Election Day – Get Ur Democracy On!

by

by Ugh

It's here!  God it's like Christmas morning only without the presents, joy, holiday cheer, tree, decorations, and your crabby Uncle that nobody likes.  Okay maybe not so much.  Perhaps more like Lady Macbeth and the damn spot, at least with respect to the campaign.  

My prediction – Hillary wins with 300+ electoral votes and Trump gives a mostly gracious – although at times caustic - concession speech.  So I guess there could be some joy and holiday cheer.  Senate is either 50/50 or 51-49 in favor of GOP.  In the case of the latter we get 4 years of Mitch McConnell's jowls all over my Teevee.  Yuck.

I can't wait for 2020!

Anyway – go vote and open thread!  

(and if any of the other front pages want to add to this or take it down and put up your own thread – go right ahead!)

UPDATE:  Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkk!

120 thoughts on “Election Day – Get Ur Democracy On!”

  3. I voted early! (Out of town conference which got scheduled for this week. Grrr!) So I’m ahead of the game on that.
    I’ve got both local and national wishes for this non-Christmas:
    Nationally: the bigger disaster Trump sees, the better. If he at least comes close to losing Georgia and Texas, maybe my party will figure out that it needs to return to sanity. Losing the Senate might help with that.
    Locally: I’ve got the opposite problem to the nation. I’m in a fairly Democratic area (like most of non-rural California is). Mostly moderates, which in California means fewer Republicans these days. But last time the Democrats nominated someone far enough left that a Republican not only made it thru the TopTwo primary but won the state Assembly seat. She’s a fiscal conservative (albeit not an extreme one), but socially tolerant: pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, etc.
    This time, we’ve got a different but similar Democrat on the ballot. I’m hoping my Assemblywoman doesn’t get swept out in the anti-Trump surge. We are starting to get sane Republicans emerging at the local level again. And I’d like to see them rewarded by getting elected and re-elected.

  4. wj – it would be nice if the GOP could return to sanity, especially if they are going to continue to control the House through at least 2022, but I don’t think a Trump disaster would be the catalyst.
    Instead, he will have lost because he is not a “true conservative,” and Hillary cheated, and because illegal immigrants voted, etc. etc.
    I don’t think the modern GOP is capable of introspection and substantial change, at least not in the short run (that being the next 12 years or so). The hater-wing of the party is too numerous and thus too powerful to condone any change.
    That doesn’t mean they can’t win the next Presidential election – hell they might win this one, and if not they probably would have had they nominated any single one of the other candidates running.
    Odds are Hillary will be in a worse position in 2020 than she is in now – that just seems to be the way of things for Presidents running for re-election. Unless the economy is growing like gangbusters, the underlying resentment will still be there, and again if the GOP can manage to nominate someone reasonably less repulsive than Trump, then they could win.
    OTOH, I don’t see why someone just as repulsive as Trump who does a good job of pushing the same buttons he does couldn’t win the GOP nomination in 2020.

  5. The good news is that my morning commute was a breeze. Lots of people off today. The bad news is that my trash will still be at the curb when I get home. It only occurred to me as I closed the door behind me last night while coming in after taking the trash out.

  6. Good luck, you all. I’ll be up all night watching, and will check in here from time to time to see if anybody’s posting.

  7. I hope that, faced with the words “TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT” in the ballot box, many, many people, despite their response in the polls, will think to themselves: “Really? Do I really think this is a great idea?” and just not push the button for him.

  8. Ugh,I suspect your estimate of 12 years is about right. I base that on the fact that we here in California got a head start on the drive to total insanity, so we may well be ahead in the return as well.

  10. Count, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Nor, if you prefer, was it burned in a day.
    Back in my youth, I came across a book called Grooks. Little verse aphorisms, one of which stuck with me:

    “Put up in a place where it’s easy to see
    The cryptic admonishment TTT
    When you feel how depressingly slowly you climb
    It’s well to remember that Things Take Time”

  12. bon chance, america.
    Hmmph. I think this is definitely a situation where the more traditional and standard bon courage should be used.

  14. it would be nice if the GOP could return to sanity
    Seriously, what is wrong with McMullen?
    Everybody talking about how they wish there was some alternative to Trump. Well, there’s your guy.
    Would I want him to be POTUS? No, not really. I’m not a conservative, I don’t agree with him on a lot of points.
    Would it freak me the hell out if he were to be POTUS? No, not at all.
    I really do see the roots of the whole (R) decline in Nixon’s ’72 campaign.
    Vote for us, we hate hippies. Been like that ever since.
    That’s my analysis.
    I think this is definitely a situation where the more traditional and standard bon courage should be used.
    Well said, and noted.

  17. The excerpt below jumped out at me while I was reading this. I can’t fathom WTF this guy is talking about.

    In Manassas, where there is both a sizable immigrant population and support for Trump, James Bowers, 72, said working-class
    Americans like himself have seen their personal liberties erode with a Democrat in the White House.
    “These eight years are the worst eight years I’ve seen in my life,” Bowers said. “It’s become a dictatorship, and if Hillary wins, she’ll continue that dictatorship.”

  18. He meant that part of the Constitution that guarantees his feelings shall not be hurt.
    Stand in line, Dagwood.

  19. Vote for us, we hate hippies and forced bussing. Been like that ever since.
    Fixed it for you.
    wj,
    Certainly there can be a “sane” GOP, but it will be a rump party, and unable to effectively project its policies (whatever the f those are)at a national level.
    The vision of Bloomberg-Friedman for a “center” (right) party simply has not, and will not catch on.
    There are fairly obvious reasons for this failure.

  21. hsh, Marty has said a few times that Obama is a dictator. As far as I can recall, he’s never really backed it up, except for maybe executive orders…?

  23. Grooks
    Piet Hein FTW!
    Everything’s either concave or -vex
    So whatever you dream will be something with sex.

  25. Sam Wang has his Geek’s Guide to the Election up, downloadable & printable. Particularly important:

    How To Know When The Fat Lady Sings
    Surprising results in certain Eastern states would suggest that results differ from pre-election polls. Possible causes include biases such as unexpected turnout effects, unrepresentative models by pollsters, or missing Trump or Clinton voters coming out of the woodwork.
    Early warnings for a larger-than-expected Clinton win: North Carolina (closing time 7:30 pm, polling median at Clinton +1%) and New Hampshire (closing time 7:30-8:30pm, Clinton +1%). New Hampshire is a homogeneous and quickly-reporting state. Clinton wins in these two states would indicate that she is at or above her pre-election polling performance. If Clinton
    loses these states, tonight may be a nail-biter.
    Trump has a reasonable path to win if he takes three of the following four states: Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

    also note:

    Bug-eating watch: if Clinton wins Texas or Trump gets above 240 EV, one bug each.

  26. Obama is a dictator
    he can’t even do that right.
    he allowed the election to happen! he plans to step down in two months! he didn’t jail or kill his opponents! he never made Sharia law mandatory! guns are still legal!
    worst. dictator. ever.

  28. Doc, thanks for Sam Wang excerpt; I have fivethirtyeight interactive map up, but this quick note is very helpful.

  29. “These eight years are the worst eight years I’ve seen in my life,” Bowers said. “It’s become a dictatorship, and if Hillary wins, she’ll continue that dictatorship.”
    Translation: He’s black, she’s a woman. Oh, the horror.

  30. As a long time plain vanilla-raging red Leftist, I deem this sound advise.
    The only way I’m voting Clinton is if my sibling texts me in the next hour saying they’ve decided increasing the number after Trump’s name by one is needful to show their support for Republican judicial appointees despite their hatred of the candidate. Barring that eventuality, voting-swapping will proceed as planned.

  35. This is incredibly worrying. The New York Times is saying Trump has a 59% chance of winning the presidency.

  39. Time to binge-watch The Man In The High Castle again. Just in case you need to get acclimated to “the new normal”.

  40. it ain’t over, but it ain’t looking good.
    no matter how this plays out, I really don’t feel like this is my country. I don’t feel like I belong here, and I have nowhere else.
    I’m profoundly ashamed of this nation. I don’t know who we are anymore.

  41. We’re a nation of scared children with access to nuclear weapons, Russell. Never forget, when it comes down to it, vast swaths of this country are more than willing to swap liberty in exchange for a bully’s promise that he’ll beat up whoever is hurting us, no matter the consequences.

  42. russell, I know exactly how you feel, it’s exactly how millions of us felt after the Brexit vote, and for most of the same reasons. I feel for you, and for all of us.

  46. Time to binge-watch The Man In The High Castle again. Just in case you need to get acclimated to “the new normal”.
    I’m pretty sure “the new normal” is way more “the new normal” than I need. I think I’ll binge-watch Freaks and Geeks.

  47. I feel sick. Were the polls off? Two of the remaining battelground states are voter suppression states. If the Republicans make the next Supreme Court appontments, representative government is over here.

  48. Nate Silver on FiveThirtyEight always gave Trump much more chance than other pollsters, but still gave him only a 28.6% probability when 538 shut up shop. But that was versus single figures from most others.

  58. Thanks Ugh, I thought that might be it but couldn’t make sense of the Nevada mention. However, I see her path now looks almost non-existent, so I guess I don’t need to understand every arcane detail.

  59. Senate is gone – just called Wisconsin against Feingold.
    So we are going to either test whether Clinton can get a SCOTUS nominee through a GOP controlled Senate or a Trump Presidency…..
    I’d take a deal of an 8 member supreme court until 2021 in exchange for a Clinton win.

  62. Sorry I meant that it looks like we need Nevada or maybe Michigan. And I was despairing that it could all come to Nevada.

  65. It seems lots of people missed that Trump’s continual pounding on a “rigged” system and things being stolen from him is that was a key GOTV mechanism for him. They were rightly concerned this would cause problems should Trump lose (and he still might….), but ISTM it drove a lot of people who might not otherwise have voted to the polls to ensure that the election wasn’t stolen from Trump.

  66. I’d take a deal of an 8 member supreme court until 2021 in exchange for a Clinton win.
    Before tonight, I might have taken you up on that. Had it been up to us.

  68. I say they’re my friends, not because I know them, but because they make me feel better. They are wonderful, hopeful people.

  69. She does need Wisconsin – Tapper just said on CNN all the electoral projections had her winning Wisconsin and that Clinton didn’t set foot in the state since winning the Democratic Primary.

  75. Not sure you can give all of Johnson’s votes to Trump in the absence of a Johnson run. Probably depends on the state.

  76. I’m considering going to bed.
    I’m so sorry you guys, this is looking just unbelievably awful. I’ve no doubt we’ll all discuss the implications in the coming weeks, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Canada receives many requests for citizenship – in fact coincidentally just as I was typing that I heard on the TV that the Canadian Immigration website has crashed! Somebody’s going to have to stage an intervention on the Count or there could be big trouble ahead….

  79. I guess we now have to rely on the GOP orthodoxy Trump went off the reservation on, like LGBT rights and maybe abortion rights?
    Can we hope he nominates someone to SCOTUS that’s not Sam Alito part 2?

  80. is it too late to cut the confederacy loose?
    I used to be agin it but I’m for it now. (Please can you adopt VA? We did right!)

  85. America you fucking idiots. I woke up from a stress dream where I discovered my one year old walking around the (non existent) swimming pool next door, but couldn’t fetch her without locking myself out of the house, slightly panicked, and thought I’d just check in on Clinton’s 4% poll lead. Now I can’t get back to sleep.
    2016 will surely go down as one of the most awful years in history.

  87. Sorry, it could be a 270-268 trump win because of Maine’s electoral vote split, but looking like a trump blowout.

  91. Looks as though Clinton will win the popular vote while losing the electoral college comprehensively.
    With the benefit of hindsight, she seems to have spent a lot of time and money in the wrong states. Though whether that really mattered…
    The next four years are going to be… different.
    I’m not sure how a president Trump will meet the expectations of those who voted for him other than the xenophobia thing.

  92. No votes reported out of Lebanon County, PA? That was one of the counties where the machines were showing straight democrat ticket when the votes were cast R. Hmmm. And the county is apparently 53% R to 33% D. OTOH,the total number of precincts not reporting statewide seems evenly divided between “red” and “blue” counties. This is going to be close.

  94. This is a bad night to be alone. But on the other hand at least I’m gay and alone in California. Many hugs to brothers and sisters in scarier states.

  97. The chumps who voted for He, Trump will now have 4 more years of feeling overlooked, disrespected, and screwed by The Establishment. Only The Establishment will now be He, Trump and the three Little Trumps — populists of the first order.
    Marty will no doubt enjoy the cheap and fabulous medical care he will have, now that we libruls have been properly chastised. So that’s the upside, I suppose.
    –TP

  99. I wonder if any of those Republicans who rejected Trump (McCain, Graham) would caucus with the Dems? Wonder if there are enough to take control?

  101. I wonder if any of those Republicans who rejected Trump (McCain, Graham) would caucus with the Dems? Wonder if there are enough to take control?
    Not. A. Chance.

  104. Habemus (o)possum (salatamque)!
    Pater non dimittet illis quippe enim scierunt quid fecerunt.
    Lucernas interientes tota in America reconcepturas non videbimus nostra aetate.

  106. “But on the other hand at least I’m gay and alone in California. ”
    And soon you’ll be able to get legally stoned! No, not that kind of stoning….

  108. When NV drops by to say I told you so, as he should,
    i’m going to hunt down and drown anyone gloating over this. too many people’s lives are going to be utterly fucked because of this.

  109. I literally felt like I had been concussed last night – and I mean literally. Now I’m just kind of numb and hoping my worst fears don’t come true.
    Maybe Trump will defy expectations and be at least not horrible. Maybe he’ll be horrible but so incompetent that he doesn’t really get much done, and a wave sweeps both chambers in 2 years, with Trump out in 4 (or less).
    Fnck…

  110. Maybe Trump will defy expectations and be at least not horrible.
    every stupid, cruel or retrograde idea you’ve ever heard out of the GOP: Trump just approved it.

  111. Loooong theory.
    For a few decades Western political thought has been dominated by economic rationalist ideas (At least in the US, UK, Australia, IMF, Eurozone, CNN, NBC…). First taking over the right wing with Reagan and Thatcher, then adopted by Clinton, Blair et. al. (Hawke and Keating in Australia) who won their elections and ran their governments as “serious” pro-business left wing parties. Pro-market, pro-competition, anti-regulation.
    On either side other groups co-operated with the dominant business interests to try to keep the really nasty business interests out and hope to occasionally extract something addressing their actual issues. I’m thinking of evangelicals, possibly pro-gun folks, unions, pro-immigrants, anti-immigrants, environmentalists, minorities and so on. These groups were occasionally given small compromise wins (DADT, half-assed abortion restrictions) but were mostly ignored. The economy was what mattered and there was never quite enough time, votes or money to “cater to special interests”.
    Come 2008 the GFC gave this economic consensus a serious kicking worldwide. These serious people hadn’t known what they were doing. Lots of people got hurt. Over the next few years the response to the GFC (almost but not quite everywhere) showed very clearly that what was important was looking after banks and big business, and lots of people got angry. (Tea Party, Occupy, Syriza in Greece…)
    2016 is where that’s really come to a head. Revolutions on all sides that were unthinkable a few years before, with Trump and Bernie. Brexit and Corbyn. Arguably Trudeau. And in Australia a general move away from anyone that looks like a major party.
    On the left those reactions were squashed (Occupy), excluded (Bernie, Corbyn) or didn’t have enough focus or critical mass.
    On the right those reactions have been pretty unopposed (it looks to me, the GOP has been dancing to the Tea Party’s tune since Bush) and have been much more successful than anyone expected. Including themselves.
    So what? So the “centrist” economic consensus is discredited, but that’s getting pinned on “Left” that hasn’t actually had serious power. That Left is very popular, just might be 50% +1 popular, but only if it distinguishes itself from the corporatist centre.

  112. You gotta feel sorry for Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. They were certain they’d get to swoop in on the 2020 contest and pick over the bones of what was left of the GOP. Trump’s victory has slammed the door in their faces.

  113. Why do I get the feeling that we’re about to find out what would have happened if Gollum had not fallen into Mount Doom.

  115. We have to stay strong, take care of our sisters and brothers, especially the ones who face the most harm, and fight like hell. I’m not going to tolerate nihilists.

  116. Well, only one (the middle one) is a (distorted) Bible quote, the first only works properly in German* and the last is August 1914.
    I forgot: amentia brevis, paenitentia longa.
    Altough, actually, I see no end of the former and not much on the latter (yet?).
    *’now we have the salad’ means that one realizes that one has landed in deep (and usually forseeable) sh|t.

  117. Trump won my county by a margin of 0.22%, or about 600 votes. Not that it matters. He lost my state. Not that it matters. He won overall.
    The wealthier is appropriately dreary – grey, cold drizzle. Sigh.

  119. i’m going to hunt down and drown anyone gloating over this. too many people’s lives are going to be utterly fucked because of this.
    The election’s over. You lost. Move on. Isn’t that what you told me over and over again this year, cleek? Was that gloating? You and your ilk (moreso the sapients than the cleeks, but both) brought us to these straights. Elections have consequences. Own your damned mistakes. It’s good to see you finally, belatedly realize that politics don’t stop when the last ballot is cast, at least. We ended up with Republicans soon to be holding all three branches because the Nice Respectable Liberals didn’t give a damn about any opinions but their own. Gloating? I’m not gloating. I’m sick to my stomach, even if I have that vague, awful, warm, fuzzy reassurance in the back of my mind because things really are as bad as my fatalism keeps telling me they are. But I’ll be damned if you want me to sit back quietly and act as a scapegoat while the pompous asses who set this stage try to deflect responsibility for ignoring their mantras and cast blame on us DFHs for not clapping loud enough.
    Thank you, no.
    —
    Nigel, good article. Depressing as hell, but pitch-perfect. Yuck.
    —
    Silver linings? We just elected the oldest president ever? Advances in medicine make that less significant than it would have been a few decades ago, but hey, it’s something. Maybe?

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