1). “After Win, Trump Fans Admit 'Project 2025 Is the Agenda': 'Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda. Lol.' ”, Nov 6, 2024, Julianne McShane, Mother Jones, at < https://www.motherjones.com/
2). “MAGA allies say they can finally admit Project 2025 ‘is the agenda’ for Trump’s second term: In an apparent attempt to troll their political opponents, MAGA allies gleefully announced the extreme conservative blueprint is ‘on the Trump agenda’ ”, Nov 7, 2024, The Independent, at < https://www.independent.co.uk/
3). “America Meets Its Judgment Day: Trump’s victory signals a national embrace of the politics of hate and a possible fascist future”, Nov 6, 2024, David Corn, Mother Jones, at < https://www.motherjones.com/
4). “Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections”, Table, n.d., Anon, The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara, at < https://www.presidency.ucsb.
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: Yesterday morning, November 6th, the various media operations reporting on the Presidential Election called it for Donald Trump, with Fox News leading the way of course. Trump even won the “Popular Vote”. There was definitely a shift of support by voters towards Trump, but of course nobody in the Corporate Controlled Media, or in the quasi-public media like NPR and PBS, discusses the extensive purges of voters from Democratic leaning groups or the methods used in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida to control and frustrate the many citizens in those states who are opposed to right-wing authoritarian rule. Item 1)., “After Win, ….”, Item 2)., “MAGA allies say ….”, and Item 3)., “America Meets Its Judgment Day: ….”, all discuss the potential consequences of having Trump and his coterie of advisors take power, and with control of at least the Senate, and Supreme Court, and probably control of the House of Representatives.
A telling fact, presented in Item 4)., “Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections”, is that turnout of voters in 2024 fell dramatically from 2020, down to a similar level of those from the 2016 election. Turnout in 2016 was 136.8 million, that was 54.8% of Voting Age Population (VAP) and 59.2% of the Voting Eligible Population (VEP). Turnout in 2020 was 158.5 million, that was 62.8% of VAP and 65.9% of the VEP. The level of Turnout fell to the levels of 2016, another year of far-right political victory. Turnout in 2024 was 140.6 million, which figuring the growth in population of the U.S. since 2016 is even a bit lower than the level in 2016. I do not have the figures for VAP or VEP in 2024, but will post them when I do get them. True to the long-term right-wing ruling operations, low levels of voter participation made these massive Republican victories possible (caused by vacuous and empty political and socioeconomic policy positions and irrelevant publicity on the part of the Democratic Party). Richard Viguerie made a famous statement about maintaining political and socioeconomic control, by minimizing voter participation in the processes, back in the late 1970s while speaking to right-wing evangelicals in Dallas, Texas.
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After win, Trump fans admit “Project 2025 is the agenda"
Mother Jones illustration; Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald/Zuma
On Wednesday morning, some of Trump’s favorite fans finally felt comfortable joking about what the next president has long denied: Project 2025 has always been the plan for a second Trump term.
“Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda. Lol,” right-wing podcast host Matt Walsh wrote in a post on X of the 900-plus-page extremist guidebook. Walsh’s message soon got picked up and promoted by Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist who was recently released from prison, where he landed after ignoring a subpoena from the House January 6 Committee. “Fabulous,” Bannon said, chuckling, after reading Walsh’s post out loud on his War Room podcast today. “We might have to put that everywhere.”
Benny Johnson, a conservative YouTuber with 2.59 million followers who has called affirmative action “Nazi-level thinking” and said Trump should prosecute Biden for human trafficking of immigrants, also chimed in: “It is my honor to inform you all that Project 2025 was real the whole time,” he posted on X.
Bo French, a local Texas GOP official who recently came under fire for using slurs about gay people and people with disabilities on social media, wrote: “Can we admit now that we are going to implement Project 2025?”
Walsh, Bannon, and the others are not the only people in Trump’s orbit who have made these promises. While Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, there is a long list of his connections to it, which include many people who have similarly said that Trump plans to enact the policies if reelected. Russell Vought, a potential next chief of staff profiled by my colleague Isabela Dias, said in a secretly recorded meeting that Project 2025 is the real Trump plan and the distancing tactic was just campaign necessity.
Spokespeople for the Trump campaign, the RNC, and the Heritage Foundation—the right-wing think tank behind the plan—did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Mother Jones.
If these claims are true, then Trump could potentially see an erosion of support from his base. As I reported in September, an NBC News poll found that only 7 percent of GOP voters had positive views of Project 2025, while 33 percent held negative views. That is not entirely surprising when you consider the drastic ways it could radically reshape American life if enacted. It calls for banning abortion pills nationwide; using big tech to surveil abortion access; rolling back climate policies; enabling workplace discrimination; and worsening wealth inequality.
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MAGA allies say they can finally admit Project 2025 is Trump’s agenda
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MAGA allies have boasted they can finally admit that Project 2025 is on “the agenda” when Donald Trump returns to the White House next year.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist who walked free from prison just days before the election, took to his War Room podcast on Wednesday to joke that “Project 2025 is the agenda” for the former president’s second term.
Bannon cited a social media post by conservative activist Matt Walsh, who baited Kamala Harris supporters about the right-wing blueprint.
“Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda. Lol,” Walsh posted on X in a likely bid to get a rise out of his political opponents.
“Matt Walsh, I think, is a very smart and funny guy," Bannon said on his podcast. “Now that the election is over, I think we can finally say that, yeah, actually, Project 2025 is the agenda.”
“Fabulous,” Bannon laughed. “Put that everywhere.”
Other MAGA figures joined in with the taunting. Texas’s Tarrant County GOP chair Bo French, said in a post on X: “So can we admit now that we are going to implement Project 2025?”
The Republican, who has come under fire for homophobic slurs against his political opponents, received backlash for the post.
“Proud of lying, not even a noble lie, just a run of the mill self serving lie. True role model for your children,” someone said.
French claimed it was a joke. “Once again you prove that leftist have no sense of humor. How sad you are. Cry more,” he said.
He added: “The left (and some on the right) just need to remember what comedy is.”
Conservative commentator and YouTuber Benny Johnson also posted: “It is my honor to inform you all that Project 2025 was real the whole time.”
His post had a mixed response. A fellow Trump supporter said: “Stop. I’m warning all of you stop antagonizing them. Just stop.”
Project 2025, a 900-page plan drawn up by former Trump aides and endorsed by a powerful right-wing think tank, has long been seen as a roadmap for Trump’s second administration.
The blueprint, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and more than a dozen former Trump administration officials, is essentially a wishlist for the next Republican administration with plans to expand executive authority, replace civil servants with ideologically aligned appointees, crush abortion rights and impose an anti-immigrant agenda, among other policies.
Harris repeatedly warned against Project 2025’s ambitions during her presidential campaign.
“Can you believe they put that thing in writing? Read it. It’s 900 pages,” she said at a rally this summer.
Despite his obvious ties to the blueprint – with its authors coming from Trump’s White House and the GOP’s close links to the group that launched it – Trump repeatedly tried to distance himself from the plan on the campaign trail, claiming that he knew “nothing” about it or “who is behind it.”
At a rally in Michigan, Trump told the crowd: “Some on the right, severe right, came up with this Project ‘25. I don’t even know, some of them I know who they are, but they’re very, very conservative. They’re sort of the opposite of the radical left.”
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America meets its Judgment Day
This article has been revised to reflect the latest election results.
Every election is a Judgment Day, but this one more so than any other in the history of the nation.
Never before has a major party run a nominee described by retired military leaders who worked with him as a “fascist” and a serious threat to American democracy. Never before has the electorate been provided the choice of a nominee who previously refused to accept vote tallies, falsely declared victory, covertly schemed to overturn an election, and incited a violent assault on the US Capitol to stay in power, as well as one whose mismanagement of a pandemic caused the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Never before have Americans been asked to return to office a politician who waged a massive disinformation operation fueled by the most vicious vitriol to exploit hatred, racism, misogyny, and ignorance.
Is America a nation that accepts and embraces all that? The answer is yes.
Despite Trump’s multiple offenses (criminal, political, and social), tens of millions voters—more than half of the electorate—said they want more of him and desire this felonious, misogynistic, racist, and seemingly cognitively challenged wannabe autocrat to lead the nation once again. Trumpism triumphed, and the godhead of this cult has become both the first fascist and the first convicted felon to win an American presidential election.
Facing a highly unconventional candidate whose main strategy was to whip up fear and anxiety, Vice President Kamala Harris, a latecomer to the race, ran a conventional campaign. She touted the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, presented a compelling personal story, offered a host of generally realistic policy proposals, and critiqued her opponent—doing all of this mostly accurately. Her last-minute elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket raised the question of whether the United States could elect a Black woman president. Counterpoised was another question: Can a criminal awaiting sentencing (found guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to keep secret his supposed extramarital affair with a porn star) who has been indicted for other alleged crimes, and who has called for the termination of the Constitution (so he could be reinstalled as president), be elected commander in chief and the nation’s top defender of the Constitution?
The visions of America presented by the two candidates were black-and-white opposites.
There was nothing subtle about the 2024 election. It pit the political extremism Trump has embraced and fomented to drive his red-meat base to the polls against Harris’ effort to expand her pool of voters by forging an alliance of progressives and independents, centrists, and Republicans concerned about the danger Trump poses to democracy. More so than in his previous campaigns, Trump endeavored to demonize his opponents. He peddled the false claim that the United States has descended into a hellscape with an economy in a “depression” and gangs of criminal migrants armed with military-style weapons conquering towns and cities across the land. Looking to stoke grievance, resentment, and bigotry, he asserted that “evil” Democrats, assisted by a subversive media, have purposefully conspired to destroy the country. He essentially QAnonized American politics. He dismissed Harris as “low IQ” and not truly Black. He called her supporters “scum.”
Trump debased the national discourse further than he had in the years since he launched his first presidential bid in 2015. That included violent talk of retribution, which included suggesting deploying the US military against “radical left lunatics,” putting Liz Cheney on trial for treason before a military tribunal and placing her before a line of guns, and executing retired Gen. Mark Milley, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
For years, Trump has forced American politics into a downward spiral of unprecedented indecencies and anti-democratic impulses. And this year, more than 71 million Americans continued to cheer this along. Harris campaigned not only to implement a host of left-leaning policies related to such fundamental matters as health care, women’s freedom, and middle-class economics, but to prevent a would-be autocrat from gaining control of the US government. That’s a heavy lift for any one candidate.
The visions of America presented by the two candidates were black-and-white opposites. At Trump rallies, the former reality TV celebrity staged his own version of the Two Minutes Hate that George Orwell envisioned in 1984. He decried his rivals—“the enemy within”—for sabotaging America and directed his followers to vent tribalistic fury at these targets, exploiting their rage and, yes, ignorance.
At one of his final rallies—held in a half-empty arena in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Monday—when Trump called Harris dumb, he was met by approving and angry shouts from the crowd: “She’s an idiot.” “She’s a moron.” “She’s a puppet.” “Lock her up.” One Trump supporter there told me Harris was too stupid to make a decision about anything and former President Barack Obama was calling all the shots. Another Trump devotee wore a sweatshirt that declared, “Say No to the Hoe.” (Racism and misogyny in a single slur.) One of the most anticipated moments of Trump’s rambling and repetitive speech occurred when he assailed the press. As soon as he started his now-familiar anti-media screed, many in the audience pivoted to face the journalists and TV crews on the riser toward the rear of the arena, shook their fists at them, and screamed profanities. This seemed to be fun for them.
Attendees I spoke with echoed Trump’s talking points, insisting that gangs of thugs from overseas are terrorizing American cities, that the nation is a crime-ridden disaster, that US government funds are being siphoned from a host of programs and handed to immigrants, and that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. One fellow said he was for Trump because his 401(k) retirement fund was strong when Trump was president and now was in the dumps. When I explained that’s virtually impossible, given the Dow Jones average is now more than 44 percent higher than its best mark during the Trump years, he just shrugged and insisted President Joe Biden and Harris were to blame.
Some were unaware that retired Gens. John Kelly and Milley had called Trump a “fascist.” Those in the know dismissed these remarks as comments uttered by traitorous men envious of Trump or being paid by dark forces to undermine the Republican nominee. Many in the audience were wearing hats and T-shirts proclaiming Jesus backed Trump, and the ones I asked about this said that since Jesus had chosen Trump to be the victor in this race, only cheating could defy God’s will. (Apparently, God and Jesus can’t stop the steal.) Indeed, most of the Trump people I encountered said they would not accept a Harris win as legitimate, and a few remarked that there would be violence if Trump were declared the loser. They were fundamentalists: The nation must be Trump-led or all is lost.
It’s not a radical observation that Trump tried to win through hate. Harris, as was much commented upon when she became the presidential nominee, talked up joy. At her rallies, she highlighted the rhetoric and values of community, noting that Americans can work together to address challenges. She repeatedly promised to listen to those who oppose her views and consider Republicans for posts in her administration if she were to prevail. That might have been just nice talk. But it was better than fueling division and, as Trump did, vowing to use the power of the presidency to investigate and prosecute critics and opponents and to root out of the federal government civil servants deemed insufficiently loyal to the president. Certainly, there was anger on the Democratic side: over the Dobbs decision and those politicians enacting or advocating severe restrictions on women, over the lack of action on climate change, over the horrific war in Gaza. But at Harris events, she did not seek to channel that into paranoid and dehumanizing assaults against Americans on the other side. Her stance—at least, rhetorically—was that all Americans count. Trump’s position: Trump uber alles, all others are “vermin” and the “enemy.”
American politics has always contained an us-versus-them element, and the battle can be fierce. But Trump turned this into asymmetrical warfare. More than any other major presidential candidate in modern history, he lied, he insulted, he appealed to the basest reflexes in people. He waged war on reality, seeking to lead millions into a cosmos of fakery and false narratives that boosts an ultra-Manichean view of the world. He saw his path to power as exacerbating the divisions within American society. He has been an accelerationist for tribalistic discord, explicitly threatening the norms and values of democratic governance. His answer to what ails the United States is strongman government, in which he is the authoritarian savior. Harris ran as a feisty Democrat who wants to work with Congress to tackle assorted problems.
These were profoundly different approaches to…well, to life. And in the 2024 election, Americans had to choose which camp they were in. Certainly, there were many issues beyond this monumental clash in values for voters to focus on: inflation, immigration, housing costs, trade, taxes, Ukraine, education, abortion, and so on. But ultimately, voters were forced to pick a side, to render a verdict on Trump’s war on truth, democracy, and decency and Harris’ traditional embrace of pluralism and established norms.
At this fork in the road, Americans made a decision on what sort of country the United States will be. A judgment has been reached: This is a nation to be ruled by Trump’s politics of hate. It can happen here, and it has.
DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY
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2Voter Turnout in Presidential ElectionsPlease see Notes below.
| 158,481,688 | 252,274,000 | 240,628,443 | 168,308,000 | 62.8% | 65.9% |
Notes
This table last updated on 10/15/2024. Relevant data for 2020 added.
“Turnout” refers to efforts to measure the extent of popular participation in elections. Turnout is usually discussed as a ratio although always based on a count of votes cast. The numerator is the number of votes cast. Various measures may be used as the denominator: (1) The Voting Age Population—broadly speaking it is the population above the legal voting age; (2) Voting Eligible Population—all citizens who are not excluded from voting because of some legal impediment; (3) Registered voters. Reported measures of each of these has varied somewhat over time as estimates have been revised and refined.
Three propositions underlie most research on turnout.
- First: turnout may be a way of assessing the health of a popular democracy. Well-functioning democracies are more inclusive and will have higher turnout.
- Second: Ease of registration should affect turnout. In comparing two jurisdictions over time with comparable demographic characteristics (education, age, income, etc.), turnout should be higher in the one with less restrictive registration requirements.
- Third: Electoral competition should drive up turnout. Other things equal, when the stakes in the election seem greater, turnout should increase.
Voting Age Population is typically calculated based on census data (“resident population [21 or 18] years and older”). But before 1920 the numbers used are always adjusted for the shifting definition of citizens with voting rights. So women are excluded prior to 1920. The classic attempt to define the voting age population for the 19th century is by Walter Dean Burnham, “The Turnout Problem” in Elections American Style ed., Reichley (Brookings: Washington D.C., 1987) Burnham published only the turnout ratio, not his actual estimate of the voting age population!
Voting Eligible Population is an attempt to make an even more precise definition of the population of people who have a legal right to vote—potential voters. Making the estimates of noncitizens and disfranchised felons has been carried out mostly by Professor Michael McDonald and data are published in the U.S. Elections Project website.
Registered voters counts the total number of eligible people who have taken the additional step of actually registering to vote. We report here the estimates produced by the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. This revised table no longer reports registration totals before 1968, consistent with recent CPS publications. Registration was not a universal requirement until “well into the twentieth century” (Ansolabhere and Konisky) and some states did not impose uniform registration requirements until the 1970s. As of 2016, North Dakota had no registration requirement. So it is possible for the number of votes to exceed the number of registered voters. Scholars point out that census data may not be entirely accurate (see Bennett 1990). A data source that may be of interest to many is the U.S. Election Assistance Commission which surveys county-level officials about voting and elections. Among their data is a series reporting the total number of persons "registered and eligible to vote." For 2016, the sum of the individual county numbers, for counties with data in the US is 185,714,229--a number 15% greater than the CPS estimate for the same year and election.
We thank users who have taken the time to suggest specific modifications to our data on turnout: Thomas Meagher and Phil Kiesling.
Number of votes cast in presidential elections is published by the U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Clerk, Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election for various years starting with 1920.
Source(s)
Ansolabehere, Stephen and David M. Konisky, “The Introduction of Voter Registration and Its Effect on Turnout,” Political Analysis Winter 2006, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 83-100.
Bennett, Stephen Earl, “The Uses and Abuses of Registration and Turnout Data,” PS: Political Science and Politics Vol 23, No. 2 (Jun., 1990): 166-171.
Burnham, Walter Dean, “The Turnout Problem,” Elections American Style ed. A. james Reichley (Brookings: Washington DC 1987)
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