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Trump's proposed policies would cause prices to go up.  Maybe significantly up.  So the only people who voted for Trump to help with grocery prices don't know anything about how that works.  Tariffs will increase prices.  Period.  Hard stop.  Deporting millions of illegal immigrants would increase prices.  Decreasing taxes but increasing government spending will increase inflation.  People that voted for Trump either don't understanding how anything works, or they voted for higher prices.

Again, Trump overwhelmingly won the stupid vote.  And that's why he's gonna be president.

I guess the problem with this is that there'd be a record of Section 31 that Bashir would've been aware of.  It would be like if Trump disbanded the FBI and then 100 years later a rogue agency called itself the FBI.  Someone from the future wouldn't know that the FBI still existed, but they would know that the FBI once existed.

I think your "Section 31 captured a Q" is a great idea.

It's possible, but Discovery-era Section 31 is so out in the open.  It would have to be a massive galactic mindwipe along with erasing them from all databases.  It would need to be some combination of Dr Strange's spell in No Way Home and the Clean Slate program from the Dark Knight Rises.  And then all the Section 31 ships and combadges and stuff would need to be destroyed or repurposed or whatever.

I guess it's not too farfetched for Star Trek.  Q could do that pretty easily.  Let's say the official head canon is that the head of Section 31 in the Discovery era became a Q somehow and made it a secret to make the organization more effective.

Cavill's Superman is deeply flawed and I don't think they could salvage it.  And if they wanted to say "this is a different Superman that just looks like Henry Cavill" they could have, but Cavill is also 41.  I assume he'll age pretty great, but he doesn't look like he's in his 20s anymore, and Superman isn't really supposed to age much at all.  Corenswet should look right for the next 10-15 years.

I do wonder about Gunn's style, but I think he's capable of doing the stuff that would work for Superman.  There are parts of the Guardians movies that feel right, and I think the Guardians Holiday Special shows he doesn't have to be fully cynical.

And I think Superman just hasn't been done right.  Gunn is taking inspiration from a couple of great Superman comics, and if he can pull it off, it could revitalize Superman again.

So the first trailer to James Gunn's Superman movie has come out and oh man I'm excited.  I have a couple of hesitations about the new DC Universe, but I'm really excited to see what Gunn is going to do here.  He's such a strong filmmaker, and I think he's going to have a greater understanding of this universe than Snyder ever did.

My two concerns are:

1. I still wish that Batman and Superman were the same age.  I just want Batman and Superman to be best friends haha.  But I get why they have to do it this way, especially with the Pattinson Batman being around at the same time.

2. I've seen a lot of James Gunn's work, and his films have the heart that you want in a Superman movie but they're also extremely cynical.  The trailer makes it look like he's getting the right balance, but I want to see a little bit more before I believe.

But I'm super excited for this movie.  I think next year might be a really rough year, and I think we're going to need something like this.

Discovery gave Section 31 special combadges to identify themselves.  I agree they completely ruined what they're supposed to be.  I have very little interest in the Section 31 movie, but I'll give it a shot.

They're still doing Starfleet Academy, right?  Lower Decks characters could hypothetically end up on that, which I would love.

Lower Decks got 5 years which is longer than most.  Although it has way less episodes than TOS because of shorter seasons.  And less episodes than Enterprise or Discovery.  But more than Picard or Prodigy.

Yeah I guess there's a difference between silly and comedy.  Lower Decks is funny and silly.  I don't think the other shows have tried for silly until something like the musical episode of Strange New Worlds.  As you pointed out, there are tons of silly moments (like Janeway turning into a salamander), but I don't know how much of that was intentional

I really thought the series might end with Doomsday's heart going into Clark.  Hypothetically, Bizarro Clark (assuming it wasn't destroyed by all the Doomsday stuff) would have had a functional heart that Clark could've used.  Or even if it was wrecked, I assume the heart could've been adapted to work for Clark with Kryptonian tech. 

But the way it ended was great and I wouldn't have changed it.

I do think the Doomsday plot was one of the weaker parts of the season.  I don't really understand why Bizarro worked with Lex, and I don't understand why Bizarro came back to life when he died but Clark didn't.  Wouldn't Clark be Doomsdayed as well?  I probably would've had Doomsday leave once Lois talked to him and never come back.  If you want to be done with him, he flies into the sun back then.  If you want to redeem him, you send him out into space and show some sort of tag where space doctors turn him back into Bizarro.  I don't know.  But I never understood why he was working for Lex and so that whole plot made no sense outside of him just being a force of nature that Clark couldn't defeat on his own.

I feel like if this was Smallville: the Later Years, the show would be fairly similar.  I think Clark wouldn't be Superman, having retired, but I think he may still do work for Sam Lane and the DOD.  I think it would be Clark and Lois retiring to Smallville to raise their kids in peace with Clark wanting a quieter life.  The plot of the show is mostly about Clark Kent anyway so I don't think you'd need to change much.  And if Tom Welling wanted to wear the suit, I think they could've played it exactly like Superman & Lois did.  If they didn't want to, Clark could still stay in the action in his flannel.

I really don't think much would really change.  And now I'm a little sad we didn't get that, as much as I liked the show as we got it

I think there's a lot of good information there.  And my hope is that, unlike the Republicans, Democrats will actually learn from their loss and make changes/improvements.  If they can fix what's wrong (and there are still free and fair elections), Democrats have an opportunity to take advantage of running against a party that is 100% Donald Trump when Donald Trump might not even be willing to help them.  There could be a huge vacuum of power in the Republican party with no one there to take over.

And if Democrats can be smarter and evolve, they could get massive wins.

But the party kinda sucks at all this so I'm not overly optimistic at this time.

I can't recommend it for everyone because I think its important to stay apprised on local news and stuff like that.  But it has felt really good to not have to worry about Trump or hear his name.  I don't know if I can keep it up for 4 years, but it has been good for my mental health.

It's also let me take a step back and realize that the truth of the situation will probably be somewhere between Trump being the worst president ever and the best parts of his first term.  I think some of my anxiety came from doom-and-gloom people on the left who, like Republicans, are selling fear.  I've allowed myself to rationalize with myself that maybe it won't be worst case scenario with Trump.  There are certainly horrible things that are going to come out of it (the Supreme Court, global warming, and Trump getting away with all the crimes he's already done), but we have to rely on a couple things:

1. I truly believe Trump is a unique animal, and I don't think enough Republicans want to be a part of burning down the United States.  Naive or not, I'm choosing to believe that if Trump pushes things too far, enough Republicans will stand in his way.  In the past, people have.  Let's hope they continue to.

2. Republicans are really bad at being in control.  I think they're the opposite of Democrats - great at politics but terrible at leading.  I think there will be infighting, I think there will be a disagreements on how far to take things, and I think they don't have even "concepts of a plan" to get anything done.  I think this was all about keeping Donald Trump out of prison, and they accomplished that.  They're a dog chasing a car.  Now what.  Maybe I'm wrong.  The president gets 100 days to get stuff done, and Trump is fairly terrible at getting things done.  He's good at being popular and convincing idiots to support him, but that won't help him now.

Let's see if some his dumber ideas (10% across the board tariffs) get done.  Let's see if he actually rounds up a bunch of immigrants or just does some dog and pony shows at the border.  I think we'll know pretty soon if we're getting Trump the Dictator or Trump the impotent showman.  And for my mental health, I'm choosing to believe that we'll see more of the latter.

Yeah, even that kind of stuff they sorta handled.  In the "previously on", they devoted precious time to showing that John Henry and Lana were, in fact, dating.  And then she calls him out on it.  They included Nat on the episode where Candice tries to break up with Jon, showing that they are hanging out.  John Henry was there enough to know that he's supporting Clark.

I think they just did a great job with what they had.  Especially, considering when they announced the budget and the casting issues, I figured the whole season would take place in the Phantom Zone (which would just be the Kent farm with a red filter).  Until you mentioned it recently, I'd completely forgotten about that.  Which, I suppose, was the point.

Thank you.  And I hope QuinnSlidr comes back and respects your wishes.

**********

On Biden.  I really have cut myself off from the news.  No social media.  No news apps.  No cable news.  I just can't stand to think about it.  At Thanksgiving, my family is not very political and no one wanted to talk about it.

But I agree with you that he did what he had to do.  I think Trump is absolutely going to us the Department of Justice to go after his enemies, and I wouldn't be surprised if several of them left the country.  I don't know where they'd go.  I assume they'd go to an extradition country, and I can't imagine any of them protecting a former president over the current one.  And Trump would absolutely try to punish anyone who harbored one of his enemies.

It's a mess.  My only hope is that Trump is content with the power and the title and being out of trouble and just leaves everyone alone.  If his advisors can sway him from doing anything too extreme, maybe we can get through it.  But if he decides to follow through on any of his extreme campaign ideas (or is encouraged to do so), we're in trouble.

********

My family and I went to Disney last week.  In EPCOT, there's such a focus on the future and hope and learning from our mistakes.  The front of the park has this futuristic/inspirational instrumental music, and Spaceship Earth (in the iconic EPCOT sphere) is all about how we can build on the past to make a brighter tomorrow.  Other parts of the park are about our natural world, our shared planet and differing cultures, and our imaginations.

On one hand, I was inspired to make the world a better place.  On the other, when my mind would wander, I was just depressed at how things are going and how bad things could get.    And how my kids might have to pay for what's happening now.  And that just sucks.

Just my two cents here, but I would like to find a solution that doesn't involve dwindling our already-small community by another person.  I truly respect ireactions' desire to keep this moderated and respectful and not allow toxic behavior.  I also understand QuinnSlidr's fear and anger.

I would prefer if both of you took a step back and tried to read each other's posts from a different angle so we don't lose anyone (voluntarily or involuntarily).

I think the fact that Democrats lost across the board shows that Kamala wasn't the issue.  Which is both good and bad.  They can't really blame the presidential campaign, but it also shows that the issues they have go beyond one politician.  People just weren't buying what Democrats were selling.

Maybe time will fix that.  Maybe it won't.  Luckily for Democrats, I don't have to make any key decisions.

I think everyone should calm down.  I think several things are at play here.

1. People are angry.  I'm angry.  This sucks.  It's allowed to suck, and we're allowed to be angry.  What really sucks is that the bad part hasn't even started yet.

2. Trump won.  As weird as that might feel or as bad as that might be, it's what happened.  Maybe Trump did something, but if he did, he covered his tracks.  If he did, he got away with it.  But until we can prove he did it, we need to treat conspiracy theories about Kamala winning the same way we treated conspiracy theories about Trump winning in 2020.  They're nonsense.  I would love for nothing more than for Trump to be caught in another crime and thrown in prison and Kamala be president.  But this isn't Scandal, and there's no indication that anything like that would ever happen.  He's going to be president, and now it's our turn to respond.

3. How do Democrats react?  I honestly don't know.  I think Democrats were in trouble either way, and this just expedites the trouble.

On one hand, I think QuinnSlidr is right in the sense that Democrats are on the right side of history.  They stood up for democracy, for the middle class, for justice, for hope, for the future, and for America.  I think the Democratic party should still stand for these things, and I don't think Kamala or the Harris campaign should have regrets about the campaign they did.

On the other hand, they lost.  And they lost bad.  Not just at the presidential level but everywhere.  From sea to shining sea, this election was a disaster.  If Kamala lost and the Democrats won the House and kept the Senate, you could blame things on Harris or her campaign.  Or you could blame racism or sexism.  But white male Democrats also lost in places they shouldn't have so it can't be all that.

The problems that the Democrats face are many.  One, there's Trump-level concerns.  Will we ever get to have elections again?  Will Trump stack the deck to make it hard/harder/impossible for Democrats to win?  Will Trump go after Democrats with his DoJ and there won't be any Democrats to run in 2026/2028?  ireactions says that I shouldn't worry about this stuff, and since his head is probably clearer than mine, I will believe him.

But there's the problem of the Democratic coalition, both what it is and what it needs to be.  The coalition in 2020 (and what they tried to do in 2024) was traditional Democrats with suburban/college-educated former Republicans who were repulsed by Trump.  The problem is that those two groups don't have a ton in common.  Traditional Democrats are in favor of unions and social programs and helping the less fortunate and stuff like that.  Suburban college-educated people are cool with all that, but they're more interested in social progressive issues like climate change and LGBT rights Ukraine and democracy and some of the "woke" stuff.  One group is worried about tomorrow.  The other group is doing well enough that they're worried about 2050.

So when Democrats focus on unions and child tax credits, one part of the base is energized and the other half is indifferent.  When Democrats focus on Ukraine and climate change, half the base is energized and the other half is wondering why we're focused on that stuff when groceries are expensive.  Republicans don't have that problem - when they scream about whatever woke is, everyone cheers.  When they scream about lowering taxes, everyone cheers.  They're a monolith.

And I don't have a solution to that.  My solution for 2024 was for Kamala to ignore voters like me and let me make the pragmatic choice.  If that means downplaying Ukraine or climate change or whatever, that's fine.  But I'm also hesitant to just say "forget about climate change" because I would like my kids to live on the Earth.  I'm fortunate not to be hit hard by inflation or gas/grocery prices, and I have the luxury of worrying about more than just right now.  But my concerns are still concerns, and if Republicans get Democrats to abandon climate policy, then Republicans win even when Democrats win.

So I don't know.  They need to focus on kitchen table issues and get back blue collar workers.  My expectation is that Trump will screw things up so monumentally that a lot of those people will abandon Trump and vote Democrat in 2026/2028.  Basically, Republicans will lose in 2026/2028 for the same reason that Democrats lost in 2024 - extreme inflation, huge increases to prices, high unemployment, etc.  And in that case, they can focus on economic issues in the same way that Republicans focused on it in 2024.  And then I think their changes can be smaller - obviously a pivot from Trump/democracy and a focus on the middle class and economic recovery.

But what if Trump doesn't destroy the economy.  Not only would he not lose the blue collar workers, but Democrats would probably lose some of the suburban upper middle class people who only voted for Biden/Harris because of Trump.  If they're successful under Trump, they might vote for Vance and other Republicans.  And then the only hope Democrats would have would be to convince Obama/Trump voters to come back now that Trump is gone.  Or hope that, as Trump said, evangelicals will never have to vote again.

But honestly, at this point, I struggle to care.  It feels like we lost a battle and the war.  The Supreme Court is gone.  Ukraine will be gone.  Palestine will be gone.  The bad guys won.  Even if the good guys win next time, it might be too late to turn things back around.  It feels hopeless, and honestly, maybe it is.

Again, the bad part hasn't even started yet.

Oh absolutely.  I think it's vital for democracy for the stupid voters to be split evenly.  They can believe equally that Democrats are pedophiles that drink children's blood to stay young and that Republicans are careless monsters that would gleefully trade a human life for a buck.  We just can't have them all voting one way because a) there are too many of them and b) they are too easily tricked.

I don't know how to get them back.  Too many of them are "Democrats bad, Republicans good" and I don't know how you deprogram people like that on a large scale.  My only hope is that Trump makes life so miserable for all of them that they have no choice but to realize that they've been lied to.  But even then I assume Trump would blame it on "woke" and they'd believe him.

I think this is part of it but not even all of it.  I don't think people are stupid for not doing full research into everything or watching full speeches or any of that.  I would also say that MSNBC is not without bias, and most analyses of the media landscape call this out.  They don't lie as much Fox, but they're definitely slanted to the left.

And I don't even know if my problem is necessarily where they get their news.  You can watch Fox News and think critically.  My issue is more that people don't have any interest in learning anything.  I think this election might have gone differently if people had bothered to learn what a tariff is and who pays it.  Or understood on any level how the government works.  Or what the Vice President is responsible for.  What the relationship between the president and the  Department of Justice.  What the relationship is between the actions of the president and the economy.  How the economy works and how slowly it moves.  The relationship between the president and Congress and who controls what. 

People basically just said "Kamala Harris is Biden" and "I have a good memory of the year 2017 so Trump must be great" and nothing else.  No one put any more thought into than that, and that's why we are here.  I've seen countless interviews with Trump supporters who have no idea how tariffs work.  Which is fine except that it's clear that Trump has no idea how tariffs work.  People think that Kamala Harris, as VP, had some sort of control over what Biden does when the VP's roles are extremely limited and extremely specific.

I think these voters are stupid because they don't know and they don't want to know.  They fall for dumb little slogans because they want to put absolutely no thought into it.  I don't care how they get their news or what their politics are, but I do care that they have a 6th grade understanding of how the country works.

And we are in this situation because we've allowed the dumbest among us to elect the king of the dummies.

I'm angry at them so I'm calling them stupid, but you're probably more accurate.  But, at the same time, I can't think of a better word than "stupid" right now.  Because these people choose to believe a reality that is not like the one they are seeing with their own eyes.  They are gaslighting themselves and allowing themselves to be fooled.  They believe nonsense about babies being executed and schools performing complicated surgeries even though that's absolutely ridiculous.  They believe that gas is $8/gallon when they probably pass ten gas stations a day charging a fraction of that.  They believe two prisoners getting sex change operations is a danger to them and their families.

These are people who either can't think critically or refuse to.  To me, that's not ignorance.  It's stupidity.  And I would be angrier at these people except I know they're going to be hurt the worst by what Trump is about to do.  So they'll be punished and don't need any additional attack from me.

Grizzlor, I was with you for most of that, but I think there are some issues.

What is woke and who is cheerleading it?  I never heard Kamala Harris talk about anything that you referred to.  I never heard her champion DEI or boys playing girls sports or downplaying Hunter Biden's laptop or critical race theory or any of that.  Now Republicans were speaking out against it, but they've essentially made up a word with no definition and are staunchly against it.  And it can include tons of things that can change on the day, and it's usually something that is happening so rarely that it's affecting almost no one's actual lives.  As I said, two prisoners got sex change operations, and Ted Cruz essentially won his race on that point alone.

So how do you fight that?  If I said that Grizzlor has children-eating invisible goblins in his house that he controls with his mind, how would Grizzlor defend himself?  He could let people into his home to see that there are no goblins there, but they're invisible and he controls them with his mind.  Of course you can't see or hear them, or maybe he hid them in Dimension Z while investigators are there.  People don't have to provide proof that any children were eaten because the media covers it up or the investigators are corrupt or whatever.  And any expert that Grizzlor brings to proves that invisible goblins don't exist is obviously biased.

Meanwhile, Grizzlor has now spent hours and hours of his time trying to defend himself against something that some idiot made up that is impossible to prove.

Now Democrats could come out against all those things, but herein lies the problem.  If you speak out against them, you lose voters on the left.  There are people that benefit from DEI, there are people that enjoy doing drag shows, there are trans kids that want to play sports.  If they spoke out against everything that conservative media defines as "woke" (which, again, changes regularly and could be anything), they'd essentially be ceding all social progressivism.  What if Republicans define gay marriage as woke?  Or interracial marriage as woke?  Or Brown vs Board of Education as woke?  Do Democrats have to come out in favor of segregation because they have to fight woke so that they don't lose elections?

I still maintain that the number one reason Republicans are winning is because they have all the stupid people.  Stupid people believe whatever they hear from whoever they like the most.  They've convinced themselves that Donald Trump is the smartest man on the planet, and that whatever he says is the truth.  They've convinced themselves that kids are getting involuntary sex changes when schools don't even let kids take an aspirin without parental approval.  They've convinced themselves that there are millions of invisible child-eating goblins out to get them all over the world.

Stupid people can easily get conned, and that's what happened.  They all got conned.  When stupid people are evenly distributed in both parties, then this stuff doesn't work.  If I say that there are child-eating goblins and Grizzlor says there aren't, then half the people believe me and half believe him.

The good news is that stupid people are going to suffer big time under Trump.  They're going to be absolutely wiped out both economically and physically.  I think a lot of them are going to believe when they're being told that it's raining (and it's not you know what), but a lot of them are finally going to realize they've been lied to.  And if that convinces enough of them to go back to Democrats, then I think we might have something resembling a fair system again.

But if they all continue to believe in Donald Trump no matter how bad their lives are, then Democrats will be battling invisible child-eating goblins forever.

I'm sure it will come up, and it will be interesting to see how it's handled.  This isn't exactly like Tony Stark giving out his address in Iron Man 3.  People aren't going to come after Superman, and if they did, Superman and his super sons can probably handle it.  The one who's in real danger is Lois, and I'm not sure how you handle that.  But people already know that Lois is under the protection of Superman, and it keeps people away from her instead of inspiring people to go after her.

It's possible that he has good genes.  But remember two things:

1. This is a very overweight man who eats extremely poorly.  Even if he and his father ate the same exact foods, the food that Trump eats is going to have more fat, more artificial ingredients, more sugar, more chemicals, etc.  Trump also gets almost no exercise from what we can tell.  He golfs a lot, but he's not walking the course or carrying his own clubs.  And depending on how much work he's actually going to do as president, he's going to get very little sleep and will almost certainly have a high level of stress either way.  A human heart can only take so much.

2. Trump doesn't listen to actual advice.  So if a normal doctor saw a patient exactly like Trump and recommended additional exercise or a statin for cholesterol or less sodium in his diet, etc, then the patient might listen to the doctor and take steps to improve his health.  1) Trump wouldn't listen 2) The doctor won't tell him any of that.  Trump wants to hear that he's in perfect health with no issues and will live forever no matter what he does.  So I assume Trump has issues that any man his age would have, and I assume he's not getting any treatment for it.  Unless they're secretly slipping it into his food or something.  Trump would fire any doctor that said he wasn't in perfect healthy, and Ronny Jackson sure as heck isn't going to tell him anything is wrong.

With those two things in mind, we can't even count on Trump having the best modern medicine in the world.  He's an old fat guy who has a yes man as a doctor.  He was already on a limited timeframe, and God willing, that time is running out.

Yeah, but I think there's three things about Vance vs Trump that don't scare me.

1. No one is beholden to Vance like they are to Trump.  Vance is less popular among Republicans than Trump, and I don't think Republicans would worship Vance the way they worship Trump.  I think there's a much greater chance that Republicans would push back on Vance in ways that they wouldn't push back on Trump.  If Trump put out a national abortion ban, all Republicans would get behind it because they wouldn't want to alienate Trump's cult base.  Vance has no cult base, and there's no indication that they would all immediately accept Vance if Trump were to die.  Republicans would be free to make the choice that is best for themselves, not necessarily the choice that is best for Trump.

2. I think Vance would take the job seriously in a way that Trump simply won't.  He might want to turn the US into Gilead, but I don't think he's willing to break the law or bully people or manipulate situations in order to do it.  I think he'd try, but he'd try in a way that normal presidents would try.  And if he failed, he'd be upset but he wouldn't burn the whole system down.  Remember that Vance thought Trump was Hitler eight years ago.  That guy is still in there, and without Trump to impress, he might come back out.

3. Anything Vance does (outside of the Supreme Court) can be undone by a future Democratic president.  Even if he guts the federal government per Project 2025, that can be fixed.  Any laws he passes can be undone.  Even the Supreme Court is fixable by adding members to balance things out.  But the point is that we need to have a future Democratic president for that to work.  If Trump suspends elections, there's a chance that he appoints his son to succeed him and then America is finished.  America would be in bad hands with Vance, but there's a chance it's still America.  The boat would be off course, but it wouldn't be destroyed.  Trump will aim the ship right at an iceberg, and there would be no saving it.

I'll take off course.  It means we still have a ship.

Again.  In no way saying Vance is good.  He sucks.  But Vance is, at least in my humble opinion, a significantly safer option for the future of the country and dangerous in a different (and less permanent) way.  Maybe Vance would execute rivals and use the military to attack political opponents and bow down to dictators.  But I don't think he would, and that would make me feel so much better with a Vance presidency.

It would be illegal, but he has full immunity.  What would be the recourse?  If he suspended 2026 midterm elections, the Republicans would still control Congress and the Senate would never convict him even if he was impeached.  Trump would have some BS argument about some sort of voter fraud scheme the FBI (which he would control) and Department of Justice (which he would control) would have "uncovered."  Half the country would believe him.  So for the safety of the country, no elections would be held.  Or they'd be indefinitely delayed.  And half the country would celebrate.  Democratic congressmen (and maybe some Republican ones) might complain, but Trump could have them jailed (or executed) and there's nothing anyone could do because he has full immunity.  People could riot or protest, and the military (which Trump would control) would massacre them.  He has full immunity.

If he wants to do that, there's no one that would stop them.  We are literally at his mercy because Congress can't (and won't) stop him and the courts have given him unlimited power to break the law.  Maybe Trump doesn't want to do that, but if he does, it doesn't matter if he "can" - he just will.

And that's why I'm not watching or reading any news at all.  As I told my friends, I'm unsubscribing to the world until either Trump goes away on his own or dies.

I think it's important to have a clear differentiation between "something feels wrong" and "something is wrong"

I 100% agree that something feels wrong.  The polls, even with GOP trash polls dragging down the average, looked like Harris was going to win.  If not any of the Sun Belt, at least the Blue Wall (which was enough).  Maybe not by much but there was a consistent result from reliable polls that she was up by at least a point or so in all three Blue Wall states.  There was also, for months now, reliable polls showing that she would win the popular vote fairly comfortably.

There was also evidence, mostly from the Selzer poll in Iowa, primary data, and local level polling, that polls were underestimating Democrats.  Maybe they were undercounting republican women voting Democratic or overcounting minority men voting Republic, but something was happening.

Then there was all the other stuff.  Ground game and money seemed to be in Harris' favor and it was thought that it would influence a close election.  And there was the fact that Trump was calling for fraud early, which some saw as an indication that maybe he was getting bad internal polling.

And in Democratic circles, that all added up to what was hoped would be a great night for Democrats.  Harris would win, maybe bigger than most thought and maybe with a couple surprises (Iowa or even Texas/Florida), the Dems would easily win the House, and they had a decent chance of keeping the Senate at least at 50/50.

Then there's the fact that Trump is a known cheater who has a tech billionaire working his butt off to get him elected.  He's been talking fraud for four months, and we know every accusation he makes is a confession.  Maybe he figured out a way to steal it.

The problem:

1. Ground game and money meant nothing.
2. The polls were either mostly right or underestimated Trump again
3. The garbage GOP polls were capturing something
4. The Selzer poll was an extreme outlier
5. Trump made gains with minorities and didn't lose as many women as was feared
6. Democratic circles got it wrong.  They were way too optimistic, cherry picked the results that made them feel better, and bought into stuff that wasn't right.

And that appears to be what happened.  And as ireactions said, while there is speculation, there is no proof that anything out of the ordinary happened.  There's still my last point about Trump being a criminal and a cheater, but if he stole the election, so far, he's done it without leaving any sort of trace.  And just like we said in 2020, this kind of operation would have to be huge and would certainly have leaks, and nothing ever came of it.  If we go by the feeling that Trump couldn't possibly have won, we're the same as election deniers from 2020.  There's no evidence and until there is, we have to trust the system.

So yes it feels wrong.  Yes, Trump is both capable (and motivated) to steal an election and possibly has the infrastructure to do so.  But police can feel like someone killed their wife all they want, but without evidence, the bad guy walks free.  Maybe Trump stole the election.  But unless we can prove it or at least start building a case that we could prove it, it doesn't matter.  He won.  The data says he won.  The proof is that he won.  So it's our duty to accept that he won.

We don't have to like it.  We have to remain vigilant.  But as much as it sucks, it is what it is.  People didn't show up to vote for her.  They did show up to vote for him.  It sucks but it's true.

Really don't worry about me.  I'm better off than most.  My wife and I have good jobs that should be fairly safe no matter what happens to the economy.  We will be fine.  And that's what's so infuriating is that the people who made the pragmatic decision to vote for Harris are not the ones that will suffer under Trump.  It's the people that supported him all along.  Red states are some of the ones with the worst education, the most poverty, and the most vulnerable.  If things go the way I assume they will, a lot of them are going to be completely wiped out.

Even though their savior is in office.

What will they do then?  Blame Democrats still?  Blame the two people who got sex changes in prison?  Maybe.  But I'm hoping they realize that Trump never actually cared about them.

I'm hoping that simply breaking the Trump spell is enough for some people, but Democrats really need to take a hard look at what they want their party to be.  The problem is that they're at a fork in the road.  They can't be the party of the working class and the suburban educated - what those people want isn't aligned.  The reason they ran "anti-Trump" is that their new base was held together by people that hate Trump.

Suburban educated voters like me are fine now so they're worried about climate change and retirement accounts and the future of the country.  Blue collar workers don't care about any of that because they need to put food on the table tonight.  So which segment do you go for and which do you ignore?

To me, I think they need to go after the blue collar workers with ways to make their lives better, and they need to leave voters like me to make the pragmatic choice.  Because I do really think that if Trump makes this country a disaster like he's going to actively try to do, he could wipe out support for the GOP.  I think he was on the verge of doing it because the whole party is just about Trump.  It's why I don't think for a second that Trump will "run" again in 2028 because they don't have anything else.  No one else can replicate what Trump did.  No one has come close.

Democrats might be in a good spot to win big in 2026 and 2028 if there are elections to win.  The problem is that the Supreme Court just gave Trump unlimited powers and put him in the White House.  So if he wants to suspend elections and make himself king, who's going to stop him

Two things:

1. QuinnSlidr, I think you're right to be suspicious of the results because, logically, it doesn't make any sense.  Republicans can say the economy is bad, but it isn't.  Republicans can say that an army of illegal immigrants are coming to rape, murder, and steal, but they aren't.  Whenever Trump voters are asked how illegal immigration hurts them personally, they say it doesn't.  So even if you discount Trump's crimes and his fascist tendencies, there was no reason to vote for him over Harris.  The polls said she'd win (even if it was close), Harris had a much better ground game and more money to get her over the finish line, and there were signs that, if there was polling error, it was going to her.  On election night, I was sure she'd win.  Maybe not 100% but pretty sure.

But I think I fell into a trap that a lot of Trump voters fell into, and my news became an echo chamber.  I didn't want to read or trust any source that said Trump might win, and I read as much as I could that gave me hope that she'd win.  Maybe those sources, like many of the ones Trump voters listen to, are biased.  And that's on me.  So while it feels like the cheater cheated, maybe it just feels like that.  Until we see evidence, that's just how it is.

2. Here's how I'm going to resist.  I hope Trump voters get everything they want.  I hope they get the tariffs and the mass deportations.  The economy will suffer, and people that thought Trump would save the economy will get to know first hand how that was going to work out.  Trust Trump, elect Trump, go broke.  No sympathy from me.

I hope he arrests Gaza protesters that voted for Stein or even Trump.  I hope Trump goes after unions and encourages companies to fire employees that try to unionize.  Biden took care of the unions, and they gave him the middle finger.  This is what they wanted, and they get to live with the consequences.  No sympathy from me.

I hope proud Americans who voted for him get to see the constitution that they love so much get tattered just a little.  I hope Latino men that voted for Trump get caught up in mass deportations and get kicked out by the man they trusted.  I hope black men see white supremacy in power and realize that Trump will sooner turn back to slavery than give them a seat at the table.  No sympathy from me.

I hope the people who think Trump is a pacifist get to see genocides continue under a new Axis of evil that the United States is not only complicit in but a part of.  That Trump doesn't bring peace through strength, he only brings death.  No sympathy from me.

I hope the evangelicals that voted for him see that this man isn't godly.  Or Christian.  Or any of it.  That he's a false prophet at best and the Antichrist at worst.  I hope they realize that they did the Devil's bidding and that it will take a lot of soul searching to get where they want to go.  No sympathy from me.

Because we need all these people to realize the error of their ways.  They need to understand what they did and they need to understand the hurt they caused their friends, their neighbors, and themselves.  Because as we just found out, there aren't enough good people.  We need some of the bad people to become good.

Do I want Trump to suffer?  Do I want his cronies to suffer?  Of course.  But they already won.  Trump won't face justice, and anyone under his protection will be set for life.  Palestine is gone.  Ukraine is gone.  There's no saving those people.  But we can save some of the Americans that enabled this, but they're going to have to go through a baptism by fire.  And they will.  They're expecting gas to be $0.50/gallon and for food and clothing prices to drastically drop.  They're expecting there to be zero crime and zero sickness and zero problems.  They won't be ready.

But we will.  And because we'll be ready, we can weather the storm.  And we will.  I'm sorry to have to be cold, but this is the point we've come to.  If we want to save this country, we need to be ready for things to get much worse.  And we need to be ready to endure that.  If we can, we'll come out on the other end stronger.

This is incredibly false.  The media did everything it could to get Trump elected.  Whenever they could cover a story about him, they would only talk about the "normal" parts of his speeches.  They never covered any of the crazy things that Trump would do or say.  When Biden was running, they constantly ran stories about how old Biden was.  Once he dropped out, the media never mentioned age again.

All of those networks are owned by billionaires who wanted Trump.  So the networks treated Trump like a normal candidate.

"I walked across the highway at 4am, and I didn't get hit by a car.  The lesson I have learned is that it's impossible for a human being to be hit by a car."