A pygmy hippopotamus named Moo Deng outperformed the pollsters by correctly predicting a Trump victory. Virtually all of the professional prognosticators anticipated either a Harris win or a race that would be too close to call on Tuesday night.

The pollsters have once again been exposed as little more than a glorified Rasputin class, soothsayers whispering into the ears of the elite in Washington and New York. “US election ‘oracle’ predicts surprise Kamala Harris win,” one representative news article declared on Sunday, referring to the widely touted Selzer poll finding Harris leading in Iowa. Trump has since won the state by over 10 points.

Those Rasputins and their council of fools made well over $1.5 billion from the presidential election, advising and advertising Harris to defeat. Whatever we’ll learn about why the Vice President failed so badly, one thing is clear: her campaign advisors don’t know America.

Humility seems in order: about the limits of polling, about the Democratic Party’s lack of working class appeal, about Kamala’s performance in the popular vote, and about the major media’s obliviousness. Instead of humility, though, the “strategic” political class are in full-on We Did Nothing Wrong mode.

Despite the Democrats losing the popular vote in the election to the Republicans for the first time since 2004 - and by more than five million votes - many pro-Kamala Harris social media users aimed their frustrations at pro-Palestine voters, specifically Arabs and Muslims, on Wednesday.

Even if Harris had managed to win Michigan in the electoral college, which is home to a significant Muslim and Arab voting bloc, she would have still lost the election.

"Asian, Black, Hispanic and white voters all moved towards Trump. "Harris only increased her vote share among the over-65s and with white college-educated women," the FT report said.

One X account user posted: "Fuck Gaza at this point! And I mean that from the bottom of my ass! They at harris rally screaming every time she speak and never at a trump rally! Good! Let Israel run wild on them."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22226888

Matthew Sledge
November 6 2024, 1:47 p.m.

I thought fascism was a Republican thing 🤯

Full text of statement:

"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. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defend the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right.

Today, while the very rich are doing phenomenally well, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and we have more income and wealth inequality than ever before. Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago.

Today, despite an explosion in technology and worker productivity, many young people will have a worse standard of living than their parents. And many of them worry that Artificial Intelligence and robotics will make a bad situation even worse.

Today, despite spending far more per capita than other countries, we remain the only wealthy nation not to guarantee health care to all as a human right and we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We, alone among major countries, cannot even guarantee paid family and medical leave.

Today, despite strong opposition from a majority or Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government's all out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children.

While the big money interests and well paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much political power? Probably not.

In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions.

Stay tuned."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21702392

Democrats bet on appeals to neoconservatives — including war criminals like Dick Cheney — and touted harsh border policies, bolstering rather than challenging Republican anti-immigrant frameworks.

Kamala Harris may have relied on women to vote for abortion rights, but she promised little more than a potential return to the flawed and insufficient norm of Roe v. Wade, at best. Like President Joe Biden, she supported a genocide and failed to distinguish herself from extremist Zionists like Trump.

For Democrats, appealing to the right has been a disaster of realpolitik, especially in an electoral system that structurally favors Republicans anyway. But what’s worse, Democratic strategies have failed and harmed the most vulnerable communities both in the U.S. and those who suffer under the yoke of U.S.-backed wars.

There is an urgent need for social justice movement organizing, growing unions and union power, antagonism rather than acquiescence to existing power structures, and expansive networks of care and support. The most powerful social movements of the last decades did not primarily build on support from Democratic leadership under Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden. Nor did they collapse during Trump’s first tenure.

What are your predictions for his Trump's presidency will go?

Overall, I believe we will see a continuation of the trends from 2017-2020, but an increase or intensification of said trends due to Trump's experience in presidency and increased confident position.

• increased deregulation and cutting funding to regulatory bodies across the board
• federal workforce reduction
• immigration workforce reduction, reviving the spike in the backlog of pending immigration cases
• dramatic increase in tariffs. This has many implications, most importantly negative impact on domestic consumers, increase in consumer prices, but also economic war with certain players like China, and causing economic suffering to certain partners such as Mexico.
• Ukraine: this one is hard to predict, as trump is unpredictable on those. There's a good chance trump will push zelensky towards accepting a peace deal with Russia, but equally likely that he will up US' involvement in Ukraine (contrary to what Trump claims)
• Israel / Palestine: Biden admin was the first to show the kind of hesitant rhetoric we see today towards supporting Israel. Trump will reverse this trend, and we will go back to standard neocon Israel supporting. He will likely push for Israel to take over the west bank as a convoluted effort for "peace".
• interest rates: I am less certain of this, but there's a decent chance that trump pushes interest rates lower to catalyze short term economic growth
• job market: if interest rates drop, we will see a short term rally for the job market, especially in big tech. Long term ramifications are tough to predict
• border security: my unpopular / controversial opinion is that trump and biden admins are very similar on this. Although public sentiment about the border issues will likely shift, I do not expect a significant material change or major departure from biden policy.
• Healthcare: Trump didn't make any big moves in 2017-2020. I cannot forecast anything here.
• Abortion issues: with Republicans likely securing Congress, a federal abortion regulation is possible but not certain. Support for some type of regulation is near unanimous among Republicans, but some oppose the degree. Trump himself has flip flopped on whether a federal ban is necessary. I expect that there will be some regulation, albeit limited.

What are your predictions and thoughts?

The billionaire CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has said it “really doesn’t matter” who wins the US presidential election, because both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will be good for Wall Street.

“I’m tired of hearing this is the biggest election in your lifetime. The reality is over time it doesn’t matter”, said BlackRock chief Larry Fink at an October 21 conference hosted by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, according to the Financial Times.

“It really doesn’t matter”, Fink reiterated. He revealed that, at BlackRock, “we work with both administrations and are having conversations with both candidates”.

BlackRock has $11.5 trillion assets under management, making it the biggest investment company on Earth.

Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press
November 6, 2024 updated 10:03 EST

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22207480

Carter Sherman, Noa Yachot and Andrew Witherspoon
Wed 6 Nov 2024 06.04 EST

All the takes are correct and yet they also miss the point.

Yes, it was insane for the Democrats to think they could win by running a soulless candidate, without a shred of progressive policy vision, pursuing endorsements from neocon war-hawks everybody hates, while arming and funding a genocide, and belittling and crushing those who have enough morality to protest it. It is enraging that the Democrats are so smug and blind to this.

But these are all just symptoms. The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned.

Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even basic steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee - things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future.

Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment. At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development.

The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of "mistake" but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital.

And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism. They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time - this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don't really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative.

So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of "converting" the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.

https://x.com/jasonhickel/status/1854107107743682797