I don’t understand how this many people see everything that he’s done and said, and still voted for him. I just do not understand. I don’t want to live on the same planet as these people, nevermind in the same country.
They like what he says and does. There’s nothing deeper, they’re not fooled, they’re not protest voting. A lot of people in germany liked Hitler, a lot of italians liked Mussolini, a lot of russians like Putin, a lot of americans like Trump.
I think most countries have like 20-30% of people who’d love a fascist leader. They’re why high-school bullies are popular rather than shunned for being anti-social. They’re fine with people getting hurt as long as they can imagine themselves part of the “strong” side, as that’s the only win and feeling of safety they get.
Why they’re closer to 50% in the US is a more interesting question
It’s not really all that complicated. The Democrats represent the status quo. The status quo sucks. The Republicans present themselves as an alternative to the status quo. So, people vote Republican.
All the centrist messaging just makes it worse. The Republicans can explain why things suck by scapegoating the poor and marginalized. But the Democrats won’t call out the rich and powerful who are the actual reason things suck, so instead they just try to tell people that things don’t suck at all. They “reach across the aisle” to people like Dick Cheney who are clearly part of the political establishment which only serves to help Trump present himself as an outsider. They adopt all these right-wing positions on immigration, the military, etc, but the people that appeals to already have a party waiting on them hand and foot, giving them exactly what they want. And all the bad shit he does doesn’t matter to them because they believe in lesser evilism and hate the establishment.
Of course, Trump is part of the billionaire class and isn’t any sort of real alternative to the existing system, but as long as Republicans are able to paint themselves that way, and are the only “alternative” game in town, people are going to turn to them when they dislike the way things are going, no matter how shitty they are.
I felt surprised and confused in 2016 when Trump won, but it’s been 8 years. It’s long past time to start figuring out where the Trump phenomenon came from.
100% this. And it frustrates me to no end because we’re having the exact same issue in Germany (although we’re still “behind” the US in the timeline). The extremist AfD has been gaining consistently over the past decade because they just present themselves as the alternative to everything establishment, so a lot of voters that are unhappy with the system for whatever reason flock to them (as one AfD politician put it, “the worse Germany is doing, the better for the AfD”). But instead of offering a different, more left-wing alternative to the status quo, all other major parties have been trying a centrist or even right-wing approach (e. g. the current government implementing hilariously useless stricter border controls), hoping to appeal to AfD voters by offering a watered-down version of their authoritarian agenda. And of course the outcome of this strategy is the same as in the US: The AfD just keeps on gaining ground.
As a non-american, this seems unsurprising. The Harris campaign seemed to be running the same playbook as the Clinton one did. The main reason anyone gave for voting for her was not being trump, effectively making her the satus quo candidate. If everything is shit for you under the current status quo, that doesn’t encourage you to vote for her.
Wisdom will show you. I watch the democrats for the last 3 elections snuff out the popular vote. They tried to pull a fast one in this election and disrespected their voters. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but the democrats have the dirtier shirt for voter manipulation and suppression. This happened 2 times when Bernie Sanders was the popular vote. We didn’t even get to chose this last time.
From what I’ve seen it’s people angry at the status quo and looking for a change in a desperate effort.
This is exactly what happened with Brexit.
From what I’ve seen it’s people angry at the status quo and looking for a change in a desperate effort.
This. Both the Biden and Harris campaign were focused on “it’s not actually that bad, but it’ll be worse under Trump”. And for a lot of people, it IS that bad. All they heard from Harris was that it will be more of the same, and the same isn’t working for a lot of Americans.
Fair enough.
But what is it they heard from Trump, then? I can not understand Americans. They vote for a felon who can not make a coherent sentence. What kind of change they expect, exactly?
I mean, what kind of change a black person who voted from Trump expects, for example? I truly can not comprehend.
Status-quo politics is dead, many major western parties just haven’t realized this yet. People want firmer political leadership that promises fundamental change and isn’t afraid of breaking things along the way.
It’s just fucking unfortunate that (in most countries) it’s only the far right who are ahead of the curve at realizing this.
Center to left parties need to reinvent themselves and focus less on pleasing everyone or fighting losing battles. They also need to present a much clearer vision.
“Center” is almost always the establishment. The whole problem with the status quo is that they have hijacked the idea to be associated solely with them.
People generally like status quo. When life is not perfect, but doesn’t become worse. The thing is - people also hate growing and entrenching elite whose power is represented by parties who generally represent that option (and who press out anyone else trying to present a better version of it).
Ultimately people feel that power as something they want to free themselves from, and thus vote for those who promise destructive action.
Anyway, let’s not forget that the last 4 years, despite the emotion in the media, were with Biden-Harris, not with Trump. All those nice things they promised - those really can only be done after year 2024, no way to try before it, right?
And Trump, despite all the scary promises, is not going to break too many things either. The difference between these parties is not as big as it would seem.
Also he attracted RFK. RFK, other than being an antivaxxer, is almost leftist. OK, not leftist, but a normal Democrat, one can say. That may mean a bit of moderation. That’s if he gets any real influence and has not been just fooled for votes.
Important to note here, the status quo is the status quo for a reason. Incremental evidence based change happens slowly. It cannot happen fast, and that’s good. Slow is stable. The clear vision is “the system we have but marginally better tomorrow. And then the day after tomorrow, marginally better than that.” It’s foolish to vote for anyone who promises drastic change, left, right, up, or down. It’s a trick. It’s like changing 5 variables at once in a science experiment and expecting any sort of result better than random chance. We don’t have a perfect system but rolling the dice on a wannabe fascist dictator is obviously not the way forward if you have two brain cells to run together, but an alarming amount of people seem to just not get it.
For the record, we progressives in the US have been trying to foment that kind of attention. Messaging seems to be artificially limited by the corporate media, which is why groups like XR have had to resort to super glue hands onto the outer frames of art.
Every time we gain some momentum, serious violence appears, perfectly on schedule, to quell our desire for change.
Well, they’re certainly going to get change, that’s for sure. I hope they’re happy sleeping in the bed they made.
No, they won’t. Like it happened in 2020. The problem is that there might not be another chance to rectify this if project 2025 can truly happen.
I think that for many of his voters, the system doesn’t work anymore for them. So they want it to change and they only see this change possible with Trump and Vance. Very sad.
I believe so. He at least promises more system breaking in his unique way. I believe he will do what he said on the campaign including implementing project 2025 ideas.
But the people who voted for him, believe he will improve their situation, even if it means that it will get harder for them in the near term. I believe things won’t improve for these people.
Obviously the system doesn’t work for most people with wealth inequality increasing every year without exception and people needing 3 jobs to survive. As long as the system is set up such that there are 2 major parties that fight for media attention by begging for money from rich people there will be no improvement for the working class. The working class knows that and they feel that. However, with lying being so normalised on every news station it’s very difficult to point to the right cause, so people lash out and vote for the candidate that promises change instead of the same spiel.
And yet Trump is the party of more and cronyism. Not less.
The is just more of the “drain the swamp” con. People didn’t learn.
Granted I don’t understand those people, but this difference between now and 2020 is lack of support for Harris, not increased support for Trump. I’ll add people sitting at home to the list of people I don’t want to associate with.
Trump support increased on many levels.
Kamala had problems. But Trump is stronger than any of us are comfortable with.
I agree that people are stupid for not understanding how terrible Trump was and will be. However, I think a big problem was that the DNC didn’t provide an attractive alternative to excite these dummies.
There was very obviously support for Harris early on when the DNC made some progressive decisions. Getting rid of Biden was a progressive choice. Choosing Tim Walz was a progressive choice. The DNC was immediately rewarded for these progressive choices with $1 billion in small donor donations.
The DNC got arrogant and decided to aggressively move in a conservative direction. Harris started talking about how she would build the wall and prosecute immigrants. The DNC welcomed the Cheneys with open arms. Harris told interviewers that she would be more conservative than Biden by accepting more Republicans in her Cabinet.
The DNC actively threw away their progressive supporters and gained absolutely nothing in return because the voters they were courting would never have voted for Harris anyway. Racists gonna vote Trump. Moderate conservatives gonna secretly vote Trump. People who want Republicans in a Presidential Cabinet are obviously gonna vote Trump.
If the DNC just focused on stuff like being pro choice or going into detail about fighting price gouging, that would have been much more successful than trying to attract the mythical “Moderate Conservative”.
I hate to say it, but progressives lose in battleground states. Everyone dreaming of the DNC moving further left is just that—dreaming.
And I say that as a somewhat progressive person living in a battleground state. If you think a progressive is going to run up the votes in rural Pennsylvania, they aren’t.
And if this pisses you off, well, join the club.
Trump is so far outperforming compared to 2020, its looking like he did increase his support. Definitely among younger people his numbers are significantly better than 2020.
No he isn’t. 71 million votes this year. 74 million in 2020. When the tally is done, at absolute best he matches his old performance within a percent or so, and that’s unlikely.
I don’t know either. Maybe everyone should have did more to talk to their shitty parents but who could expect this much BS.
Youth vote leaned into Trump. It’s an across the board / demographics loss for Democrats.
You can’t blame this on the boomers. It wasn’t much leaning but Trump gained support here.
You need to just fully recognize that your brand of politics is falling apart and we need real answers in the next 4 years. It’s going to be even harder after the grifters have even more megaphones drowning out the truth
