The election (redux)
Nov. 6th, 2024 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineHey all. :\
I have a post on Tumblr about it that I imagine most of you have already seen. The short version would be that this doesn't feel as bad as Trump's first victory did—I had told myself over and over that this could happen, that it would come down to political trends thousands of miles away from where I live, etc. But my brain is telling me it's actually much worse. Trump scraped a victory in 2016 with a deck stacked very heavily in his favor, and without certainty about what his administration would really look like given that he's a lying blowhard, via the electoral college but against the will of the greater number of voters. That didn't mean he wasn't president, but getting fucked over by outdated mechanics of government set up by long-dead men is not the same as getting fucked over by fellow citizens who are very much alive and who know, or have the ability to easily find out, about the policies of the first Trump administration. Kamala Harris, whatever her faults, did not have anything like the baggage of HRC and yet the people of this country were far more willing to vote for Trump against her.
I've been quietly enraged for hours in a way I don't often get—I get annoyed, and sometimes I get normal angry, but like ... in 2016 I broke down crying over and over, and I haven't done anything of that. I feel cold but not numb. The last time I felt this kind of frozen hatred was when a relative told me he'd struck a plea bargain about statutory rape with a sixteen-year-old student and was telling me so I didn't find out about it in the news. I didn't get upset as such, or feel immediately angry, or fight with him about it. I simply didn't care whether he lived or died for years afterwards.
There's this awful review of The Borgias that condemns Jeremy Irons's performance as Alexander VI/Rodrigo Borgia, because the reviewer claimed Irons lacks the appropriate "fire" to play Rodrigo—he admits that Irons does play him with a kind of fire, but says that Irons "burns with the steely flame of the North, not Latin fire." I thought this was a hilarious and very stupid characterization of both Alexander VI and Jeremy Irons, and told my best friend J about it, and it's entered our friendship lexicon. But he (my bff) has remarked a couple times that when I get truly, genuinely angry, it is absolutely a Steely Flame of the North situation. And I'm definitely feeling that now—not numb, not sad, not shocked, not screaming, just kind of hard.
I will say that, despite dutifully voting for him in the primaries, Bernie's "this is happening because of the Democrats turning their backs on working-class people, they lost the white ones to Trump and now they're deservingly losing Latino and Black ones" shtick is even more contemptible than usual IMO. Yeah, he's hammering it into his The Class War Is The Only War constant replay loop, but I don't know why the fuck he's associating this with Black voters. From what data we have at this point, the talk about Black men switching from Biden to Trump came out to a shift of four points from 2020 in exit polls (which, while done carefully, are known to be rough estimates—that's in the realm of statistical noise) and even if you did treat them as 100% accurate, the exit polls have Black female support for Trump actually dropping three points from 2020. (Union households favored Harris, btw.) Maybe he referenced Black voters to avoid sounding like he's scapegoating Latine voters specifically (who did shift towards Trump, especially men), maybe he's talking about lower turnout, but I think it's honestly super shitty to associate Black voters with this loss when a) there are many other more proximate causes, b) many Black voters are deliberately disenfranchised by their state governments and deal with more obstacles to voting than virtually any other group, and c) Black voters have been and remain unambiguously the most stalwart Democratic demographic apart from LGBT people (iirc the only group even slightly close is Jewish people—the same exit polls have them at 78% Democratic to Black voters' 85%, with Black women specifically at 91% for Harris). Lumping Black voters in with almost anyone else flattens a truly vast divide.
I have a post on Tumblr about it that I imagine most of you have already seen. The short version would be that this doesn't feel as bad as Trump's first victory did—I had told myself over and over that this could happen, that it would come down to political trends thousands of miles away from where I live, etc. But my brain is telling me it's actually much worse. Trump scraped a victory in 2016 with a deck stacked very heavily in his favor, and without certainty about what his administration would really look like given that he's a lying blowhard, via the electoral college but against the will of the greater number of voters. That didn't mean he wasn't president, but getting fucked over by outdated mechanics of government set up by long-dead men is not the same as getting fucked over by fellow citizens who are very much alive and who know, or have the ability to easily find out, about the policies of the first Trump administration. Kamala Harris, whatever her faults, did not have anything like the baggage of HRC and yet the people of this country were far more willing to vote for Trump against her.
I've been quietly enraged for hours in a way I don't often get—I get annoyed, and sometimes I get normal angry, but like ... in 2016 I broke down crying over and over, and I haven't done anything of that. I feel cold but not numb. The last time I felt this kind of frozen hatred was when a relative told me he'd struck a plea bargain about statutory rape with a sixteen-year-old student and was telling me so I didn't find out about it in the news. I didn't get upset as such, or feel immediately angry, or fight with him about it. I simply didn't care whether he lived or died for years afterwards.
There's this awful review of The Borgias that condemns Jeremy Irons's performance as Alexander VI/Rodrigo Borgia, because the reviewer claimed Irons lacks the appropriate "fire" to play Rodrigo—he admits that Irons does play him with a kind of fire, but says that Irons "burns with the steely flame of the North, not Latin fire." I thought this was a hilarious and very stupid characterization of both Alexander VI and Jeremy Irons, and told my best friend J about it, and it's entered our friendship lexicon. But he (my bff) has remarked a couple times that when I get truly, genuinely angry, it is absolutely a Steely Flame of the North situation. And I'm definitely feeling that now—not numb, not sad, not shocked, not screaming, just kind of hard.
I will say that, despite dutifully voting for him in the primaries, Bernie's "this is happening because of the Democrats turning their backs on working-class people, they lost the white ones to Trump and now they're deservingly losing Latino and Black ones" shtick is even more contemptible than usual IMO. Yeah, he's hammering it into his The Class War Is The Only War constant replay loop, but I don't know why the fuck he's associating this with Black voters. From what data we have at this point, the talk about Black men switching from Biden to Trump came out to a shift of four points from 2020 in exit polls (which, while done carefully, are known to be rough estimates—that's in the realm of statistical noise) and even if you did treat them as 100% accurate, the exit polls have Black female support for Trump actually dropping three points from 2020. (Union households favored Harris, btw.) Maybe he referenced Black voters to avoid sounding like he's scapegoating Latine voters specifically (who did shift towards Trump, especially men), maybe he's talking about lower turnout, but I think it's honestly super shitty to associate Black voters with this loss when a) there are many other more proximate causes, b) many Black voters are deliberately disenfranchised by their state governments and deal with more obstacles to voting than virtually any other group, and c) Black voters have been and remain unambiguously the most stalwart Democratic demographic apart from LGBT people (iirc the only group even slightly close is Jewish people—the same exit polls have them at 78% Democratic to Black voters' 85%, with Black women specifically at 91% for Harris). Lumping Black voters in with almost anyone else flattens a truly vast divide.
no subject
on 2024-11-07 04:36 am (UTC)no subject
on 2024-11-11 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-11-07 05:58 pm (UTC)I am still in shock over that. I am still thinking about what it means for my long-term plans, because at a certain point, you stop trying to save the country that's on-board with authoritarian demagoguery and you work to save who you can by getting them out. I know that sounds dire. I think we're in a pretty dire situation. But I am on the steely fire of the North today again, because resistance is how we survive.
I am also stunned at how many people were voting for Trump who were not white Americans, but especially the CNN poll data on Native Americans and "other races" lumped together. I have no idea how that played out, but it certainly took me by total surprise, and it doesn't fit into Sanders' framework either. I think Sanders also has a problem in that in some ways, his voting base overlaps with Trump's (especially the old guard union base, anti-immigration, pro-tariffs base) and so he's looking for another scapegoat that won't alienate his voters back home.
/fistbump
on 2024-11-11 04:54 pm (UTC)There is no excuse at this point for US voters to not know what Trump is—by and large they do know. Nearly a quarter of Trump voters don't think he's trustworthy. The votes for relatively progressive state measures in states easily swept by Trump combined with his solid popular vote win does not suggest his voters are motivated by policy concerns, actually!!
I am still thinking about what it means for my long-term plans, because at a certain point, you stop trying to save the country that's on-board with authoritarian demagoguery and you work to save who you can by getting them out. I know that sounds dire. I think we're in a pretty dire situation. But I am on the steely fire of the North today again, because resistance is how we survive.
Yeah. Our governor-elect (the current AG here who rose to prominence by suing the Trump administration many, many times and winning nearly every case) has already said that his team knew this was entirely possible and has been preparing long before it happened, which was a relief if not a surprise. I'm glad they've been gearing up to fight what's going to happen and to protect as many people as we can (and the WA government has always been talking about the importance of Washington's alliances with other blue states, which is good and necessary and scary in this country when we start conceptualizing other states in terms of allied powers more than fellow US Americans). But there's a lot of the USA that isn't here and can't count on the shield of a deep blue state government, and I'm torn between worrying about what's going to happen on the national level affecting everyone, worrying much more about people whose states are only too happy to sacrifice them, and imagining how much me and mine could get done if we weren't always stuck fighting fucking Republicans.
(People acting like Republicans are hapless deluded children without agency is especially frustrating to me—sorry to my fellow leftists, I guess, but this is no less a fantasy than Republicans' own. Yeah, Republican voters are included in the human rights I support on principle because they're human beings, yes they deserve their full rights as fellow citizens, but beyond that I'm prioritizing people who are not onboard with authoritarian demagoguery and the worldview of "I'm okay with suffering a bit if the scapegoat groups de jour suffer more.")
I have no idea how that played out, but it certainly took me by total surprise, and it doesn't fit into Sanders' framework either. I think Sanders also has a problem in that in some ways, his voting base overlaps with Trump's (especially the old guard union base, anti-immigration, pro-tariffs base) and so he's looking for another scapegoat that won't alienate his voters back home.
Yup. I keep seeing remarks about how Black voters did this or that, and it feels like it's either wildly wrong or an attempt to not sound like they're scapegoating particular other groups that did move right, collectively. I do find it disturbing, because ... like. My dad has been mostly centrist all my life apart from his left-wing SoCal environmentalism, but he's experienced enough racism as a Mexican-American who grew up in severe poverty that the racism directed against Obama convinced him he was never going to vote for any Republican for the rest of his life. The commonalities between his own experiences and the anti-Blackness directed at Obama were clear to him without them having to be exactly equivalent. But there are plenty of people who refuse to connect the marginalization they themselves experience with the marginalization of any other group, but especially anti-Black racism, despite the ease with which the GOP unites every conceivable form of bigotry and talks about how much they hate every marginalized group all the time! But any measures to help any group that people regard as "undeserving" gets seen as unjustly taking resources from worthy minorities like themselves. Not just racial minorities either—obviously cishet white women as a voting bloc are the prime example of destructively short-sighted and bigoted self-interest.
But yeah, Sanders has kind of sucked for a long time wrt addressing racism (or, uh. anything) as something other than a symptom of the class war. I do feel that he's repeatedly been hobbled by his dedication to telling white men in the US that their sense of persecuted rage is right and good actually—and lumping very different voting blocs together as if their motives are interchangeable and equivalent is, hm, certainly a choice right now.