Ever the optimist, eh whimsy?

Looking pretty bleak isn’t it?

Misinformation and an ignorant, reactionary population have played a massive (if not the main) part but I do think the Dems have brought so much of this upon themselves. They’re uninspiring, not tackling the major problems, and massively disorganised (never, for example, disciplining those right-wing Dems (like Sinema or Manchin) for wrecking plans over and over).

As I say everywhere, I think everyone can share the blame on this. Earlier somebody accused me of 'both-sidesing' the issue but I firmly blame the right, and only the right, for being the fascists. They literally fly Nazi flags. Not much to argue there. They're fundamentally broken, toxic, absolutely evil human beings and the only legitimate solution for them is extermination. It's an ideology which has absolutely no values or desires beyond inflicting torment on as many people as possible.

So, with that in mind, you would think that the opposition party, along with the electorate, would have been able to form some kind of function coalition to combat this. The Dems of course were constantly walking a fine line of trying to half-assedly condemn this kind of thing while being beholden to a lot of the same corporate overlords as the fascist party. And for some reason, Democrats were always convinced that their voters didn't want them to show any passion of any kind for any issue. They refused to believe that they had a voting block outside of Des Moines, Iowa. There's a lot I could talk about here of course but I don't want to be here all morning.

But meanwhile, part of your comment illustrates the issue with voters. "The Dems are uninspiring!" Okay well, that's okay, because the GOP is more than enough inspiration for me. They've been saying, for decades, we want to take away all of your rights. Your right to vote, your right to marry, your right to an abortion. That was literally the entire platform. We want to take away your rights, with the help of our base of bigoted voters. And yet what do I see? Well, I see people popping up in my feed with things like "Trans-He/they-polyamor-whatever" saying shit like "I'm not voting for the lesser of two evils! M-my principles!" Okay, well, you've chosen to lose your rights, as well as usher in an era of unprecedented, national hate and violence against yourself because you wanted internet clout with 19-year-old leftists, congratulations. Of course, much of that is because America's far-left block is mostly hobbyist white kids who mostly see it as a hobby and like all white people, think everything is a game that won't really count for them in the end. But that's not the entire issue of course, it's not just modern leftists. People for years have just been shrugging off elections, especially off year elections, midterms, anything that wasn't presidential. It was laziness often poorly disguised as street-smart cynicism. "Oh they're all the same, it doesn't matter, I'm not playing their game." When it mostly just meant you didn't feel like standing in line. I absolutely refuse to let blame for this go around without putting it on the first line of defense against what we're seeing now, and that's the voters. I was exposed to all the same rhetoric they were, I'm even MORE cynical than they are, I've been watching the Dems be fucking lame for years but I still recognized that something phenomenally evil was just under the surface of America's right wing. And now it's out in the open, so thoroughly and effortlessly soaked into the minds of their insane followers that they no longer have to promise them anything. They openly say, vote for us, and we'll do nothing for you. You're poor, you deserve to be poor, we don't care, but we'll torture and kill all those people you hate. Blacks, gays, women, all of them, they're fuckin' dead, as long as you hand over everything. Deal?

And well, lol...you had the white vote at 'torture and kill.'

But yeah. Everyone came together to destroy America's democracy. The fascists were a minority. Literally every single thing had to go right for them to win. And we let it happen because we just plain couldn't be bothered.

If I successfully get out of this country, one of the first things I want to do is point and laugh at everyone, not just the fooled whites, but hell even the marginalized groups who will be suffering unlike anything they thought possible in the modern world, I just want to mock everyone left behind and then never think about them again. From top to bottom, every layer of American life surrounds you with the worst people on Earth, the people motivated purely my hatred, and the people motivated by literally nothing and thus, do nothing. They can all rot in hell as far as I'm concerned. They wanted this. Whether they recognize it or not, they wanted exactly this, to live in a society in which they no longer have to try and make it a better place because it's literally no longer an option. They can sit around in their stupor, distracted by whatever version of the internet is still legal to access in a few years, content that they'll never have to try, ever again.

Of course, I suppose they could prove me wrong later today. But I sincerely doubt that. Nobody ever does.

hahaha yeah - I still maintain that you are too harsh on actual left-wing white americans and often conflate irritating radlibs with actual ideological left wingers BUT I think the overall characterisation is mostly valid and the effect is generally applicable.

I do generally agree with your point regarding a compromise vote and, again, I think actually-genuine ideological left wingers would do that. Several american friends of mine that I went to university with as an undergrad were of that bent - one of my closest friends from those days was an anarchist-community but he would always vote for the Dem candidate in an election that was going to be closely contested. In areas, though, where there was a longstanding (e.g. 20-30 point margin) bias, he would vote more ideologically for a more minor left-wing candidate.

In all, though, it's hard to disagree with your overall assessment; the general "middle-America" is determined to extinguish itself in the most violent, repressive way possible. Racism, misogyny, anti-youth, anti-working class. It's neofascism at its worst and it's astonishing the extent to which it has become *so* normalised in the post-Nixon era.

On the very very minor bright side, the results in so far don't look quite as overwhelmingly awful as you expected and not even as bad as I expected; looks like there might be a net +1 gain in the senate and that lower chamber will end up roughly the same as it was before. Not a total disaster. I think, on some level, it probably does indicate that some of that "average, middle America" (particularly, of course, the ethnic minority voters and even some of those wishy washy white middle class voters) are finding the incredibly extreme Republican policy base just too much to put their crosses by, even if they don't really want to back the Dems either...

I admit that the results are...well, they're a bit confounding. I mean they make sense of character is a factor in American politics, but of course it is not, or at least not usually so I'm not sure what to make of this. I wouldn't put too much into that +1 to the Senate though. We did flip a seat but we're in real danger of losing one in Nevada (experts think that when the mail votes come in the Dem will hold on but you never know) and Warnock is headed to a runoff because seriously, fuck Georgia. I told people that 2020 was a fluke. If we were to lose Warnock's seat and the NV seat we would actually lose the Senate, and the House is still expected to flip GOP, albeit by dramatically fewer numbers than predicted. If we do hold the Senate, remaining 50-50 is the better bet.

I also admit that it's somewhat heartening that the GOP weren't all-powerful in this environment. Dems were given no chance at all on these elections, the question wasn't will they lose but, by how much. And whether or not they take congress, R's are feeling pretty sour right now and perhaps more satisfyingly, media pollsters look like fucking idiots. Long overdue we retire them. Credit to the youth vote - indeed, their influence was real, and went unnoticed by a process that is designed to overlook them. A GOP slaughter would have been considered unremarkable in many ways. These results, regardless of outcome at this point, are something of a shock. Mind you, it's not enough for me to be convinced that America's democracy will survive. I guess it's just a nice little reminder that a few people out there actually do care about it. Not that it's likely to matter that they do.

Still, I'm not 'celebrating' anything until the results are actually in. Without the Senate we can't even cling to the hail-Mary hope that Clarence Thomas or alito will fall over dead.

Yup, I think that’s all very valid. I’ll join you in a very big celebratory toast if the latter events do occur…!