On this day in history, in 2016, the unthinkable happened: the American people elected as their leader an ignorant, racist demagogue, far worse than anything we could have imagined when we saw George W. Bush as the bottom of the political barrel. The barrel is apparently a lot deeper than we thought. Professor Ceiling Cat, confident of a Clinton victory, was wrong. He will dutifully pay off his bets. The polls were wrong, too. That can only mean that either the polls were conducted incorrectly or, more likely, people didn’t want to say they were voting for Trump.
I have no words to bemoan the next four years, years with a Republican congress and President. The Supreme Court will remain conservative. Trump will get through what legislation he wants. Those who voted for Trump because they were tired of the establishment will, I fear, realize their error too late, perhaps among the smoking ruins of America.
I declare that we have one day to moan and despair, and then we must roll up our sleeves and get to work—working for the realization of those liberal values we supported with our vote.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Cyrus are talking not about politics, but about their joint bed:
Cyrus: We have several options.Hili: For the moment I would retain status quo.
Cyrus: Mamy kilka opcji.
Hili: Chwilowo zachowałabym status quo.
Cyrus: Do you have any comment to the American election?Hili: Meow.
Cyrus: Masz jakiś komentarz do wyników tych amerykańskich wyborów?
Hili: Miau.
Good Morning America by David Rowe – political cartoon galleryh pic.twitter.com/MC2Yvb8a6d
— Political Cartoon (@Cartoon4sale) November 9, 2016
BRITAIN: "Hey, America, watch this!"
*BRITAIN SETS ITSELF ON FIRE*
USA: "Cool. Can I borrow your lighter?"#ElectionNight
— Greg Jenner (@greg_jenner) November 9, 2016
We've updated our Twitter header in honor of the election. pic.twitter.com/mOFT8sUlVD
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) November 7, 2016
“Misery’s the river of the world; everybody row, everybody row.” — Tom Waits
I had faith in the people of the United States. It was misplaced.
I wish I could move to New Zealand.
Is New Zealand accepting American refugees?
Is this the time to mention that NZ has just topped another world index of places to live?
We accept UNHCR refugees, and I doubt US citizens meet their criteria.
Following Brexit there was an increase of several hundred percent in enquiries about emigrating here. Perhaps the same will happen following the US version?
Give it a year or two.
Good point. In exit polls, 37% said they were scared of a Trump presidency. That’s more than a third of the country who realize just what’s coming.
There’ll be a stampede to qualify at that rate.
Another 100 million boat people. I don’t think the world can handle that many more on top of the current 50-odd million.
https://youtu.be/QT9BeGNnCqw
Ha ha. Didn’t think of that. Cello theme will play in my head for Trump’s future appearances. If I can stomach the animal.
Ha ha, yes, good one. Appropriate too given that the whole country has jumped the shark by electing whatshisname.
Jumped the shark like this?
FYI, of the 5 stories on the front page of the Teletext news (tech section) service this morning, one is about the anadian immigration website having crashed on Wednesday morning, and another about the New Zealand equivalent getting a major surge in traffic.
I note that the UK immigration website is reporting no surge. So much for Brexit making Britain an attractive place to live.
Apparently realestate.co.nz got a 423% increase in traffic from the US as well.
That’ll probably put people off. Despite all the space, property is expensive here, especially in Auckland.
Immigration here is already high and has been since c. 2008. The US is just catching up with the rest of the world.
I have been as wrong as anyone on this. Hope that somehow I am also dead wrong on the future of this country.
America got what it deserved. Sorry for the wake-up call, but those of us on the outside have seen for a long time that the US is heading in the wrong direction.
From now on, if I want your opinion I’ll ask Donald Trump.
You misunderstood my comment. Blind faith is never good.
I understood your comment, and concur. We The People have chosen, and chosen poorly. We deserve every bit of misery that shall surely follow. I do hope we make it out alive and intact and that we don’t take anyone else out with us.
I am not convinced there are right & wrong directions, there are only directions…
If you don’t care much where you end up then indeed there are no right or wrong directions. If you have an idea about where you would prefer to be then you’re either heading towards it or away from it and I would suggest only one of those is the right direction.
Imagine how it feels to see the same thing from inside this country knowing you’ll never be able to move to another country and never be able to do anything to stop the society you live in from collapsing into a vortex of navel gazing narcissism, which is what this reactionary nonsense is mostly about.
It’s naked anti-intellectualism at it’s finest. It’s the perpetually vaping 20 something libertarian who couldn’t pass a high school level economics course thinking he knows more about fiscal policy than the people running the Fed. It’s the 4-ton SUV driving trophy-wife-turned-soccer-mom who chooses to believe that climate change is a liberal conspiracy because she totes loves her Escalade. Thousands of adults, at least 15,000 in fact, cast a write-in ballot in a Presidential election for a gorilla whom has been deceased for months.
I’m just so tired of refusing to call a spade a spade. If conservatives don’t want to be called xenophobes and racists then they should stop supporting candidates that scapegoat minorities and immigrants. If they don’t like being called misogynists, then they should stop standing for candidates that condescend to women, try to control their reproductive rights and treat them like rides at an amusement park where they have a free pass. We’ve tried the whole, “politics stops at the water’s edge and I won’t judge someone because of who they voted for,” thing and it’s never been anything other than a disaster for liberals.
We’ve got to stop holding ourselves to a standard that our opponents refuse to acknowledge, that’s just flat-out bad strategy. The fate of the Republic is more important than the tissue-paper feelings of willfully ignorant people or the cheap-ass sense of moral superiority that pseudo-liberals get out of saying, “can’t we all just get along?”
How about some accountability? How about, if you think it’s appropriate to cast a ballot for a trash-TV star so you can ‘shake things up’, if you think a woman deleting emails is a grievous trespass, yet a man-child saying ‘I garb them by the p@#%y is acceptable, if you think a GOP ticket in 2016 that is at least one-half young Earth creationist, one half evolution and climate change denier, then I will look upon you as the ignorant trash you have just so boldly declared yourself to be, and so should every other educated reasonable adult.
Politics has never been friendly. Vitriol and divisiveness go all the way back to the very first cabinet meetings in the history of the Federal Government of the United States. If people want to hold hands and sing songs and make friends, they should drag their butts to summer camp. Bellicosity is sometimes part of the process, that’s life. It’s really a small price to pay when one considers what’s in the balance.
sub
I still think that is is primarily motivated by economic factors but –
Jeebus I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in the US right now and be surrounded with this totally decivilising behaviour and attitudes. My sympathies
It is primarily motivated by economic factors but the result is influenced by an almost complete lack of understanding of macroeconomics or fiscal policy. Bernie Sanders made a comment that the Trump voters were tired of establishment economics, which I believe. The problem is they voted for establishment economics, a point that seems lost on all the self-flagellating liberals who want to hold the DNC or Obama or other liberals accountable for the poor decisions of misinformed, uneducated reactionaries.
Sorry, but we did not “deserve” Donald Trump. What kind of person is gloating over the dismantling of liberal democracy because we “deserved it”?
Aren’t YOU the prescient one? And do you think the “Trump direction” is the right one?
I am in no way gloating. I fear the consequences as much as anyone else. What America deserved was a good kick in the head, and it just got one. Who knows how this will play out? America has so much potential, the Founding Fathers had such wisdom, but boy, it sure does some stupid things. Maybe it will learn something from this one. Me, me, me will not work for a social species, and the sooner America learns that, the better the world will be for the rest of us.
“Those liberal values we supported with our vote”? You just don’t get it, do you? The (neo)liberal values you supported with your vote, for decades, are exactly what made this possible. That you can’t see that means it’ll just keep happening.
Welcome to Trumpland. You’ll be living here the rest of your life.
What are neo liberal values? A woman’s right to choose? Equality for all sexes, races and sexual persuasions? Decent health care for those who can’t afford it rather than leaving them to die in the street?
Or is the only ideal worth supporting to take what you can and devil take the hindmost? Good luck with that one, I hope you never have bad luck or fall on hard times.
You’re dead wrong about what made this possible.Liberal values mean women’s equality, medical care for all people, an assurance that the worst among us gets help, there is no bigotry, and so on. I am proud of those values and support them, and NONE of them made Trump happen.
Welcome to Ignorance Land, where you’re already dwelling.
Take two luvox and a cup of Quietly Chamomile.
As Ed Koch said, “The people have spoken…and they must be punished.”
Errr…Posted a long comment but doesn’t look like it is going through…Short version: I thought it was easy to predict popular vote.
Kerry 2004: 59 million.
Obama 2008: 69.5 million (Democrat record).
Obama 2012: 65.9 million.
That is a stunning drop of 3.6 million votes…Obviously trend is down for Hillary (less popular than Obama in 2012)…
Bush 2004: 62 million ( Republican record)
McCain 2008: 59.9x million
Romney 2012: 60.933 million
My prediction for Trump: Around 65 million to Hillary’s 64.5 million…Made this estimate in January…
A billionaire is going to cure globalisation?
I don’t think so.
isn’t it time for that obama coup right-wingers have scared themselves sh*tless about for the last eight years?
You left out the VP, religious nut job.
With god on our side. Oh yeah!
“U-ESS-AY, U-ESS-AY” etc. But it is not as if you are going to kick anyone’s bottom – what with being isolationist…. etc!
Not to worry, Donald has promised to usher in “Near Term Human Extinction” in his first hundred days in office.
I put a suitable pic on my twitter feed… 🙁
at least the US will be more hated than the UK now! 😉
Neither is hated by me.
The racss in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin were extremely close. So the fate of this country and the world hinged on small things.
What exactly did any of you do during the campaign to get rational people elected? It takes more than the few minutes you spend casting your ballot to get good people elected and to put good laws in place. I have asked this question before — I’d really like to know — what did you all do?
What do you intend to do now to protect the progress we have made, not that I think there is anything much we can do now to protect the environment, public lands, the social safety net, social security, medicare, comprehensive health care, a living wage, consumer rights, civil rights, women’s rights, public parks, schools and libraries, to name a few things we lost yesterday.
Will you be happy with Personhood laws and forced birth? We let thousands of black men be put in prison to suppress their vote, now you want to see thousands or women join them? You like the idea of your tax money going to Crisis Pregnancy Centers rather than Planned Parenthood. You like tax money going to religious schools and home schools that will teach pseudoscience and creationism.
Was what we lost worth the momentary pleasure of indulging in Hillary hatred?
Maybe that’s the neo liberalism which a poster above was saying is to blame for this disaster. The only way to have decency is to, er, not try to have decency?
I think we’re likely to find out what would have happened if Hitler had won the war.
SCOTTIE!! BEAM ME THE HELL UP !!
Ah cannae work murucles!
There was one poll, the LA Times/USC, that consistently showed Trump ahead. It nagged at me, with good reason it turns out.
You were just whistling in the graveyard, PCC. I did too.
Sob
Now is NOT the time to be talking about moving to another country! The millions of us who don’t agree with Trump need to take a deep breath and be prepared to donate some serious cash to those organizations that protect what we hold dear so that they can bring lawsuits against fracking in national parks, logging national forests, drilling in national wildlife refuges, women’s rights, LGBT rights…
It is time to put our money where our mouths are! It is time to get ready to stand up and be counted! It is time for us to TAKE BACK AMERICA… To paraphrase President (oh, my god! Did I say that?) Trump, WE CAN MAKE IT GREAT AGAIN!
+ 1! This is the spirit I want to see, as a survivor of several disastrous elections that brought about even more disastrous mass emigration!
Perhaps Hillary was a terrific politician but a weak candidate. There’s also the abject failure of the press–MSNBC in most particular. Fire Chris Matthews and Maddow. Rehire Melissa Harris-Perry and Crystal Ball, who predicted Hillary’s failure and was immediately canned.
I am not USian and may not appreciate subtleties of American politics but I wonder if Pence for president would not be worst. After all, he is now very close to the job (closer than S. Palin ever been).
I suspect the same. Maybe everyone should wish good health to Pres. Trump!
What are the odds on an assassination attempt in the next four years? It’s not like there’s a shortage of guns…
I’m certainly not advocating it BTW, and as Maya has pointed out, promoting the VP would not be a good idea.
Given the narow margins for Trump in his key states, I would like to see a statistical analysis of the difference between polling predications and outcomes in those states versus the “certainties” for each party.
It is time to play blame the loser. HRC was complacent. She did not set foot in Wisconsin thinking it was in the bag. Ironic that Wisconsin put Trump over the top.
Well let see
THE DNS with Hillery’s full blessing undermines the other Democrat(s). In this can it was only one, Bernie Sanders.
Break any and all laws. Toss any ethics away, to ensure Hillary will be the Democratic nominee.
The American voters both Right and Left were fed up with either party and anyone the party machines put on stage.
What can go wrong ….
sorry make that the DNC …
Yes. The DNC decided it was Clinton’s “turn”, as if there was an entitlement. The only democrat (sort of) with the fortitude to challenge that assumption was a seventy-something old socialist.
HRC’s other yuge mistake–she let Trump win with the “I feel your pain” card. Sheesh, her husband invented it. Instead, she makes the “deplorables” comment, which killed her as surely as Romney’s 47% statement.
All in all she was an incompetent campaigner, who had the nomination through favoritism rather than than merit.
It’s already inevitable that Trump’s presidency will a source of lampooning that surpasses even that of George Bush. Let’s all laugh as the ship goes down.
Get ready for Sarah Palin Interior secretary!
“The barrel is apparently a lot deeper than we thought.”
To quote John Oliver –
“Look up there. Way up there. That’s rock bottom.”
cr
according to infographic by Max Tegmark
Americans of all ages including non citizens only
18% of all Americans voted for Trump
the rest of the numbers were
18% for Clinton
23% Registered but didn’t vote
8% Didn’t register to vote
2.5% Other Candidates
0.5% still being counted
The rest weren’t eligible to vote because
23% are under 18
7% are not Citizens
https://twitter.com/GSpellchecker