This comment from Lurid really resonated with me:

The sense of not just resignation but surrender this time is overwhelming. Someone will probably try to pull together a women's march, protests at the inauguration, etc., but it won't feel like there's any more force behind it than any other protest.

Yeah, I don't have the same sort of fight in me this time. I don't have the anger that dumb America was hoodwinked. It's the despair that nobody was hoodwinked. At some point you have to acknowledge that people have agency and voted like they have rotted-out cores. (I know about the FT graph with the international headwinds. That's a piece of it but not a prophecy.)

It's a lot more hopeless, but not necessarily helpless. More like plodding along and taking care of vulnerable people and mitigating the damage where you can. It's really shitty though.

I really and truly thought the abortion issue would be decisive. Taking the numbers in this article (gift link) as correct, it was not.

Tied: The vote (49-49) among voters who said abortion should be "legal in most cases." In the 2022 midterms, Democrats won these voters by 22 points, 60-38. That underscores how little the abortion rights issue did for Harris and how Trump mitigated it by keeping the issue at arm's length.

In fact, gender as a whole seems to have been a non-issue.

8 points: Harris's margin among women. That would actually be Democrats' smallest margin since 2004 -- despite their hopes that abortion rights and nominating a female candidate would mobilize women.

11 points: The "gender gap" between Harris's share of men and women, with men more likely to favor Trump. That's actually a somewhat normal gap, and it would suggest this wasn't largely about men being unwilling to vote for a woman.

And it felt like a good bet that the racist candidate who invited the island of garbage comedian to his rally would struggle with Hispanics. Not the case.

46 percent: The percentage of Latinos that Trump won, according to the most recent exit polls. It's the highest number for a Republican presidential candidate in at least 50 years -- eclipsing George W. Bush's (disputed) 44 percent in 2004. Trump also won a majority (55 percent) of Latino men.

Let's make it a thread of interesting numbers or analysis you've found elsewhere.

For example, here's a piece explaining the global anti-incumbent wave that this election seems to have been part of.

I've been pretty convinced since sometime last spring that Trump was genuinely starting to show signs of dementia, and I still think so: aside from the sort of general air of confusion, the microphone blowjob-mime and the speech about Arnold Palmer's giant dick seem like the sort of disinhibition that you'd expect if he were losing it. When I thought he was going to lose the election, that seemed like a good thing, but now we'd probably be better off if he were as functional as he can manage.

I have no idea what happens if he irretrievably falls apart, though. Who's the power behind the throne? Might be Vance, but I have no real idea if he's an actual center of power, or just another figurehead. Melania's not interested enough to take the Edith Wilson role. I suppose we just have to hope the mad king's evil vizer isn't too evil.

Here we go!

I've had two separate conversations in the past few days where the other person has posited that Democrats are going to become the party of voter suppression, and Republicans are going to become the GOTV party, as soon as the dust fully settles and everyone gets used to the new alignment along education and information lines.

I don't entirely buy it - Dems have never had a major GOTV effort for unlikely D voters, and will continue to have one for likely D voters. Republicans... it depends on how organized they can manage to be, I guess, and what ends up working to mobilize their voters.

But anyway, it does seem clear that a major realignment along education lines is just about complete.