What the Fuck Just Happened?

A Discourse Blog roundtable on the election.

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On Wednesday night, a bunch of us got together to talk about what the fuck just happened in this election, and where we go from here. This is an edited transcript of that conversation.

Jack: I feel like the only thing worse than having to cope with whatever we're about to face is doing it alone and not having any place to say what you want to say about it. So as ever, but especially right now, I'm very grateful for all of you.

How do we find you all today?

Paul: Yeah, it's just very tough. I do not think that Kamala Harris deserved to win, but I also don't think that vulnerable people in America deserved this. It's important to just be clear-eyed about what happened, which is that this was a complete repudiation of the last four years under Joe Biden. He was supposed to restore the soul of America. That was the 2020 campaign slogan. And it's clear that he failed pretty miserably in every respect.

I think this is also part of the long-term trend of Democrats not necessarily listening to their working-class base and taking it for granted. We’ve seen that in every election since 2012 with the white working class and now, in 2022 and 2024, with the Latino working class.

There's going to be a move to ostracize anybody who pushed for something more than the Dems' status quo. And I think there needs to be pushback to that. I’m hopeful in some ways that we'll find the energy to do that.

I don't necessarily see the opposition to Trump matching the same levels as in 2017, but he doesn’t have the solutions to people's problems, he's going to stumble, and there are going to be a lot of persuadable people out there. That's all I can hope for.

Sam: I did not have a great feeling that Kamala would win, specifically because all of this right-wing pandering wasn't working. So much of it felt like a repeat of Hillary’s 2016 mistakes. When you've got only three months of a campaign, every single minute matters. And I just thought, this is how you're spending your time? This is who you're listening to?

I'm a prime target of Democratic messaging. But on things like the genocide and abortion rights and trans rights, they have said and done very little to convince me. If this is how I feel, and I don't really feel like voting for her, how does everybody else feel?

I'm also frustrated with the reaction being like, what voting bloc can we blame right now, instead of just that the Dems shit the bed here.

Cros: I didn't really have as big of a visceral physical reaction as a lot of people did. A lot of my friends over the past couple days have been like, “I feel like throwing up constantly.”

Maybe that’s because it's somewhat of a known quantity. This administration is going to be worse than 2016—everything is going to be worse—but I do feel like having done it once before, some of the terror of the unknown is gone. I mean, I’m drinking Pepto Bismol straight from the bottle, but I normally do that, so that's not a change for me.

I've heard a lot of people saying this is going to be a generational shift. This is going to be the last normal election. This is the start of potentially a generational right-wing rule over the United States that is going to fundamentally change our country into something that it was not before.

Maybe. I guess the only thing that I'm still holding out hope for here is that what the right has lined up at the moment is still so tied in with Trump. Trump really has four years. I don't think that even the most efficient Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, McKinsey-to-the-gills version of the Trump administration is going to be competent enough to make the structural changes that they would needto prevent a center-right party, which the Democrats basically are, and certainly will be in 2028, from having a shot in four years. So I'm not full doomer that this is the complete start of autocracy. I think this could be the first step on the road. I definitely think that if the Democrats manage to continue losing presidential elections that at a certain point they're not going to have a chance to win another one. I don't think that we've crossed that point yet.

So I guess my only positive is that I'm not sure if they are good enough to transform our political system into a fully autocratic model and to consolidate the very real popular mandate that they got in this election. We talk a lot of shit about the machinery of the state and bureaucracy, but the first Trump administration was largely hindered by their own incompetence and disorganization. They're going to be much better at it these four years, and we are going to be worse off for it, but looking at Trump, looking at the people around him, I don't think that they've got the juice to make it as bad as it possibly could be with the power that they've been given. 

Jack: Let's hope you’re correct!

Cros: We have to proceed as if it is going to be a worst-case scenario, though. 

Katherine: We as a country are so fucking washed. It's so over.