I said this earlier and got downvoted. 2024 was literally the perfect storm for Dems between everyone being home and the election coming during an unwinnable set of circumstances for Trump (or arguably any president).
BUT, it’s ridiculous to say that Trump’s base didn’t grow between now and then. In 2024 he got a higher percentage of almost every voter class than he did in 2016 or 2020. Whether or not that’s defections or just new voters, I don’t know and it’s probably too soon to tell, but I’ve seen things saying that more first-time Gen Zers voted for Trump much higher than predictions.
I really am worried that Dems (the party and the voters) are going to go through a third election cycle without learning anything, bury their head in the sand, and scream “it’s just the white, flyover rednecks voting for him.”
It’s not just that.
One thing that the Republicans got real good at was piping the idea of election fraud into their base. Part of what they’ve been doing is getting devoted citizens to target individuals they suspect to be democrat friendly and pouring over their registration paperwork. If they find anything amiss they report it which has made it nessisary to show up and defend one’s right to vote to the administrative bodies on a schedule.
https://youtu.be/CkK3W0lOKcc?si=OT4mOCnlZosTGbld
It’s meant that relatively small wildcat groups of citizens have managed to target literal tens of thousands of voters in swing states to cause confusion and delegitimize voters based on minute errors.
They find new ways to rig the game because they believe that they are owed this.
Thank you, after 2020 we were all warned Republicans would ramp up efforts to disenfrachise and prevent people from voting in a ton of ways. They screamed interference and they always project. I think Trump was mad that his efforts to cheat in 2020 didn’t work like they did in 2016. I would not be surprised to find out that votes were lost or removed. Florida was reporting 95% like 2 hours after the polls closed? I think the Dems could have tried to contest results in many states, but the amount of time and money required to address everything would be unreasonable and would make them look like they’re just acting like Trump. I think they also wanted to avoid scotus setting some kind of precedent. I’m looking forward to the YouTube video essay in 20 years explaining it all.
