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-Inflation is not prices; it is the rate of change in prices. Low inflation doesn't imply low prices.
-Aggregate statistics don't necessarily explain individual outcomes.
The Dems failed on this count massively, and have, for maybe the last 40 years, which is about the amount of time it took for my state to go from national bellwether (As goes Ohio, so goes the nation) to a reliably red state. This cost one of the most pro-union Senators (Sherrod Brown) his job.
About 20 million votes less than the 2020 election, with about 15 million less for the democrats, and a measely 4 million less for the republicans. Thought that was interesting.
one thing i definitely worry is about using public lands for oil, mineral extraction purposes.
while America has a bounty of public land acreage wise, 4 years and a complete control of the government is a lot of time to do some lasting damage to the ecosystem by opening up these areas for privatization.
US politics isn't easy to understand as an outsider. It looks like Harris was was an ok candidate for the core democrat voter and a terrible candidate to win a populist election in what is essentially a deeply divided and mostly conservative country. She didn't address the swing voters greatest concerns which was their decline in real wealth due to inflation and fear of change. I am sure money and influence had a lot to do with it as well but still a colossal misreading of public sentiment and an inability to reach out to a broader audience.
incumbents all around the world have performed terribly post COVID. UK, Canada, Japan, France, Italy, have all had landslide or shocking election results.
Unsure what the general mood is that can lead to Keir Starmer dropping 30 points in approval months after winning in a landslide, but the mood of general discontent may be relevant in the United States as well. It seems whatever the status quo / incumbent advantage that used to exist, is now working against candidates.
Even if the democrats ran a better candidate in a better campaign, it may not have been enough to overcome these headwinds. Although, I'm not sure I totally believe that myself since she lost by a pretty narrow margin in swing states.
Obviously not to excuse the dems, just something to consider
Imagine coming out of covid, without a recession, only to be hit with inflation (both parties to blame) and sky high interest rates coupled with all other stuff like illegal border crossing to lack of majority support from Women to Harris to Harris being a silent VP for 4 full years and thrown to lime light.
FYI, the map looks horrendous for democrats after the 2030 census. Estimates give Texas +4, Florida +3, and various other southern states +1 for a total of +12 on solid red states.
Since the Citizens United decision the USA is a defacto oligarchy. Politicians are no longer beholden to the whims of the people, only the donors. The Supreme Court decreed that money is speech, therefore the more money you have, the more speech you have, and the more speech you have, the louder your voice. Herein lies the proof, and the lesson.
2016 : Hilary Clinton - People felt that she was chosen because it was her turn
2020 : Kamala Harris - A candidate who never ever even did well in the primaries.
I hope DNC learn from this and let people choose a candidate next time.
The big thing to remember is the election isn't over. I'm not talking about the president, but the house. Most of the things on the list of actions in the article, or list of concerns in the comments, will require congress to enact. We could still end up with a split congress. Even narrow majorities should imped the most extreme items. In my opinion, narrow majorities or a split is beneficial. It helps keep stuff from being rammed though without real thought or debate.
From a game theoretical perspective this is a good result. It is a clear reiteration of the message to the Democrats: you won't win by claiming to be 0.1% less bad.
The Democrats should have fielded a strong personality in their own right. This is not about left or right. It's about mobilizing people by giving them something to care about. "More of the same" and "not like that guy" isn't very enticing.
I don't think the policy positions even matter that much, if you can make a strong case and gain the confidence of the electorate.
Even if you support his economic approach, for example, wouldn't his criminal behaviour, or his racist and transphobic views disqualify him? One does not wash away the other.
Again the DEM party took another opportunity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
They should have nominated Mark Kelly. The GOP ran on "this bitch hates America". You can't run on that against a 4 star rear admiral who also went into space.
Shout out to dang for all the hard work at moderating he does--there's going to be a lot of flagged comments to slog through in the coming days if this thread is any indication
Apparently claiming the other side is worse in Gaza issue is not enough. Democratic voters simply refuse to turn out in swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin.
Something I've been wondering lately is how big of a blind spot I have from being habitually online. Like, I'll read the news, and I'll read political discussions on HN and r/politics and r/conservative and Twitter, and I'll try to get a sense of what everyone is thinking, but unfortunately I don't think that's possible. The posters on these sites all have one thing in common: they're into politics and current events.
Having a chance to talk to more people in meatspace this year, it was a surprise to find out how many people have only a passing interest in politics, but still vote. Like, the average user here probably reads 5+ news articles a day, but there are plenty of people IRL that will read one a month, or maybe just skim a headline. They don't really keep up-to-date with the race. They mostly vote by feel and pragmaticism.
People always talk about "shy" Trump voters, but what makes me more curious are voters that match the description above. If you put someone in a voting booth who isn't interested by news, who do they vote for? I mean, Trump has a lot of surface-level qualities - he's a tall, confident white man who's a successful boss of business and an anti-establishment outsider - and maybe that's enough to capture this demographic.
I think that Harris was a very poor choice of a candidate. I have no way to know this, but I like to imagine that a better Dem candidate would have led to a different president.
I thought it is interesting to note the vibe shift on HN between first election, his 2nd try and now. ( Although not specific to election but how the political shift of HN has changed from 2008 to now )
The 2nd obvious observation is that HN now manage to fit 9435!!!! comments ( and counting ) in a single page. I downloaded it and it was ~18MB or 2.7MB zipped. And Arc is now Clarc and works on multiple core. I guess this thread is a huge battle ground for further optimisation. I also wonder if this is the most comment HN thread.
I get really tired of this narrative that people are pushing that trump voters are somehow ignorant, stupid or simply don't care.
We're not ignorant, we care a lot and we're not being duped. We're really tired of the high gas prices, the moral hypocrisy of the left, the domestic law fare going on attacking political rivals and most of all, we want to afford our groceries and experience a better economy.
Telling us, that the entire base that voted for Trump is either heartless, naive or stupid just isn't going to cut it in reality. People that voted for Trump believe that the President is the diplomatic representative to the world for the American people. He literally got shot and stood up pumping his fist in the air. Joe Biden can barely walk down the stairs without tripping. Kamala had a "phone" call with an undecided voter just yesterday and when she showed the screen it was the camera app. Our choice this election was either the badass who after being shot wanted to show the crowd he was alive or two bumbling idiots. He's not my first choice, but he's a lot better then the Democratic Party offered as alternatives.
We want an American who will fight for business and fight for America to win. We want lower gas prices, which will then make it cheaper to transport goods across the nation and help lower prices in the grocery store.
Trump is not the best person, but he was the better option out of the two party system.
I was told Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, and Ethel Cain would deliver this for the Dems months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41020940 and that Musk's actions wouldn't matter.
If the GOP sweeps both chambers and form a supermajority they will be in the position where they are expected to deliver what their constituents were promised without any opposition. Hell of a tight-rope given the scale of their promises and how rabidly sure the GOP base is on their ability to deliver.
Foreign policy under Trump will generally be isolationist.
- US out of NATO? Trump will at least threaten that. The larger European countries are currently weak militarily by historical standards. There does not seem to be enough will in Europe to spend at US levels, outside of the countries on the front line, such as Poland and Finland.
- Ukraine war: Heavy US support for Ukraine probably stops. Whether Ukraine surrenders is up to Ukraine.
Ukraine can fight on, but won't win much.
Trump will meet with Putin and will give Putin much of what he asks for.
- Israel's wars: US support continues.
- China vs. Taiwan: Reduced support for Taiwan. China starts treating the area inside the nine lines as their own lake, and no US Navy craft go there. Pressure on Taiwan increases. China will attempt to get Taiwan to cave without actually invading. A blockade is possible.
- Trade with China: heavy protectionism on the US side. Few other countries will go along. Overall, China's influence in the world will increase.
- China's influence in South America will continue to increase. This isn't noticed much in the US, but it's big. South America now trades more with China than with the US. China controls about 40 ports in South America. The US had military bases around the world. China builds ports.
I think a lot of people forgot that before Covid hit, Trump was headed for a fairly routine reelection. Many people thought he was doing a solid job, especially on the economy. All American elections still come down to the James Carville truism, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Despite what the official metrics or stock market says, we’ve been in a “vibesession” due to inflation and elevated interest rates. Anecdotally, I'm still seeing stores run low/out of things far more frequently than pre pandemic times, which just adds to the feeling that all is not right with the world. America is actually in better economic shape than most other countries, but people are not feeling happy or optimistic, and the incumbent party is going to pay for it.
Reading through the post is quite depressing. As a lifelong independent, I've never felt more vilified by the Democratic Party than at any other time. Constantly being talked down to, insulted as a white supremacist, nazi, etc. It's this "elitist" and "we know better than you" attitude that really, really puts a sour taste in my mouth.
Yet, reading through these comments, it seems alive and well even after an astounding rebuke. Why? I despise our two-party system, but I'm actually quite happy to see one particular party rebuked this time around for this abhorrent behavior that should have no place in civil discourse. It's sad that HN can't rise above it.
And for clarity, yes, both sides participate in this charade of incivilities, but I am simply expressing my own opinion as an independent in 2024 that it overwhelmingly came from one side towards _me_ in this election cycle.
But aren't we supposed to wait out the Red Mirage / Blue Shift [0] before calling a winner? (Linked to timestamp of where former political director of Fox News testifies about it being a known thing).
My analysis is the Democrat party leadership should have conducted a true primary election.
She was "gifted" the nomination, vs being selected in the primary. I think the populace responded in turn: This wasn't their candidate. Compare this to the Obama vs Clinton selection, which I actually believe the populace would have supported either.
btw: I'm not sure I'd compare this to the 2020 primaries as 2020 was a special year, and I don't think really any of the candidates really resonated with the voters, Biden just "wasn't Trump".
Republicans did a great job mobilizing voters. They’ve learned from the tactics the Democrats pioneered and it worked well. Things like early voting, etc. This election will be a landslide but looks like and I believe in large part because of how they exploited the early voting opportunity.
It's interesting how bad the democrats seem to be at the game of winning elections. They continuously seem to pick bad candidates and poor strategies resulting in them losing the election when they seem to have had the general conditions for winning. This time, the elephant in the room is of course the late ousting of Joe Biden, but there were similar issues that (in hindsight at least) were obvious in the Clinton 2016 campaign. This pattern can be seen in other countries as well, where it's clear that one group knows how to play the game while other groups don't, but it's surprising to me that a massive organization like the democratic party wouldn't have streamlined this process.
It would be interesting to hear from someone more familiar with the inner workings of the democratic party why this is. I.e., if it's a cultural issue in the party, if it's economical, or if my view on this is completely off.
Love him or hate him, it will be fascinating to see if the democratic institutions of the United States can endure this. He has made it very clear he wants to dismantle as much as he can, including term limits.
Time will tell if the US really is the greatest democracy and can withstand a wannabe dictator, or if he really can subvert it all. It’s going to be a wild four years, and I fear more wall building.
Not super worried from a European perspective, it might even spur on some cooperation in our own union, which I support.
Just a bit nervous for Ukraine... I wish Europe could step up on that front but we just don't have the capacity for it. Which is entirely our own fault, Trump is right to call us out on our reliance on the US. It's our continent we should be the one spearheading this.
Hopefully that will change in the near future. But that doesn't help Ukraine now.
The democrats need to do some serious introspection on their policies and priorities. And perhaps just return to running a white male as candidate...
Oh well at least it's a very clear victory, so no weeks or months of anxiety over the results.
It’s all about the economy (remember, ‘it’s the economy, stupid’).
We keep hearing statistics showing that the economy is doing well, but I have yet to meet anyone who feels like they’re actually better off.
I’m not saying that the stats are wrong, but when it comes to politics, you can’t address economic anxiety by just pointing to statistics and saying, ‘Look, the numbers say everything is fine.’
- Will I still have a job in 6 months? If I lose my job, can I get by?
- Can I continue to afford groceries, rent, utilities at the current pace of inflation?
- If I have a major health problem, will I be ok?
During an election, you can either harness the fear voters have around these issues and turn them into hateful energy against the other side (Trump tactic) or you can calm people's nerves by acknowledging the problems and providing a path to deal with them (Obama tactic). Obama was able to confidently appeal to voters on these issues and he brought them to the fore-front throughout his campaign. Obama was charismatic as well, so when he talked about these issues, you got the sense that he could competently provide that protection. He was reassuring.
I voted for Kamala, but I didn't want to. She possessed none of those positive qualities. She didn't instill confidence. Her voice and demeanor made her sound annoyed. Her fake smile made me cringe. I wanted an authentic candidate that could make me feel safe. She was not it.
Lastly, those primary issues were shrouded by gender politics. I would like transgender people to feel safe and have access to resources they need. I would like women to have access to abortion when it's necessary. These are not things to run a campaign off of though. EVERYONE feels the pain of a bad economy; that should've been the primary focus all along and we needed a STRONG candidate to really drive a strategy for addressing it. I just don't think Kamala was able to make any headway in that respect and I think that's why she ultimately lost.
Donald Trump had 74 million votes in 2020. As of right now, he's nearly at 72 million. To me that says he hasn't necessarily gained new followers. That's a good sign. It seems the Dems have lost millions however. That's a very bad sign. It's pretty clear then that Kamala did not represent what voters really cared about during this election cycle.
Probably in the end fundamentals beat candidate quality.
Rightly or wrongly, economic sentiment indicators are all in the dumpster and historically incumbent party loses in that scenario. We've had the best covid recovery, lowest inflation and lowest unemployment in the developed world but that doesn't matter to the average voter.
Biden probably would have done worse (look at approval rating & imagine another debate). Open primary might have helped, or not, total gamble. Probably less than 25% of this is attributable to Harris or her campaign.
If there was a dem mistake it was in picking her as VP in 2020 to lock up a demographic they already would win. From there it made her the presumed successor to an elderly president who was assumed to not really run for a second term.
Just an observation from a limey. The Western (and Christian) world has changed massively over 2 generations from a predominantly white Western world to a mixed culture one, which takes a bit of acclimatising to.
The politics around gender (and however many there's supposed to be) makes people lose their frame of reference also IMO. For some, the world is changing too quick, or their neighbourhood is changing too quick.
Older generations who've witnessed the change perhaps see it most, as perhaps younger white men who have had the blowback of historical racism, misogyny and generally assumed to be the most privileged, though many (the majority) are not. I hear that the Trump campaign focused on them who generally do not vote.
I hope the USA moves on and accepts the result. In the end people vote with their desires, sometimes illogical but ultimately their desires are their motivations. The USA is also a good age now, as I was reminded by a Canadian taxi driver while living in Canada, regardless of what foreigners nebs think about US politics, better a world with the USA in it than without (though I'm probably biased as a Westerner).
Perhaps to an extent it's hard to keep an identity, like national pride or what a country stands for when things move so quickly.
Personally I thought Harris was a shoo in, but the people have spoken.
Insert caveat about big tech algos persuading people.
Adding comments favored or tailored to one political party or another should not be allowed on HN.
Clicked on this thread for insightful discussion/debate, I’m just reading people talk about how trump was not a good candidate, and how kamala campaigned incorrectly and so on so forth
Who would have thought sneering at half the voters, taking voter groups for granted just because of their demographics, running the country with a senile out-of-touch leader (while denying this self-evident truth), replacing him at the last minute with totally bland careerist politician, basing their campaign on vibes of "joy", crying wolf, insulting the voters on the other side you instead needed to attract, and being tone-deaf on people's complains on everyday issues, while championing marginal concerns, could ever backfire!
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
This my outsider perspective, I am not into US politics at all but I have spent a couple hours catching up today and my takeaway is simple (and probably wrong):
the Democrat's messaging wasn't clear enough in my opinion and Kamala Harris was a weak candidate.
I listened to some of her interviews and I had a really hard time understanding what her campaign was about besides not being Trump. She also failed to put some distance between her and Biden which means that in my mind and probably in the mind of a lot of voters, she was seen merely as a carbon copy of him but as a woman.
Also the fact that KH was parachuted on the ticket without a primary vote because it was too late for that meant that she just wasn't ready. She put up a good fight but it wasn't enough to beat Trump who by that stage had been on the campaign trail for more than a year and spent time crafting responses, rebuttals and finding ways to attack his opponents.
I think Biden shares some of the blame here but she must have known this was a suicide mission.
All in all I don't think I missed anything by not paying attention to this whole circus.
It's getting sort of ridiculous how much each party is stuck in an electoral strategy where they have to pretend to be on one side of an issue which is objectively against the interests of the people they pretend to be representing.
Dems have to appear to be pro-immigration for reasons (honestly I don't know why this is like this, historically). They are genuinely less xenophobic than the Reps, so they respect the rights of recent immigrants much better. But when it comes to preventing more poor workers coming in, they are just as tough as the Reps. And I believe that's because ultimately they are slightly less captured by capital and therefore more amenable to balance the economy in favor of workers.
Reps on the other hand have to appear xenophobic once again for reasons that aren't super clear to me, but when it comes to actually preventing immigration, they always manage to torpedo their own proposals. And arguably that's because if they passed effective anti-immigration laws, that would negatively affect the interests of capital, the very obvious reason they're in politics for (and Trump is certainly no different).
Maybe now we can resolve this apparent paradox and simply accept that the Democrats are first and foremost the party of the educated, metropolitan and utterly disinterested in matters of material conditions. Whereas the Republicans are the party of people who are bitter towards the first group. Which leads to the conclusion that exceptionally few people in the US are voting according to their own economic interests.
My theory: people are just hacked off that life is getting worse for most people while billionaires get richer and richer. Every disaster the wealthy get handouts while the poor have to pay for them. Government can no longer afford anything because all of its assets have been sold and rented back at a profit.
I don’t think either campaign made any difference to the outcome of this election at all.
In conclusion it might be an amazing economy on the high level averages but when inflation caused by COVID handouts (I’m reading $16 TRILLION, but that can’t be real surely?) is always going to lose you an election badly.
One of the original predictions that might be entertaining(?) to see would be the US having its first President "run" the country from prison... And the follow-up situation to witness, how different would that look, in the end?
For those who think rather than just react, I guess it would not be as entertaining...?
Reddit is finding out that if you block everyone not inside your echo chamber, but are still in the smaller echo chamber, every election will shock you
It unfortunately sits on the shoulders of progressives seeking change to convince the conservatives not seeking it to do so. By choosing not to do this asymmetric work, this is the consequence
It’s good to periodically reexamine your own positions against that of the majority and be open to realignment and different ideas, but remember that the collective opinion of society over the long term may look back unfavorably on the collective opinion of society over a period of time in the past. It’s OK to hold minority opinions, and it’s OK to disagree with the majority of Americans who voted for Trump.
Here's a European perspective that is somewhat pro-Trump, surprising as it may sound. I am Dutch and if someone would come along and promise the following:
"We're gonna lower your taxes so you have more money to spend"
"We're gonna take a sledge hammer to bloated policies so everything will run smoothly. Then we will build a million houses per year"
I would very much consider voting for that person. That said, Trump is a madman, he lies all the time, is a danger to institutions etc. At the same time, I am so disgruntled by the current system and by not a single politician tackling or even speaking about relevant issues that I am easily swayed.
Doesn't seem to be much commentary here on what an axis of Musk/Vance/Thiel (and Andreesen, etc.) influence and power in the US federal administration now means for the technology sector.
Remember it is Musk who began the wave of layoffs a bit over two years ago.
Bezos evidently saw the way the wind was blowing already.
I also see almost zero discussion about climate change policy. For many of us non-Americans, this (the disengagement of the US from even the pathetic half-measures it moved towards under Obama) is one of the key things that was horrifying to watch.
The Democrats need to figure out how to recapture the favor of young men. The Joe Rogans/Logan Pauls/Elon Musks/Tiktok/Podcast bros are doing serious damage to that demographic. Almost a +30 swing to the right in the 18-29 M category from 2020.
I don't think it's the economy or anything else. All this seems like rationalizing to me not an understanding of what happened. Trump was able to motivate more people to vote than Harris was. I have yet to meet anyone who truly rationally made a choice that they had not already made to begin with other than after the fact rationalization. It is all about perception and what the other person believes. Reality and facts do not matter as much as we would like them to. There is no interest in anyone want to actually change their views. What argument or evidence would actually cause you to change your view? It would take extraordinary evidence for me to change my vote. I suspect that is the same for most voters, it's more of an issue of who can motivate better.
There’s lots of blame and anger directed at Democrats, but ultimately it’s the Republicans who picked Trump.
They could have won against the unpopular Biden/Harris with practically any other candidate. Nikki Haley polled well against all possible Democrats.
The party was already done with Trump in February 2021, but then they explicitly decided that they prefer one more try with an old man who doesn’t spare much thought to actual policies but does brag about sexual assault, tried to orchestrate a coup last time he lost an election, etc. etc.
It’s not inflation or Biden’s unpopularity or some other external factor. Lots of Americans really want what Trump is selling.
It's dissatisfying that he could win, but it's not the first time, so I've already accepted a long time ago that the world is not what I wish it to be.
In that context, I am more curious what his policies will be because even though he rides different waves of general discontent in society, ultimately he doesn't care about anything except the economy and money. So I think he will double down on tariffs, but some things are irreversible - saving the e.g. coal mining industry is a lost cause and he'll throw those people down the drain because it doesn't make economic sense anymore. What I am most curious about is how he'll handle Biden's policies with regards to blocking acquisitions on monopoly prevention grounds.
Also the markets are not open in the US, but over here in Europe they're already skyrocketing. So "Wallstreet" is expecting massive growth in what is already quite an inflated market.
When he ran the first time, the tactic was "oh easy, we'll say we're not as egregious as that guy".
They even sabotaged Bernie to this effect (see Podesta emails), even though he was polling much better than Clinton. This failed miserably, probably in essence because the Democrats were underestimating the power of clicks to drive reality, which Trump understood, at least intuitively.
This was a historical moment where the Democrats could have reorganised things and refocused on their traditional base, namely, the working class. It seemed obvious they should, I personally really thought they would have to.
No no, it turned out. We were treated to years and years of full on circus shenanigans. They doubled down, blamed others - the Russians, Wikileaks, whoever really. Anything but blame themselves and admit that they were offering nothing which was substantively different enough from the Republicans, in the eyes of the voters.
And here we are again. Will they be able to gut the decrepit power structures keeping the zombie Democrat party afloat this time, injecting new life? Or will they find a new scapegoat, treating us to more utterly pointless pontificating through a series of never-ending media cycles.
In summary, it seems they think pandering to identity tropes will be enough to distinguish them in the eyes of the voters, but that is simply playing on Trump's territory where he decides the rules. He does it better than them. It's one of the quite few things you could say he's "good" at.
>It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.
>While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.
>And they’re right.
Anyone here who is still confused about this election result need only unplug their fingers from their ears and open their eyes.
As a foreigner, it seems like both sides are super extremely marginalised. Both sides believe everything will be done and there will be a big change if the other side wins. Reality is really not that radical, people are being lit up by propoganda. Saying this as a Turkish person, this has been happening in our country almost since I was born and it destroyed politics, normalisation and being calm is much better than sensationalising everything. Imho biggest issues are related to economics, like housing, like dark money in elections. Meaningless topics are sensationalised to marginalise people and unfortunately it works every time. Politics shouldn’t be right vs left, it should be rich vs middle class vs poor, as economics is the single most impactful aspect on most people’s lives. But politicians want to rile everyone up and put them against each other.
Hopefully there is still time to give Edward Snowden a well deserved pardon, before he becomes a bargaining chip to be extradited in exchange for something (less sanctions, etc) in a US-Russia, or better, Trump-Putin deal.
Dems need stronger narratives and their candidates to hammer this stuff. I'll use Bernie as an example, which even if you dont agree if everything he says, the guy hammers his point home and will do it in any venue.
As an American who grew from nothing, served in the military, and expanded in my career -
I find the concerns for Democracy comical.
Most of you do not understand the type of people that built and fought for democracy. There is no real fear amongst these same type of people in modern America.
To the people that are very upset about this, I'd like to offer some silver linings.
A blowout in either direction was necessary here. A clear result is better for everyone.
The press can go back to being adversarial to power (Although straight faced bullshit like the Cheney firing squad thing will probably only be more common, so thats a double edged sword).
The dems will likely stop anointing people.
We never have to sit through a Trump election campaign again.
The first woman president will likely be a much stronger candidate. Kamala could have potentially really ruined it for women going forward.
“It’s the economy, stupid” has never been truer. People will trade their rights for more basic needs being fulfilled and most people simply aren’t happy with the one sided economy that has prevailed since the late 80s. Interest rates were too low for too long beginning circa 2000, and the massive flood of QE led to an explosion in house prices, car prices, and food. This is what the world gets for poor monetary and fiscal management for more than two decades.
It'll be interesting to see what this will mean for European dependence on US tech companies. I'm not personally against companies like Microsoft as such, in fact I think they are one of the better IT business partners for non-tech Enterprise. Often what they sell is vastly underestimated by their critics within the EU, not that I disagree with the problematic nature of depending on foreign tech companies either. With the proposed deregulation of US tech and their "freeing", however, I wonder if a lot of organisations will be capable of continuing using US tech services or it'll move in the direction of how Chinese (and other) services aren't legally available for a lot of things.
It's extremely gross that I already see Democrats blaming the fact that Harris was a woman. They're going to play that card rather than admit that their message and agenda is falling flat. Trump should not be hard to beat. He has never been broadly popular. Democrats keep losing to him because they refuse to listen to anyone but their own echo chamber. They lost in 2016 and almost in 2020 and learned nothing.
Speaking of... this has firmly convinced me that deplatforming is the wrong answer. All it has done is create echo chambers. All I see is Democrats scratching their heads and blaming and fuming because they can't possibly understand why they lost. That's because they hang out in places like this or /r/politics and they've all moved to coastal cities with left-leaning political environments. If Harris had won in a landslide you'd see the exact same thing on the other side because they, too, are in echo chambers.
I did get one thing I was hoping for: a clear result. I was hoping whichever way it went it would be unambiguous to avoid a bunch of conspiracy theories and fighting.
Edit: one more takeaway: the traditional media is dead. Toast. They had no idea what was happening and all their takes are basically empty hand waving. They're absolutely clueless and out of touch and no longer have any influence.
My greatest fear is for America. He undermined it's institutions last time and there's no telling how much he'll weaken it now. I suspect the DoJ will be first to get gutted and then education, health, science. NATO, WTO, UN. I'm sure he'll embed gerrymandering to ensure republican victories. At the end of this we'll have a radically different America, domestically and Globally.
Another perplexing decision. It reminds me of when Bush won his second term. In retrospect, nobody today thinks that was a good move. But you'd be surprised how many people vote for Trump because they want to save money on taxes and think republican policies will help the economy.
Don't really care much about this election since I'm not a US citizen, but I decided to check out Bluesky as the results were coming in and it confirmed my long-time suspicion that roughly 99% of its users are far left American political activists.
Literally the entire discovery feed was post after post of said activists apparently suffering from legitimate mental breakdowns as if the entire world was crumbling around them.
Looks like he also might win the popular vote. First republican to win the popular vote since 2004. If this is true, then this was a clear mandate that the a majority of voters prefer Trump's policies over the other side. We might not like it, but this is how democracy works.
There is certainly going to be domestic and international chaos in the coming years. But a realignment of the world order and domestic politics was inevitable. It's not going to be end of the world like some are making out to be. Nor is it going to be the end of the United States. There will be opportunities. Buckle up and find opportunities where you can.
As a European, I’m trying to see the positive side of this situation. Here are a few thoughts:
- It appears that Democrats are often seen as part of an "elite," which makes it difficult for people at home to relate to or understand their message. A full reset might be needed to bridge this gap.
- Europe has long been under the shadow of the United States. Perhaps this could be a good start toward greater independence for Europe.
I sometimes imagine what Science Officer Spock would really say to humans to help them understand themselves.
Just saying "highly illogical" is not very helpful.
(The following is all my imagination, any resemblance to reality is coincidental)
So, I think he would talk about how the mind is not a machine designed for rationality. The mind is a holographic projection, a story told by a collection of organs in your head, fed by sensations from your body.
I think he would talk about the dilemma of aspiration. If you aspire to rationality, and you feel that rationality is the best system of thought, then you will be driven to believe that you are highly rational. Unfortunately, in many things, you cannot differentiate between logical consistency and post-hoc rationalization.
Humans know this; so we have things like peer review.
Unfortunately you also cannot trust another person to rationally evaluate your beliefs - humans have a strong history of in-group/out-group dynamics. It is beneficial to signal agreement and trustworthiness; it is harmful and painful to signal disagreement with the in-group.
And so rational thought requires rational communication with people you disagree with - and people in the out-group, because your in-group may have centered on a wrong, harmful or otherwise useless belief.
Rational communication requires an overlap in perspective. Not the same point of view, but at least a minimal consensus in perception of reality and goals. For instance, most people believe that it is good to invest in young people in some way, though they may disagree about what that means.
Unfortunately, in-group/out-group dynamics can make this very difficult in times of active conflict, as humans have a very strong sense of morality, and sending moral signals to your in-group is more important that rational communication.
----
No one had a plan that got humans to this point in our story. No one has a plan for humans in an age of worldwide social media. We have to build it together.
I don't like country music, but I can see the appeal. Things are simpler in the country - you have to believe in real things like trucks and cows, not theoretical things like software and commodity futures contracts.
It's nice to deal with things that are simple and real.
There might be a cultural issue here for the Dems. Many of the canvassers I met who were not retirees tended to be young women, often college-aged or a bit older, very liberal and very much benefitting directly from the economic status quo. To them, voting for anyone besides Harris was just completely insensible and they did not even bother to try and understand the views of anyone they spoke with (from what I could tell), they were just pushing "get out the vote" but no substantial reasons as to why. I suspect that many of these young women are fairly out of touch with the sentiments of most americans and the daily hardships of those without college degrees, especially young men. I suspect that many of these young women will be forced out of the party for that reason, and if they aren't, then they will have to learn to actually talk to people with opposing viewpoints and figure out how to get along with the so-called "deplorables." But most likely they will just end up working somewhere else; not all at once, but the dems will be forced to change their platforms, new candidates will get elected who will change their staffs, and an entire cohort of well-to-do liberal poly sci majors will be gradually shifted out of Washington.
Trump may not have deserved to win, but the Democrats deserved to lose - and I'm relieved they did.
Maybe after this rematch the blue team will finally understand the loss was their fault, so they can start moving away from the abominable ideology and spiteful elitism that handed them this result.
Trump is a fuck-you vote from the economic losers of globalisation. They know he won't do anything for them, but they also know the other side won't either. All the pearl clutching about trumps characteristics from inner-city relativists fell on deaf ears because it rang hollow.
A women of the luxury belief professional class from an academic family and an uninspiring bureaucratic life story was never going to be able to talk to these people and she didn't really try too either.
The specific policies don't really matter to people when they are exhausted and angry. Revenge does.
What's the best way for someone from one of the groups that Republicans hate to move to a Western European or Nordic nation where they are less likely to be marginalized or threatened? I'm sure there will be plenty of time to analyze exactly what happened, but right now my only concern is getting out.
I strongly feel Harris lost because she did not connect with white voting women in the swing states. The exit poll numbers show this. She had about the same percentage voting women as Biden, but lost votes with white men. So to make up for that gap, it had to be white women. She did great with non-white overall.
I think it's easy to say "Harri needed more votes" but to go about this strategically, there needs to be on-target messaging.
Did they include into the prediction the fact that in many state mail in ballots have to be counted after normal ballots and that for a lot of reasons Democrats are way more likely to vote by mail.
This is the best news for entrepreneurship in eons. Clearing regulations and barriers to entry will result in a much smoother, faster, and easier entrepreneurship process.
the biggest problem is the climate. with trump winning, most/all of the climate policies will be revered irreparably damaging our planet bringing us to the brink of extinction. ofc it won't be all trump fault, current trends are gloomy enough yet those are the very last few years to actually do something..
Shower thought:
People vote for Trump because he is actually predictable.
You never have to guess whose interests he is protecting. It's always his own.
You never have to guess whether he is lying. He sure as hell is but there is also no hidden agenda. It's unfiltered mental diarrhea but it's raw and authentic.
I think a lot of the unease and disdain for the Western political class stems from their attempts to be inoffensive and appeal to everybody. Whatever policy you enact there is always going to be a trade-off, winners and losers, and if you do now acknowledge that, how can I be sure that you are acting in my interest?
“Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly... stupid.”
― Captain Jack Sparrow
This really sucks and is making me incredibly worried. I know we don't discuss politics on HN, and there's not much point in debating this. But seriously... this clown? what's wrong with the US.
who would of guessed that swinging to the Right and courting Republican voters while holding no real tangible policy positions that address the pain that people are feeling wouldn't pay off?? (except for literally everybody who follows politics)
I could write an essay on each massive mistake they made after that first week after the swap, but if I had to simmer it down into a sentence, it would be: people wanted change, Kamala Harris made it extremely clear that she does not represent that change. She cozied up to Biden and tried to be a centrist-right candidate, and literally nobody wants that... and the worst part is that they will never learn a lesson from this.
I'm gonna be honest, this is much closer to the future that humanity deserves than the AI utopia many of you were dreaming of. Look at the entirety of human history and all the evil things people have done, and look at your own consumption of factory-farmed meat/dairy/eggs. Look at how few people donate kidneys (less than 0.1% in USA, and even lower in countries like Japan). And of course people would rather spend their 1st-world disposable income on enshitified creature-comforts than donate it; about $3500 is enough to save a kid's life from malaria, or go on a family vacation to Disney World.
People will say "I'd be a better person if only I were rich!", but predictably, the number of rich people willing to do those things is almost a rounding error.
I'm not American. I feel sad, not because Ds lost or Rs one. A nation, which happens to wield so much power in the world, has chosen to elect as its president, a deranged, indecent, man, with dictatorial tendencies, who cares for nothing about democratic--or any--institutions, who never believed in peaceful transfer of power, who called for an insurrection. I'd have thought that alone would have been a reason enough to say, "not that guy, no way". But here we are.
An unsurprising result. There is a worrying global rise in right-wing popularism and this is part of it.
We can look forward to more war, more crime, more suffering, more scapegoating of minorities. This is the start of a long decline that ends in death and destruction.
That Harris and Trump were apparently the best that the US political machine could spew up as choices to run one of the most powerful countries in the world is concerning in itself. Just shows how severely politics is broken in the US.
This is weird because the information I was getting was that Harris was leading the opinion polls and the Trump supporters were dropping him at the last minute. Now this feels like a rigged election.
This election has been a testament to the complete and utter obliviousness of the American voter, as far as economics goes.
All polls have indicated that economy and inflation was the number 1 issue that voters on the right cared about, and yet they haven't flinched at the proposals that Trump have laid out. Musk even said it in clear language, that there will be "austerity" moving forward.
The greatest grift in modern times - and the people that stood most to lose walked straight into it, cheering.
I guess the only hope is that the economy is fine, and improving - which makes any radical changes much more visible and risky. If Trump and Musk want to set off the bomb and likely crater it, then they'll own that mess. But hopefully they'll just do nothing, and try to take credit for the trajectory they've inherited - for the sake of your average citizen.
To provide a little perspective on what seems to be an fruitless exercise in Democratic Party political apologetics, let’s remind ourselves that the smart, dumb, rich, poor, wise, foolish, old, young, native born, foreign born, male, female American people have spoken in a generally free and fair election. As they did when they elected Biden in 2020, Trump in 2016, Obama in 2012…. Whether you agree with the results or not, that process is a beautiful thing. Think of the billions on this planet who aren’t afforded that luxury.
There is a phrase that took root in the American legal subculture a while back: “come to Jesus meeting”. It refers to a meeting where a lawyer explains to their client the realities of their situation with the expectation that presentation of the cold facts and current climate will “recalibrate their expectations” and move them on a new path…normally to settlement and no further wasting of the Court’s time. The Democratic Party would do well to consider having such public meetings with elder statesmen types from both sides of the aisle. The US is best served when both political parties are strong and healthy.
Paradoxically, it’s harder for the Republicans to do that now, since they are winning. Normally requires a hard slap in the face…as has occurred for Democrats.
Is there some statistical analysis on the reason people vote trump ? I refuse to believe the narrative that Americans are just a bunch of redneck retarded bigots.
1) It's very hard for a woman to be elected president.
2) The electorate demographic without college degrees is more likely to make an emotional decision that is more easily manipulated with Trump-style bombast.
Not in a battleground state, I didn't see any advertising, but the Dems should have pounded Trump as a criminal sex offending lying hypocrit draft dodger loser felon bankrupt self-obsessed asshole (note this is not snark it's literally how they should have gone at him).
"America first" (read: "Trump first").
It is going to be interesting to see all the different ways that guy is going to enrich himself and businesses, again..
I find it ironic that the word capitalism appears only 13 times in this thread, which has 7112 comments at the time of posting. This isn’t surprising, though, given how unpopular the topic of class warfare is in the USA.
Regardless of who you vote for, many would argue that a lot of the USA’s (and most countries nowadays, really) socioeconomic issues stem from unregulated capitalism, which -- quite simply -- prioritizes profit over people.
People are tired of competing with 3rd-world wages while having to meet 1st-world expenses—especially in a ChatGPT world. It’s no surprise that shutting the borders and capping the visas is a mildly popular platform—especially when the Democrats (with a few exceptions, like Sanders) abandoned their labor constituencies back in the 90s.
I'm going to share a tweet with you that is not my own tweet but one that more than 200k people have upvoted. If you want to see a list of topics that motivated Trump re-election: https://twitter.com/wildbarestepf/status/1854026810331365823
Trump didn’t win. Harris lost. Trump is about 2M votes behind his losing mark in 2020. Meanwhile Harris is 11M behind Biden last time round.
Everyone voted as anticipated in the main and Musk’s antics did nothing to boost Trump.
Trump‘s campaign was a disaster, pulling him back and losing him votes. No one can be proud of returning fewer votes than before. Nothing he did worked.
White suburban men and the Latino population didn’t show up for Harris. Outside that even groups that didn’t vote for her in large numbers, or voted in part for Trump, otherwise performed as expected.
Polls are not good at identifying voters who traditionally vote one way and then decide not to show up. The apathetic voters were falsely recorded as being votes for Harris.
Many theories are out there to explain the apathy. Certainly there’s an element or sexism and racism. Many people don’t want to vote for a brown woman. Trump and his surrogates attacked Harris directly as a minority woman by implying she was only good for sex and had slept her way to power.
The Latino population in the US skews catholic and that constituency skews them conservative.
On top of that they often live in states with high immigration from South and Central America and are more hawkish on that issue than most. Many do not identify with the countries their parents or grandparents came from and consider themselves “good” immigrants who are angry at the “bad” immigrants they are often lumped in with.
People talking about any move to the right by Trump are wrong. If anything the country is less Trumpest than it was 4 years ago. He has no mandate.
America still seems unwilling to elect a woman to the highest office. People who think Obama election means race is no longer an issue are also wrong. Politically Obama was Michael Jordan. His performance and ability cannot be considered the new normal. He may remain an outlier in the same way Thatcher, the UKs only elected female PM, is.
Not sure if its clear here to US participants, but the world views this outcome much like we did in 2016: it makes the US into an absolute laughing stock. I don't fully understand: he was voted out in 2020 due to the massive failures of his term and him personally, and now four years later when he has become even more deranged, they voted him back in? What the hell?
Positive outcomes I see is that much like with the US's unequivocal support of Israel, this devastates the US's reputation and foreign influence. Trump wants to abandon Europe and Ukraine, which might grant Europe the independence and the urgency to step up and support Ukraine itself, unfettered by dysfunctional politics back in the US. A third pole on the world power stage would improve things, the US isolated back home in its infighting and staying out of the rest of the worlds business. IF the EU steps up.
Well.. the last time he won, many people were literally expecting a nuclear holocaust. I remember a season of American Horror Story where the main part of the premise was that Trump became president.
We survived the first time?
I want to believe that somehow having Musk involved will help? I think there are a few people who feel encouraged by that based on how effective some of his companies are, and others think he will just call in a political favor for his own profit.
There seem to be two alternate realities. Either we are on the brink of a horrific fascist cyberpunk dystopia, or we have dealt a massive blow to the war-profiteering drug-profiteering establishment.
I don't think either is the real world, but the extreme divergence in predictions is confusing. I dislike this guy quite a lot but I also don't think the Democrats are trustworthy or honest.
Lot of comments about the economy and inflation but I don’t think that explains all of it. Trump grew votes in demographics across the board including traditional Democrat strongholds. Something else was working for him that didn’t work for Harris.
All this handwringing about inflation, economy etc. I think it is lot simpler:
Most people are already set on who they will vote for. Perhaps Trump supporters more so than Democrats. So, it all boils down to turnout:
1. Kamala wasn't the candidate to bring out Democrats (no primary, not a popular choice even among Democrats, selected by the DNC)
2. Trump can bring out his voters. The added advantage was a female opponent. A number of his supporter (male and female) have a pretty strong misogynistic streak. They will turn out to vote against a female opponent just because of that. I suspect a male Democratic candidate (even Biden) would have done much better (entirely driven by lower turnout of Trump supporters as they would not have been so committed against a male opponent)
This is further supported by the results of 2018 /2022 mid-terms. Trump was not on the ballot. So, Republican turnout (especially the kind that is in the cult) was impacted and Democrats had a good showing. We will see the same in 2026 (even more so as the economy will tank over the next 2 years and Democrats will come out in force). I predict a clean sweep by Democrats in 2026 perhaps even 60 Senate seats (yes, the economy will be that bad) and then the impeachment will start.
Pakistanis in the majority and Muslims in general supported Trump because Biden's govt is alleged to have toppled Imran Khan's govt and supported genocide in Gaza. American Muslims have voted for Trump
AP News at this time are reporting 224 (Harris) vs 267 (Trump) [1].
A lot of political thoughts in these comments. I think the important thing going forwards is to figure out how to maximise the opportunity that you find in your environment.
For our team we were looking to relocate our manufacturing from China and get additional investment. One of our objectives today is to figure out how the recent result in the US will affect this planning.
It's been an incredible campaign this time around. I'm a bit of a black sheep as a voter, I voted for Obama twice, I voted Hillary in 2016, Trump in 2020, Trump for the primary, and now again Trump in 2024. Having a multi-ethnic coalition behind him really sealed the deal for him IMO, as well as a coherent platform of deregulation, immigration reform, and putting American workers and businesses first.
Wish I'd bet more in the election markets and crypto, but hindsight is always 20/20 as they say.
It always amazes me that a country that cares so much about being the 'best', cares so little about what people think of them.
Voting in this guy, and his policies reduces the legitimacy of the US. If Trump withdraws from Nato, then members may not pay so much to US for weapons any more. Protection money only works while you get Protection. Maybe the Visa and Mastercard tribute taxes we all pay back to the US will be less welcome.
Maybe, in the new protectionist world, tax dodging US tech companies will be less welcome too.
This is going to be the "snake ate my face" situation real fast. Republicans push class divide so to keep their voter base uneducated and poor. Seems like they've reached the critical mass necessary. I don't understand any other way they vote someone in who has demonstrated time and again he'll work against their own interests. I understand short sighted single issue greed for the mighty dollar but it is a nonsensical vote for anyone else.
Dreading it on one level but also looking forward to the entertainment of a watch a slow motion train wreck. If he actually follows through on promises like mass deportation and forcing Ukraine peace that could get intense.
Its funny. Even after this happens the comments continue to keep the echo chamber going instead of wanting to understand how this happened. Until the DNC has an honest conversation with itself this will just keep happening.
Not a Trump voter so can't say exactly why they vote for him, but my guess would be the rather toxic race/sexism obsessed narrative the far left pushes. Every article nowadays rambles on about it, ever book/tv show also, it is tiresome and self defeating. Also so much negativity directed at males, especially white ones. The trans stuff is also a factor I'd guess, even as someone who voted for Harris I don't care for this level of anti science belief that a guy is now a women just because they say so.
Harris didn't really push this narrative as far as I can tell, but unfortunately some of her supporters do(and the media outlets they run).
Or perhaps the Trump voters actually believe he can somehow lower grocery store costs, though to me this seems like it would require some real mental gymnastics to believe, or deep ignorance.
No, it is not a single thing that drove US citizen to give Trump unprecedented mandate to fix the country.
It is:
1. the selective outrage judicial system that corrupted the trust in the process , the judges and the prosecutors. Not only towards Trump, but towards his close allies and supporters
2. It it the Covid response that forced people to get vaccinated to get a job
(talk about bodily autonomy)
3. It is complete disregards for immigration law, importing into US workforce, families and criminals illegally. Causing hardship to US citizens
4. It is the visible immoral US stance on using Ukrainian lives in an unwinnable territorial war, so that US could 'weaken' Russia, while also enriching the military-industrial complex
5. Yes, it is the economy (inflation, lack of stable income, where people have to work multiple jobs to pay rent and to buy food).
6. It is a complete disregard for a family unit, parental accountability and control for mental health of young kinds. Adoption of transgender surgeries for the kids, having public schools push racial self-hate, demoralizing kids identities.
7. It is support for on campus violence against american Jews.
8. It is remarkable encouragement for transgender to compete, and even violently attack (or hurt in competition) females.
9. It emboldening the South American gangs in crossing borders, child trafficking, extortion.
10. it is distrust in 2020 election process, and the judicial refusal to actually review the cases brought in front of them.
Different 'categories' of voters were deeply disturbed by different points in the above. But the collectively -- it is clear that the problem why Dems lost is exactly in their anti-constitutional, immoral policies and constant lies by the propaganda machine and their 'experts' (that Trump is guilty of something, Russian interference, mRNA is safe ... etc)
Trump received a mandate not just to address one of the above points, but to address all of them and forever through strengthening the word of the Constitution via detective, preventative and corrective controls.
Ah, so Twitter had the more quality real-world signal; who would have thought? It seems "hate and disinformation" are just what people were feeling, and what they were thinking.
In our current panopitcon, lies work. Turns out if an entertaining man lies again and again into a mechanism (the Internet) that endlessly amplifies and repeats those lies for free (paid for by all of us with our attention), you can win.
Just the day before the election a family member asked how anyone could possibly vote for Trump. I started going into the history of the primaries, and the fraud with Bernie in 2016 & 2020. How it's not red vs blue, it's really insiders vs outsiders. Within 30 seconds I was shouted down and shamed.
I then asked: "I can name 10 good things about Biden / Harris, can you do the same for Trump?" They couldn't say 1 positive reason that the ~ 75million voters are supporting Trump.
It's a good self-test of your bubble. Could you make a sound argument in favor of the opponent? If not, then you haven't spent enough time trying to understand the context.
Robert Kennedy detailed how CO2 pipelines have ruptured causing people to die & become sick. And how eminent domain was used to profit companies rather than social welfare. Even though Robert Kennedy seems to believe that CO2 is the climate control knob, many Americans don't. They see Carbon Capture as a scam that enriches Billionaires at the health + wealth expense of everyone else.
This is one example where ideology becomes a mechanism of coercion to transfer wealth from the large majority to a very small group of people.
For my friends here who are not Americans, here's my take on how the election played out. Please bare in mind I'm neither Democrat nor Republican. The analysis comes from commentators on both sides of the political spectrum. Since Trump won, the analysis focuses on the Harris campaign mistakes. I'll leave critiques on Trump for other commenters, as there are many.
- Harris skipped the traditional primary which reinforced to many independent voters that she was appointed by the ruling class of the Democratic party; US voters are extremely tired of feeling like the political "elites" have more control than the actual voters
- Democrats gaslit the American people for too long, claiming President Biden was not in mental decline; this created a lot of open questions about the inner workings of the Democratic party that were never addressed head on by Harris's campaign; to many independent voters, this left them feeling like Harris might be more of a political puppet than a qualified leader
- Harris's campaign ran primarily on restoring Roe v Wade (abortion rights) which is a false promise; it was clear she would not have the necessary Senate majority to codify a new law; many liberal and independent voters were annoyed at this attempt at emotional manipulation; this was a critical campaign mistake
- When Harris was trailing in the polls, she went on the attack against Trump with ads and chopped up sound bites instead clearly stating her plan for the country in longer form interviews; this left independent voters with a lot of open questions about her policies and plan
Ultimately, Trump won the popular and electoral votes on more of a referendum against the Democrats political playbook. Most Americans are tired of being talked down to and gaslit. And yes, Trump does this as well, but he won the perception battle.
The main takeaways on what needs to change in American politics to restore some sanity in future elections:
1. We need an overhaul in traditional media (or new media) to restore trust in sources of facts; all American traditional media is incredibly biased at the moment, leaving our politics up to the whims and misinformation of social media
2. We need a 3 party system; this is a long shot, but it's the only reasonable way to enforce accountability for the Democrats and Republicans since traditional press is failing to provide a balance of power; for the last 20+ years, elections have mostly been against the other candidate instead of for policy plans or candidates
The economy, cost of living, no meaningful or high-paying jobs, the crackdown on Cryptocurrency, the way mainstream media and other mediums treat the right lead to Trump's second Term, in my opinion.
Between a clean sweep win of the Electoral College, the popular vote (by a Republican president for the first time in 20 years!), the Senate, and very likely the House this is an epic, bottom of the ninth comeback victory for the history books. And I thought the World Series Dodgers comeback in game 5 was incredible, I guess we just keep on winning.
I am also absolutely vindicated in my opinion that "journalism" (the mainstream media) are cancers upon society. The polls fucking lied and the "journalism" was the real garbage.
And yes, I voted for Trump and the Republicans as an Oregonian. No, my vote didn't count for his EC win, but I don't care: My vote still helped deliver a mandate that the Democrats and their policies are not acceptable.
When Trump was president last time, my project was just beginning. Now that many years have passed and I have gained experience, I can say that this is a second chance for him.
LOL democrats really did a number on themselves here!
The majority of the country was telling them "We are having change anxiety after Obama and we are having distrust in institutions after Covid". So what did they do? Cling to the same power structures with a dead man walking, doubled down on gender politics, devolved internally into morality based foreign policy shout match and the cherry on top put an uncharismatic non white woman as the candidate. At every step of the way they very eloquently and academically explained why they have the right solutions while completely ignoring the emotional state of the nation.
All they had to do was bring a calming white man that is not in cognitive decline that would reassure the nation that everything was going to be alright. That the America they know and love is here to stay.
You may don't like that this was reality, that your progressive views are more "right" than that, but it is. So now enjoy being factually, morally, academically correct with trump as the president with control on the congress. What a joke.
I think this short video explains a lot - basically the establishment Democrats look after their donors & don't do much for everyday people who are struggling economically - hence the appeal of Donald Trump who promises to shake things up & generates hope - for many voters this "trumps" his bad qualities
To all the people wondering why Trump has been elected, the answer is very simple and has been true in all countries that have had elections. When a large section of the voting public is chronically missing out on the benefits of what they're told is a "growing economy", only to observe continued "unfair" extremes of wealth distribution, they become disenchanted with the system that has generated this situation. By definition almost, they become very willing prey for any demagogue that threatens to upend the system, turn over the money-changers tables. It's irrelevant whether the demagogue's policies will work or not. It's irrelevant whether the demagogue is provably lying or not. It's all about repressed anger being unleashed and finding a target. Even if the target is not the cause of their misery. And so every latent form of bigotry finds expression and is easily exploited by the demagogue.
It's worth re-reading Goebells primarily because his understanding of this psychology is what made Nazi demagoguery so devastatingly successful. Any attempt by a party to attack the demagogue without directly addressing the elephant in the room (the growing class of working poor) is not only destined to fail, but destined to fail badly. If I hate you - really hate you - I don't mind copping a few painful blows if it means I get to see you bludgeoned to near death. Vengeance is an incredibly powerful motivator. People trying to lump all of Trump's supporters as Nazi's are making a grave mistake and refusing to see the forest for the trees. Just as most Germans in WWII were not Nazis yet supported Hitler, so too with Trump. Latinos, blacks, gays and women all voted for Trump. Don't assume they're all stupid. When I hate you, I'm happy to burn in hell if you're there with me.
Of course, this is a simple generalisation and there are lots of "sub-reasons" (the bro-vote, the foot-gun Democrat advertising - "he doesn't have to know!", etc). If the Democrats had chosen Bernie Sanders as their candidate back in 2016, they would've had eight years in power. It's no coincidence that Bernie had a lot of support from those that otherwise voted Trump. They felt that he was real and was really concerned about them and would really do something to assuage their pain. Now? Now they're just mad - "enough is enough".
However, anger is not sustainable for too long and all demagogues eventually come undone because once the heat of anger is gone and you look around and realise things are worse than ever - well, that's when things can REALLY get dangerous.
Can the doomers relax? He is mentally unstable and egomaniac, but do you really think the US is this fregile? Have you met CEOs and politicians? most of them are egomaniacs and some are mentally unstable. If the system could not handle them in power the country would have crumbled long ago...
Will it be better or worse? who knows. but definitely not OMFG ruined everything gone. Have a day off and calm down.
This European travels to the US all the time, having probably spent an average of 1-2 months or so there yearly over the past couple years.
With very few exceptions I've never met people there who outwardly seemed like they'd like someone as a leader who habitually lies and tries to usurp democratic institutions for personal gain.
What the hell is going on there guys? Are you just voting for the person who promises the most "interesting" times, for better or for worse?
I try to understand why Trump lost the 2020 election and won the 2024.
My reading is that people vote with a punishment mindset. Aka the only way to punish Trump for his horrible term was to vote for Biden. And the only way to punish Biden for his bad financially term was to vote for Trump.
This is a massive indicitment of our country. We get what we deserve.
Voting based on perception, not facts, especially given Trump's overall character and abhorrent track record, is going plunge us further into far right extremism. Enjoy.
All: please make sure you're up on the site guidelines before commenting: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That means editing out snark, swipes, and flamebait. Or you can simply follow this metarule, which is also in there: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
This thread could be worse (ok, it could be a lot worse) but I'm still noticing people breaking the rules. Please follow them instead—it will be a better experience for all of us, including yourself.
It's the economy, stupid:
-Inflation is not prices; it is the rate of change in prices. Low inflation doesn't imply low prices. -Aggregate statistics don't necessarily explain individual outcomes.
The Dems failed on this count massively, and have, for maybe the last 40 years, which is about the amount of time it took for my state to go from national bellwether (As goes Ohio, so goes the nation) to a reliably red state. This cost one of the most pro-union Senators (Sherrod Brown) his job.
About 20 million votes less than the 2020 election, with about 15 million less for the democrats, and a measely 4 million less for the republicans. Thought that was interesting.
This will sadly be the end of FCC/FTC and all the antitrust efforts that were graining steam over the last few years.
one thing i definitely worry is about using public lands for oil, mineral extraction purposes.
while America has a bounty of public land acreage wise, 4 years and a complete control of the government is a lot of time to do some lasting damage to the ecosystem by opening up these areas for privatization.
US politics isn't easy to understand as an outsider. It looks like Harris was was an ok candidate for the core democrat voter and a terrible candidate to win a populist election in what is essentially a deeply divided and mostly conservative country. She didn't address the swing voters greatest concerns which was their decline in real wealth due to inflation and fear of change. I am sure money and influence had a lot to do with it as well but still a colossal misreading of public sentiment and an inability to reach out to a broader audience.
incumbents all around the world have performed terribly post COVID. UK, Canada, Japan, France, Italy, have all had landslide or shocking election results.
Unsure what the general mood is that can lead to Keir Starmer dropping 30 points in approval months after winning in a landslide, but the mood of general discontent may be relevant in the United States as well. It seems whatever the status quo / incumbent advantage that used to exist, is now working against candidates.
Even if the democrats ran a better candidate in a better campaign, it may not have been enough to overcome these headwinds. Although, I'm not sure I totally believe that myself since she lost by a pretty narrow margin in swing states.
Obviously not to excuse the dems, just something to consider
For many this ended up with
"Have i felt better over the past 4 years" .
Imagine coming out of covid, without a recession, only to be hit with inflation (both parties to blame) and sky high interest rates coupled with all other stuff like illegal border crossing to lack of majority support from Women to Harris to Harris being a silent VP for 4 full years and thrown to lime light.
Today we learned that immigration is more important for Americans than even abortion, so much that 3 states didn’t even codify it.
Wouldn't it be amazing if we had a viable third party? I can dream, can't I?
FYI, the map looks horrendous for democrats after the 2030 census. Estimates give Texas +4, Florida +3, and various other southern states +1 for a total of +12 on solid red states.
Since the Citizens United decision the USA is a defacto oligarchy. Politicians are no longer beholden to the whims of the people, only the donors. The Supreme Court decreed that money is speech, therefore the more money you have, the more speech you have, and the more speech you have, the louder your voice. Herein lies the proof, and the lesson.
2016 : Hilary Clinton - People felt that she was chosen because it was her turn 2020 : Kamala Harris - A candidate who never ever even did well in the primaries.
I hope DNC learn from this and let people choose a candidate next time.
Is there some analysis why the polls didn't correctly predict the result?
A failure in representative polls like this should be avoided with statistical methods.
The big thing to remember is the election isn't over. I'm not talking about the president, but the house. Most of the things on the list of actions in the article, or list of concerns in the comments, will require congress to enact. We could still end up with a split congress. Even narrow majorities should imped the most extreme items. In my opinion, narrow majorities or a split is beneficial. It helps keep stuff from being rammed though without real thought or debate.
From a game theoretical perspective this is a good result. It is a clear reiteration of the message to the Democrats: you won't win by claiming to be 0.1% less bad. The Democrats should have fielded a strong personality in their own right. This is not about left or right. It's about mobilizing people by giving them something to care about. "More of the same" and "not like that guy" isn't very enticing.
I don't think the policy positions even matter that much, if you can make a strong case and gain the confidence of the electorate.
Even if you support his economic approach, for example, wouldn't his criminal behaviour, or his racist and transphobic views disqualify him? One does not wash away the other.
Again the DEM party took another opportunity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
They should have nominated Mark Kelly. The GOP ran on "this bitch hates America". You can't run on that against a 4 star rear admiral who also went into space.
Shout out to dang for all the hard work at moderating he does--there's going to be a lot of flagged comments to slog through in the coming days if this thread is any indication
Apparently claiming the other side is worse in Gaza issue is not enough. Democratic voters simply refuse to turn out in swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin.
Something I've been wondering lately is how big of a blind spot I have from being habitually online. Like, I'll read the news, and I'll read political discussions on HN and r/politics and r/conservative and Twitter, and I'll try to get a sense of what everyone is thinking, but unfortunately I don't think that's possible. The posters on these sites all have one thing in common: they're into politics and current events.
Having a chance to talk to more people in meatspace this year, it was a surprise to find out how many people have only a passing interest in politics, but still vote. Like, the average user here probably reads 5+ news articles a day, but there are plenty of people IRL that will read one a month, or maybe just skim a headline. They don't really keep up-to-date with the race. They mostly vote by feel and pragmaticism.
People always talk about "shy" Trump voters, but what makes me more curious are voters that match the description above. If you put someone in a voting booth who isn't interested by news, who do they vote for? I mean, Trump has a lot of surface-level qualities - he's a tall, confident white man who's a successful boss of business and an anti-establishment outsider - and maybe that's enough to capture this demographic.
And the rise of anti intelllectualism in the USA continues to rise.
I think that Harris was a very poor choice of a candidate. I have no way to know this, but I like to imagine that a better Dem candidate would have led to a different president.
"Republican voters relying on friends and family more than traditional news media for their election news." https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/11/06/trump-voters-news-d...
I thought it is interesting to note the vibe shift on HN between first election, his 2nd try and now. ( Although not specific to election but how the political shift of HN has changed from 2008 to now )
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12909752
The 2nd obvious observation is that HN now manage to fit 9435!!!! comments ( and counting ) in a single page. I downloaded it and it was ~18MB or 2.7MB zipped. And Arc is now Clarc and works on multiple core. I guess this thread is a huge battle ground for further optimisation. I also wonder if this is the most comment HN thread.
I get really tired of this narrative that people are pushing that trump voters are somehow ignorant, stupid or simply don't care.
We're not ignorant, we care a lot and we're not being duped. We're really tired of the high gas prices, the moral hypocrisy of the left, the domestic law fare going on attacking political rivals and most of all, we want to afford our groceries and experience a better economy.
Telling us, that the entire base that voted for Trump is either heartless, naive or stupid just isn't going to cut it in reality. People that voted for Trump believe that the President is the diplomatic representative to the world for the American people. He literally got shot and stood up pumping his fist in the air. Joe Biden can barely walk down the stairs without tripping. Kamala had a "phone" call with an undecided voter just yesterday and when she showed the screen it was the camera app. Our choice this election was either the badass who after being shot wanted to show the crowd he was alive or two bumbling idiots. He's not my first choice, but he's a lot better then the Democratic Party offered as alternatives.
We want an American who will fight for business and fight for America to win. We want lower gas prices, which will then make it cheaper to transport goods across the nation and help lower prices in the grocery store.
Trump is not the best person, but he was the better option out of the two party system.
I was told Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, and Ethel Cain would deliver this for the Dems months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41020940 and that Musk's actions wouldn't matter.
More recently Joe Rogan
The DNC reminds me of the board a formerly successful company with good people - but has terrible management and keeps promoting unpopular leaders.
If the GOP sweeps both chambers and form a supermajority they will be in the position where they are expected to deliver what their constituents were promised without any opposition. Hell of a tight-rope given the scale of their promises and how rabidly sure the GOP base is on their ability to deliver.
Foreign policy under Trump will generally be isolationist.
- US out of NATO? Trump will at least threaten that. The larger European countries are currently weak militarily by historical standards. There does not seem to be enough will in Europe to spend at US levels, outside of the countries on the front line, such as Poland and Finland.
- Ukraine war: Heavy US support for Ukraine probably stops. Whether Ukraine surrenders is up to Ukraine. Ukraine can fight on, but won't win much. Trump will meet with Putin and will give Putin much of what he asks for.
- Israel's wars: US support continues.
- China vs. Taiwan: Reduced support for Taiwan. China starts treating the area inside the nine lines as their own lake, and no US Navy craft go there. Pressure on Taiwan increases. China will attempt to get Taiwan to cave without actually invading. A blockade is possible.
- Trade with China: heavy protectionism on the US side. Few other countries will go along. Overall, China's influence in the world will increase.
- China's influence in South America will continue to increase. This isn't noticed much in the US, but it's big. South America now trades more with China than with the US. China controls about 40 ports in South America. The US had military bases around the world. China builds ports.
Made possible by the internet.
I think a lot of people forgot that before Covid hit, Trump was headed for a fairly routine reelection. Many people thought he was doing a solid job, especially on the economy. All American elections still come down to the James Carville truism, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Despite what the official metrics or stock market says, we’ve been in a “vibesession” due to inflation and elevated interest rates. Anecdotally, I'm still seeing stores run low/out of things far more frequently than pre pandemic times, which just adds to the feeling that all is not right with the world. America is actually in better economic shape than most other countries, but people are not feeling happy or optimistic, and the incumbent party is going to pay for it.
For some of us this is not unexpected at all. But the margin and the likely win of the popular vote should send a clear message.
Reading through the post is quite depressing. As a lifelong independent, I've never felt more vilified by the Democratic Party than at any other time. Constantly being talked down to, insulted as a white supremacist, nazi, etc. It's this "elitist" and "we know better than you" attitude that really, really puts a sour taste in my mouth.
Yet, reading through these comments, it seems alive and well even after an astounding rebuke. Why? I despise our two-party system, but I'm actually quite happy to see one particular party rebuked this time around for this abhorrent behavior that should have no place in civil discourse. It's sad that HN can't rise above it.
And for clarity, yes, both sides participate in this charade of incivilities, but I am simply expressing my own opinion as an independent in 2024 that it overwhelmingly came from one side towards _me_ in this election cycle.
Just out of (actual) curiosity: is the culture divide now strong enough that dissolution of the Union is a possibility? If so, why? If not, why not?
Do we need to allow parties to put up multiple candidates and implement ranked choice voting? would that help us with outcomes like these?
Lewd charisma wins over kind intelligence.
Parties basically switched sides this election. From 2008 to now: - Pro war party: Repubs -> Dems - Dick Cheney party: Repubs -> Dems - Elitist party: Repubs -> Dems - Working class party: Dems -> Repubs - Pro free speech party: Dems -> Repubs - Bigger spending party: Dems -> Repubs - Skeptical of large corps: Dems -> Repubs
There are some issues where they haven't switched (eg. abortion)
But aren't we supposed to wait out the Red Mirage / Blue Shift [0] before calling a winner? (Linked to timestamp of where former political director of Fox News testifies about it being a known thing).
[0]: https://youtu.be/5XEQ_7zZ-bw?t=93
My analysis is the Democrat party leadership should have conducted a true primary election.
She was "gifted" the nomination, vs being selected in the primary. I think the populace responded in turn: This wasn't their candidate. Compare this to the Obama vs Clinton selection, which I actually believe the populace would have supported either.
btw: I'm not sure I'd compare this to the 2020 primaries as 2020 was a special year, and I don't think really any of the candidates really resonated with the voters, Biden just "wasn't Trump".
Republicans did a great job mobilizing voters. They’ve learned from the tactics the Democrats pioneered and it worked well. Things like early voting, etc. This election will be a landslide but looks like and I believe in large part because of how they exploited the early voting opportunity.
Amazing victory.
I am waiting for the final tally to understand how the Dems lost 15M votes from one election to the other.
It's interesting how bad the democrats seem to be at the game of winning elections. They continuously seem to pick bad candidates and poor strategies resulting in them losing the election when they seem to have had the general conditions for winning. This time, the elephant in the room is of course the late ousting of Joe Biden, but there were similar issues that (in hindsight at least) were obvious in the Clinton 2016 campaign. This pattern can be seen in other countries as well, where it's clear that one group knows how to play the game while other groups don't, but it's surprising to me that a massive organization like the democratic party wouldn't have streamlined this process.
It would be interesting to hear from someone more familiar with the inner workings of the democratic party why this is. I.e., if it's a cultural issue in the party, if it's economical, or if my view on this is completely off.
Love him or hate him, it will be fascinating to see if the democratic institutions of the United States can endure this. He has made it very clear he wants to dismantle as much as he can, including term limits.
Time will tell if the US really is the greatest democracy and can withstand a wannabe dictator, or if he really can subvert it all. It’s going to be a wild four years, and I fear more wall building.
Not super worried from a European perspective, it might even spur on some cooperation in our own union, which I support.
Just a bit nervous for Ukraine... I wish Europe could step up on that front but we just don't have the capacity for it. Which is entirely our own fault, Trump is right to call us out on our reliance on the US. It's our continent we should be the one spearheading this.
Hopefully that will change in the near future. But that doesn't help Ukraine now.
The democrats need to do some serious introspection on their policies and priorities. And perhaps just return to running a white male as candidate...
Oh well at least it's a very clear victory, so no weeks or months of anxiety over the results.
It’s all about the economy (remember, ‘it’s the economy, stupid’).
We keep hearing statistics showing that the economy is doing well, but I have yet to meet anyone who feels like they’re actually better off.
I’m not saying that the stats are wrong, but when it comes to politics, you can’t address economic anxiety by just pointing to statistics and saying, ‘Look, the numbers say everything is fine.’
My condolences to all north americans.
On a side note: thank you HN team for fixing the large-number-of-comments issue.
Things that most people care about:
- Will I still have a job in 6 months? If I lose my job, can I get by?
- Can I continue to afford groceries, rent, utilities at the current pace of inflation?
- If I have a major health problem, will I be ok?
During an election, you can either harness the fear voters have around these issues and turn them into hateful energy against the other side (Trump tactic) or you can calm people's nerves by acknowledging the problems and providing a path to deal with them (Obama tactic). Obama was able to confidently appeal to voters on these issues and he brought them to the fore-front throughout his campaign. Obama was charismatic as well, so when he talked about these issues, you got the sense that he could competently provide that protection. He was reassuring.
I voted for Kamala, but I didn't want to. She possessed none of those positive qualities. She didn't instill confidence. Her voice and demeanor made her sound annoyed. Her fake smile made me cringe. I wanted an authentic candidate that could make me feel safe. She was not it.
Lastly, those primary issues were shrouded by gender politics. I would like transgender people to feel safe and have access to resources they need. I would like women to have access to abortion when it's necessary. These are not things to run a campaign off of though. EVERYONE feels the pain of a bad economy; that should've been the primary focus all along and we needed a STRONG candidate to really drive a strategy for addressing it. I just don't think Kamala was able to make any headway in that respect and I think that's why she ultimately lost.
Donald Trump had 74 million votes in 2020. As of right now, he's nearly at 72 million. To me that says he hasn't necessarily gained new followers. That's a good sign. It seems the Dems have lost millions however. That's a very bad sign. It's pretty clear then that Kamala did not represent what voters really cared about during this election cycle.
House and senate sweep? Interesting times intensifies.
Probably in the end fundamentals beat candidate quality.
Rightly or wrongly, economic sentiment indicators are all in the dumpster and historically incumbent party loses in that scenario. We've had the best covid recovery, lowest inflation and lowest unemployment in the developed world but that doesn't matter to the average voter.
Biden probably would have done worse (look at approval rating & imagine another debate). Open primary might have helped, or not, total gamble. Probably less than 25% of this is attributable to Harris or her campaign.
If there was a dem mistake it was in picking her as VP in 2020 to lock up a demographic they already would win. From there it made her the presumed successor to an elderly president who was assumed to not really run for a second term.
Just an observation from a limey. The Western (and Christian) world has changed massively over 2 generations from a predominantly white Western world to a mixed culture one, which takes a bit of acclimatising to.
The politics around gender (and however many there's supposed to be) makes people lose their frame of reference also IMO. For some, the world is changing too quick, or their neighbourhood is changing too quick.
Older generations who've witnessed the change perhaps see it most, as perhaps younger white men who have had the blowback of historical racism, misogyny and generally assumed to be the most privileged, though many (the majority) are not. I hear that the Trump campaign focused on them who generally do not vote.
I hope the USA moves on and accepts the result. In the end people vote with their desires, sometimes illogical but ultimately their desires are their motivations. The USA is also a good age now, as I was reminded by a Canadian taxi driver while living in Canada, regardless of what foreigners nebs think about US politics, better a world with the USA in it than without (though I'm probably biased as a Westerner).
Perhaps to an extent it's hard to keep an identity, like national pride or what a country stands for when things move so quickly.
Personally I thought Harris was a shoo in, but the people have spoken.
Insert caveat about big tech algos persuading people.
Adding comments favored or tailored to one political party or another should not be allowed on HN.
Clicked on this thread for insightful discussion/debate, I’m just reading people talk about how trump was not a good candidate, and how kamala campaigned incorrectly and so on so forth
Who would have thought sneering at half the voters, taking voter groups for granted just because of their demographics, running the country with a senile out-of-touch leader (while denying this self-evident truth), replacing him at the last minute with totally bland careerist politician, basing their campaign on vibes of "joy", crying wolf, insulting the voters on the other side you instead needed to attract, and being tone-deaf on people's complains on everyday issues, while championing marginal concerns, could ever backfire!
This is already the most commented post on HN. An intense thread for intense times...
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
From: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This my outsider perspective, I am not into US politics at all but I have spent a couple hours catching up today and my takeaway is simple (and probably wrong):
the Democrat's messaging wasn't clear enough in my opinion and Kamala Harris was a weak candidate.
I listened to some of her interviews and I had a really hard time understanding what her campaign was about besides not being Trump. She also failed to put some distance between her and Biden which means that in my mind and probably in the mind of a lot of voters, she was seen merely as a carbon copy of him but as a woman.
Also the fact that KH was parachuted on the ticket without a primary vote because it was too late for that meant that she just wasn't ready. She put up a good fight but it wasn't enough to beat Trump who by that stage had been on the campaign trail for more than a year and spent time crafting responses, rebuttals and finding ways to attack his opponents.
I think Biden shares some of the blame here but she must have known this was a suicide mission.
All in all I don't think I missed anything by not paying attention to this whole circus.
There is quite a bit of pessimism here.
It's getting sort of ridiculous how much each party is stuck in an electoral strategy where they have to pretend to be on one side of an issue which is objectively against the interests of the people they pretend to be representing.
Dems have to appear to be pro-immigration for reasons (honestly I don't know why this is like this, historically). They are genuinely less xenophobic than the Reps, so they respect the rights of recent immigrants much better. But when it comes to preventing more poor workers coming in, they are just as tough as the Reps. And I believe that's because ultimately they are slightly less captured by capital and therefore more amenable to balance the economy in favor of workers.
Reps on the other hand have to appear xenophobic once again for reasons that aren't super clear to me, but when it comes to actually preventing immigration, they always manage to torpedo their own proposals. And arguably that's because if they passed effective anti-immigration laws, that would negatively affect the interests of capital, the very obvious reason they're in politics for (and Trump is certainly no different).
Maybe now we can resolve this apparent paradox and simply accept that the Democrats are first and foremost the party of the educated, metropolitan and utterly disinterested in matters of material conditions. Whereas the Republicans are the party of people who are bitter towards the first group. Which leads to the conclusion that exceptionally few people in the US are voting according to their own economic interests.
My theory: people are just hacked off that life is getting worse for most people while billionaires get richer and richer. Every disaster the wealthy get handouts while the poor have to pay for them. Government can no longer afford anything because all of its assets have been sold and rented back at a profit.
I don’t think either campaign made any difference to the outcome of this election at all.
In conclusion it might be an amazing economy on the high level averages but when inflation caused by COVID handouts (I’m reading $16 TRILLION, but that can’t be real surely?) is always going to lose you an election badly.
One of the original predictions that might be entertaining(?) to see would be the US having its first President "run" the country from prison... And the follow-up situation to witness, how different would that look, in the end?
For those who think rather than just react, I guess it would not be as entertaining...?
Reddit is finding out that if you block everyone not inside your echo chamber, but are still in the smaller echo chamber, every election will shock you
It unfortunately sits on the shoulders of progressives seeking change to convince the conservatives not seeking it to do so. By choosing not to do this asymmetric work, this is the consequence
It’s good to periodically reexamine your own positions against that of the majority and be open to realignment and different ideas, but remember that the collective opinion of society over the long term may look back unfavorably on the collective opinion of society over a period of time in the past. It’s OK to hold minority opinions, and it’s OK to disagree with the majority of Americans who voted for Trump.
From my perspective, Harris mostly failed to convey what her agenda is.
The way I inform myself about politicians is by typing "<name> interview" into YouTube and listen to a few hours of interviews with them.
With Harris, nothing stuck except that she is pro taxing the rich.
With Trump, what stuck is that he is pro border, pro Bitcoin, pro tariffs and pro Tesla.
Here's a European perspective that is somewhat pro-Trump, surprising as it may sound. I am Dutch and if someone would come along and promise the following:
"We're gonna lower your taxes so you have more money to spend" "We're gonna take a sledge hammer to bloated policies so everything will run smoothly. Then we will build a million houses per year"
I would very much consider voting for that person. That said, Trump is a madman, he lies all the time, is a danger to institutions etc. At the same time, I am so disgruntled by the current system and by not a single politician tackling or even speaking about relevant issues that I am easily swayed.
“Every [democratic] country has the government it deserves.” ― Joseph de Maistre
Interesting unrelated fact, but at 6745 comments this page lags a lot on my phone, even typing this is difficult.
With all of the hacking and newfangled ai tools out there, perhaps hand counting removes some of that element.
Doesn't seem to be much commentary here on what an axis of Musk/Vance/Thiel (and Andreesen, etc.) influence and power in the US federal administration now means for the technology sector.
Remember it is Musk who began the wave of layoffs a bit over two years ago.
Bezos evidently saw the way the wind was blowing already.
I also see almost zero discussion about climate change policy. For many of us non-Americans, this (the disengagement of the US from even the pathetic half-measures it moved towards under Obama) is one of the key things that was horrifying to watch.
It happens that an IETF meeting is currently going on. Mic comment at the plenary just a few minutes ago:
"I believe we will need to reopen discussion on the IETF 127 venue."
IETF 127 is (probably soon: was) scheduled to occur November 14th-20th, 2026, in San Francisco.
(Previous US-scheduled IETF meetings during the Trump presidency were moved to Canada, particularly due to Chinese attendees' inability to get Visas.)
Or vote for a cow:
https://www.discoverdairy.com/vote/
Where everyone can be happy regardless of the result.
The Democrats need to figure out how to recapture the favor of young men. The Joe Rogans/Logan Pauls/Elon Musks/Tiktok/Podcast bros are doing serious damage to that demographic. Almost a +30 swing to the right in the 18-29 M category from 2020.
I don't think it's the economy or anything else. All this seems like rationalizing to me not an understanding of what happened. Trump was able to motivate more people to vote than Harris was. I have yet to meet anyone who truly rationally made a choice that they had not already made to begin with other than after the fact rationalization. It is all about perception and what the other person believes. Reality and facts do not matter as much as we would like them to. There is no interest in anyone want to actually change their views. What argument or evidence would actually cause you to change your view? It would take extraordinary evidence for me to change my vote. I suspect that is the same for most voters, it's more of an issue of who can motivate better.
How did polls go so wrong? “gold standard” Ann Selzer predicted +3 Harris in Iowa and it became +14 Trump. That’s an incredible miss from a pollster.
There’s lots of blame and anger directed at Democrats, but ultimately it’s the Republicans who picked Trump.
They could have won against the unpopular Biden/Harris with practically any other candidate. Nikki Haley polled well against all possible Democrats.
The party was already done with Trump in February 2021, but then they explicitly decided that they prefer one more try with an old man who doesn’t spare much thought to actual policies but does brag about sexual assault, tried to orchestrate a coup last time he lost an election, etc. etc.
It’s not inflation or Biden’s unpopularity or some other external factor. Lots of Americans really want what Trump is selling.
It's dissatisfying that he could win, but it's not the first time, so I've already accepted a long time ago that the world is not what I wish it to be.
In that context, I am more curious what his policies will be because even though he rides different waves of general discontent in society, ultimately he doesn't care about anything except the economy and money. So I think he will double down on tariffs, but some things are irreversible - saving the e.g. coal mining industry is a lost cause and he'll throw those people down the drain because it doesn't make economic sense anymore. What I am most curious about is how he'll handle Biden's policies with regards to blocking acquisitions on monopoly prevention grounds.
Also the markets are not open in the US, but over here in Europe they're already skyrocketing. So "Wallstreet" is expecting massive growth in what is already quite an inflated market.
From far away, it looks obvious.
When he ran the first time, the tactic was "oh easy, we'll say we're not as egregious as that guy".
They even sabotaged Bernie to this effect (see Podesta emails), even though he was polling much better than Clinton. This failed miserably, probably in essence because the Democrats were underestimating the power of clicks to drive reality, which Trump understood, at least intuitively.
This was a historical moment where the Democrats could have reorganised things and refocused on their traditional base, namely, the working class. It seemed obvious they should, I personally really thought they would have to.
No no, it turned out. We were treated to years and years of full on circus shenanigans. They doubled down, blamed others - the Russians, Wikileaks, whoever really. Anything but blame themselves and admit that they were offering nothing which was substantively different enough from the Republicans, in the eyes of the voters.
And here we are again. Will they be able to gut the decrepit power structures keeping the zombie Democrat party afloat this time, injecting new life? Or will they find a new scapegoat, treating us to more utterly pointless pontificating through a series of never-ending media cycles.
In summary, it seems they think pandering to identity tropes will be enough to distinguish them in the eyes of the voters, but that is simply playing on Trump's territory where he decides the rules. He does it better than them. It's one of the quite few things you could say he's "good" at.
Bernie Sanders just put it perfectly:
>It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.
>While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.
>And they’re right.
Anyone here who is still confused about this election result need only unplug their fingers from their ears and open their eyes.
Rip America. China and russia are gonna love this.
Astounding they have elected a literal criminal as a president. Bonkers even.
As a foreigner, it seems like both sides are super extremely marginalised. Both sides believe everything will be done and there will be a big change if the other side wins. Reality is really not that radical, people are being lit up by propoganda. Saying this as a Turkish person, this has been happening in our country almost since I was born and it destroyed politics, normalisation and being calm is much better than sensationalising everything. Imho biggest issues are related to economics, like housing, like dark money in elections. Meaningless topics are sensationalised to marginalise people and unfortunately it works every time. Politics shouldn’t be right vs left, it should be rich vs middle class vs poor, as economics is the single most impactful aspect on most people’s lives. But politicians want to rile everyone up and put them against each other.
Well, we gonna have 4 years of amazing memes.
Hopefully there is still time to give Edward Snowden a well deserved pardon, before he becomes a bargaining chip to be extradited in exchange for something (less sanctions, etc) in a US-Russia, or better, Trump-Putin deal.
Anger is a helluva drug.
Dems need stronger narratives and their candidates to hammer this stuff. I'll use Bernie as an example, which even if you dont agree if everything he says, the guy hammers his point home and will do it in any venue.
Demxit (Democracy exit)
All i can say is.. f** ajit pai
As an American who grew from nothing, served in the military, and expanded in my career -
I find the concerns for Democracy comical.
Most of you do not understand the type of people that built and fought for democracy. There is no real fear amongst these same type of people in modern America.
Ranked choice voting.
To the people that are very upset about this, I'd like to offer some silver linings.
A blowout in either direction was necessary here. A clear result is better for everyone.
The press can go back to being adversarial to power (Although straight faced bullshit like the Cheney firing squad thing will probably only be more common, so thats a double edged sword).
The dems will likely stop anointing people.
We never have to sit through a Trump election campaign again.
The first woman president will likely be a much stronger candidate. Kamala could have potentially really ruined it for women going forward.
“It’s the economy, stupid” has never been truer. People will trade their rights for more basic needs being fulfilled and most people simply aren’t happy with the one sided economy that has prevailed since the late 80s. Interest rates were too low for too long beginning circa 2000, and the massive flood of QE led to an explosion in house prices, car prices, and food. This is what the world gets for poor monetary and fiscal management for more than two decades.
It'll be interesting to see what this will mean for European dependence on US tech companies. I'm not personally against companies like Microsoft as such, in fact I think they are one of the better IT business partners for non-tech Enterprise. Often what they sell is vastly underestimated by their critics within the EU, not that I disagree with the problematic nature of depending on foreign tech companies either. With the proposed deregulation of US tech and their "freeing", however, I wonder if a lot of organisations will be capable of continuing using US tech services or it'll move in the direction of how Chinese (and other) services aren't legally available for a lot of things.
It's extremely gross that I already see Democrats blaming the fact that Harris was a woman. They're going to play that card rather than admit that their message and agenda is falling flat. Trump should not be hard to beat. He has never been broadly popular. Democrats keep losing to him because they refuse to listen to anyone but their own echo chamber. They lost in 2016 and almost in 2020 and learned nothing.
Speaking of... this has firmly convinced me that deplatforming is the wrong answer. All it has done is create echo chambers. All I see is Democrats scratching their heads and blaming and fuming because they can't possibly understand why they lost. That's because they hang out in places like this or /r/politics and they've all moved to coastal cities with left-leaning political environments. If Harris had won in a landslide you'd see the exact same thing on the other side because they, too, are in echo chambers.
I did get one thing I was hoping for: a clear result. I was hoping whichever way it went it would be unambiguous to avoid a bunch of conspiracy theories and fighting.
Edit: one more takeaway: the traditional media is dead. Toast. They had no idea what was happening and all their takes are basically empty hand waving. They're absolutely clueless and out of touch and no longer have any influence.
My greatest fear is for America. He undermined it's institutions last time and there's no telling how much he'll weaken it now. I suspect the DoJ will be first to get gutted and then education, health, science. NATO, WTO, UN. I'm sure he'll embed gerrymandering to ensure republican victories. At the end of this we'll have a radically different America, domestically and Globally.
Another perplexing decision. It reminds me of when Bush won his second term. In retrospect, nobody today thinks that was a good move. But you'd be surprised how many people vote for Trump because they want to save money on taxes and think republican policies will help the economy.
Don't really care much about this election since I'm not a US citizen, but I decided to check out Bluesky as the results were coming in and it confirmed my long-time suspicion that roughly 99% of its users are far left American political activists.
Literally the entire discovery feed was post after post of said activists apparently suffering from legitimate mental breakdowns as if the entire world was crumbling around them.
I see little analysis of Elon’s role in this election. Does anyone know if the accusation of him takin Russian money for Twitter were real?
Looks like he also might win the popular vote. First republican to win the popular vote since 2004. If this is true, then this was a clear mandate that the a majority of voters prefer Trump's policies over the other side. We might not like it, but this is how democracy works.
There is certainly going to be domestic and international chaos in the coming years. But a realignment of the world order and domestic politics was inevitable. It's not going to be end of the world like some are making out to be. Nor is it going to be the end of the United States. There will be opportunities. Buckle up and find opportunities where you can.
As a European, I’m trying to see the positive side of this situation. Here are a few thoughts:
- It appears that Democrats are often seen as part of an "elite," which makes it difficult for people at home to relate to or understand their message. A full reset might be needed to bridge this gap.
- Europe has long been under the shadow of the United States. Perhaps this could be a good start toward greater independence for Europe.
I sometimes imagine what Science Officer Spock would really say to humans to help them understand themselves.
Just saying "highly illogical" is not very helpful.
(The following is all my imagination, any resemblance to reality is coincidental)
So, I think he would talk about how the mind is not a machine designed for rationality. The mind is a holographic projection, a story told by a collection of organs in your head, fed by sensations from your body.
I think he would talk about the dilemma of aspiration. If you aspire to rationality, and you feel that rationality is the best system of thought, then you will be driven to believe that you are highly rational. Unfortunately, in many things, you cannot differentiate between logical consistency and post-hoc rationalization.
Humans know this; so we have things like peer review.
Unfortunately you also cannot trust another person to rationally evaluate your beliefs - humans have a strong history of in-group/out-group dynamics. It is beneficial to signal agreement and trustworthiness; it is harmful and painful to signal disagreement with the in-group.
And so rational thought requires rational communication with people you disagree with - and people in the out-group, because your in-group may have centered on a wrong, harmful or otherwise useless belief.
Rational communication requires an overlap in perspective. Not the same point of view, but at least a minimal consensus in perception of reality and goals. For instance, most people believe that it is good to invest in young people in some way, though they may disagree about what that means.
Unfortunately, in-group/out-group dynamics can make this very difficult in times of active conflict, as humans have a very strong sense of morality, and sending moral signals to your in-group is more important that rational communication.
----
No one had a plan that got humans to this point in our story. No one has a plan for humans in an age of worldwide social media. We have to build it together.
I don't like country music, but I can see the appeal. Things are simpler in the country - you have to believe in real things like trucks and cows, not theoretical things like software and commodity futures contracts.
It's nice to deal with things that are simple and real.
There might be a cultural issue here for the Dems. Many of the canvassers I met who were not retirees tended to be young women, often college-aged or a bit older, very liberal and very much benefitting directly from the economic status quo. To them, voting for anyone besides Harris was just completely insensible and they did not even bother to try and understand the views of anyone they spoke with (from what I could tell), they were just pushing "get out the vote" but no substantial reasons as to why. I suspect that many of these young women are fairly out of touch with the sentiments of most americans and the daily hardships of those without college degrees, especially young men. I suspect that many of these young women will be forced out of the party for that reason, and if they aren't, then they will have to learn to actually talk to people with opposing viewpoints and figure out how to get along with the so-called "deplorables." But most likely they will just end up working somewhere else; not all at once, but the dems will be forced to change their platforms, new candidates will get elected who will change their staffs, and an entire cohort of well-to-do liberal poly sci majors will be gradually shifted out of Washington.
Trump may not have deserved to win, but the Democrats deserved to lose - and I'm relieved they did.
Maybe after this rematch the blue team will finally understand the loss was their fault, so they can start moving away from the abominable ideology and spiteful elitism that handed them this result.
Trump is a fuck-you vote from the economic losers of globalisation. They know he won't do anything for them, but they also know the other side won't either. All the pearl clutching about trumps characteristics from inner-city relativists fell on deaf ears because it rang hollow.
A women of the luxury belief professional class from an academic family and an uninspiring bureaucratic life story was never going to be able to talk to these people and she didn't really try too either.
The specific policies don't really matter to people when they are exhausted and angry. Revenge does.
What's the best way for someone from one of the groups that Republicans hate to move to a Western European or Nordic nation where they are less likely to be marginalized or threatened? I'm sure there will be plenty of time to analyze exactly what happened, but right now my only concern is getting out.
Reasons I think why Trump won:
- Biden's Inflation
- Fortunate timing
I strongly feel Harris lost because she did not connect with white voting women in the swing states. The exit poll numbers show this. She had about the same percentage voting women as Biden, but lost votes with white men. So to make up for that gap, it had to be white women. She did great with non-white overall.
I think it's easy to say "Harri needed more votes" but to go about this strategically, there needs to be on-target messaging.
The numbers shows the dems screwed this one up in the worst way possible from top to bottom.
The main question here is:
Did they include into the prediction the fact that in many state mail in ballots have to be counted after normal ballots and that for a lot of reasons Democrats are way more likely to vote by mail.
EDIT: Not that it matters anymore by know.
This is the best news for entrepreneurship in eons. Clearing regulations and barriers to entry will result in a much smoother, faster, and easier entrepreneurship process.
I think its time for the EU to distance itself from the US trainwreck
the biggest problem is the climate. with trump winning, most/all of the climate policies will be revered irreparably damaging our planet bringing us to the brink of extinction. ofc it won't be all trump fault, current trends are gloomy enough yet those are the very last few years to actually do something..
Shower thought: People vote for Trump because he is actually predictable. You never have to guess whose interests he is protecting. It's always his own. You never have to guess whether he is lying. He sure as hell is but there is also no hidden agenda. It's unfiltered mental diarrhea but it's raw and authentic.
I think a lot of the unease and disdain for the Western political class stems from their attempts to be inoffensive and appeal to everybody. Whatever policy you enact there is always going to be a trade-off, winners and losers, and if you do now acknowledge that, how can I be sure that you are acting in my interest?
“Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly... stupid.” ― Captain Jack Sparrow
Why doesn't this violate HN's rules about politics?
This really sucks and is making me incredibly worried. I know we don't discuss politics on HN, and there's not much point in debating this. But seriously... this clown? what's wrong with the US.
who would of guessed that swinging to the Right and courting Republican voters while holding no real tangible policy positions that address the pain that people are feeling wouldn't pay off?? (except for literally everybody who follows politics)
I could write an essay on each massive mistake they made after that first week after the swap, but if I had to simmer it down into a sentence, it would be: people wanted change, Kamala Harris made it extremely clear that she does not represent that change. She cozied up to Biden and tried to be a centrist-right candidate, and literally nobody wants that... and the worst part is that they will never learn a lesson from this.
> In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote.
Donald J. Trump, 07/28/24
Unbelievable.
"Kill and eat the others" ideology has won
I'm gonna be honest, this is much closer to the future that humanity deserves than the AI utopia many of you were dreaming of. Look at the entirety of human history and all the evil things people have done, and look at your own consumption of factory-farmed meat/dairy/eggs. Look at how few people donate kidneys (less than 0.1% in USA, and even lower in countries like Japan). And of course people would rather spend their 1st-world disposable income on enshitified creature-comforts than donate it; about $3500 is enough to save a kid's life from malaria, or go on a family vacation to Disney World.
People will say "I'd be a better person if only I were rich!", but predictably, the number of rich people willing to do those things is almost a rounding error.
I'm not American. I feel sad, not because Ds lost or Rs one. A nation, which happens to wield so much power in the world, has chosen to elect as its president, a deranged, indecent, man, with dictatorial tendencies, who cares for nothing about democratic--or any--institutions, who never believed in peaceful transfer of power, who called for an insurrection. I'd have thought that alone would have been a reason enough to say, "not that guy, no way". But here we are.
An unsurprising result. There is a worrying global rise in right-wing popularism and this is part of it.
We can look forward to more war, more crime, more suffering, more scapegoating of minorities. This is the start of a long decline that ends in death and destruction.
That Harris and Trump were apparently the best that the US political machine could spew up as choices to run one of the most powerful countries in the world is concerning in itself. Just shows how severely politics is broken in the US.
This is weird because the information I was getting was that Harris was leading the opinion polls and the Trump supporters were dropping him at the last minute. Now this feels like a rigged election.
This election has been a testament to the complete and utter obliviousness of the American voter, as far as economics goes.
All polls have indicated that economy and inflation was the number 1 issue that voters on the right cared about, and yet they haven't flinched at the proposals that Trump have laid out. Musk even said it in clear language, that there will be "austerity" moving forward.
The greatest grift in modern times - and the people that stood most to lose walked straight into it, cheering.
I guess the only hope is that the economy is fine, and improving - which makes any radical changes much more visible and risky. If Trump and Musk want to set off the bomb and likely crater it, then they'll own that mess. But hopefully they'll just do nothing, and try to take credit for the trajectory they've inherited - for the sake of your average citizen.
But the courts will be screwed for decades.
With the greatest of compassion and respect: America - get a fucking hold of yourselves, would you please?
[flagged]
To provide a little perspective on what seems to be an fruitless exercise in Democratic Party political apologetics, let’s remind ourselves that the smart, dumb, rich, poor, wise, foolish, old, young, native born, foreign born, male, female American people have spoken in a generally free and fair election. As they did when they elected Biden in 2020, Trump in 2016, Obama in 2012…. Whether you agree with the results or not, that process is a beautiful thing. Think of the billions on this planet who aren’t afforded that luxury.
There is a phrase that took root in the American legal subculture a while back: “come to Jesus meeting”. It refers to a meeting where a lawyer explains to their client the realities of their situation with the expectation that presentation of the cold facts and current climate will “recalibrate their expectations” and move them on a new path…normally to settlement and no further wasting of the Court’s time. The Democratic Party would do well to consider having such public meetings with elder statesmen types from both sides of the aisle. The US is best served when both political parties are strong and healthy.
Paradoxically, it’s harder for the Republicans to do that now, since they are winning. Normally requires a hard slap in the face…as has occurred for Democrats.
Is there some statistical analysis on the reason people vote trump ? I refuse to believe the narrative that Americans are just a bunch of redneck retarded bigots.
Tried to Google it but all I find is a bunch of American news website like CNN and website like https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/the-five-types-t...
I'm trying to look beyond the propaganda, any idea if there has been scientific studies or anything remotely credible ?
and on track to win the popular vote with the senate and House all going... Red.
How has this happened and what went wrong?
Discuss.
Edit: Flagged as usual.
1) It's very hard for a woman to be elected president.
2) The electorate demographic without college degrees is more likely to make an emotional decision that is more easily manipulated with Trump-style bombast.
Not in a battleground state, I didn't see any advertising, but the Dems should have pounded Trump as a criminal sex offending lying hypocrit draft dodger loser felon bankrupt self-obsessed asshole (note this is not snark it's literally how they should have gone at him).
"America first" (read: "Trump first"). It is going to be interesting to see all the different ways that guy is going to enrich himself and businesses, again..
I find it ironic that the word capitalism appears only 13 times in this thread, which has 7112 comments at the time of posting. This isn’t surprising, though, given how unpopular the topic of class warfare is in the USA.
Regardless of who you vote for, many would argue that a lot of the USA’s (and most countries nowadays, really) socioeconomic issues stem from unregulated capitalism, which -- quite simply -- prioritizes profit over people.
People are tired of competing with 3rd-world wages while having to meet 1st-world expenses—especially in a ChatGPT world. It’s no surprise that shutting the borders and capping the visas is a mildly popular platform—especially when the Democrats (with a few exceptions, like Sanders) abandoned their labor constituencies back in the 90s.
Please, don't shoot the messenger.
I'm going to share a tweet with you that is not my own tweet but one that more than 200k people have upvoted. If you want to see a list of topics that motivated Trump re-election: https://twitter.com/wildbarestepf/status/1854026810331365823
Trump didn’t win. Harris lost. Trump is about 2M votes behind his losing mark in 2020. Meanwhile Harris is 11M behind Biden last time round.
Everyone voted as anticipated in the main and Musk’s antics did nothing to boost Trump.
Trump‘s campaign was a disaster, pulling him back and losing him votes. No one can be proud of returning fewer votes than before. Nothing he did worked.
White suburban men and the Latino population didn’t show up for Harris. Outside that even groups that didn’t vote for her in large numbers, or voted in part for Trump, otherwise performed as expected.
Polls are not good at identifying voters who traditionally vote one way and then decide not to show up. The apathetic voters were falsely recorded as being votes for Harris.
Many theories are out there to explain the apathy. Certainly there’s an element or sexism and racism. Many people don’t want to vote for a brown woman. Trump and his surrogates attacked Harris directly as a minority woman by implying she was only good for sex and had slept her way to power.
The Latino population in the US skews catholic and that constituency skews them conservative.
On top of that they often live in states with high immigration from South and Central America and are more hawkish on that issue than most. Many do not identify with the countries their parents or grandparents came from and consider themselves “good” immigrants who are angry at the “bad” immigrants they are often lumped in with.
People talking about any move to the right by Trump are wrong. If anything the country is less Trumpest than it was 4 years ago. He has no mandate.
America still seems unwilling to elect a woman to the highest office. People who think Obama election means race is no longer an issue are also wrong. Politically Obama was Michael Jordan. His performance and ability cannot be considered the new normal. He may remain an outlier in the same way Thatcher, the UKs only elected female PM, is.
As a Pole I'm very afraid what this will mean for my region.
With Trump wanting to support Russia over Ukraine and his talk about leaving NATO, yeah.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1gkwo2u/chatgpt_bl...
Not sure if its clear here to US participants, but the world views this outcome much like we did in 2016: it makes the US into an absolute laughing stock. I don't fully understand: he was voted out in 2020 due to the massive failures of his term and him personally, and now four years later when he has become even more deranged, they voted him back in? What the hell?
Positive outcomes I see is that much like with the US's unequivocal support of Israel, this devastates the US's reputation and foreign influence. Trump wants to abandon Europe and Ukraine, which might grant Europe the independence and the urgency to step up and support Ukraine itself, unfettered by dysfunctional politics back in the US. A third pole on the world power stage would improve things, the US isolated back home in its infighting and staying out of the rest of the worlds business. IF the EU steps up.
I think it more likely this election was rigged in favor of trump
Well.. the last time he won, many people were literally expecting a nuclear holocaust. I remember a season of American Horror Story where the main part of the premise was that Trump became president.
We survived the first time?
I want to believe that somehow having Musk involved will help? I think there are a few people who feel encouraged by that based on how effective some of his companies are, and others think he will just call in a political favor for his own profit.
There seem to be two alternate realities. Either we are on the brink of a horrific fascist cyberpunk dystopia, or we have dealt a massive blow to the war-profiteering drug-profiteering establishment.
I don't think either is the real world, but the extreme divergence in predictions is confusing. I dislike this guy quite a lot but I also don't think the Democrats are trustworthy or honest.
The economy is broken. Facism rises. History repeats itself.
I had to double check if I was on reddit…these are some wild comments lol
Lot of comments about the economy and inflation but I don’t think that explains all of it. Trump grew votes in demographics across the board including traditional Democrat strongholds. Something else was working for him that didn’t work for Harris.
America now stands in line with various developing nations and sports a convicted felon as head of state. Bravo!
Step 1: Blame people who don't look like you
Step 2: Become dictator/king
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit
---
History repeats itself.
Congratulations to Elon Musk. Best $44b spent.
All this handwringing about inflation, economy etc. I think it is lot simpler:
Most people are already set on who they will vote for. Perhaps Trump supporters more so than Democrats. So, it all boils down to turnout:
1. Kamala wasn't the candidate to bring out Democrats (no primary, not a popular choice even among Democrats, selected by the DNC)
2. Trump can bring out his voters. The added advantage was a female opponent. A number of his supporter (male and female) have a pretty strong misogynistic streak. They will turn out to vote against a female opponent just because of that. I suspect a male Democratic candidate (even Biden) would have done much better (entirely driven by lower turnout of Trump supporters as they would not have been so committed against a male opponent)
This is further supported by the results of 2018 /2022 mid-terms. Trump was not on the ballot. So, Republican turnout (especially the kind that is in the cult) was impacted and Democrats had a good showing. We will see the same in 2026 (even more so as the economy will tank over the next 2 years and Democrats will come out in force). I predict a clean sweep by Democrats in 2026 perhaps even 60 Senate seats (yes, the economy will be that bad) and then the impeachment will start.
Congrats Melania!
Don't move to Canada; move to a swing state.
Pakistanis in the majority and Muslims in general supported Trump because Biden's govt is alleged to have toppled Imran Khan's govt and supported genocide in Gaza. American Muslims have voted for Trump
New Zealander here. I hope that now with Trump in office that USA will go back to the moon in 2025-2028 :).
Hope more high income manufacturing jobs are created for the working class and they build a bigger middle class.
AP News at this time are reporting 224 (Harris) vs 267 (Trump) [1].
A lot of political thoughts in these comments. I think the important thing going forwards is to figure out how to maximise the opportunity that you find in your environment.
For our team we were looking to relocate our manufacturing from China and get additional investment. One of our objectives today is to figure out how the recent result in the US will affect this planning.
[1] https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024
I think people underestimate the impact of misinformation platforms like Twitter and TikTok.
It's been an incredible campaign this time around. I'm a bit of a black sheep as a voter, I voted for Obama twice, I voted Hillary in 2016, Trump in 2020, Trump for the primary, and now again Trump in 2024. Having a multi-ethnic coalition behind him really sealed the deal for him IMO, as well as a coherent platform of deregulation, immigration reform, and putting American workers and businesses first.
Wish I'd bet more in the election markets and crypto, but hindsight is always 20/20 as they say.
It always amazes me that a country that cares so much about being the 'best', cares so little about what people think of them.
Voting in this guy, and his policies reduces the legitimacy of the US. If Trump withdraws from Nato, then members may not pay so much to US for weapons any more. Protection money only works while you get Protection. Maybe the Visa and Mastercard tribute taxes we all pay back to the US will be less welcome.
Maybe, in the new protectionist world, tax dodging US tech companies will be less welcome too.
The left and the Democrats has become so far left and radical that their party didn’t resonate with everyday Americans for the past several years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s
What a truly amazing series of events
This is going to be the "snake ate my face" situation real fast. Republicans push class divide so to keep their voter base uneducated and poor. Seems like they've reached the critical mass necessary. I don't understand any other way they vote someone in who has demonstrated time and again he'll work against their own interests. I understand short sighted single issue greed for the mighty dollar but it is a nonsensical vote for anyone else.
Well this is going to be a wild ride.
Dreading it on one level but also looking forward to the entertainment of a watch a slow motion train wreck. If he actually follows through on promises like mass deportation and forcing Ukraine peace that could get intense.
All I'll say right now is to not focus so much on the half that voted against your rights that you forget about the half that's behind you.
Its funny. Even after this happens the comments continue to keep the echo chamber going instead of wanting to understand how this happened. Until the DNC has an honest conversation with itself this will just keep happening.
Not a Trump voter so can't say exactly why they vote for him, but my guess would be the rather toxic race/sexism obsessed narrative the far left pushes. Every article nowadays rambles on about it, ever book/tv show also, it is tiresome and self defeating. Also so much negativity directed at males, especially white ones. The trans stuff is also a factor I'd guess, even as someone who voted for Harris I don't care for this level of anti science belief that a guy is now a women just because they say so.
Harris didn't really push this narrative as far as I can tell, but unfortunately some of her supporters do(and the media outlets they run).
Or perhaps the Trump voters actually believe he can somehow lower grocery store costs, though to me this seems like it would require some real mental gymnastics to believe, or deep ignorance.
No, it is not a single thing that drove US citizen to give Trump unprecedented mandate to fix the country.
It is:
1. the selective outrage judicial system that corrupted the trust in the process , the judges and the prosecutors. Not only towards Trump, but towards his close allies and supporters
2. It it the Covid response that forced people to get vaccinated to get a job (talk about bodily autonomy)
3. It is complete disregards for immigration law, importing into US workforce, families and criminals illegally. Causing hardship to US citizens
4. It is the visible immoral US stance on using Ukrainian lives in an unwinnable territorial war, so that US could 'weaken' Russia, while also enriching the military-industrial complex
5. Yes, it is the economy (inflation, lack of stable income, where people have to work multiple jobs to pay rent and to buy food).
6. It is a complete disregard for a family unit, parental accountability and control for mental health of young kinds. Adoption of transgender surgeries for the kids, having public schools push racial self-hate, demoralizing kids identities.
7. It is support for on campus violence against american Jews.
8. It is remarkable encouragement for transgender to compete, and even violently attack (or hurt in competition) females.
9. It emboldening the South American gangs in crossing borders, child trafficking, extortion.
10. it is distrust in 2020 election process, and the judicial refusal to actually review the cases brought in front of them.
Different 'categories' of voters were deeply disturbed by different points in the above. But the collectively -- it is clear that the problem why Dems lost is exactly in their anti-constitutional, immoral policies and constant lies by the propaganda machine and their 'experts' (that Trump is guilty of something, Russian interference, mRNA is safe ... etc)
Trump received a mandate not just to address one of the above points, but to address all of them and forever through strengthening the word of the Constitution via detective, preventative and corrective controls.
Another country succumbed to a fascist moron, such a shame.
Ah, so Twitter had the more quality real-world signal; who would have thought? It seems "hate and disinformation" are just what people were feeling, and what they were thinking.
In our current panopitcon, lies work. Turns out if an entertaining man lies again and again into a mechanism (the Internet) that endlessly amplifies and repeats those lies for free (paid for by all of us with our attention), you can win.
Very happy I visited Ukraine earlier this year. Won't be much left soon, unfortunately.
Just the day before the election a family member asked how anyone could possibly vote for Trump. I started going into the history of the primaries, and the fraud with Bernie in 2016 & 2020. How it's not red vs blue, it's really insiders vs outsiders. Within 30 seconds I was shouted down and shamed.
I then asked: "I can name 10 good things about Biden / Harris, can you do the same for Trump?" They couldn't say 1 positive reason that the ~ 75million voters are supporting Trump.
It's a good self-test of your bubble. Could you make a sound argument in favor of the opponent? If not, then you haven't spent enough time trying to understand the context.
This is the first time I've ever seen HN lag from sheer comment load.
Robert Kennedy detailed how CO2 pipelines have ruptured causing people to die & become sick. And how eminent domain was used to profit companies rather than social welfare. Even though Robert Kennedy seems to believe that CO2 is the climate control knob, many Americans don't. They see Carbon Capture as a scam that enriches Billionaires at the health + wealth expense of everyone else.
This is one example where ideology becomes a mechanism of coercion to transfer wealth from the large majority to a very small group of people.
Welcome to the world social media gave us
It's clear that this is actually what the American voters want. It's not a glitch or a fluke or a quirk of the system.
I've never been more ashamed to be American.
The DNC really needs to address Trump voters.
They have to figure out their needs there and satisfy them.
Its crucial.
For my friends here who are not Americans, here's my take on how the election played out. Please bare in mind I'm neither Democrat nor Republican. The analysis comes from commentators on both sides of the political spectrum. Since Trump won, the analysis focuses on the Harris campaign mistakes. I'll leave critiques on Trump for other commenters, as there are many.
- Harris skipped the traditional primary which reinforced to many independent voters that she was appointed by the ruling class of the Democratic party; US voters are extremely tired of feeling like the political "elites" have more control than the actual voters
- Democrats gaslit the American people for too long, claiming President Biden was not in mental decline; this created a lot of open questions about the inner workings of the Democratic party that were never addressed head on by Harris's campaign; to many independent voters, this left them feeling like Harris might be more of a political puppet than a qualified leader
- Harris's campaign ran primarily on restoring Roe v Wade (abortion rights) which is a false promise; it was clear she would not have the necessary Senate majority to codify a new law; many liberal and independent voters were annoyed at this attempt at emotional manipulation; this was a critical campaign mistake
- When Harris was trailing in the polls, she went on the attack against Trump with ads and chopped up sound bites instead clearly stating her plan for the country in longer form interviews; this left independent voters with a lot of open questions about her policies and plan
Ultimately, Trump won the popular and electoral votes on more of a referendum against the Democrats political playbook. Most Americans are tired of being talked down to and gaslit. And yes, Trump does this as well, but he won the perception battle.
The main takeaways on what needs to change in American politics to restore some sanity in future elections:
1. We need an overhaul in traditional media (or new media) to restore trust in sources of facts; all American traditional media is incredibly biased at the moment, leaving our politics up to the whims and misinformation of social media
2. We need a 3 party system; this is a long shot, but it's the only reasonable way to enforce accountability for the Democrats and Republicans since traditional press is failing to provide a balance of power; for the last 20+ years, elections have mostly been against the other candidate instead of for policy plans or candidates
The economy, cost of living, no meaningful or high-paying jobs, the crackdown on Cryptocurrency, the way mainstream media and other mediums treat the right lead to Trump's second Term, in my opinion.
I predict Trump dies before 2028 and JD Vance is the last American president.
Good luck to our American friends.
Between a clean sweep win of the Electoral College, the popular vote (by a Republican president for the first time in 20 years!), the Senate, and very likely the House this is an epic, bottom of the ninth comeback victory for the history books. And I thought the World Series Dodgers comeback in game 5 was incredible, I guess we just keep on winning.
I am also absolutely vindicated in my opinion that "journalism" (the mainstream media) are cancers upon society. The polls fucking lied and the "journalism" was the real garbage.
And yes, I voted for Trump and the Republicans as an Oregonian. No, my vote didn't count for his EC win, but I don't care: My vote still helped deliver a mandate that the Democrats and their policies are not acceptable.
When Trump was president last time, my project was just beginning. Now that many years have passed and I have gained experience, I can say that this is a second chance for him.
I genuinely don’t understand. I really hope I am wrong, but I believe we are about to enter a post-truth state.
You should now assume your sources are compromised if you did not expect this
LOL democrats really did a number on themselves here!
The majority of the country was telling them "We are having change anxiety after Obama and we are having distrust in institutions after Covid". So what did they do? Cling to the same power structures with a dead man walking, doubled down on gender politics, devolved internally into morality based foreign policy shout match and the cherry on top put an uncharismatic non white woman as the candidate. At every step of the way they very eloquently and academically explained why they have the right solutions while completely ignoring the emotional state of the nation.
All they had to do was bring a calming white man that is not in cognitive decline that would reassure the nation that everything was going to be alright. That the America they know and love is here to stay.
You may don't like that this was reality, that your progressive views are more "right" than that, but it is. So now enjoy being factually, morally, academically correct with trump as the president with control on the congress. What a joke.
Partisanship aside, he is not a smart man. He's a convict and a known racist.
He most likely has dementia, and we will be under a President Vance before 2026.
But he still won. I'm disappointed but not surprised.
Kudos to Elon Musk and his $44B megaphone, I guess. Money, lies, and misinformation work, folks.
You can clearly see that Kamala won due to all the illegals voting for Democrats. Oh wait.
oh lord, I was afraid of it
where is "stop the count", "rigged elections" and other messaging like this? it's disappointing that democrats can't call that out
the hill is far to be a unbiased... deport this post
I think this short video explains a lot - basically the establishment Democrats look after their donors & don't do much for everyday people who are struggling economically - hence the appeal of Donald Trump who promises to shake things up & generates hope - for many voters this "trumps" his bad qualities
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYGy-Ea7jMw
Well, my hope for humanity is permanently eroded. Half the populace elected a blubbering rapist, felon, and fascist to lead them. Again.
I'm making rapid plans to get the fuck out of this shithole country, and as far as business goes, no known Trump supporter will ever get my handshake.
To all the people wondering why Trump has been elected, the answer is very simple and has been true in all countries that have had elections. When a large section of the voting public is chronically missing out on the benefits of what they're told is a "growing economy", only to observe continued "unfair" extremes of wealth distribution, they become disenchanted with the system that has generated this situation. By definition almost, they become very willing prey for any demagogue that threatens to upend the system, turn over the money-changers tables. It's irrelevant whether the demagogue's policies will work or not. It's irrelevant whether the demagogue is provably lying or not. It's all about repressed anger being unleashed and finding a target. Even if the target is not the cause of their misery. And so every latent form of bigotry finds expression and is easily exploited by the demagogue.
It's worth re-reading Goebells primarily because his understanding of this psychology is what made Nazi demagoguery so devastatingly successful. Any attempt by a party to attack the demagogue without directly addressing the elephant in the room (the growing class of working poor) is not only destined to fail, but destined to fail badly. If I hate you - really hate you - I don't mind copping a few painful blows if it means I get to see you bludgeoned to near death. Vengeance is an incredibly powerful motivator. People trying to lump all of Trump's supporters as Nazi's are making a grave mistake and refusing to see the forest for the trees. Just as most Germans in WWII were not Nazis yet supported Hitler, so too with Trump. Latinos, blacks, gays and women all voted for Trump. Don't assume they're all stupid. When I hate you, I'm happy to burn in hell if you're there with me.
Of course, this is a simple generalisation and there are lots of "sub-reasons" (the bro-vote, the foot-gun Democrat advertising - "he doesn't have to know!", etc). If the Democrats had chosen Bernie Sanders as their candidate back in 2016, they would've had eight years in power. It's no coincidence that Bernie had a lot of support from those that otherwise voted Trump. They felt that he was real and was really concerned about them and would really do something to assuage their pain. Now? Now they're just mad - "enough is enough".
However, anger is not sustainable for too long and all demagogues eventually come undone because once the heat of anger is gone and you look around and realise things are worse than ever - well, that's when things can REALLY get dangerous.
absolutely bonkers, this is the shittiest timeline
And if the GOP wins the house god help us. Smh.
Can the doomers relax? He is mentally unstable and egomaniac, but do you really think the US is this fregile? Have you met CEOs and politicians? most of them are egomaniacs and some are mentally unstable. If the system could not handle them in power the country would have crumbled long ago... Will it be better or worse? who knows. but definitely not OMFG ruined everything gone. Have a day off and calm down.
This European travels to the US all the time, having probably spent an average of 1-2 months or so there yearly over the past couple years.
With very few exceptions I've never met people there who outwardly seemed like they'd like someone as a leader who habitually lies and tries to usurp democratic institutions for personal gain.
What the hell is going on there guys? Are you just voting for the person who promises the most "interesting" times, for better or for worse?
I try to understand why Trump lost the 2020 election and won the 2024.
My reading is that people vote with a punishment mindset. Aka the only way to punish Trump for his horrible term was to vote for Biden. And the only way to punish Biden for his bad financially term was to vote for Trump.
> Former President Trump is projected to win the presidency
He has already won. 277 votes
“Ask HN: So who did you vote for?”
This is a massive indicitment of our country. We get what we deserve.
Voting based on perception, not facts, especially given Trump's overall character and abhorrent track record, is going plunge us further into far right extremism. Enjoy.