2024-11-06

Okay. Election crap. Lotta things didn't go the way I wanted them to yesterday. I waited until this morning to check the results so I could have one last night of decent(-ish) sleep. >sigh<

What I got right

The people I voted for in city, county, and state races did win their elections. My U.S. Congress choices for senator and representative also won. I rarely get all these right but I did this time.

Wider circle: A mixed bag

I had a mixed bag of successes and failures on city, county, and state initiatives. Marriage equality - at least as far as LGBT people go - is enshrined in the state constitution and after 16 years on the books, prop (H)8 has been repealed.

On the other hand, the California electorate - not as liberal as people make us out to be - decided that continuing the one remaining practice of legal enslavement that is still allowed in the U.S. Constitution is just a-okay. Peachy.

Also, don't raise the minimum wage in a state that's already expensive to live in. Screw poor people, I guess. Who needs store and restaurant workers anyway, right?

And then there's the big ~~GOP~~ Elephant in the room

I had hoped but was not sure that Harris would win (and she didn't) but I really thought she was at least going to win the popular vote. I was wrong. By a lot.

The non-maga conservatives will probably go with "people aren't ready for a woman as president... still" and "people aren't ready for a person of color as president... again". When the Leopards Eating Faces party comes for their Social Security and Medicare and wrecks whatever nest egg they've managed to save aside, they'll probably blame the Democrats for not appealing to them hard enough.

For their part, the libs are probably going to Monday-morning-quarterback how the Harris campaign failed to capitalize on all good will and excitement and money and endorsements from July onward, blah, blah, freaking blah. They'll probably also blame anyone who didn't vote or, if they did vote, didn't vote hard enough!

Then they'll have a go at any and all minority groups for the loss. Because that's how they do. They better do it fast, though, before Trump rounds up the various the minorities in all the racial, gender, sexual, and political categories into his concentration camps or deports them... or worse.

Upshot

But let's be real: white supremacy - supported and encouraged by patriarchy, plutocracy, and fascism - is the reason.

How to tell? Well, look at the various demographics and figure out which ones consistently voted for Trump.

Hint: It's the white people.

Sure, there are a lot of white people who voted for Harris. And, sure, there are a few people in all the other demographics who voted for the ones making a bee-line toward fascism but those are small numbers. White men and white women consistently and overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and... 2024.

Okay. Enough looking back... for now. My follow-up post looks forward.