Summary
Donald Trump and Republicans are falsely framing his 2024 election win as a historic “landslide” and sweeping mandate, despite the data showing otherwise.
Trump won the popular vote by just 1.6%, the smallest margin for a winning president since 1968, and his 307 electoral votes rank low in U.S. history.
Crucial Senate and House gains were limited, with Republicans relying on gerrymandering for their narrow House majority.
This exaggeration of victory serves to justify potential power expansions, but the facts debunk claims of an unprecedented or overwhelming mandate.
It’s time to nip that lie in the bud
Frankly, I’m sick and tired of nipping MAGA lies in the bud every day. It’s been the better part of a decade of this bullshit already… I fucking hate that my countrymen chose this for us for the next four years. Fuck every Trump voter, but a much bigger fuck you goes out to all the jackasses that stayed home on the 5th. You’re complicit, and I don’t give a shit why you think fascism is “okay” as long as you got to punish the Democratic Party for your grievances.
Exactly, until media reframes this from distraction politics to a call to action none of this matters. Wake me up when we have a functioning government again.
I’ll be focusing locally on building mutual aid networks and contributing as much as I can to local policy and governance.
I’m sick and tired of anywhere near half of the voting public choosing him.
Doesn’t matter. He won the presidency. He has demonstrated his entire life that he will just do whatever he wants and dare the world to stop him. (Narrator: They haven’t.) Now he also has near-complete criminal immunity once he’s inaugurated. He’s already stacking up appointees who are going to follow his orders.
“B-b-but Senate confirmation --” Shut the fuck up. Whoever he wants to be in charge of departments is going to be in charge of departments. Don’t appoint anyone else, throw “Acting” in front of the title, done and done. What is anyone going to do about it? Fucking nothing.
Maybe if we correct the Republicans they’ll listen. Yeah, that’ll work.
Republicans are trying to gaslight us by calling Trump’s win a landslide. The point isn’t to correct them; it’s to make sure we don’t believe the lies they tell us.
The problem is that in practical terms it is a landslide, because of the way our shitty system is setup. They have control of all 3 branches now.
Yes but we shouldn’t act like it gives them any sort of moral authority, or that future elections are unwinnable.
Oh Republicans have zero, no scratch that negative 100 moral authority.
As for winning future elections it really depends on if Democrats make some massive changes.
It’s not gonna win anything and we shouldn’t act like it will.
Still, no reason not to be correct about it. He’s gonna try and make his delusions national news, so, gotta have the reality out there.
Maybe the media themselves shouldn’t have been running around talking about the absolutely massive and devastating defeat the Democrats suffered the day after the election… Maybe they should have waited for all the results?
Nahhh… Clicks clicks clicks! It’s all that matters! Money money money!
All corporate media:
That really doesn’t make me feel that much better about it, but I guess we’re mostly trying to find the corn in the shit on this one, so thanks?
They already have power. They don’t need a justification for expansion they’ll just do it.
Yes and no. All power, ultimately, depends on compliance. Even autocracies. There would not have been a “divine right of kings” if kings did not have a pressing need to assure people of their right to hold power.
The “mandate” narrative is aimed at convincing everyone that their objections are in the minority. That even if they stand up and say something, they’ll simply be the odd one out.
Power ultimately depends on violence. Violence can create compliance and vice versa, but the violence and compliance with violence is what’s fundamental. These politicians are very capable of overwhelming violence. It’s a crucial part of their function. It’s been the norm as long as states have existed.
There wouldn’t have been the “divine right of kings” if kings were unable to torture and murder people.
The state’s ability to use violence is entirely contingent on compliance.
There are approximately 1.3 million police officers in the US. That number doubles if you were to throw in the entire US military. That is about 1% of the adult population of the US (~260 million).
The only reason state violence is possible is because people accept it. If every time a police officer tried to arrest someone, an entire neighbourhood rolled out to stop them, no amount of military grade weaponry would prevent a total breakdown of government control. This is what is meant by “policing by consent”. It is the understanding that policing only works because people consent to be policed.
One could reasonably interpret the entirety of the modern era to be the upper class’s quest to push us as close to that point as possible without quite getting there. They’ve already pushed it pretty god damn far with very little meaningful resistance. If the public’s line in the sand is on the far side of fascism then that line may as well not exist at all.
Well, yes, exactly. It’s all about creating sufficient compliance, something they’ve gotten very good at.
Who cares he still fucking won. We are fucked regardless.
That’s not going to fly when the entire country saw him sweep the swing states. That’s part of the fuckiness of the EC, he only won by a tiny margin but visually state after state went red on the TV.
That’s pedantic. They won the trifecta of government. The definition of landslide is academic at this point.
the point is to wake us up to that our resistance coalitions needn’t be small
resistance coalitions
Good luck with that. The last chance for an organized resistance was the 90’s before we put in mass surveillance. It’s game set and match at this point. The only chance now is maybe the hardcore blue states succeed, but that didn’t end well last time either.
the best time was 25 years ago. the second best time is right now. it’s a lot like planting a tree.
A resistance coalition isn’t insurrection when it’s a left leaning coalition.
The “resistance” is ineffective and fractured because its supposed leaders are largely genocidal.
who? name names. who are these resistance leaders aiding in genocide. and don’t say joe biden. if you say joe biden you don’t understand what we’re talking about.
this is a decentralized movement of care. any weakness we have is that we’re uncoordinated because we lack any leadership
It might only be pedantic/academic if the term was only being used in an educational setting. Instead, it’s bandied about nearly every day since the election, and it does need to stop.
It’s not academic, it’s relative to the various examples he cites in the article
Have you seen the crowd in his 2016 inauguration? It was huuuge. Or how he fit 80,000 people in a 20,000 capacity venue.
People should know by now that he exaggerate everything including the size of his mushroom penis.
Fungi are not amused by association with Trump’s penis.
This is one of the reasons I hate talking in abstracts. I hear people talking about landslides, but what does that mean numerically? If there was a vote with a pool of 10 people and a candidate got 6 of those is that a landslide? Is 9/10 a landslide?
Some people talk “landslide” but without knowing what that means, it makes it hard to have a conversation.
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Wait, did a major outlet just use “lie” in its headline?
I’m impressed. Even for an op-ed.
Anyway, this cannot be repeated enough. I’m already sick of people trying to say it’s “historic”, it’s a “landslide”, etc…give me a break.
Who cares about the label? The only descriptor that matters is “President-elect Trump” and that one is not in dispute. The rest is either semantics or copium that doesn’t impact anything in a material fashion.
Well, I can only speak for myself in that terms and facts matter. And I’m not one for letting fascists frame the narrative; they’ll keep pushing the Overton window and pushing and pushing…
Trump won the popular vote by just 1.6%, the smallest margin for a winning president since 1968…
What about Trump and Bush 2 both losing the popular vote yet winning the presidency?
It’s ok for liberals to criticize trump, but revealing the sham of “democracy” is a few steps too far.
I like how both the right and the left now use “liberals” to insult people not politically aligned with them.
And I thought the word lost all meaning back when Rush Limbaugh used it to mean anyone to the left of him.
Its not an insult, per se. Its a categorization of the individual’s beliefs, and also an understanding of what, exactly, our system is, in the US.
And yes, folks on the left don’t like liberals all that much, ie:
“The White liberal is the worst enemy to America and the worst enemy to the Black man. Let me first explain what I mean by this White liberal. In America there’s no such thing as Democrats and Republicans anymore. That’s antiquated. In America you have liberals and conservatives. This is what the American political structure boils down to among Whites. The only people who are still living in the past and thinks in terms of “I’m a Democrat” or “I’m a Republican” is the American Negro. He’s the one who runs around bragging about party affiliation and he’s the one who sticks to the Democrat or sticks to the Republican, but White people in America are divided into two groups, liberals and Republicans…or rather, liberals and conservatives. And when you find White people vote in the political picture, they’re not divided in terms of Democrats and Republicans, they’re divided consistently as conservatives and as liberal. The Democrats who are conservative vote with Republicans who are conservative. Democrats who are liberals vote with Republicans who are liberals. You find this in Washington, DC. Now the White liberals aren’t White people who are for independence, who are liberal, who are moral, who are ethical in their thinking, they are just a faction of White people who are jockeying for power the same as the White conservatives are a faction of White people who are jockeying for power. Now they are fighting each other for booty, for power, for prestige and the one who is the football in the game is the Negro. Twenty million Black people in this country are a political football, a political pawn an economic football, an economic pawn, a social football, a social pawn…” - Malcom X
And of course, Reich Wingers don’t like liberals all that much, because they are the less authoritarian (Not un-authoritarian, mind you) than they are.
When I was younger I thought the saying was, “nip it in the butt”
I dunno it always made sense to me.
Anywho carry on
Please explain what nip it in the butt means.
I thought it was “nip it in the butt” as well. Listening to Les Mis 10th Anniversary Edition, the way the gentleman who plays Javert always sounded like “butt” to me as well.
To answer the other commenters question of what would that mean: for years, I thought it meant “nip” like a dog will nip your finger, and “in the butt” was like, “you’d pinch em in the butt” to get them to stop whatever they were doing.
Also thought the line “Burnin’ up his fuel, out there, alone” in Rocket Man was “Burnin’ up the atmos-PHERE, he’s gone” for years before a friend corrected me.
