Comic Strip of the Day Editorial cartooning

CSotD: The Morning After

Oh well.

Wiley anticipated the outcome of yesterday’s vote with a Non Sequitur (AMS) that didn’t try to predict the winner but just observed that the Electoral College count doesn’t reflect the popular vote.

There have been several cartoons over the past weeks suggesting we abandon the Electoral College and I think it’s a remnant of a much smaller nation with a much narrower electorate, as well as the problem of slave states that dictated several compromises in the first century of our nation.

Howsoever, as I’m writing this at 5 a.m., Trump has both the Electoral College and the popular vote in hand, which sure doesn’t leave Harris folks a whole lot to complain about.

French cartoonist Philippe Pil Serrette posted this commentary two days ago*, so he was commenting on the rise of fascism in America but not specifically on its actual rise to power. I suppose, however, that Trump’s (apparent) victory is the result of the fact that his transparent leanings were not just forgivable but attractive.

Note that Serrette gets the generations right: The son of the WWII vet has a bowl cut that is seen in his adult form, and it’s his son who takes up the cause his grandfather fought to defeat.

He does a nice job of telling the story without using language, which is not the usual approach by Continental cartoonists, who tend to draw metaphorical statements, which don’t require translation, rather than narrative pieces.

*Update: He posted it, but informs me that it isn’t his work. It was done by a cartoonist known as Flock, who often draws for Fluide Glacial, which has an impressive lineup of artists.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Channel, Jeremy Banx posted this piece before the elections here, and I got one final laugh out of the idea of the “undecided voter.”

As I’ve written before, I think claiming to be undecided is a bluff to cover a lack of engagement and understanding, so Banx got a chuckle out of the notion that this knucklehead would actually show up at the polls, even if he was too late.

As for reflecting the results, Clay Jones did a live blog throughout the evening, doing several reactions as things went on, of which this is my favorite, but you can see the rest here.

The plans these Puritans outline seem unlikely to fail, given that the GOP has taken the Senate and is closing in on the House. I don’t think Trump’s cockamamie tariffs will get past the 13th Amendment, but I have half a dozen granddaughters and a great-granddaughter to think of. Thank god we didn’t ditch the Senate’s filibuster rule.

Jones is a frequent flyer here, partly because I tend to agree with his take on things, but the main reason is that he produces a cartoon every day. I don’t feature everything he does and I don’t always agree with him, but, as Woody Allen said, “Showing up is 80 percent of life.”

Allen later modified his quote to say it was 80 percent of success, but that’s largely a distinction without a difference. He was criticizing people who want to write something but just talk about doing it instead.

Jones was the Yank I came across in my perusals this morning and he’s got an excellent track record of showing up, even if you don’t think he hits the target 80 percent of the time.

Some of his presence, granted, is because he’s self-syndicating and doesn’t have to rely on anyone else’s distribution system. But the major part of it is because he keeps drawing things.

I’m sure there will be more American reactions in the days to come, but they’re gonna have to be really good to make up for the fact that the iron is hot this morning.

Juxtaposition of David Rowe

I count on David Rowe to provide overnight service on breaking news, and he didn’t disappoint with this grim portrait of America getting a good look at itself in the mirror.

Uncle Sam is depressed and Liberty is shocked but there it is: Both the popular and the Electoral College votes are an adequate, eloquent statement of who we are.

We spent weeks denying the polls and asking “How can it possibly be this close?”

Well, look in the mirror.

Rowe then followed up with this piece, which certainly indicates his contempt for Dear Leader, but again puts Trump in a place that forces us to own him. There will be all sorts of discussions about how it happened and why it happened and how my goodness it certainly doesn’t reflect who we are.

Except there he is, and, yes, he’ll now pardon himself for his federal doings and will go to his pals on the Supreme Court to argue that they have already put him above all those state laws, too, and that sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll was done in his official capacity as president even though it happened about a quarter century before he was elected.

Point being that we knew who he was and we voted him into office anyway. That’s who we are, whether we knew it or not. Numbers don’t lie.

And please don’t say you were surprised. Rowe depicted our surprise back in 2016, when we genuinely were surprised.

Giulio Laurenzi (Cartoon Movement) indicates who he thinks won the election, and he could be right.

I worry about the effect of a Trump presidency and a GOP congress on my granddaughters, but the impact on Ukraine seems more immediate and irreversible. It’s one thing to be able to filibuster legislation, but you can’t block something that hasn’t been proposed, and not funding aid to Ukraine seems inevitable, unless a few Republicans show some independence.

And let’s not forget that, while Harris’s talks with Netanyahu have verged on being a confrontation, Trump has promised to encourage him to “finish the job,” which, if he does, suggests that our next president may not have Gaza to deal with.

The oddity in all this being that Trump and his cohorts kept calling Harris a communist and a socialist, neither of which she was and neither of which they could define.

Brookings Institution

But we’ve known that the “Russia Hoax” was no hoax since the Helsinki meeting in 2018.

It’s been a long time since conservatives shouted “Go back to Russia!” at demonstrators. They don’t have to anymore.

Russia’s coming here, thanks to the so-called “Party of Lincoln.”



Comments 22

  1. Sue

    This is in fact who we are, and now the whole world can see it. The whole collection today over at Cartoon Movement from around the world shows that. And the Talking Heads will undoubtedly go on and on about what Harris did wrong, but it’s difficult to see what could go right with the attitude embodied in pro-Trump voters.

  2. Mike Tiefenbacher

    Re: the Electoral College. Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out that it’s yet another instance of our government’s minority rule (along with the filibuster and some other things which ignore winning a majority) and pointed out that New York and California have around fifteen million people who never vote in these things because they rightfully realize that their states will take care of that for them so their own votes are worthless. If piling up national votes instead of state-by-state was how we did it, I agree that a few more of those people might be more engaged–and DJT might be headed off into the ocean where he could get eaten by a shark.

  3. Missy

    I am so deeply ashamed of what the U.S. has become. I don’t have words.

    1. H. Carlson

      Those of us who’re saying the same thing are millions
      It’s an atrocity.

  4. Lost in A**2

    An easy fix to the Electoral College is for the States to move away from winner-take-all. One vote per House district would go a long way toward equality.

    1. George Paczolt

      And right now that’s Never Gonna Happen. The GOP is too dependent on the current system when the populous doesn’t support them, so they’re certainly not going to drop it when the support is in their favor.

      1. Ben R

        It’s just a theory that more folks would vote for President if there were no electoral college. And I figure rigging the electoral college will be easier after the next couple of years.

    2. Hank Gillette

      That might help, but it would not be a solution as long as gerrymandering remains legal.

      In North Carolina, my state, Republicans and Democratic voters are roughly even. Trump won the state by 3 points, but we elected a Democratic governor.

      Yet, thanks to gerrymandering, Republicans won 10 of the 14 congressional races.

  5. Ben R

    I guess I’ll just live in my cocoon. I’m an old, white straight dude who is in no danger from anyone. I apologize to everyone else that is adversely affected by what is to come.

    1. SDC

      Oh, don’t expect to not be harmed. Given the roller coaster the stock market became last time with so many tariffs, expect it to at first have a honeymoon but then to ratchet downward as investors seek more secure monetary options. Expect two types of increases in prices and reductions in services from the deportations suggested. In the U.S. many of our essential professionals are immigrants, so engineering, medical care and some other fields will have brain drains. Meanwhile, a number of service industry jobs and food industry jobs are among the ones which are largely staffed by immigrants. Shortages drive up prices; lack of labor can create shortages. If you have foreign made electronic equipment or vehicles then expect purchases and repairs to go up if the “promised” tariffs of those happen (including farm equipment and repair parts where a 200% tariff was suggested). Tariffs ultimately cost the purchaser and small farmers could easily get badly burned unless they work up sharing agreements w neighbors to wait out at least four years.

  6. David M Spitko

    Harris did nothing wrong. *Nothing at all.* In fact, I think she was brilliant. What this election demonstrated is too many people would rather vote for the devil incarnate rather than for a woman, and a black woman at that. And, astonishingly, this applies to women voters as much as men. Regarding the strong latino vote for Trump – never underestimate the misogyny within a machismo culture.

    1. Richard Furman

      What this election demonstrates is that more Americans are Nazis than not. Full Stop.

    2. Lou

      My fondest wish (and a way to force the issue while creating a bit of havoc with the president-elect) would be for Joe Biden to resign the presidency sometime in the next few weeks, therefore allowing Kamala Harris to become the 47th president for about two months. Not only would America have its first woman (and black woman) president, but it would make DJT the 48th president, therefore invalidating all the branded merchandise being pushed showing him as the 47th (some of which I’m sure the money for will be funneled back to Trump or his PACs)–imagine the rush to put out 48th president merch while scrapping all the 47th out there for him. And it wouldn’t be like it was with a vacant Supreme Court position being kept open for a period of time; I believe by law we would need to have the President vacancy filled immediately.

      One can wish…

  7. Clay Jones

    You can continue to complain about the Electoral College even though Trump won the popular vote. The only way the EC was a factor in this election is that it does discourage people to vote.

    1. Michael

      As of November 6, 2024 at 6:55 a.m. EST, the winner of the popular vote is still unknown according to the Washington Post.

      1. Michael

        Updated November 6, 2024 at 7:39 p.m. EST.

  8. Ben R

    Guess they’ll have to use the Supreme Court to get around term limits on the President. Although, as previously discussed, Vance is considerably more likely to be President than Trump come the next election.

    1. Tom Gillespie

      The 22nd Amendment is no more enforceable than the 14th Amendment’s restrictions against an insurrectionist holding office.

      Also, to Mike’s earlier point, the filibuster can be eliminated with a simple majority vote in the Senate, if the Dem minority refuses to play ball with the apparatchiks in the majority. But why would any legislator, on either side of the Capitol, want to oppose anything that a prosecutorially-immune autocrat demands?

  9. Sukie Crandall

    We try to read widely and my hubby ran into a piece recently that Republican strategists think that within perhaps 20 years the Electoral College will better favor the Democratic Party, and that there may once again be a brief window between then and now, as there was in the 1970s (when it was quite close to being eliminated) when it may be possible to remove it. Of course, that is dependent on the Constitution still being recognized as the foundation of our nation.

  10. JP Trostle

    This is *exactly* who we are, exactly who we’ve always been — a land of racist, sexist, selfish ignoramuses. So it goes.

    America invented the conman and the carnival barker, so maybe it’s appropriate we’ll be brought down by one.

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