I went to bed early on Election Night because I didn't want the stress to get the worst of me.
I wake up to a goddamn nightmare.
I thought the worst case nightmare of a trump "win" was that he was going to fight legal challenges all the way up to the Supreme Court. I didn't consider even the possibility trump would claim more popular votes than Harris. trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by three million votes, and lost it more by seven million in 2020. trump had done nothing to improve his favorability numbers in all that time, and yet... what the hell?
And it's not that trump's winning by garnering a higher count than the 74 million he got in 2020: his current total is below that (last saw it was 71 million) and even after all the final tallying is done by this weekend it doesn't look like it'll be any higher than that 74 million from last time.
What's horrifying is how Kamala's vote total - based off the 81 million Biden got earlier - dropped off a literal cliff down to 66 million(!). That total should increase slightly during the final ballot counting, but there's no way she's finding 15 million votes hiding away under a sofa or something to regain the popular vote or flip the Electoral College. This is... wrong. This is broken.
WHERE THE HELL DID 15 MILLION DEMOCRATIC VOTES GO?
This was after all the reports of increased voter registration, this was after all the early voting reports of higher turnout. Pennsylvania and Florida in particular were reporting big turnout overall. There were few signs that the turnout numbers were favoring trump or Republicans. If anything, most of the turnout numbers were matching - if not exceeding in some states - 2020 numbers. AND YET. There's 15 million votes unaccounted for.
This can't be right.
By all accounts, Harris ran the final stages of the campaign - taking over from President Biden when he dropped out from media pressure to do so - just right. She fundraised better than trump. Her rallies drew bigger crowds. The ground game was knocking on every door in the battleground states and then some. There weren't any signs from the voting base itself that they disapproved of Harris (other than the pro-Palestinians fearing the year-long war Israel was inflicting on the Gaza and West Bank citizenry).
There wasn't any evidence that turnout was going to drop this bad. Where the hell did 15 million voters from 2020 go?
Other than grappling at the conspiracy train of thought that the voting machines were rigged - across every battleground state, even the ones where Democrats held local control - the only other thought is that all that voter turnout was a mirage, or that voters avoided marking off a choice for President on the ballots either way.
Looking at the results nationwide, it's not as though that 15 million votes went towards the Libertarian or Green candidates (the Libertarians had barely 540,000 votes, and the Greens got 611,000). Those 15 million votes are just... gone.
What the hell happened to the 81 million voters who showed up for Biden where 15 million of them refused - in an election that could have stopped a known felon and sex offender in trump - to show up for Harris?
This is both frustrating and alarming as hell.
And now we're stuck in hell.
I am regretting ever getting this emotionally invested into my nation's own well-being and survival against the forces of darkness that trump (and his BFF Putin) represent.
For a long time, I thought the Far Right was too extreme, too cruel, too corrupt to truly represent what the United States could be (even with all the racism and sexism dripping through our history books).
I believed the Republican Party wasn't truly reflective of the majority of Americans - not since the 1990s when the sheen of Reaganism fell away - and that they were really a minority party surviving on gerrymandering and voter suppression. The possibility that massive voter suppression happened last night is there, but on this scale? Considering how so many Americans ARE happy voting for a known criminal felon, tax fraud, and sex offender in trump, the only honest reality is that GODS HELP US a majority of Americans are truly this blind, truly this cruel, truly this spiteful towards their own communities and families.
I'm despairing for the poor, for the Blacks facing law enforcement crackdowns to serve trump's obsession for violence against them, for the Latinos and Arabs about to suffer hardships under a vicious anti-immigrant regime, for the women who are about to lose even more rights to an evangelical mob, for the children about to see their personal lives and their safety violated by anti-trans and anti-gay haters.
I'm not despairing for America though. Those sons of bitches voted for a monster about to blow everything up to feed their fear and hate, and they will get caught in the chaos and destruction they thought was going to inflict everyone else.
Goddamn us tonight. History and humanity will never forgive us.
3 comments:
I've heard that California is not finished counting yet and still has a few million votes to go. The majority of those will be for Harris. It won't affect the Electoral College outcome, but the shortfall isn't as large as 15 million.
Also, 66 to 69 million votes for the Democratic presidential candidates is pretty much in line with what we saw in the 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections. 2020 was the exception, where Democratic turnout surged well above the norm. It didn't surge as much this year. Republicans lost just a little of their enthusiasm, but Democrats lost considerably more of theirs.
Also, this is not "the country". 71 million is not a majority of 340 million. A lot of people were apathetic or had different priorities, but that doesn't mean they support Trump's agenda.
Back in 2020, so many people were dying of covid that they were stacking the bodies in refrigerated trailers, and normal life was upended for a large segment of the electorate. Biden was a chance to maybe get their lives back. And he did that, they got their lives back so much that they felt they could vote to tear down the status quo again. Sort of like how after Obama fixed the mess W left the country in, they felt like they were doing well enough to elect the king of the birthers. The shit talking Fergus does about the country and the shape it's in may be bullshit, but a large portion of the electorate is so checked out from how things actually work that they believe it, at least enough to vote for the damn fool. A large number of them are about to pay a gruesome price for their vote, but I have no confidence that the survivors will learn anything from it.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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