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[Grim Portent]

Ah, so it's just an extension of the general problems of a two party system then.

[Great Order]

So apparently gen Z males had a major swing towards Trump.

This is interesting, and I feel it can be brought down to two things:

1) The lack of liberal or left-wing masculine male role models. That seems to be the refuge of the Tates of the world, who espouse misogynistic, racist, and other reactionary views.

2) The progressive attitude of telling men they're the issue. Tell a group of people they're a problem (Or idiots, I feel this is another problem American liberals have, this idea that you know better and everyone else is stupid) and they aren't inclined to vote with you. Similar to how you wouldn't expect to get black people to vote for you by being racist to black people, you shouldn't expect to get men to vote for you by being misandrist.

This is a bit worrying because odds are they're going to be set in their ways. This is a generation which isn't going to be more progressive (At least on the male side), and even though it's not my country as the saying goes, America sneezes and the world gets a cold. As someone on the leading edge of progressive issues (ie, a trans woman) this doesn't spell well for my future. This will be echoing across the West for a while.

Progressives as a whole need to have a good, hard look at themselves, their attitudes, and their culture. If they don't, they're going to see a lot more of this.

[Lord Shonus]

That's probably part of it (and not just in the "young men" category - a lot of self-identified American "leftists" and "progressives" have a really strong attitude of condescension toward low income people who dare to question a closely-held agenda), but we've been seeing a global wave of elections throwing out the incumbents or at least forcing the ruling coalitions to get extremely narrow. The global inflation problems are turning into a global problem for the people that have been in power. There's real reason to believe that this week's election was almost entirely decided by a perception that prices are out of control and that it is Biden's fault.

[Great Order]

Thing is the swing didn't bear out among gen z women, just the men.

If it was a uniform swing then yeah, I'd have given more credit to the idea that men are just lurching the same way as everyone else, but it wasn't. In fact, the swing was outright *extreme*. From 2020, they swung by a whole 29%, from 14% voting progressive to 15% voting conservative. Women, by comparison, dropped 14%, from 32% to 18%. Only half the size.

But yes, the condescension doesn't help. As a genuine socialist it's one of the things I hate about my side. Champagne socialists, the kind who look down on the people they ostensibly want to help and refuse to actually fucking *ask* them what they want because they're so convinced that they know what's best, fuelled by the fact they're middle class and the last time they saw a working class person was when the cleaner came in on the day they were sick.

[Flying Dice]

Trump may not be particularly bothered about Project 2025, but Republicans control the Senate and are probably on the way to getting the lower chamber too. Harris showed how easily manipulated Trump is during the debate, so it probably isn’t going to take much to get him to sign off on it.

I consider it unlikely that much of Project 2025 will come to pass, enough of the Republican Senate and Congress will not be in favour of various chunks of it to make it impractical. No party on earch passes all their policies without some internal dissent.

There's also considerable ability for a minority party to gum things up (especially in the Senate), and even if the GOP retains the House the margins will remain razor thin. Fighting the legislative parts of whatever agenda gets proposed (which won't necessarily be what's been pushed so far) enough to delay the worst until the midterms is entirely possible.

The bigger problem is that we won't have much ability to actually do anything beneficial on a Federal level unless the Dems make deals or manage to make gains in said midterms. Two or more years where legislative stasis is a best case scenario is not a good thing.

McConnell going off the scene was a massive blessing, he was a major component of the right's ability to accomplish anything in Congress.

That said, the stuff I'm most concerned about are the executive orders targeting environmental protection and business regulation. The damage that's going to be done there is beyond words.

(As for the whole political-violence angle... I don't think we're going to be seeing gangs of MAGA brownshirts marching people off to camps, but if I was someone who couldn't pass as straight-Anglo I would be wearing kevlar under my clothes in the week or two leading up to him taking office. I expect a lot of lone-wolf hate crimes predicated on the assumption that it's open season on minorities with presidential pardons for all.)