There is no thread on elections this year so I thought we could at least have a reaction thread. I wasn’t surprised about the results considering what polling had showed us leading up to election day. It’s just surprising that Trump was as competitive as he has been, when you consider how unpopular his first term as president was. His first term average approval ratings were the lowest by any president since they began keeping track of that data. You would think he would lose by landslides but I think it shows just how much he consolidated support among conservatives in the U.S. They support him no matter what. Also, Republicans have won majority in the Senate, and it is likely they will win majority in the House.
His party has powerful…
His party has powerful backers. Evidently, more powerful than the rival bourgeois faction's backers.
Stock capital markets reacted moderately positively to the result. Oil price is down on the day. Don't follow the price of gold.
Perhaps the American voting public (a minority of the population) are just simply racist? They don't want a Jew or an "Asian" as President. They prefer the orange man.
It’s somewhat surprising…
It’s somewhat surprising that Trump managed to win some of the Arab and Palestinian-activist vote, especially considering how the first Trump administration was the most pro-Israeli administration in US history (e.g. the Trump admin recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which is technically territory annexed by Israel and violates international law). One would expect such Trump-supporting Palestinian activists to have some knowledge of Israeli-American relations within the last decade or so, but apparently not… If the past is any indication of the future, Trump is hardly going to deliver any kind of “peace to the Middle East,” but one could also argue that things probably couldn't get much worse than the current Israeli genocide against Palestinians that the Biden administration has allowed and enabled. The fact that the Netanyahu government, and other right-wing Israeli elements who want to exterminate or expel the Palestinians in Gaza before moving on to the West Bank, are currently celebrating the American election result should say everything about Trump’s alignment.
Of course communists and people outraged by the Israeli genocide against Palestinians are not restricted to the ballot box/bourgeois democracy in terms of effecting social change or altering American government policy (e.g. there have been the mass demonstrations over the last year, the various acts of sabotage and occupation, strikes, and so on). Unfortunately, though somewhat predictably, even these acts of protest do not seem to have really shaken American support for the Netanyahu government or to have diminished Israeli aggression against Palestinians by all that much, which is not to say that such activities are pointless; they're certainly not—we just need more of them.
Trump actually did quite well with Latinos, black voters, and other minority groups, which partly reflects how Harris' substanceless campaign, along with her reliance on not being Trump, were clearly not enough to carry her to victory. Ignoring Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza, along with allowing that neo-liberal imbecile Bill Clinton to spread Israeli propaganda for her at a rally in Michigan (which has a high Arab American population), also probably did not do much to encourage people opposed to the current Israeli war on Palestinians to vote for her.
https://libcom.org…
https://libcom.org/discussion/icc-online-public-meeting-global-implications-us-elections-16-november-2pm
Comrades can also continue the discussion here
What was the turnout of the…
What was the turnout of the registered electorate, not according to racist classifications but in general? How does this turnout relate to the population size of the USA?
Thanks
Around 65% of the eligible…
Around 65% of the eligible population, which is slightly less than in 2020, but still relatively high nonetheless. Trump also won both the electoral college and the popular vote, so a pretty clean sweep for the orange buffoon.
The worst part is that if…
The worst part is that if Trump chokes on a Big Mac or whatever, the equally revolting and no less buffoonish JD Vance will take his place. All of this because (in part—and true story) Obama and co. belittled and hurt Trump's feelings at that 2011 correspondents' dinner...
adri wrote: westartfromhere…
Thank you
Once again, Trump's election…
Once again, Trump's election to president is going to embolden the far-right, just like it did in 2016, and likely to a much greater extent this time around. There are already reports of a wave of racist text messages (referencing slavery) being received by African Americans across some states. Trump might have done well among minority groups, but that certainly doesn't mean that the militant far-right part of Trump's base is not still determined to carry out their plans.
The meeting on 16 November…
The meeting on 16 November will begin with a presentation along the lines of the article recently published, followed by discussion. There will be comrades from a number of countries present.
https://en.internationalism.org/content/17586/trumps-triumph-united-states-giant-step-forward-decomposition-capitalism