Do any of you feel confident?

[Cary]

Problems:

1. The Senate, unless we win the run offs.

2. 74 million death cult followers.

3. Republican state houses and governors.

4. No path to compromise so we can solve glaring problems made much worse by "conservatives."

5. Unqualified partisan hack judges.

6. Uncertainty as to our own unity and will to battle fascism.

The election elevated my spirits significantly but I am still nervous. Can we all pull together and do what we need to do or will we drop the ball like we did in 2016?

[Demsrule86]

1. No matter what Trump being gone give us a chance.

[tblue37]

2. Republican state houses means more gerrymandering for another 10 years.

[MissB]

3. I am certain that we are better off

than we would be if Trump had been re-elected.

Biden has challenges in front of him to be sure. But he’s also capable of handling those.

He won’t be watching Fox News and OANN for much of the day, or dashing off to one of his (non existent) golf courses.

[relayerbob]

4. Yes

Expecting the worst will only help to ensure the worst. We must, as we have had to do since the beginning of time, is keeping working to make things better.

[NNadir]

5. I personally feel supremely confident.

It's because I'm a fairly well read student of American history, including the first (shooting) Civil War, which was also lost by virulent racists.

[Cary]

19. Interesting, yes

And thank you. I like that and I'm borrowing it.

[arlyellowdog]

6. Not 74 million death cult

Sadly, I know a lot of people who voted for Trump totally based on not wanting to pay more taxes. I was hopeful these guys who really couldn’t stand Trump would not vote or go 3rd party or something. I found out from their wives, they voted Trump. Not death cult, but selfish Republicans.

[Pantagruel]

7. The alternative

is clearly a dictatorship with a clown in charge.
Huge inherited problems for Biden but no choice but to govern honestly and intelligently.

[CrispyQ]

8. #2 is our biggest problem & how appropriate they occupy the #2 position.

America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent
Trump was ineffective and easily beaten. A future strongman won’t be.

NOVEMBER 6, 2020
Zeynep Tufekci
Contributing writer at The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/trump-proved-authoritarians-can-get-elected-america/617023/

snip...

Make no mistake: The attempt to harness Trumpism—without Trump, but with calculated, refined, and smarter political talent—is coming. And it won’t be easy to make the next Trumpist a one-term president.

more...

At the moment, the Democratic Party risks celebrating Trump’s loss and moving on—an acute danger, especially because many of its constituencies, the ones that drove Trump’s loss, are understandably tired. A political nap for a few years probably looks appealing to many who opposed Trump, but the real message of this election is not that Trump lost and Democrats triumphed. It’s that a weak and untalented politician lost, while the rest of his party has completely entrenched its power over every other branch of government: the perfect setup for a talented right-wing populist to sweep into office in 2024. And make no mistake: They’re all thinking about it.

We are far from out of the woods.

[pat_k]

9. My biggest fear is. . .

. . .that to many on our side feel like we are "done" after defeating Trump.

If we are to make any progress in the coming years, we need the same kind of energy focused on winning state legislatures and governorships, winning more House and Senate seats at the midterms, and countering voter suppression to make it all possible. (I also fear that all the blanket defenses on how great the election went will sap energy from the latter efforts too.)

I don't have confidence in the mainstream party to do what needs to be done. We need the netroots and citizen lobbyists to mobilize to push them.

More thoughts here:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=14603616

[pat_k]

10. Some inspirational quotes are called for at this juncture.

“Every great dream, begins with a dreamer. Always remember you have within you the strength, the patience and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”
–Harriet Tubman

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
— Goethe

“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”
— Dinos Christianopoulos

“New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises ‘Why then are you not taking part in them?'”
— H.G. Wells

“Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.”
— Bob Marley

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
— Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

“You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.”
–C.S.Lewis

“It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”
— Samuel Adams

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
— Frederick Douglass

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
— Helen Keller

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
— Helen Keller

“Don’t be afraid to take a big step. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.”
— David Lloyd George

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”
–John Quincy Adams

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
— Anne Frank

“It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

“The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.

[Cary]

20. Love it!

Thanks.

[Bettie]

11. My bit of hope is that in 2022

there are a whole lot of disaffected MAGATs who will form their own party or vote Libertarian, thus fucking over all of Republicans' dreams of gerrymandering working out.

Because those MAGAT assholes are as vengeful and grudge-nursing as their orange idol.

[dubyadiprecession]

12. Don't forget that Republicans also have the upper hand when it comes to redistricting...

After the 2020 census. Somehow we goofed by not concentrating on state legislatures!

[peggysue2]

13. Trump will be gone

Always the primary goal. We now concentrate on the Georgia runoffs then switch to the 2022 elections for opportunities. Then straight on to 2024.

Not ideal nor the election results we expected. But . . . Trump will be out of our White House.

Consider how we'd all feel had the Squatter-in-Chief been reelected or had Biden's victory been razor-thin, giving fuel to all these ridiculous legal challenges?

So yes, I feel more confident than I have in the last four years. Lots of work to be done but we've accomplished Step 1, the ouster of a wanna-be despot.

[beachbumbob]

14. Confident? Nope, hopeful? Yep

[Crunchy Frog]

15. I'm planning on leaving the country with my family.

I don't have any confidence in this country's future.

[stillcool]

16. I don't have a lot of hope...

it's never been so obvious to me that people who vote for the same old shit, actually like it. State governments are an integral part of reform. Whatever gets to the federal level, always seems to start in the states. Good and bad.

[Hortensis]

17. I feel hopeful and glad. With the senate, I'll feel excited about the future.

With that large senate majority we won't have, I'd feel confident we were going to achieve many great advances.

Those who say we lack the will are lying or shockingly ignorant. We lack only enough power, and one guess who's to blame?

Check below, btw. If Pelosi's statement that should have shook the nation was covered anywhere in the MSM, instead of buried, I didn't see it. But she means it, and she's leader of many.

[Cary]

21. We have shown that we have the will

But we have yet to show that we can sustain it. 2022 will be a big test.

We can break them. We should have broken them in 2016.

[soothsayer]

18. Sit, be still, and listen, because you're drunk and we're at the edge of the roof. -- Rumi

[Initech]

22. Biden is going to have a monumental effort to get the smell of stupid out of the room.

But I am confident it can be done! My biggest worry though is SCOTUS. How does the worst president in US history get three SCOTUS picks?