canyonwalker | Election Night Results (Reply)

It's late evening on Tuesday, Election Day here in California as I write. It's too early to call a winner in the presidential race but it looks like it's going to be Trump. He's leading in most of the swing states: Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada. Not all the votes are counted— so the outcome could still flip— but the margins are big enough in several of these states and the numbers of votes remaining to be counted small enough that a "red mirage"/"blue wave" reversal seems unlikely.

Meanwhile the Republicans have taken the Senate and are on track to keep their small majority in the House. Assuming Trump does win the White House he'll have complete control over the federal government. Both houses of Congress will be his willing lapdogs to enact boldly reactionary policies fueled by hatred and the grudges he's amassed and nursed for the past 4 years. He won't be slowed down by his ineptitude at understanding the levers of power; his political supporters have written a plan (Project 2025, one of its aspects) for how to fill the ranks of government with loyalist yes-men instead of the various "adults in the room" who curbed his worst impulses last time. And the 6 seat arch-conservative majority on the Supreme Court will not check him.

This is a terrifying time to be a US citizen. I'm afraid in a year or two I won't recognize my own country.