Even without seeing final vote totals we can already discuss one fundamental thing that happened here is that the traditional wager Democrats had with their voters has disappeared almost entirely. I have delved into this previously here and in other places, but I want to dig in a little more, starting with a story about the place I come from.

Anyone that has listened to things I have recorded or read things I have written probably knows that I am a proud lifelong resident of the Rustbelt, the core of the Rustbelt. I am from a place where people casually talk about the city collapsing every 20 or so years, where we joke about crumbling infrastructure and the complete lack of any sort of relief from capitalism, where we constantly talk about how the city government has failed and we are on our own. It is a place where there has always been a heavy autonomist streak, and a deeply embedded hatred for all authority figures; just comes with being from here.

At the same time this is a place that is dominated by the Democratic Party, and is one of the most solid strongholds that they have in the US. How is that possible, that local political culture can be typified by a deep resentment for the political establishment, yet unending devotion to their Party? That seemingly makes absolutely no sense, and I can tell you, watching people explain why they were going to go vote for Democrats AGAIN, even though they never do anything, was an interesting lesson in navigating non-ideal political situations.

This paradox is actually really easy to understand once you get away from questions of support for policies, and start getting into more nebulous concepts like social perception, class conflict, and general senses of how stable life is. In this area the core narrative is that capitalism has failed us but has not collapsed, so we need this Rooseveltian social democracy, where we have healthcare, housing, food, and some level of financial support in order to not fall into the abyss (of course this comes along with a narrative that only Democrats can save us).

The devotion is not grounded in actual support; hell, my parents canvassed for the DNC and constantly talked about how much they hated the DNC and how they were useless in trying to achieve some sort of social equity. The devotion, the inability of anyone to even think about voting for a Republican, is grounded not in what the DNC has done, but in what they claim to be protecting us from, namely unmitigated capitalism and right wing social policies.

This was good enough for some time, but, even here, in one of their strongest strongholds, where I literally did not know a Republican growing up, we have been watching this wager, and the ability of it to hold people in line, fall apart. The conditions of the city have kept deteriorating, poverty has not been alleviated, all that has happened is that we stabilized our collapse, but at the cost of being able to fight our way to something different. After decades of corporate giveaways, rampant police brutality, corruption, failed programs, ineptitude, that wager kept attracting fewer and fewer people, till we get to now, where Democrats run the city, but the people in positions of power came into the DNC from outside positions, and largely for the purpose of running for office. Over the last decade I have watched as good enough has started to be seen as a way to trap us in our current condition, and there is a desire for a way out, which Democrats will never provide or support.

In a lot of ways this same story has played out in Democrat run cities across the US, where candidates from outside the DNC are pushing into traditional Democrat seats of power, and where the ability of autonomous political movements, to push the political agenda is increasingly apparent. We have watched for decades as Democrats keep moving to the right, keep being a source of disappointment, keep undermining those within their party with energy and vision. We have watched them stand in the way of social movements or crush them, watched them support the Iraq War, watched them bail out Wall Street, watched them support a genocide in Gaza, continued police brutality, advancing border militarization. And, for decades that all seemed to not matter, until it did.

Though this wager used to be sufficient, we have been watching that weaken at least since NAFTA, and during this election it finally broke. In the past that was enough to hold the line, but this time 14 million people that would have likely voted for Harris stayed home. We can speculate about why that wager has collapsed (Gaza, support for right wing immigration policies, failure to deliver universal healthcare, collapsing wages and union protections, and general political ineptitude are definitely part of it), but it has. That means we will watch a repetition of this occur over and over again unless the Democrats make a significant political shift and differentiate themselves from Republicans.

Given their current political trajectory, which they have been on, unflinchingly, since Clinton, this sort of change is unlikely to happen without a deep remaking of the Democratic Party. Much of the power of moderates in the DNC is related to this dynamic related to polling discussed earlier; polls limit the number of political possibilities, people do not find their position within those so report being uncommitted on a specific question, but the polls, and their media coverage, help solidify those limited terms as the terms of the discussion. Out of this comes the assumption of the "uncommitted moderate". They assume, and this is repeated almost as a truism in mainstream political discourse, that uncommitted people must fall "between" the positions outlined in the polls, making them "moderate", meaning that to win the means "playing to the middle".

Problem is, not only is this an errant assumption not grounded in anything other than random assertions of limits to politics, but it is one that creates a Democratic Party that is wholly reactionary, completely committed to a nicer version of right wing politics, and that is increasingly irrelevant to voters as they become more and more a symbol of establishment politics. By basing their politics on trying to find this non-existent moderate (Americans have far more extreme and far less coherent positions than a label like "moderate" would ever hope to encompass) they end up reinforcing the same dynamics that people have rushed to them in the past to protect them from.

Why elect the people that agree with the other people, but are only offering to take half measures? The entire way the DNC operates serves to validate right wing concerns, and then find "moderate solutions" to the concerns the right wing raises out of racism and conspiracism.

Its a failure in basic negotiating tactics. If your approach is that, regardless of how valid the proposal is, you are always going to meet your opposition half way, you have just allowed them to control the entire negotiation; they get to set the terms you are then meeting. That is the last 40 years of DNC politics, giving ground away to what has become a movement more and more comfortable with ripping the mask off their naked authoritarianism, all in the name of trying to find this mysterious moderate voter.

Given the internal dynamics of the Democratic Party, though, and the structure of their fundraising, unless there is an acute inter-party rebellion from the Sanders/DSA wing of the party, we may see this happen over and over again, until either the DNC shifts and is able to recapture discontent as it was able to in the past (cutting off social movements at the knees, and then absorbing their moderates), or there is an acute socio-political crisis that collapses American politics as we understand it.

The second fundamental change that is starting to come into focus is changes in the right wing movement itself. That political space has always been this mish-mash of wild conspiracy theories and serious political figures tryng to leverage that phenomenon for their own benefit (on top of the army of scammers, new age health gurus, and Christian Nationalists in their ranks). Though it is still early into the transition discussion, we are already seeing some signs that this time is going to be different.

The first, and most notable, sign is the appointing of Susie Wiles as the Chief of Staff. Wiles is not a known figure in the public consciousness, but is a major figure in background Republican politics. She comes out of the Florida GOP, but from a wing opposed to DeSantis. Her background is actually with more moderate city administrations in Jacksonville. This has led a number of commentators to breathe a sigh of relief, that she is not a wingnut, and may hold him in check. Unfortunately, though, I think this is very optimistic.

Outside of populating a space of more moderate Republican politics, Wiles is above and beyond everything else a political strategist, rather than an ideologue. Her reputation is one of organization, balancing complex internal dynamics, and holding complex personalities in line. We have to remember that the first Trump administration was typified by tragedies resulting from their failures, infighting, whimsical approach to state violence, and so on; if they would have been better organized (or just less egotistical people), the situation could have ended differently the first time. Her addition is not about moderating the agenda, it is about organizing its implementation better.

The MAGA movement professionalized, and if we look back we can see indications of that move happening for some time. Even though we saw Trump cozy up to fringe figures periodically throughout the campaign, from Nick Fuentes to Laura Loomer, to Kanye, there has also been a counter-tendency. If we really look at the campaign, and who they surrounded themselves with, it was less the Pepe the frog flag flying Nazis, and more the Bannonites, people like Vance, people like Wiles, who, though they may have their own "unique" ideas about the world, are considered legitimate, professionals with intellectual weight. This administration is likely to be a lot more Heritage Foundation and National Review than it is QAnon.

That means a more well organized, more dangerous, more repressive Trumpism, but that does not necessarily mean they get what they want.

There are going to be a number of things that are going to stand in their way, and the approaches they take over the next couple of months, and the people they appoint to roles in the administration, are going to shape how they attempt to move past the barriers to their vision.

Firstly, there are going to be bureaucratic limitations that they will face. The first set of limitations will come from Congress. Even though the GOP controls Congress, they do so with very thin majorities. That means that the group empowered more than any other are the moderates that do not always vote along Party lines. Though they are a small number, and getting smaller all the time, it is enough to functionally shape the entire legislative agenda. There is also the question of the courts. Even though conservatives have packed the courts for 3 generations now, that does not mean that every single judge, especially Federal judges, will just go with the program. The first time a number of courts stood in the way of significant moves the administration wanted to make, and often those were stacked with conservatives. Not all of them have lost all of their integrity, some have a shred left.

Secondly, there are economic, budgetary, and bureaucratic limitations to implementing this agenda. To deport massive numbers of people would potentially tank the economy, which relies on low wage labor. When combined with tariffs, that risk increases dramatically, as does inflation likely. You can't just fire union employees with employment contracts, or just appoint anyone to be their manager. There are processes, roles, ranks, lines of decision making, that are all very core to how the state functions. Trying to rip that all up is not going to be a process that is smooth or that occurs without resistance. Just like with lawsuits, these resistances don't need to succeed necessarily, just cause delays and disruptions.

Thirdly, political limitations. Project 2025 has existed in various forms since 1980, and was used to inform the Reagan administration. During that time they found that attempts to implement these programs would lead to their collapse of political support. It has created a paradox that has defined the last 50 years of Republican politics, having to campaign on things outside of your actual agenda, and having to hide your agenda, so you can gain power, but under conditions that undermine the ability to implement their agenda. We can already see this with Trump distancing himself from Project 2025. Yeah, that's bullshit, and the right wing has been saying as much, but he has created this paradox for himself, by disowning it he constructed those ideas as outside of acceptability, yet it is his agenda

The darkest of silver linings is that we now have two months of time to watch what they are doing, get serious, and get prepared for what is to come.

The first administration largely failed due to bureaucratic limitations and political resistance, and it was often enough to just hit the streets and do some light direct action. That will likely not be enough this time, as they seem fully prepared to use overwhelming force to crush dissent. We need to move in quieter ways, build the ability to have actual autonomy and to be able to defend it, to build communities that actually can keep us safe, and the logistics to do that under extreme circumstances. We have to go, and I have been saying this for years (and seeing the transitions over time), into a form of action that is far more like an actual resistance movement, and far less like a bunch of leftists hopelessly marching around with signs. Not only will repression impact those they can find first, their ability to gain visibility into what we are doing and how could be devastating in a circumstance in which we are under a de facto state of exception.

In the coming months, rest, get your communities logistics together, build comms networks, and get ready for what is to come. We only make it through this if we tighten down, work with people we can actually trust (so not tankies and liberals that throw us under the bus constantly), and prepare for having to move in ways far quieter and more difficult to track than most people utilize today (for God's sake, please figure out ho to do outreach outside of main social media platorms, which essentially gathers our social network intelligence data for the state based on data we give them...).

Think about what fighting for local autonomy means. We have this tendency to nationalize politics, and that does make sense. National level politics do have major impacts on us in more or less direct ways due to the size and power of the American state. At the same time, nothing actually functions with the uniformity policy tends to assume. The reality of these changes occur where we live, happen in the tactical contexts we find ourselves in, and on a terrain where we often have many more advantages than when trying to play the mass politics game. Fighting on a national level devolves into liberalism quickly, but what does it look like if we say "fuck policy", "fuck states", and start fighting where we are, in the spaces we are in, for our own autonomy, and then make absolutely fucking certain we have one anothers back across space.

Paying attention to the news. I know, I always say this. But, I actually do mean it this time...No seriously. People really need to be paying attention to the news. The reason is that, if this plays out anything like the first time, there is going to be a pretty massive gap between what Trump says he is going to do, what he says was done, and what actually happened. The attempts at mass deportations the first time are an excellent example; they threatened to deport hundreds of thousands in the same series of days, and they ended up deporting a couple hundred people, mostly from the same small number of factories.

We need to simultaneously pay attention to the things they are saying, which do definitely signal intent, and also the realities, as they hit roadblocks and bureaucratic barriers, and are met by resistance in the streets. So much of the analysis of Trump centers on what he says and the terror that induces, or the bungling that happens when he tries to do anything; we need analysis more nuanced than this. We need to understand how the state works, how it is attempting to use its power against us, and what the actual, material dynamics on the ground are.

But, if we do this, and if we get serious about this, jettison the liberals and tankies who are both strategic fantasists and security risks, and start to move on our own, as anarchists, for our own goals, we will survive this. In the 25 years I have been active I have watched us morph from a world in which we were not constantly being watched by cameras, and in which cops were far less present in our lives, through the era of the PATRIOT Act, the repression that followed in the years that followed, their numerous attempts to crush us in the decades since. We have made it through, always because of persistence, tenacity, good operational security, a safe distance from Leftists, and a clear sense that we are beyond complaining about what is wrong, and are now directly fighting for our autonomy to determine what world we live in.