I'm just going to keep riding this horse until it fucking dies but the very first thing he did was take everything Obama did during his presidency and throw it out the window, including the pandemic playbook.

That playbook would have given us step by step instructions and reactions to deal with any type of suddenly erupting national pandemic like Ebola or coronavirus.

And because of this, which was by all measures a racially motivated attack on Obama, more than 1 million Americans died in a badly managed pandemic.

Trump's racism killed a million Americans.

It undoubtedly exacerbated the problem for the entire world and his total kill count is likely much more than that.

How can you let somebody who genocided millions of people through racism sit in the oval office?

It's crazy that the vote is apparently close. Really goes to show how many "average" americans have utterly lost any connection to actual reality and have guzzled enough of the kool-aid to believe the weird whacky world of wonders the religious fascists constantly conjure up.

I wonder though, is this ultimately a failure not of the education and internal offices, decades ago? We let schools let people down, leading to them becoming undereducated terrible parents who let their kids down and made them vulnerable to be exploited by republicans and churches and crypto grifters. :(

Don’t underestimate their tactic. For the republican presidential campaign, they will recognize only one of two outcomes: victory, or election tampering/fraud/manipulation. And, the wider the margin of win, the stronger the rhetoric will be.

Trump will challenge no matter what the margin is, if he loses. He will never concede because he’s a narcissistic loser and his moron followers will blindly do his bidding, especially on the next January 6.

They already won culturally, as they managed to shift the political culture closer towards theirs. They also managed to set issues that are "theirs". We see the same shit in Europe, were supposedly progressive parties are implementing the wildest dreams of racist anti-immigration, anti-refugee, anti-science and authoritarian surveillance state policies that the fascists dreamed off. All in the name of "stopping" them, while neglecting actually relevant issues like social services and infrastructure investments. Rinse and repeat and by the time the fascists take over all they have to do is remove the remaining formalities of division of power and democracy.

The major difference is that he's not president this time, Biden is. Republicans only control the House, and that control is narrow. He will try, but he has very few people in government who support him this time.

USA is a country with a lot of inequality, if not rising inequality, so a fertile breeding ground for populists. And it has an ancient voting system that always gives a two party system so perfect for this kind of polarisation. The system with campaign contributions will also make sure nothing changes about inequality and is making things worse. Yeah, it'll happen again.

Voted PSL, and yah, I am terrified.

The difference is I am also terrified about what will happen with the Democrats in power. About the unlimited slop being handed to the military-industrial complex so they can ship guns to Israel to continue a genocide. About the crackdown on immigrants and refugees. About the global poor being crushed under the bootheels of American-led capitalism.

To support the Democratic party is to actively decide to place less value on the lives of non-Americans, something I simply cannot do. You want to vote for Harris as harm reduction, be my guest. But understand that the problems facing America cannot, and will not, be solved by voting. Voting should be an absolutely minor thing in the totality of your political actions. Join, start, or support a union. Find what mutual aids groups are nearby, and participate. Join protests. Pressure your local politicians. Support your comrades in their direct action campaigns. Build political power that is under your control, not the control of a system invented in the 1700s by a bunch of wealthy white slaveowners.