Lol. ¿Et tu, Texas?
I expected Democrats to beat Republicans in both houses, but not by this much. E’en if Texas was a real hope, Kansas & Iowa were considered long shots, much less South Carolina & possibly e’en Mississippi, which nobody was e’en talking ’bout. Kansas hasn’t had a blue senator in almost a century & the Democrats haven’t seen these kind o’ #s since 2008 — & e’en then not with a blue Texas or Kansas. & e’en the places where Democrats lost, like in Florida, the DSA member, Angie Nixon, only lost by 2%, when it seemed e’eryone viewed it as a long shot.
Mo’ important than the senate, as I said in my 1st update, are the wins in local governments, especially in Texas, where Democrats won a few supreme court seats & the governor, as well as governors in many other red & swing states, such as Lance Bottom in Georgia — which is ironic, because it looks like Republicans were the ones who got lanced in the bottom. Unlike federal legislation, which will mainly be in a stalemate with Trump having the veto & Democrats not reaching a supermajority in the senate — it would’ve been literally impossible for them to have this year, as there were not ’nough seats in play — these bluer local legislatures will be able to engage in local politics, including affecting voting & redistricting.
E’en mo’ exciting, Democrats control ’nough local legislature to be able to possibly pass the National Popular Vote initiative I have been rizzing up for mo’ than a decade & bring the US much closer to actually being a democracy by eliminating the inane electoral college, which handed Trump a victory in 2016 despite Hilary Clinton winning mo’ popular votes, & did the same for W. Bush in 2000 gainst Al Gore.
’Course, since senate seats last for 6 years, if Democrats don’t bomb 2028, this makes it easier to gain mo’ seats then — tho it doesn’t look like there’s many likely seats to take ’cept for Alaska, Wisconsin, & North Carolina, ’less they pull off mo’ unlikely red state wins — they’ll get another stab @ Florida & Kansas.
Anyway, we need some good reactions. Since the Republicans were the ones who lost, that means I need to reluctantly delve into the mud o’ rightwing media. But let’s start with some funnier stuff. For instance, here’s Trump’s reaction:
Strangely, Trump was the least o’ the sore losers. While Trump claims he’ll accept the results — they don’t really affect him much, anyway — you have losers like Ken Paxton in Texas predictably claiming fraud. You also have the incompetent tumultuous speaker o’ the house, Mike Johnson, planning to step down in shame.
To be honest, r/conservative isn’t saying anything interesting or funny since their beautiful collage o’ Charlie Kirk & Harambe. They’re mostly just making racist Arab bait grumbling ’bout how it’s cheating for people who speak Arabic to be able to vote, when nowhere in the Constitution does it say people who can speak Arabic have the right to vote.
I was fascinated by this comment in a thread discussing dumping Trump like the massive dumps Democrats dumped in 2020 ( which gives me deja vu, as I remember conservatives saying this in 2022, only to reverse course when he won ’gain in 2024 ):
Genuinely the Republicans should take this as a wake up call to pull a pontius Pilate and wash their hands of trump come 2028
Ignoring the weird lack o’ capitalization for “Pontius”… ¿are they comparing Trump to Jesus — which is common for the right — & comparing themselves to the leader who gave in to the people who betrayed Jesus in favor o’ a criminal & portraying that as a good thing? I don’t think I’ve e’en heard atheists take Pilate’s side.
It’s also funny seeing them misunderstand what happened with this election:
Republicans don’t really stand a chance. They stood by while Democrats seized control of nearly every institution in this country.
As I’ve said in earlier posts, Democrats didn’t actually win much here, a’least not right now. They definitely didn’t win “control of nearly every institution in this country”. Republicans still hold 2 o’ the 3 branches o’ government & the Senate will be severely held back by the veto. ( They also don’t realize that Democrats don’t have the votes to remove Trump, either. )
It doesn’t seem like Fox News has any opinion pieces after October yet & I don’t want to sign up for whate’er bullshit they want to see their TV shit, but there is some funny copium from October. For instance, you have “MORNING GLORY: The Democrats have a ‘Fanatic Four’ of extremist Senate candidates”, which tries to present not just El-Sayad, but also James Talarico, as “extreme left”, while describing Mike Rogers — the 1 who engaged in election denialism — as “from the center”. Sure, & Hitler was a centrist & Jimmy Carter was a communist. Nowhere does this article explain why it thinks these Democrats are extreme beyond El-Sayad “look[ing] like he slept outside and just woke up”, whate’er that means. Funnier, they try to cope that these campaigns that we now know won were “faltering”.
@ our friends, The Federalist, instead o’ a repeat o’ the “we don’t need Trump, let’s bring back Paul Ryan, e’en tho he got bullied by Sleepy Joe when he was running for vice president”, whines ’bout how stupid voters are for s’posedly liking socialism, but without any self-awareness to wonder why people in s’posedly rich US want a change in economics. ¿Haven’t they looked @ Venezuela, which was rich 30 years ago? Note that none o’ this article’s citations back this up because it’s wrong: Venezuela did get a lot o’ money in the 70s, 50 years ago, due to the oil shortage making their oil worth a lot; but then prices fell & Venezuela ended up in a crisis by the 80s that built up by the early 90s into riots, suppression, & an attempted coup by Chavez. Socialism would come mo’ than a decade after these economic problems & the economic initially improved under Chavez.
E’en funnier, this article doesn’t provide any citations that socialism is e’en popular, much less that Bolivarian socialism is: the writer merely asserts that people believe that “price controls” & “government takeover of private industry” will “ease inflation and cure what ails capitalism”, with the 2 citations listing some think tank asserting the price controls lead to shortages without any evidence &, most bewildering o’ all, “government takeover of private industry” just linking to Apple’s homepage. I don’t know a single person making these claims: the main leftist argument for weakening inflation, other than ending Republican tariffs, is breaking down monopolies into multiple, smaller private businesses, — something that Adam Smith would’ve loved, but corporate-loving conservatives hate — & increasing wages so working class people can better afford these higher prices, something that the market was doing fine to create thanks to unprecedented full employment after COVID that was sabotaged by Trump’s federal reserve chair deliberately stoking unemployment to drive down wages. So “socialism” in this case is stopping capitalist governments from interfering in the market for the benefit to the rich, as they always do. These “Marxists” — they’re “Marxists” because schools are teaching critical theory, which is a sociological theory, not an economic theory — wouldn’t be thinking that if they were Marxists because Marxists don’t believe in “cur[ing] what ails capitalism” but in o’erthrowing it entirely — & they don’t believe that’s done by passing a few price controls & just taking o’er Apple.
“But it’s going to take determination, it’s going to take serious thinking and helping people to wake up to what socialism is and how dangerous it is,” the economics professor said.
Unfortunately for them, people who think randomly linking to Apple’s homepage instead o’ providing any real data aren’t capable o’ serious thinking, so the spectre will continue to haunt American until morale improves.
As a fun throwback — & because I can’t really think o’ many rightwing media sources, since I don’t really engage in political media much outside o’ election time anymo’, & certainly not rightwing media — I decided to check out WorldNetDaily, or “Wingnut Daily”, as left-leaning people called it back when “wingnut” was a word people used, what used to be considered a far-right rag, but now probably looks tame compared to the kind o’ shit weirdo nazi gamers like Azmongold throws on the YouTubes. I found this sweet video in the top-right corner labeled, “THE 100% MUSLIM TEST”, but unfortunately all I found was some woman babbling — she practically starts the video by flubbing the word “candidacy” & then has to repeat it, because apparently doing another take was too much for this respected establishment — racist conspiracy alarms ’bout El-Sayad using his magic genie to transform the entire US into an Islamic theocracy with his whole 1 out o’ 100 senate votes. Yawn.
I also love how “Trump spends Election Night rage-posting about Fox News” is apparently front-page news here. I thought posting right-wing meltdowns was my job. A’least they were kind ’nough to warn ’bout naughty cursing before I read:
(WARNING: One of President Trump’s messages contains an obscenity)
E’en funnier, a commenter left the message, “What a great night! Americans have come to their senses. God Bless!”. ¿Is there some geriatric 50-year-ol’ liberal troll posting to this dead news site just to dunk on them?
As someone who hangs out with actual left-leaning people, & not people play-acting as left-leaning people for Fox News, the article, “’So stupid’: Fox News anchor wishes Democrats did not say the quiet part out loud about coming investigations of Trump and top Republicans”, is funny. Investigations gainst Trump’s many, many crimes is not a “quiet part”: left-leaning — & e’en moderate — people have been loudly calling for such for years; & given how unpopular Trump is, & how this blue tsunami has rubbed that in further & made Republicans think o’ distancing from him, there is now e’en less o’ a reason to be stealthy ’bout it. Only dedicated Trumpists have a problem with enacting justice gainst him.
1 o’ the funniest scaremonger articles I’ve probably read e’er is “’Problem Solved’: Poll worker wears bloody T-shirt possibly celebrating assassination of Charlie Kirk and others”, which complains o’ a poll worker wearing a shirt “with red splatter near the collar resembling blood”. You’ll notice if you look @ the photo o’ the worker’s shirt or just read the description that there is no reference to Charlie Kirk. I tried looking up this shirt & found no evidence outside here that it’s some sneaky dogwhistle for Charlie Kirk, but is almost certainly some edgy middle-aged-millennial Hot Topic shirt you’d normally find next to the ubiquitous Happy Bunny shirts in the 2000s. It’s amazing what “snowflakes” rightwingers are ’bout anything that might e’en resemble ol’ Cap’n Kirk. ’Course, ’cause rightwingers love cancel culture, this social justice warrior tried to narc this woman out to the county, only for the county to not give a shit, only for them to angrily contrast this with the bravery o’ e’eryone’s favorite pimp cosplayer James O’Keefe, somehow still trying to pretend like he’s relevant in the 20s, “exposing flaws in Hennepin’s election security” by… trying to vote illegally & engaging in identity fraud & being caught ( while in Muslim cosplay — ’cause ’course ). Sounds like Hennepin’s election security is working just as intended; thank you, O’Keefe, for taking 1 for the team to confirm. This wasn’t e’en the 1st time O’Keefe broke the law while engaging in “investigations” political sabotage. ¡Now this is what I call a nostalgic throwback!
I hope you’re not done with racist Muslim-baiting or cosplaying O’Keefe, ’cause we have this amazing exposé, “WATCH: Undercover video reveals Dearborn poll worker confirming noncitizen CAN VOTE for Abdul El-Sayed”. If you watch the video you can see the person in question rapidly mumble out, “imnotauscitizen, ¿is it that OK?”, & the worker, — who, ’course, looks like a Muslim — obviously not expecting some sneaky illegal alien sneaking in — either past or before the places that actually ask you for proof o’ citizenship, which this video conveniently doesn’t show — & immediately jumping on their inaudible mumbling with suspicion, just answers, “yes, only for the president you can’t vote”, rather than shouting, “¡NO ILLEGALS ALLOWED!”, & shooting him right on the spot, as is her national duty. This is a great test for proving that illegals are voting, since we all know illegals would be stupid ’nough to go right up to a poll worker & tell them, “by the way, I’m not a citizen”, rather than, you know, lay low. The 1 flaw with this “undercover video” is that I can’t see the pretend illegal to see if he’s wearing a pimp suit: if he were, then I’d know this is all the proof I need to… bitch on the internet ’bout a Muslim winning an election, I guess.
& we get some good ol’-fashioned red-baiting with, “Top Constitution expert drills down on why Dems want to rid America of capitalism and replace it with … socialism!”. To its credit, it actually does provide evidence that people who identify as Democrats — not the politicians, howe’er — prefer socialism o’er capitalism @ 38% vs. 25% & does provide evidence for Talarico criticizing capitalism as an “oppressive system”, which is based as hell for a Texan senator to say. ’Course neither he nor the rando he cites for some reason give any better defense o’ this poor capitalist system that reciting empty praise for ol’ 1700s thinkers like Adam Smith without providing evidence that they have e’en read his work or that either knows that his work was mainly arguing gainst mercantilism, not arguing gainst socialism or defending capitalism, neither o’ which existed yet — that, in fact, Adam Smith was a major inspiration for socialists like Marx & that Adam Smith was a major proponent for the vile Marxist “labor theory of value” that conservatives hate so much & Adam Smith was much mo’ critical o’ what they would call “capitalism” & the greed & hypocrisy o’ the rich than with which the average conservative would be comfortable.
I also find it funny that he starts by praising capitalism by giving us such great brands as… Microsoft, Tesla, & Space X. With how terribly Xbox is doing, ¿are you sure now is the time to be rizzing up Microsoft? I guess we can thank capitalism for giving us shoddy technology that doesn’t work well. The actual good stuff is open source & outside the capitalist market.
But really I wanted to bring this article up for this beautiful image ( probably made with AI, which I guess is another “blessing” capitalism has given us; gee, I wonder why people are so hostile toward capitalism now… ):
¡All hail Comrade Kamala!
OK, I’m bored with these milquetoast Republican rags that try to appear stonefaced when giving the bad news. I’ve decided to dig deep into mo’ discussion-level areas & managed to unearth some obscure website with the edgy name Revolver. Unfortunately, I think e’eryone @ that site committed seppuku after the results came in, because their latest stories are just talking ’bout expected results from polls & just engaging in what we now know to be copium to deny them. The funniest thing ’bout this article is the random mention o’ Hilary Clinton, precisely a decade after she was last relevant, proving once again that Republicans will always offer her free rent in their heads & will ne’er let their hate boners for her whither. ¡Leave her alone; get a job!
Anyway, I will leave you all with 1 mo’ rightwing reaction to this election, my favorite rightwing media, the 1, the only, Infowars:
As a famous newscaster once said, “Good night & good nut”.
