US elections, what if Trump wins

[Sadcafe]

Is anyone worried what might happen if Trump wins?

Well the thread created a lot of debate, it does look very likely that Trump will win,so will the US become more isolationist, Ukraine have to accept significant losses of land, NATO worry about continuing support, UKs special relationship being anything but special? Women’s rights eroded, climate change worse,who knows, the positive is, unless he changes the whole constitution, he has to go in four years

I'm hoping to boycott the USA as much as possible now. Facebook account deleted, LinkedIn deleted, WhatsApp switched from my personal to work number and I will only use it for work because I'm expected to. I don't think I buy many American goods because they wouldn't meet British standards so that should be easy enough. The only tricky one is replacing Microsoft products at home. Anyone know a good non-American operating system?

The only positive I can see is Europe will have to pull together a lot more. Including Britain. Forget the common language ; the USA 🇺🇸 is just more foreign than Holland or France.
As for the Democrats, back to the economy stupid. Tariffs and trade wars will hurt the Republican party.

What makes you think Trump voters are yokels? That they live in rural areas? But 'yokel' tends to mean 'thick', so it's an insult. Most Trump voters will have good reasons for voting that way, probably to do with economics and possibly to do with too liberal trans policies from Biden and Harris.

The 'special relationship' only exists in the minds of Westminster politicians. The US only bothers with it when it needs a respectable ally that can and will put troops on the ground.

It's meant to be an insult. I've never met someone who liked Donald Trump who wasn't an idiot.

I'm not a politician so I don't have to be diplomatic about it. I think every single Trump supporter is a moron. Especially those who think someone as handsy as him is on the side of women just because he doesn't like trans people either. Frankly that's like a Jewish person liking Hitler because his vegetarianism inadvertently meant he also ate Kosher.

Why has Kamala not addressed her supporters yet? It’s disappointing to be a sore loser, she should thank all the people who supported her and donated $$$. Very poor of her.

I was wondering too

I think she’s expected to speak this evening (UK time). Agree that she should’ve spoken to her crowd last night instead of getting some poor guy to stand up and tell them she wasn’t going to address them.

If she has any sense she's packing her bags and getting ready to leave the bin fire that the USA is about to become.

To label a whole tranche of people idiots because they support a candidate you do not like (and I don't much like either) is elitist bigotry, which makes you as unintelligent as you think them. Attitudes such as this are why people vote for Trump - they are fed up to the back teeth with being told their views are stupid, bigoted, old-fashioned, out of date, fascist, the wrong side of history etc. It does not surprise me in the least that Trump won against Ms Harris, who seemed to have no platform except that the people who were Trump voters were (to quote a previous Democratic hopeful) mostly deplorables. They were not and are not - they just don't agree with Harris supporters. Their politics tells you nothing about their intelligence or education.

It's not that I don't like him that makes me think they're idiots. There are a lot of politicians I don't like who people vote for and I don't think they are or were idiots.

However, Trump quite blatantly takes the piss out of his own supporters and they're too stupid to realise it. The only thing about Trump that makes him less threatening to me is that he does more damage to his own supporters than anyone else. That's why a couple of them got so disillusioned that they fired shots at him.

I'm not sure they did try to shoot at him - I don't know why anyone tried, really. However, I speak without knowledge of US politics except what turns up on UK TV. However, I do remember the insults thrown at voters who decided they wanted to leave the EU. 'Gammon' they were called, and stupid, and backwards, uneducated, led by their noses by Russian propaganda etc. Being such a voter myself (and also my late DH and most of our family) I was pretty well insulted by this swathe of accusations. I am a Bennite socialist who stands by clause 4 of the Labour Party constitution (the bit Blair took out, which says that workers by hand or by brain should have the full fruits of their labour) which is why I voted to leave the EU, a capitalist cartel that I see as anti-union and anti-worker/ordinary people who worry about the end of the month rather than the end of the world; people who are by no means stupid nor uneducated. Thus, I see why people supported Trump over Harris. I'd have voted for neither.

Dominic Sandbrook sums it up well

Well, a couple of registered Republicans took shots at him and given that unfortunately we're going to suffer this pillock for the next four years in the public gaze they're probably not going to be the last.

People who wanted to leave the EU still owe me one tangible benefit having done so. 8 years on and I'm still waiting.

I also think Bennites are a PITA and the idea that socialists have gained anything from leaving the EU utterly pitiful.

You are entirely entitled to think Bennite socialists are a PITA. Most of the employment rights you have, however, were brougt about by people who believed ordinary people have rights, i.e. socialists/social democrats. As to the EU, Tony Benn was entirely correct when he said the EC/EEC/EU meant loss of sovereignty. I see no benefits I wanted from the EU. So I have to wait for my passport to be stamped when I go to mainland Europe. And? The people who voted to leave the EU saw it for what it was, a nascent pan-Europe (as wanted by Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa, Napoleon and Hitler) which was also piling on neo-liberal policies which give the illusion of choice (I can choose which hospital I have my cataracts fixed at - but in practice that's a non-existent choice since I know nothing about any of the hospitals and must take my GP's advice) without any real choice e.g. to stay at home with young children, to choose whether you use renewable energy or not. The EU's use of the Civil Code was also damaging the Common Law - the difference between continental Europe's Civil Code and Common Law is this: a civil code is imposed from above and decided by elites/academics/lawyers, the common law works from the bottom up i.e. what ordinary people think is reasonable is included in the law; this is what it means when the law says that something is legal/illegal based on what a reasonable person would or would not consider to be right.
The hatred of Trump is visceral, I think, because he is supported by 'ordinary' people who do not subscribe to the current (neo)-liberal outlook but want to support what may be called traditional values, or see that many policies, such as the green agenda, are damaging for ordinary people whilst making elites and those who consider themselves enlightened (but who reject the Enlightenment, quite often) feel good/moral.

No, most of the employment rights I have pre-date Bennism. If we were in any way dependent on Tony Benn for our employment rights we'd still be waiting. In fact, his only contribution to employment rights in the UK was making the Labour Party so unelectable in the 1980s that Tebbit was able to roll out counter-reform after counter-reform.

Also, Bennite socialists tend to be arrogant and self-centred. And your reasons for leaving the EU confirm that. Didn't benefit you personally? Oh well, fuck everyone else then, for some high brow theory. It's almost sad that you don't even realise how Oxbridge elitist and theoretical Bennite socialism actually was. He spent more time banging on about the Levellers than he ever did about working people in his own century.

And as for Trump, he's a narcissistic, woman abusing bully who doesn't respect democracy. That's enough for me to think anyone who would vote for him is a moron.

I did not say that Bennite socialists had worked for workers' rights, but that socialists/social democrats/those who believed in workers' rights did. You have committed the error of conflation, in reading that I meant Bennites.
The history of British trade unionism is long, at least dating from the Tolpuddle protest in the 1830s, and working for better conditions predates that event e.g. the work of Robert Owen, with his model factory, followed by Quakers (factory reform as well as prison reform) and the work of Ashley Cooper in reducing factory work hours (the Ten Hours Bill). Robert Owen can from his beliefs be called a socialist (though the term did not exist c.1800). Factory owners, business people etc. opposed those reforms, saying that shorter hours/better conditions/better pay/end of the truck system etc would damage productivity and profits. The EU is an organisation dedicated to promoting business and many of its actions give preference to the right of establishment and right to employ imported labour over trade union negotiated pay and conditions and local pay rights, to the detriment of some working people. It is worth bearing in mind that it is freedom of movement of labour that the EU promotes, which freedom is liable to drive down wages for working people in higher wage economies, when businesses import workers from lower wage EU areas.
I was not intending to sound selfish in saying the EU did not benefit me - marginally I lost out in voting to leave, as it happens. But I did not feel that it benefitted me and it did not benefit anyone like me - and this was the reaction of many people in the UK: that their money and their sovereignty were being invested in ways that they either did not agree with or saw as invidious to their and their families' well-being and prosperity, or were simply not what they wanted the money spent on - and they also felt there was no way to influence this situation.
Most political positions are elitist - political science tends to be a university subject, after all (and you do not know that I don't know that, so why are you patronising me?). The point about Trump is that his supporters are against the current crop of elitists (the climate emergency people etc.) who give little thought how their somewhat luxury beliefs impact on people outside their own bubble.
NB I am a socialist because I studied the economic and social history of the UK. That socialism leads me to be sceptical of the ideas and intents of the EU and its undemocratic elite (not that I think election is required for legitimacy, but a total disregard for democracy sticks in my throat).
Interesting exchange of ideas, btw.

Okay so let's recap:

1. You told me you were a Bennite socialist;
2. I told you I thought Bennite socialists were a PITA;
3. You replied by saying I should be grateful for my employment rights; and
4. I pointed out that I didn't rely on Bennite socialists for my employment rights.

Now, if as you say I was guilty of conflation in point 4 then there's a teeny tiny little problem with that. Logic dictates that you must have been guilty of conflation first, at stage 3, when you started banging on about employment rights in general when my point was about the Bennites.

Trust me, I don't need a history lesson on the trade union movement either! Get enough of that from my Dad.

Pt 4 was a conflation. You made the assumption that when I said socialist/social democratic/people who believed in workers' rights I meant Bennite socialists. But I cannot have since I was referring to events as far back as c.1800, as I pointed out when mentioning Robert Owen (model factory) and the Quakers on prison reform. They cannot be 'Bennite socialists' because Tony Benn had not been born or promulgated the ideas which I termed 'Bennite socialism'. Because I am a Bennite socialist does not mean I will commit the error of anachronistic (moral) judgement and call people socialists who cannot have been, though their ideas may have become what is now socialism.

Your DF may have explained trade union history to you, but I think you have not understood it. Trade unionism (not Bennite socialism - too early) has been the backbone of workers' reform from the 1830s. Others also worked for workers' reform (I name one, the Earl of Shaftsbury - Anthony Ashley Cooper). Read about the Matchgirls, the Tolpuddle Martyrs (farm labourers unionising), the formation of the TUC (first conference in 1868), the General Strike, the forming of the Union of Shopworkers. Reform and workers' rights came from workers, their organisations and the many enlightened individuals who saw all people as worthy of a decent life. Opposition came from factory owners, mine owners, retailers etc. who saw workers' rights as an attack on their profits both by raising wages and by improving conditions.

This what I wrote:
You are entirely entitled to think Bennite socialists are a PITA. Most of the employment rights you have, however, were brought about by people who believed ordinary people have rights, i.e. socialists/social democrats.
You have conflated 'Bennite socialists' with 'brought about by people...' They are not the same people, though I think I ought to have said 'e.g.' rather than 'i.e.' - grammar is important. Nevertheless, that does not mean that 'socialists/social democrats' = 'Bennite socialists'. That's a leap too far.

Well, it's Saturday and we are still alive...