Election Night 2016: The Passion of Cheeto Jesus

Well, I just have to wait and see what the first words out of President-elect's mouth will be.

We are lurching drunkenly toward the past. Brexit, Trump, racism, sexism, isolationism.... Putin and ISIS will be licking it's lips, nothing like a nasty Right to fight with... Communism against Fascism, Christianity versus Islam.... I feel sick. Seen this all before in the newsreels leading up to WWII....

halfwise wrote:Well, I just have to wait and see what the first words out of President-elect's mouth will be.

Enter youtube clip of Sideshow Bob's speech.

They're still counting absentee ballots in a number of states and there may be recounts (either statutorily required because the result was so close, or if Clinton demands them), so it could be several days before we get the official final result, but the chance of it not being Trump is vanishingly small.

The big what-if that I think will hang over the Democratic Party for the next four years will be whether Sanders could have done better. Republicans were handling him with kid gloves during primary season, but I do think the socialist label and criticism on his economic and tax policy would have been damaging. And there were non-personal reasons to expect the GOP to do better this year, including the length of time the Democrats have been in the White House and dissatisfaction with the state of the economy. But on the other hand, it's hard to imagine Sanders' unfavorables getting as bad as Clinton's even under pressure of more serious political attacks.

As I mentioned in the general election thread I don't think there are so many similarities to the Interwar period, but there is obviously a rising tide of right-wing populism in the West. The next big contests to watch will be the Dutch and French elections in 2017. Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen will be looking to have their days in the sun and both are polling very well so far.

halfwise wrote:Well, I just have to wait and see what the first words out of President-elect's mouth will be.

Shouldn't be much longer now. Dunno how quickly I'll be able to fall asleep afterwards.

Multiple sources saying Clinton has called Trump to concede.

Wowee. I did not expect that.

I mean... seeing Trump's face with "Presidental-elect" under it is just bizarre. That the guy who had the dumb catchphrase on that reality TV show is now going to be bearing the title that Lincoln and Roosevelt held... I guess people felt similarly about Reagan because of his acting career?

Wow, he actually made it through a whole speech without a whiff of jack-ass. I'm tentatively hopeful.

Good night all. It's a new dawn.

Eldorion wrote:They're still counting absentee ballots in a number of states and there may be recounts (either statutorily required because the result was so close, or if Clinton demands them), so it could be several days before we get the official final result, but the chance of it not being Trump is vanishingly small.

The big what-if that I think will hang over the Democratic Party for the next four years will be whether Sanders could have done better. Republicans were handling him with kid gloves during primary season, but I do think the socialist label and criticism on his economic and tax policy would have been damaging. And there were non-personal reasons to expect the GOP to do better this year, including the length of time the Democrats have been in the White House and dissatisfaction with the state of the economy. But on the other hand, it's hard to imagine Sanders' unfavorables getting as bad as Clinton's even under pressure of more serious political attacks.

I can't imagine nearly as much vitriol being directed toward Sanders.

{{{Like waking up in an alternative reality I suppose congratulations are due to Trump and his campaign manager Putin! }}}

He was able to act fairly Presidential during his speech though there were still moments when he'd intersperse words like "great" and "terrific" and repeat himself. Now we get to see what actual policies he'll pursue...

Forest Shepherd wrote:Wowee. I did not expect that.

I mean... seeing Trump's face with "Presidental-elect" under it is just bizarre. That the guy who had the dumb catchphrase on that reality TV show is now going to be bearing the title that Lincoln and Roosevelt held... I guess people felt similarly about Reagan because of his acting career?

I'm sure people made similar jokes about Reagan, but at least in that case he had years of experience as a union president, political activist (including his famous speech at the RNC in '64), and Governor of California.

The tide of Right rising against Left is very pre-war... it is a mood. A nasty mood.

The most bizarre thing, and I think what will require the most soul-searching from Dems/liberals, is that Trump ran largely on white identity politics (if not outright white nationalism), and yet he won in the most racially diverse electorate of any Presidential electorate in history. Granted, there's a decent chance that Clinton will win the popular vote once all the precincts in California finish reporting, but still. A lot of people, including myself and the RNC in their famous "autopsy report", talked about how the GOP had to appeal more to minorities in order to win. While I think some of the explanation for tonight is Clinton not driving turnout as much as Obama did, at least in some states, but I don't know if that can fully account for this. Halfy mentioned earlier in this thread the possibility that a lot of people voted for Trump simply as a protest candidate without fully believing in his platform and I think there's a good chance that that played a role as well. The idea of just throwing a wrench in things due to dissatisfaction with "the establishment".

The deomonization of Clinton was overpowering. We lost a Prime Minister to underlying misogyny. America has lost an opportunity for better equal rights now. The White sexist man clings on to the vestiges of power: this is the man Trump is and represents. Racist, sexist, peurility personified, ignorant, privileged... you name it, everything I detest he stands for... he is like a lot of Whites who miss apartheid and a woman in the kitchen... I despair of the short term future. Hopefully, the Republican Party will bring him to heel. He won't have it all his own way, I'm sure - he being a political baby -and there us hope in that.

I didn't even know ow this thread was going until Eldo posted in the Election 2016 one.

I don't think we can call world war 3 yet, but Orwell is correct about the rise of the Right at the moment. People are angry. They are fed up with the establishment and the only alternatives we seem to get are far Right.

I think Bernie would have cleaned up this election. Clinton just promised more of the same and despite everything that Trump did to detail himself... he still won.

Lots of European elections coming up soon... see how those ones go.

Bernie at least seemed Progressive without being an utter pig. Bless him.

I suddenly feel slightly less embarrassed about Brexit.

I'm not really upset or anything, but I do miss that feeling of superiority I gained from thinking about how the Brits went and put their foot right in it.

Commentators on the Hillary party livestream made a comparison between Trump and Andrew Jackson in terms of the Populism of Jackson and the general opposition against him from his own party.

Brexit and Trump's rise are a symptom of disatisfaction and bad decisions in trying to deal with it. Lance is right. The Right is rising. Hitler appealed to dissatisfied people who felt they had no other alternative and felt they needed a strong and virile game changer to lead them out of their imagined wilderness. Trump tries to give that impression. Actually, has succeeded. Scary times, I tells ya, and I'm scarrid...

Forest Shepherd wrote:I'm not really upset or anything, but I do miss that feeling of superiority I gained from thinking about how the Brits went and put their foot right in it.

Too true, Forest.

This is easily a much bigger polling bust than Brexit. The polls there said it would be extremely close and while most of them had Remain squeaking by, the actual result was within the margin of error for most of those polls. But also, US Presidential elections are so well-studied and pollsters of them have a much better record with them than they do with British elections. I'd call this an even bigger bust than "Dewey Defeats Truman" since modern polling is much more sophisticated than it was in 1948, and pollsters kept doing research right up until the election, while in 1948 they stopped several weeks in advance due to overconfidence. And yet here we are.

I just find it hard to believe a billionaire with no political experience is now in charge of the worlds largest stockpile of Nukes...

This nuclear codes business intrigues me. Let me get this right: if Obama wants to nuke Trump, he just pushes a few buttons on a laptop in his briefcase? Okay, maybe nuke Russia as well. Are there other protocols? Like someone sitting at a missile console getting the codes come through after Putin claims his penis is bigger than Trump's, and Trump says, well, fuck you, Vlad, I'm going to nuke Russia; but this guy at the console says, no, Mr President, I'm not going to send missiles until i've seen yor penis and can make a more informed decision... ??? You know, some kind of fail safe system as a precaution when dealing with Presidents with penis issues...

The military would not just stand by and let Trump nuke people because he got into a Twitter argument with them or whatever. Nor do I really think Trump would try to anyway. Nukes have a way of changing leaders' calculus if for no other reason than their self-preservation instinct (knowing the kind of retaliation they'd facing for using nuclear weapons without being attacked first). Even the Kims get this.

The less mind-boggling but perhaps equally important result tonight is that the Republicans have held on to the Senate, giving them both houses of Congress for the first two years of Trump's presidency. Obama got quite a bit done during his first two years when the Dems controlled Congress and while the GOP majority in the Senate is not as large, this is still a pretty big deal. Especially since there's a good chance that Trump will have the opportunity to appoint three or four Supreme Court justices in his first () term, which will shape the Court for decades.