I have every reason to expect to be disappointed by President Biden. A Democrat who has not endorsed the Green New Deal is a worry.
Equally, I cannot hide my pleasure that Trump has gone. These were some tweets from me last night, and this morning:
And this tweet, or rather the video embedded in it from Channel 4, wholly lacks objectivity and is fantastic:
‘This feels more like the end of a regime than the end of a democratically elected government.' - @mattfrei pic.twitter.com/jViSJ5j37H
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) November 7, 2020
I will have more to say on Biden and Harris, I have no doubt, but for now the overwhelming sense of relief that a fascist has been thrown out of office and that democracy of a sort can be saved is very strong indeed. In fact, even more so this morning than it was last night.
Phew, in a word.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Weird…. me, too. Last night was exhausted relief. This morning there is a spring in my step.
We would do well to remember this feeling. Biden will, no doubt, not be all that we hope for…. but he has saved us from Trump and we should not forget that.
Agreed
Surely fascists are thrown out by violence not by the ballot box? If they leave when ordered by the electorate or courts doesn’t that make them democratic?
That really is not worthy of comment, it’s so wrong
Of course you can be a fascist in a democracy
Anyone who thinks their nation is “exceptional” could be tarred with fascism that includes Obama, Johnson and Trump but that doesn’t make them real fascists. I don’t disagree that you can have fascists in a democracy, that is side stepping the issue. My point is: How many fascists when elected to power actually give it up via the ballot box? Isn’t that the acid test to join the ranks of Mussolini, Hitler, et al? Otherwise what’s the point of the word as surely the difference between the first three named above and the last two is quite obvious?
Has he accepted the result of the ballot box?
Is he still threatening violence?
Wasn’t this whole election about preventing his final assault on democracy?
I’m sorry – IO really think you are wrong here
With respect counting has not yet finished and the electoral college has not yet voted. Legal challenges needs to be determined by the Supreme Court. Trump is a narcissist, fantasist and won’t want to be seen leaving without kicking up a fuss. He doesn’t want to be a good loser. That doesn’t make him a fascist in my book. Just a mean spirited person. I agree it’s highly probable Biden will become president but there is a lot of ruin in a nation and this has further to go.
Sorry – but you ate pushing the boundaries of credibility for posting here now
I understand many many people are happy and relieved, me included, but over 70 million voted for the other guy. There is a significant job to be done to repair the damage that Trump has done to the US body politic. It remains to be seen whether the Republican Party will turn its back on Trumpism, the position in Congress is not so clear it, and the federal judiciary will bear his imprimatur for decades.
And those are some seriously concerning scenes in the middle of a pandemic – thousands of people crowding together, singing and shouting, even if they are outside and largely in masks. I am happy for them, but stay safe everyone.
The obvious hope is that the Republicans do become Republican again…
I have no liking for their party, but it was not fascist
Trump is still President for another 7 weeks, this is not over yet!
Agreed
But I still expect him to resign during that period so that Pence can grant him a presidential pardon
I suspect you’re right
I hadn’t thought of that particular arrangement – I expected him to just pardon himself on January 19, but it would be neater to get someone else to do it. I suspect other members of his inner circle (family, Barr, etc) will want pardons too.
But as I understand it, if it works, it that would only protect against prosecution for federal crimes. States (such as New York) could still prosecute for breaches of state laws.
And just how solvent is Trump anyway? Has any former president gone bankrupt?
You can only cross a wide river one stepping stone at a time. Biden is the first step, now we have to find the next one. One step won’t get us where we want to be, nor will trying to reach a stepping stone that is out of reach at the moment. If you have never read the mind blowing beautiful work of Stuart Kauffman then you should start right now. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman) He describes my stepping stones analogy as evolution finding the way through the “adjacent possible”…..the underlying processes of evolution also apply to politics.
There will be civil war in the Republican party. His loylists will keep blasting out the gospel of Trumpism. But the more sensible, looking to 2024, are already distancing themselves from his venomous presence. Pence has been very quiet, looking to be the candidate in four years time. If he is wise, he will be wanting the Rough Beast to slouch off quietly and with some semblance of dignity and grace, rather than damageing the Republican Party. on the The Murdoch media are turning against Trump. Other influential voices in the party are effectively telling the braying bully to STFU. To win in 2024, they know they need to capture more of the young vote, more of the Latino vote, more of the black vote, more of the suburban female vote. (There had been a small move to Trump among Latinos, mainly male and of Cuban heritage, but two thirds of the Latino vote had gone to Biden-Harris). Demographics will make it necessary for the Republicans to court the ethnic minorities if they are to hve any chance of winning. The likely Democratic candidate in 2024 (Biden has said he will only serve one term) is Harris, so long as her tenure of the Vice Presidency is successful. A Pence-Harris contest is quite probable in 2024, but Pence will have to keep the loyalty of the Trumpist Republicans and at the same time attract the Hispanics and women and young and blacks. No easy task for him.
Franco, Salazar, the Greek colonels and Pinochet all went without violence.
It’s the end of an ERROR
Richard, I’m curious about what you now make of your macroeconomic predictions for the Trump presidency made three days after the 2016 election – what turned out as you expected, how much of what you wrote do you think would have been happened with a second term, and for the things that turned out differently why do you think that was (aside from the pandemic, which obviously changed things)?
You thought that a Trump spending spree combined with tax cuts (mainly for the rich) would inevitably lead to inflation. There would be a two or three percentage point rise in interest rates and a massive boost to the financial services industry, which he would deregulate, leading to a debt boom.
The combination of a fiscal stimulus, tax cuts for the few, and increased rates would lead to increased poverty and an inflationary boom and then a massive bust.
To be fair, the pandemic did alter things greatly, and you did say it might not happen in four years but it would happen in eight, and fortunately we’ll never get to find out if that would have turned out to be correct.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/11/11/trumps-economic-incoherence/
I was right about the inflation – but it was only in asset prices
The effective denial of any benefit of the cuts to those on ordinary incomes – not least because the cuts went to such a narrow group that demand for real consumption of consumer goods was not impacted – meant that the inflation transmission mechanism to most prices did not exist
To that extent, I got it wrong
But I did not believe he would be quite so focussed in delivering gains to so few
What a nail biter that was?!!!
But I look at the huge black vote for the Democrats and I’m already thinking about their possible betrayal and how disappointed they might be in 4 year’s time.
Having said that progressives have learnt about how to get people out to vote for you. I am impressed with how they seemed to stick together (Labour please note).
The next thing they now have to learn however is how to truly change the country. Like yourself, I have little confidence in that – they still have quite a fight in the Senate.
At least the fight to overturn Roe versus Wade has been stalled again.
“He went on, “So to successfully elect a bloke who is about a hundred and forty years old just before a lengthy cold snap was a smart move.
“If all goes to plan Kamala will be sworn in next January and we’ll get to see the look on Donald Trump’s face when he is forced to hand over the keys to the White House to the much younger, much more talented, mixed-race daughter of immigrants”
https://newsthump.com/2020/11/07/united-states-now-just-one-particularly-cold-winter-away-from-first-female-president/
I’m getting really worried about the people commenting in zerohedge…..at the moment, I think about 99.99% of them are at serious risk of a coronary, or at the very least, a stroke!
And I think you are seriously underestimating the vagaries of the electoral college system….There is talk of several states adopting two sets of EC voters, those states with a democrat governor but a republican legislature..it could come down to the president of the senate deciding who gets to be POTUS (currently, Mike Pence is president of the senate) !
I really don’t think that is going to happen….
There is a lot of work going-on, by a lot of people, to ensure that it does.
Have a read of this, one of a very large amount of organisations/people pushing that agenda: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/wait_just_a_minute_some_very_good_news_may_be_coming.html
It may well be a right-of-centre website, but it is hugely influential. It is read by several million people a day, and contributes to a wide variety of other websites and news media.
And it is one of the calmer sites. There are many others pushing violence, and even a few pushing revolution.
I’ve read several implying that Biden is just a backdoor for a minorities takeover and that Harris is intended to be president.
If you want to see the calibre of the people who voted for Trump, look-up a guy called Jordan Klepper on youtube (please ensure that there are no breakables nearby during your viewing and that Wife/Children/Dog are not within earshot).
I have several bottles of “tranquilliser” available……
So far the judiciary is buying none of it
Maybe that’s because none of it is real
I listened to the David Frost 1987 interview with Joe Biden on Radio 4 last night – Biden came across as a decent and thoughtful human being.
And, at some point over the weekend, I heard Joe Biden talk about jobs and green economy, clean water resources, infrastructure etc. I don’t know if this was since the election or a clip from during the campaign. If it was during the campaign, there was no reporting of it over here – a number of us had opined that this was what he needed to get out in order to connect with the working man. Hopefully there will be more of it. If he can get that message out, he can possibly move the Senate even if, as is likely, the Republicans will hold the majority.
“It may well be a right-of-centre website, but it is hugely influential. It is read by several million people a day, and contributes to a wide variety of other websites and news media.”
Right of centre? More like right whinge grievance warrior drivel John. If it’s influential, it’ll only be with people on the same level of paranoia and self pity. Remember, the real voter fraud in the US has been the voter suppression techniques used for decades against African Americans and others who the Republicans know won’t vote for them. Oh, and the gerrymandering of electoral districts which has also been going on for decades.
Agreed
Several facts remain though.
Biden is not President-Elect, yet.
He won’t be until 14th December when the Electoral College Electors formally cast their vote for him.
Then, in January, the new congress meets to count the electoral college votes and formally declare the winner.
The elections in some states (Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona) are close enough to enter the requirement for a mandatory recount.
Remember the 2000 election, when the Supreme Court ruled that vote cards from Florida didn’t have clean hole punches and were invalid, which gave the state to George W. Bush and resulted in Al Gore conceding the election in December?
0.5%…..is the margin between candidates in some states…..
Unless Trump concedes, this is going to get very ugly. He probably won’t.
That could be correct John, I agree. A lot will depend on whether Republicans start backing away from him, or back his lies. If enough of them, not just the senators who so far (disgracefully) have backed him, disown him, and the saner elements in his wretched party turn on him, I think he’s finished. If not, then as you say things could get very nasty.
With such an unstable and immature personality, who knows? Like a little kid, if his support drains away he’ll probably stamp off in a sulk and then skulk in his lair in Florida, oozing self pity.
Oh, that’s quite right.
But you’ll note that the same gerrymandering is creeping-in here!
And I consider it hugely ironic that a country (USA) that trumpets democracy to the entire world, has made, and is making, such a pigs-ear of its own democracy.
Still, that’s what you get with an electoral system designed to ensure that slave owners get the govt they want!
I youtubed a conversation between a reporter and a Trump Fanatic last night, in which the fanatic was proud of the Trump tax reductions. When told they went to the rich and corporations, not the poor, the guy went ballistic and called the reported some quite nasty names. The DisUnited States of America?
I assume you mean the proposed boundary changes John, which will mean the tories have even more of an advantage under FPTP? I wouldn’t put it beyond them to copy voter suppression techniques from the Republicans either.
Their democracy, is, like ours, in a real mess. Which does make it difficult to lecture other countries about their democratic deficits, agreed. And of course, it lends succor to dictators and authoritarians everywhere. Which is why it is so important for the Republicans to stop supporting Trump and insist on a proper transition of power.
As for the electoral college, I didn’t think it was deigned to help salve owners; I thought it was designed (when the USA was far smaller) to enable less well populated states to have the same representation as bigger ones i.e to avoid a tyranny of the majority. I’m not an expert though, so could be wrong.
And now of course, it lends far too much weight to sparsely populated areas with a large percentage of very right wing voters in them. Giving the Republicans far more power than they deserve. Exactly like FPTP here.
As for the Trump fanatic, what can you say? I think these people are now beyond any attempt at engagement by reasonable people.
They are a dangerous menace. Just like the idiot who wrote that article you posted above who lives in an alternative universe where the truth is exactly what he wants it to be.
Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, just stated he is looking forward to a Donald Trump second term after investigations of widespread voter fraud were concluded.
Doesn’t sound like he’s going to go quietly!
I agree
But his support is trickling away….in the GOP