since we're doing "things we got wrong this year," I will say this: I think of myself as a pretty pessimistic person, but boy howdy did I underestimate the sheer partisan hackery of the supreme court
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all government branches have tripped me out,its been a slow roll from 2016 but the end result is the RCP(republican communist party) being full on Authoritarian with congress being yes men and scotus ruling for the supreme leader,I do not see an honest election until they are overthrown one day
So did we all. It was one thing after another — the gun rights jurisprudence is nuts — but the immunity decision was the clincher. Roberts acted like he was on the original drafting Committee and decided what *should* have been in the Constitution but seems to have been left out by mistake.
Why do liberal commentators alarmed by Trump’s win seem to discount voter suppression? And disappointment over Gaza in Michigan. While his appeal among the working class is disturbing this surely explains the result.
After being shocked in 2016, I knew Harris would lose. The rampant misogyny in Americans, even among other women, is too much. For Democrats to win they need to stop fielding women presidential candidates for a while.
Yes, I’m quite sure she would have won the general election easily. The problem for female GOP is getting the nomination; for female Dems winning the general is the barrier. I’m rapidly becoming convinced I won’t see a female president in my lifetime.
Republicans can actually stay on message and vote for their candidates. Democrats are too invested in sounding smart and idealistic, while losing. Your snark to me is a prime example. Keep selecting women who lose because Democrat white women won't even bother voting for them.
If we* compromise on that issue, then we lose before we begin.
Not saying next dem candidate can't be white guy. I'm saying we must be pragmatic, but also we can't compromise on gender, race, etc or we lose before we begin.
* "we" meaning "people that aren't in favor of totalitarianism".
Exactly! Republicans understand this. Democrats, for all their self-professed intelligence, don't understand this. Even Obama writes about how he didn't purposefully talk about certain subjects during his presidency because he knew they would cost him. We have to win, not virtue signal.
We may have a bit of a problem. Being “pragmatic” and Dems nominating women/Blacks for prez ( Obama was a singular political talent in a fortuitous moment) seem to be contradictory.
I'm aware the goals are at odds. I did allow the next candidate *could* be some white dude.
But if you decide in advance that it *must* be some white dude, then you're just doing the fascists' job for them of shifting the Overton window regressively rightward. That's called Appeasement.
I'm often amazed at how often hacks like myself see things better than the professionals - which leaves us way behind in terms of the general public seeing what is unfolding around us.
One of the ways democracies die is the moderate, sensible opposition underestimates the sheer audicity of authoritarians. Moderates always say, "They would never do that," right up to the point they do that.
Just realized my second sentence is malformed, I meant I agreed with you, not that you undershot and they undershot. Ugh, incorrect structure strikes again. Curse you, something other than me and my own ability to write clearly on the fly!
I'm an attorney and I'm kind of dumb-founded. A profession that has mechanisms to police itself around malpractice by, requires extensive training on ethics...is just sitting by while the top judges in the land destroy the rule of law.
I had no idea it was perfectly legal to rule on cases involving your wife and/or financial benefactor & there doesn’t seem 2 be a damn thing anyone can do. Apparently, admin assistants in the fed govt are held to a higher ethical standard than a SC Justice. At least admin assistants can be fired.
Presidents are free to commit whatever crimes they want, but ONLY if they do so by abusing their official powers. He can't shoplift a toaster, but he CAN order order the military to massacre every Democrat in Congress. It's the complete opposite of logical.
We are watching it implode now. There is no way this is going to last. Not with two giant egos competing for president, and all the conflicts of interest floating around. Something will fuck up in our favor.
Me too. They are not even pretending anymore to use settled law as their guide. They are so smart they are just making things up that the founders meant. For example, the immunity decision.
I did not think it was possible for Trump to get a single vote more than he got in 2020. With attrition of deaths, the insurrection & Dobbs, I never even entertained it as a possibility.
He didn't get more votes. He actually got less. But millions of others who voted in 2016 sat on their butts and couldn't be bother to vote at all. This is on them. Scum.
He made no effort to broaden his appeal. Low propensity voters ( the dregs of the earth ) really turned out for him. They liked the pet eating migrant talk and the PR floating island of garbage rhetoric.
Boy do love Letterkenny too, I just am tryin to figure out when we said “boy howdy”, but I do forget things, happens to the best of us. But I won’t forget the important stuff; like who I’m loyal to, or that yew owe me a drink.
I thought fundamentalist Christians would find Trump's recent and 1980-90s behavior abhorrent. Many of them would have voted for him no matter what he did or said.
Usually when I get a prediction wrong, it's because I allowed an assumption of rationality into my calculation.
I've done it so many times. And still I did it again. It wasn't until a week or two before the election that I realized Harris would lose. I expected the numbers to move, but they didn't.
TBF, what we see now, started even before Antonin Scum-lia taught our junior sleazes all they ever knew about unethical and immoral behavior, built upon the cornerstone of Catholic “exceptionalism”. 🤨
My biggest miss was assuming that legacy media wouldn't 2016 us again. After 4 calamitous years of Trump in office and 4 more of him taking a blowtorch to the rule of law, doing so would involve a far more egregious and unforgivable dereliction of responsibility than in 2016. My bad!
This!!! How stupid we were to think that they would get better, they never even admitted to what they did to Hillary, and now they are blaming MVP the same way they blamed Hillary. They will always look the other way for the rich MALE assholes who own all of MSM.
Me too. That's been the most shocking part of this all; they were supposed to be the guardrail, but they didn't even make much of an effort at making a pretense.
other biggest thing I got wrong: I really, really thought the dems had managed to cobble together an at least semi-durable anti-trump/pro-democracy coalition, particularly post-dobbs
Yeah I underestimated how low SCOTUS would go. Underestimated my fellow Floridians would vote down abortion rights and legal weed. I was dumbfounded that the majority of my fellow Americans really wanted Fascism, or at least someone that hated the people they hated. It's been a shameful year.
Democratic leaders must stop bringing pillows to a knife fight. Use the tools available to protect the American people from the Trump-Musk MAGA fascists. Voting, donating, volunteering, peacefully protesting has not worked. Sign the petition.
Full statement here: https://www.change.org/WeThePeople-DemandActionNow
Yeah, it seems a lot voted for Trump knowing that he was lying. That is not a problem for a lot of people. Democrats accused Trump of being a liar and a felon and that's absolutely true. But what we didn't seem to realize is that those things are not deal breakers for tens of millions of voters.
Same. Nearly made it too but for their incomprehensible stance on Gaza (plus red state voter suppression, media/social media manipulation, Musk $, etc etc ugh)
I don’t disagree, but I’d rather think that we were blindsided by the number of voters willing to buy so much bs in a second helping. But, there’s one born every minute, right?
expanding the lens internationally: also thought that the pushback against Modi in the Indian election indicated the viability of such coalitions across the globe. Whoops
or maybe it just sucked to be the incumbent party while we're still dealing with all the anger about the covid situation fucking everyone's life up for years at a time
There's absolutely no excuse for anyone remotely on the left not voting for Harris. None. They had two choices for the future and millions sat on their 🍑 and did nothing
the lockdowns didn't work and hurt kids and young adults really really badly -- they were not worth the cost but we don't talk about that because for some reason we can't criticize any shitty policy during covid
"significant decline in both incidence of COVID-19 (adjusted relative change per week, −62%) and mortality (adjusted relative change per week, −58%)...with 128.7 fewer cases per 100 000 population over 26 days and with 1.5 fewer deaths per 100 000 population...." https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2769034
“The lockdowns didn’t work” is like saying “seatbelts don’t work, there are still car accidents”.
Lockdowns didn’t hurt kids and young adults nearly as much as losing a family member to Covid would have. What policy should we have followed to reduce exposures and deaths?
Losing family members DID hurt kids. It's probably why kids in school districts that mostly stayed open (in areas w higher death rates) have the same sort of educational deficits as kids in areas with longer shutdowns.
When people argue that schools should have stayed open because kids don't die from covid, they never say anything about the teachers, who were apparently supposed to sacrifice themselves in human waves so the kids could stay in school (in gigantic classes due to the dwindling supply of teachers).
Also, when people say "lockdowns didn't work" they are admitting they can't imagine a world where millions more people would have died of COVID because we did absolutely nothing.
Also, children don't DIE from COVID but they can certainly carry it. Luckily, children rather famously do not have parents or live in communities, but live ferally in the woods, drawn to elementary schools by some atavism
I don’t get the logic. One of the first people who died from COVID I was connected to was a friend’s parent who worked in a school. Either way COVID was going to be bad, but it seems to me LIVING and having to repair mental health and learning would be better than chronic illness or death.
And yet, maybe they did work because it set (most) everyone's mindset correctly. I remember watching China and Italy freaking out that we were all going to die. My immediate family took it seriously - other parts of the family didn't. Guess which side of my family suffered deaths. Plural.
Same here. I have a large extended family. I lost two relatives to COVID. Some others have long COVID. Some were hospitalized for a time. They were in the bunch that insisted they were not going to live in fear. Now some of them are not alive.
The weird thing is that the lockdowns both started *under Trump* and were almost certainly responsible for saving countless lives.
Was it hard on kids? Yes. Would the death of a loved one not have been harder?
I am sick of hearing about fucking "lockdowns" when I am dealing with people with long COVID. It turns out learning loss and brain fog occurs with mild COVID cases, too.
Lockdowns _did_ work at the thing that they were supposed to do - which was, slow down the rate at which people got sick ("flatten the curve") just enough that ERs wouldn't be completely overwhelmed, when we had no other tools. _And_ they hurt kids and young adults really really badly, and ...
which also probably happens without, just in other ways; the alternative to remote schooling (which was bad and maybe went too long) was not good in-person schooling, but also bad in-person schooling that still kept closing down and going remote just from too many sick students or teachers
.. pretty much sucked for nearly everyone, and "the ERs aren't completely overwhelmed now" wasn't enough visible "working" for a lot of people to feel they were getting their misery's worth out of lockdowns ...
Correct. I work in public health and live in Melbourne, which by most measures had the harshest, longest lockdowns in the world. It sucked so much, but it worked and Victorians largely agreed it was worth it and returned the governing Labor Party to another term, despite right wing hyperventilating.
the lockdowns hurt kids and young adults because “adult-adults” were being shitty babies that couldn’t reach consensus about something as obvious as “germs exist.” it’s like mommy and daddy were more obsessed with scoring points during a shitty divorce than attending to the needs of their kids.
When the lockdowns happened, there was no vaccine and we didn't know it wouldn't affect kids. Historically pandemics hit the old and young the hardest. Had Trump not been such a dickhead about masking and social distancing this wouldn't even be a discussion.
See its people like you that I will never forgive.
Money over people.
The lockdowns worked. Saved possibly millions of lives. Masks worked, the vaccine worked.
Putting money over people will never end well.
The French demonstrated this with a guillotine.
A lesson worth remembering.
Lockdowns and clean air did a good enough job that US military started installing HEPA and far-uvc in all global bases, seeing COVID as the natl security threat that it is.
If you're going to criticize policies, maybe don't start by lumping every damn one of them into a big blob called "lockdowns" and then claim they all "didn't work."
We had 50 states, 12,000 school districts, and 330m people all setting their own COVID policies.
And what pisses me off about this bunch is that many of them act like their situation was *the only one* that mattered. That horrific pandemic upended all of our lives -- but a lot of us adapted as best we could while keeping safe.
Doubtful you'll ever get a cohesive answer from him or others who complain endlessly about how their lives were disturbed by mandates, because a pandemic was killing thousands every day for months.
Schools in most areas were physically closed for just a few months; however there weren't enough teachers who stayed well (or alive) long enough to keep all schools open continuously. And comparisons of student achievement between longer & shorter closures show no difference in performance.
It's impossible to know the counterfactual of how we'd have fared with no shutdowns, but early closures likely saved lives in this pandemic as they did in 1918. It was opening up too soon in 1919. That was the source of so many deaths that time.
Though, on that last point, this past year was tough on incumbents worldwide - and the incumbent D government lost the smallest vote share. (In some places, like Brazil, the left displaced the right.)
I see your point, but I put the emphasis in "anti-incumbency" on "getting rid of the incumbent." And Trump, although a former office-holder, has not held office for four years. There are lots of people who are voting now who weren't old enough to vote in '16, '20 or '24. He's not "former" to them.
Herre's a table from Parl reproduced in the Financial Times on incumbents governments. First time since Parl has been keeping track (~120 years) that all the incumbent governments they track lost vote-share.
Yep, I read it as a potential global anti-authoritarian trend when in retrospect it was just an anti-incumbent trend (which happened to take out some authoritarians)
Indeed. The trend took out (or diminished) incumbents, on the left, center, and right. In this context, the Ds actually did better than any other incumbents (1 excess loss in the Senate in PA, a gain of one seat in the House, and a sweep of the statewide offices in NC).
I do think there's a decreasing marginal value to saying that Trump is not normal and is a threat to democracy (which, tbc, he is). He's been around 8 years, he is the new normal on the right. The "get back to our norms!" and "this isn't who we are!" messaging falls flat after close to a decade.
Four years of non-stop bashing of Biden from the Media and very-online Leftists (then transferred to Kamala) didn't help. I never thought our side would treat any Dem as bad as Hillary, but the same assholes did the same bullshit and got the same result.
The Uncommitted movement and its adherents really look like an operation that involved and was underwritten by Russian, Iranian and conservative Right operatives.
Reading your book rec right now, Bartels, _Democracy Erodes from the Top_ and his take seems to be, “there are NO durable coalitions that can make you safe against the 20%+ of voters who are low information and all about paycheck growth.”
Honestly, I still think they did. It just wasn't quite enough (by 1.5%!) and in my mind it came down to the media environment + Musk throwing his weight around at the last minute.
I did think we were gonna win. I did think it was gonna be enough. But I don't think we were stupid for thinking that.
It wasn’t a coalition. It was just the Democratic Party, leavened by a small group of anti-Trump Republicans who had no constituency of their own. They had a message; the public just wasn’t tracking it. Why not? Maybe because of a big thing I got wrong.
I underestimated the power of right-wing social media to dominate the news about politics being consumed by the most ignorant people in the country. What aggrieved and disoriented rural voters had been in 2016, younger voters who never read anything but do watch TikTok were in 2024 — pivotal.
This. Between a number of older voters still getting “news” from cable/talk radio, a number of young voters getting all their news from TikTok and podcasts, and a number still getting “news” from Musk’s Twitter, that’s enough low-info voters to swing it (some by voting R, some by not voting at all.)
And they dragged their feet until the last fkkng day of the term to announce the immunity decision - which they never should have accepted in the first place.
Well, there's the pre-Trump court which was passable, and the post-Trump court since he got to appoint half the judges at the behest of the Federalist Society, which is... not.
Just because the organs of government are captured. We the people are not. The people are the body of this nation. This bribery, infidelity and various corruption but symptoms of an infection. We shake off our apathy and enrich our diet. Gather together become immune to division.♥️🔄
You and every other lawyer and legal journalist I know, including some of the most storied names in constitutional law. I accept the principle that the Constitution means only and exactly what the Supreme Court says it does, but I didn’t think they would call it a crocheted MAGA tea cozy.
Trump was an illegal candidate & the US Constitution does not allow him to take office again. Why isn't more being done to prevent his unlawful return to power? The SCOTUS determined states couldn't refuse to put him on their ballots, not that he hadn't violated his oath of office via insurrection.
Well, *I* underestimated the ability of millions of Americans to stomach another possibly permanent 💩 carnival 🎡 with an apparent cagefight between two of the worst people on earth for the role of Ringmaster, so… 🤷♀️
What was gotten wrong was gotten wrong by Biden. He believed that emulating FDR—public works projects, supporting labor, etc.—would prove sufficient competence to convince Americans to reject chaos.
Meanwhile, he did absolutely nothing to actually stand up to the authoritarianism he warned about.
Retired lawyer here. Yes-I didn't think much of this Court to begin with- given Dobbs, etc. - but I seriously underestimated how low they would be willing to go.
And as a once-Conservative, I had too much faith in the Republican party, the so-called gatekeeper of the rule of law, to do the right thing and squash the Trump(ism) before it reached a fever-pitch. Mitch McConnell had the shot and didn't take it. He can save his excuses for his book.
Scalia was supposed to be Robert Bork. They've had this plan in place since the Warren Court and especially after Roe and Nixon: Regulatory capture SCOTUS, defend evangelical legislation, punish Democrats and minorities.
They're just now more overt about it since they got the numbers.
I think that’s unfair. There is a good chunk of stupid everywhere, in the US there are also a lot of people who exercise their right to be an asshole, just to prove that they can.
I remember many years ago reading a comparison of Mexican and US officials that while the Mexicans might be easily corruptible, you couldn't afford to bribe US officials.
These days turns out that a free motor home and airplane tickets will do the job pretty well!
In 1776 we won our independence from Royal rule and won the right to form our own government of the people, by the people and for the people, yet January 20th we’ll inaugurate our own King.
Lin Manuel Miranda’s King George was right, “… You’ll be back, da da da dat da”
Right?!?!
Remember when folks used to speak about John Roberts' deep concern about historical/legal precedence and the legacy of the Roberts SCOTUS.
Now it's "How far can we bend (or destroy) the rules for our dementia-addled fascist hero?"
The personification of Hubris, combined with a supreme detachment from reality and indifference to the suffering of American citizens. Supreme arbiters of the make believe world of Republicans and Religious Extremists.
So am I (another Anne). It’s not based on the Constitution, it certainly isn’t IN the Constitution, and it makes no sense. He could order Seal Team Six to assassinate all Dems in Congress and face no accountability.
As for me, I did not believe we'd really elect Donald Trump again.
I *couldn't* believe it.
I'm still flabbergasted! I understand the reasons pretty well, I think (they are not limited to "racism and sexism" but certainly begin there), but on a visceral level it doesn't feel real.
It was particularly mind-blowing that it was Roberts, who, we were told, was deeply concerned about protecting the Court's reputation as an honest jurisprudential broker, that drove the Court to heretofore unplumbed depths of gross partisanship and intellectual dishonesty.
i will argue that it is good to have faith in institutions and that it would be nice if more people did. particularly, y'know, people in charge of institutions
Me too -- I held out hope that at least a couple more of them (Roberts & Gorsuch, probably) would remember the ethics training they (and I) had (post-Watergate) and think about the Framers and do the right thing. But no.
Comments
Not saying next dem candidate can't be white guy. I'm saying we must be pragmatic, but also we can't compromise on gender, race, etc or we lose before we begin.
* "we" meaning "people that aren't in favor of totalitarianism".
But if you decide in advance that it *must* be some white dude, then you're just doing the fascists' job for them of shifting the Overton window regressively rightward. That's called Appeasement.
Expected Biden or Harris to win by a narrower margin than in 2020.
My own thread of errors would alas not fit in this margin
He neglected to tell us that he decides beforehand how he wants the game to turn out.
I gave 36 yrs of my life to the US Courts & couldn't be more disillusioned.
Resistance isn't futile & revolution is necessary.
🌊🇺🇸🇺🇦🌈🟧🏞️💙
I've done it so many times. And still I did it again. It wasn't until a week or two before the election that I realized Harris would lose. I expected the numbers to move, but they didn't.
Full statement here:
https://www.change.org/WeThePeople-DemandActionNow
https://bsky.app/profile/edroso.bsky.social/post/3lekuphob4c2b
https://upine.medium.com/the-vast-reach-of-right-wing-disinformation-fbcee2715db7
yes there were many people who died
they obviously did not vote in 2024
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2769034
Lockdowns didn’t hurt kids and young adults nearly as much as losing a family member to Covid would have. What policy should we have followed to reduce exposures and deaths?
1. I'm not dead.
2. So, everything turned out fine.
3. We over-reacted.
4. Joe Rogan told me Dr. Fauci was wrong.
Was it hard on kids? Yes. Would the death of a loved one not have been harder?
Trump admin knew abt cv19 in Nov 2019 & alerted Israel. Why they chose 2 do NOTHING 2 prepare us is beyond me.
And vilifying Fauci? Failures once they started blaming others.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.timesofisrael.com/us-alerted-israel-nato-to-disease-outbreak-in-china-in-november-report/amp/
And who was president when the schools reopened?
You're making a complex excuse to explain away a very simple thing: People are just really dumb.
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/12/20/nx-s1-5223440/louisiana-ban-public-health-promoting-covid-flu-mpox-vaccines-landry-rfk-jr-anti-vaccine
Was president then.
Money over people.
The lockdowns worked. Saved possibly millions of lives. Masks worked, the vaccine worked.
Putting money over people will never end well.
The French demonstrated this with a guillotine.
A lesson worth remembering.
We had 50 states, 12,000 school districts, and 330m people all setting their own COVID policies.
So what specifically "didn't work?"
Do you have access to some alternate timeline where the lockdowns didn't take place?
The point of anti-incumbency is to get new people in power. This wasn't what Trumpism was about.
* cough*
I hope there aren't people voting now who weren't old enough to vote in '24.
OK, that bit excepted, voters don't become sentient upon their 18th birthday.
"The dems" are ostentatiously, arrogantly out of touch. That's how you get more Trump.
I think the voters are arrogantly out of touch, and seem only capable of nagging and scolding over their own ignorance.
I did think we were gonna win. I did think it was gonna be enough. But I don't think we were stupid for thinking that.
after ten years of knowing trump on a national stage, people have an idea of what the score is suppose to be, and they chose hate
And like... why would someone expect that. It's really, really dumb. And yet!
For too many voters
And Thomas and Alito will retire.
Their scandal will "go away" and Trumpy Bear will put two new cretins in.
It’s not just about ideological disagreements or the usual ebb and flow of judicial philosophy.
This year made it painfully clear just how far the institution has strayed from impartiality and into the realm of overt political maneuvering.
I was half right.
If tfg doesn't make it to inauguration; I am going to give me full credit.🤞🛐
Meanwhile, he did absolutely nothing to actually stand up to the authoritarianism he warned about.
Pres Election Turnout of
Young Voters 18-29:
- 2024: 42%
- 2020: 50%
https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/11/circle-releases-preliminary-findings-about-youth-voting-patterns-in-2024-election
Oh me of massive faith 🙃
Delulu?
They're just now more overt about it since they got the numbers.
These days turns out that a free motor home and airplane tickets will do the job pretty well!
Lin Manuel Miranda’s King George was right, “… You’ll be back, da da da dat da”
https://youtu.be/eYYS91VCLok
Remember when folks used to speak about John Roberts' deep concern about historical/legal precedence and the legacy of the Roberts SCOTUS.
Now it's "How far can we bend (or destroy) the rules for our dementia-addled fascist hero?"
He is now Commander In Chief.
Surprised - No
I am so disappointed in how low so many Americans have fallen. we fall any lower - It will be 1940's Germany
As for me, I did not believe we'd really elect Donald Trump again.
I *couldn't* believe it.
I'm still flabbergasted! I understand the reasons pretty well, I think (they are not limited to "racism and sexism" but certainly begin there), but on a visceral level it doesn't feel real.
Hat tip to @abraham.bsky.social
*The guy who is right
Alito and Thomas will resign this year and be replaced by people even more evil, more corrupt, and less intelligent than themselves.
Sadly, this was always the Federalist Society’s plan.
L.E. Modesitt
"The Ethos Effect"