Remember that first they ran a walking corpse who couldn't reliably form sentences!
Harris wasn't the worst possible replacement, sure. But the Democrats have several very competent governors who could have done a lot better, but that was not considered.
The whole process was botched, and there were better candidates they could have run, certainly. But their choice was OK, just not enough to overcome the ridiculous pull of Trump and Democrats' unreasonably high standards.
Right. So on one hand we have a gang of undisputable thieves (GOP), on the other hand we have honest but "not half decent" politicians (Dems). Tough choices all around!
Sort of a meta-observation, but consistently folks on the left have that take and then are confused when they lose.
“If only all those idiots on the right and in the center could see they should vote for the bumbling but well-intentioned candidate over the obvious liars and thieves” is an explanation that feels good to tell yourself, but also incredibly patronizing and prevents actually understanding why people vote the way they do.
I find the arrogance of the left pretty abhorrent. I also despise aspects of the right, but boy does the left rub me the wrong way.
If you find the arrogance abhorrent, I wonder how you characterize some of the actually bad stuff that politicians get up to.
Personally, I don't expect people on the right to come around. I am mystified by people on the center who looked at Trump and Harris and decided Trump was the way to go, or even just didn't care. If you'd like to enlighten me why they did that, I'd be interested.
My real confusion is people on the left who did this. They decided that Harris didn't say the right things about Israel, or they were upset at not having a primary, or they were still upset about Bernie, and decided to stay home. That is baffling.
> already was president for 4 years, which - aside from a lot of crazy talk - was a pretty stable and prosperous time.
you did NOT just write this seriously???! :) I hope you are being as sarcastic as one can be or did you sleep through it. just check how much of the total national debt comes from his first term… it is arguably the least “stable and prosperous” 4 years any American who is alive has ever seen
I think people forget when in the year the election is held and associate 2020 with Biden. Certainly much of that year's craziness was not Trump's fault, but his absolute uselessness was on full display, and he was the guy in charge.
we want Presidents who step up when the shit hits the fan, not take our kids out of schools and lock everyone up in their homes and then add trillions of dollars of debt they will eventually have to pay up.
It is easy to be the President when shit's easy. I don't follow politics at all anymore, stopped right around the time someone like Donald was able to get a nomination for a political party in the United States so this isn't a liberal bashing Donald, these are just facts that he was about as worse of a President in his first four years as we've ever had. The jury is still out for these 4, we'll analyze that in 2029 :)
I would characterize a lot of the behavior of politicians as despicable, antisocial, and un-American.
The short answer to your question is that the Democratic establishment in general and Harris in particular repeatedly lied throughout the Biden administration, culminating in the bald-faced lie that Joe Biden was completely competent. This was done with the attitude of “well what are you going to do? Vote for the other team? Don’t be ridiculous.” There were so, so many other things throughout the Biden administration, it felt (feels) like a race to the bottom.
So Trump, who is notorious for lying, won. To be fair to Republicans, Trumps lies are more like crazy exaggerations sprinkled with outright bullshit which somehow is more palatable than being gaslit.
If the defense of the Democrats is “Well look at how bad Trump is!” it should at least be acknowledged that is one of the worst defenses possible. And in general, if my options are to be stabbed by person A twice, or by person B once but person B expects me to be grateful, I might just go with person A.
The end result is we will keep toggling between the two parties until one of them decides to run using sane people. I sincerely hope that will be the Democrats this year.
Befuddlement at the choices of the American voters is not a defense of Democrats. They could do so much better. But even with the choices we have, I don't understand how people come to the conclusions they do.
We are sick of it, but despite being somewhat of a democracy, we have no real power in this two party, first past the post system when both parties always run establishment candidates, aka, billionaire thieves gang members.
There are more offices than just the president. Third parties often win in local elections (I don't know numbers, I doubt more than 5%). They win in state elections from time to time as well. If you get involved you can build a third party until it cannot be ignored.
The irony is that Trump won on a message of "drain the swamp" which was supposed to address this issue. Instead it seems like it's more of just "replace the swamp" with his own guys.
For me, when someone promises to "drain the swamp", they reveal their ignorance and selfishness with their shallow anti-swamp ideology.
Swamps are rich ecosystems with incredible natural beauty and diversity. Draining a swamp is extraordinarily bad in general, even if good for wealthy property developers.
Ironically, it seems that "drain the swamp" turns out to be an apt metaphor for what Trump and that gang have been doing, as promised.
It’s not even ironic. Trump never genuinely intended to do so, and anybody with a brain never trusted them to do so either. Just another case of “every accusation an admission” in the case of the leaders, and “it’s only bad when it’s not our guy doing it” in the case of the followers.
No offense, and you're not entirely wrong, but this is one of the big reasons we are in this situation politically. Millions of voters stayed home because they thought this way. The result: America is the embarrassment of the world, no longer to be trusted. We all must vote, even if we must hold our noses while doing it. We can't allow known thugs to be in command. (I was a life long GOP voter, to my shame, until 2004. How the American public didn't see the puke of a DJT presidency coming is beyond the pale.)
Technically, no, they did not come up with this thought on their own. It's been heavily propagandized that 'voting does no good, so just stay home". I just want to point that out as it's an active attack on American voters.
It doesn't help that most Democrat politicians are happy to maintain status quo. Or they're completely feckless, like Chuck Schumer, who is the absolute King of bringing a strongly-worded letter to a gun fight.
People that are actually leftist don't vote because there's nobody that represents them. Most Democrat politicians are centrist.
And this is my point, sometimes you won't have the candidate you need/want. But you don't bury your head in some kind of moral sand and allow a monster to be voted in office. You bite the bullet and vote for what's best at the time.
Most of the grooming came from Limbaugh, Rove and Gingrich. Then the entertainment "news" Fox network finished the job. At the core, though, was a large segment of the voting population that gave up on knowledge and reason.
Yep the hate-talk show hosts started so early that really is like the initial grooming period.
By the time Trump's face was on TV every day it was already full-blown abuse.
Also, I think a big element was the rallys.
Once Trump was confirmed as the big loser in 2020, he immediately started his comeback, live and in person.
Constant rallys for 4 years, real slim attendance at first but eventually getting a baseline crowd who would make gatherings seem more popular than they were. Traveling from one rally to another like many Taylor Swift fans do, but all Trump rallied about was hate.
That's the crowd that he grew by testing different targets of hate, running it up the flagpole to see who salutes.
By the time Biden started campaigning in earnest, Trump already had four solid years behind him and his pitch was tested and honed well enough to draw a much more loving and obedient crowd. Of haters. Nothing less would be appropriate.
Giving thousands of disgruntled voters a full "live concert" or "game day" experience like they never had before, making a strong impression that lasted and put him over the top. Across the country.
And the Democrats did nothing like this. Biden was already moving slow and was never an emotion-driven attention-getter, plus he was busy doing the job he was elected to do and nobody dreamed of putting him on the road full-time like Trump.
It might have taken more than 4 years of Democrat rallys to compensate also, so starting early makes a big difference.
By now there's not 4 years remaining and they're still not doing squat.
Success at the midterms is more critical than ever and that's much less than a year away too.
Dems need to bring forward a new personality now that they can rally behind all the way to the top. Get the show on the road and pack those stadiums constantly, similar to "modern" Trump voters, an actual platform is not necessary.
None of the strategists who dropped the ball for Biden and Harris seem to be doing anything different yet.
Why continue with the same failed machine that is proven not to work against built-up MAGA hate?
If Democrats aren't going to hate back they're surely going to need to express their dissatisfaction a lot more strongly.
Every false move that Trump makes would be plenty of new fodder, an unending well of new topics to rouse the crowds' congealment around when they come up. If a nationwide tour were constantly underway, these could be added to the pitch while taken in stride, and the momentum could be made to increase each time Trump makes a new foible which the opposition can focus on to gauge the popularity impact.
That may still not be enough and it may take longer than it should so you've got to start earlier rather than too late.
Ideally a new attractive personality will bypass the failed old Dem machine, and with nothing but positive aspirations from the podium, trigger a natural gut response from the crowd, whatever stadium the tour takes them to.
Could anything be more appropriate than thousands of more patriotic ralliers than ever cheering for the Democrats in unison, spontaneously repeating the rallying call "Lock him up !" ?
What I never understood is this binary system in the US - why wouldn’t you allow some other parties or reform the system in a way that allows more diversity.
pousada, I've simmered on your response for several days now. As a person in their late sixties, I've seen our political system, at least in my existence, at most of it's worst. Nixon taught us, in modern times, what evil looks like behind closed doors, because of the tapes. Reagan taught us what smiley faced racism looked like by using slogans. W taught us that lying to everyone on camera was no big deal as long as it seemed patriotic. And now here we are with a president who openly breaks the law because of however he feels on any given day.
On the seemingly rare occasions that a democrat gets into the oval office, they spend most of their time on social/environmental issues that extend to all voters, but are fought at every turn. We desperately need a reformed political system. The only way that will happen is if the American voting public will get off their cans and put forth the effort to learn civics and then realize that their opinions must be tempered with reason.
For the Fox News crowd, which is most of his supporters, they are likely not even aware of these transgressions, as they are not reported there. Or, if they are aware, they are happy to see Trump enriching himself, because, own the libs or something?
I swear, if the dems aren't running on "here is all of the shit that Trump and his cronies stole from you" every single day for the next two years they are the dumbest political strategists alive.
Trump just gave himself a $10 billion dollar slush fund from taxpayers. Who stopped him? No one. This amount of money will buy you one great den.
Noem wants luxury jets from the taxpayer.
So. Much. Winning.