
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Ah yeah I get that. Please post more, whether it's about your own cars or something else in your life. <3
 
 
Know what I think is one of the best parts of this whole thing? Stephen Miller now has to go back to living under his bridge and feasting on goats that pass over it.
 
I've been bathing in the salty tears of the maga chuds and all the memes, but this one I just saw takes the cake, I'm on the brink of tears from laughing so hard.

 
Just got home from eating mcdonalds in a parking lot with a bunch of volunteers... felt like I'm 17 again after a car meet.

I'm happy to have spent my time making calls for hick, biden, everyone... we got some dials to make in GA.

I've had restrained enthusiasm but I have to admit it was nice to see Denver have a party and know that much of the country is the same.
 
"What this pathetic election win really means is that the Democrats still haven't accepted that Hillary lost - a clear case of Trump Derangement Syndrome yet again" :mrgreen:
 
So I saw a piece in the NYT last night about how a hardcore MAGAist reacted to the election, and several parts of it were fascinating to me (like how he thought Trump was somehow going to win Massachussetts) - but this was the bit that stuck out the most:

He could imagine the United States splitting into two countries, one governed by Mr. Trump and one not. He could imagine suspending elections so Mr. Trump and his family could rule without interruption for 20 years.

“I guarantee you, Trump supporters would not care,” he said. “I guarantee you, if you got 69 million Trump supporters, and you said, ‘Would you be good with Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump as president?’ a lot of people would be 100 percent behind that.”
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Now that... that's an absolutely stunning thing to say to me.

Going into this election, I was so worried about widespread civil unrest if a sizeable number of hardcore Trump supporters thought that the election was unfairly stolen from them, and I wonder if the reason why that hasn't materialised (even more so than Fox News and the New York Post *thankfully* abandoning him) is that to the hardcore authoritarian mindset, fairness has very little meaning. Winning fairly and winning unfairly has very little distinction when your mindset is power and dominance.

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But... what gives me hope is this. I don't think this guy's right when he says most Trump supporters wouldn't care. Because what I've seen so far is encouraging - I've seen people trusting the press, I've seen people placing value on democracy and on the rule of citizens and I've seen a genuine desire for people on both sides to want to heal and unite.

I was really reflecting last night about my hopes and fears for a Biden presidency, and, look... I supported Warren and Sanders in the primaries. I'm under no illusion over who Joe Biden is, over the record he's had in the Senate, infact I thought he was a sexual assaulter back in June... but last night, I was watching his victory speech and I couldn't help thinking that maybe he really could be the right man for the moment. Because he's had this stubborn, unwavering - and I think what a lot of people like myself thought was unrealistic - belief in bipartisanship, in unity, in unconditional love and compassion for your fellow human being no matter who they are and what they might believe. And... I think everyone else out there wants to believe in those things too right now.

And maybe that's what America needs right now - not just to... y'know, avoid another civil war, but to begin making real structural change and progress as well.

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For me, being a progressive in the age of Trump, Brexit, Bolsonaro, Orban, Duda, Modi, Erdogan, Duterte, etc, etc... it's always come from a place of urgency rather than utopian or wishful thinking. Fascism and authoritarianism feed on the disaffected. They feed on people who want a strongman to give them meaning and purpose when the free world has failed. If nothing changes, another Trump will get elected.

So, here's another reason to hope. Chuck Schumer, the old centrist guy who used to base his policies on what the average suburban white family in upstate New York would like, he's said exactly the same thing.

“My view,” he told me, “is if we don’t do bold change, we could end up with someone worse than Donald Trump in four years.” What passed for change in the past two decades (including during the Obama years) had not, he acknowledged, been “big enough or bold enough.” When I asked if Democrats bore some responsibility for that, he deflected: “There’s plenty of blame to go around.”
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So I hope Biden listens to progressives, but I also hope he keeps on listening to people of all persuasions. I hope he listens to rural Trump voters, I hope he listens to suburban moderates, I hope he listens to people of colour for whom America has never been great, I hope he listens to folks who aren't political who are just worried right now, who feel like their life isn't going anywhere. And I hope he creates solutions that help everybody and make everybody heard.


Anyways, those are my thoughts. I am still hella worried, I still think the future's on a knife edge, but I'm glad to see everyone out there realises there's still a lot of work to be done.
 
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