I thought this was just click bait. But some of the answers are actually interesting (and scary in that way) how people can “rationally” explain how they fell for the lies of trump (“he cares about Muslims”, “he is a political outsider”, “he gets things done”…)
Good analysis:
“Ppl like her because she’s real. Ppl perceive Trump as real too. Dems need to do a better job of just being real with ppl. Coming on social media and chatting with ppl, etc.”
That’s why people liked Bernie too.
AOC is real.
But DJT is the most fictional character who’s ever existed. Nothing he’s ever said, done, or been has been true.
Sadly, we’re stuck in the reality that allows his falsehoods to affect real humans.
Well, like the quoted person said:
Ppl perceive Trump as real too.
Now, I have no idea how anyone could possibly think that, unless they only get Trump sanewashed by their favorite news outlet.
You vastly, vastly overestimate the intelligence of the average person/voter.
Most Americans read and write at a 6th or 7th grade level.
It’s the power of propaganda. The dems just need to start sending out mailers that scare voters like the republicans do. Shouldn’t be difficult. All they have to do is send everyone a copy of project 2025 a page at a time. They also need to hire a social media team that astroturfs and gets the talking points out.
I wonder if we listen to Trump more than they do. I have a hard time believing people can listen to him speak and come out with ideas like “he’s real”, “telling it like it is”, “he’ll do better with the economy”. Ok, maybe the last one because people are dumb
People here always talk about conservatives getting their news from Facebook or Fox.
But the connection I didn’t make until way too recently…… maybe they don’t know any politics firsthand. My Facebook tells me Trump is “telling it like it is”, so I don’t need to listen to him
Nah, DJT is real AF.
He said he’s gonna round up 20+ Million immigrants, I believe it. He says he’s gonna send the military after the enemy within, like Pelosi and Schiff, I believe it. He says don’t worry, no one’s ever going to need to vote again, to keep him in power, I definitely believe it.
He’s gonna try, I doubt he can convince the military to do anything to high ranking democratic officials.
Maybe if a “lower ranking” democratic congressperson like AOC do a BLM protest in Washington D.C, she might get harassed by the capitol police, but they’ll be fine. I doubt she’ll get shot.
The average civillian, however, if you still have any yard signs indicating that you support any democratic candidates, you might wanna take those down, because you might randonly get investigated for whatever trumped-up (pun intended) charges they invent. Or get a no-knock raid and ends with buller holes in your skull.
If you look “Mexican” to them, you could get deported if you don’t have your papers with you, even if you are legal, or even a citizen. (Might wanna look into getting a fireproof safe to store those documents, also keep photo backups of any documents that prove that you are here legally)
Bernie would have crashed just as hard with the same apparatus behind him.
Do you think Trump is charismatic on camera? No! It’s not him or his policy, it’s that his message would just not get through.
Harris turnout was lower than Biden. Trump’s was just barely up, but pretty much the same as last time. That means something with Harris failed. That’s the thing that changed.
Couldn’t be misogyny and racism. Has to be “she didn’t get her message out”.
We need real populists, that go after people’s needs, not pseudopopulists like in GOP.
I wonder what these numbskulls thought of Tim Walz. He seemed to do the real, down-to-earth thing pretty well also.
It was just too late. Plus, he was supporting Harris, who they didn’t see as genuine.
It was too late, but they also muzzled him, didn’t they? Just like the Weird business.
Whoever was running Harris campaign needs to be barred from being in charge of any political campaign ever again; talk about legendary levels of mismanagement.
They had the golden opportunity to lean into the ‘weird’ meme and hammer Trump/Vance on that issue - but decided against it because it was what, ‘demeaning’?
The Dems need a firebrand, with a truely populist message and policies; rather than just lip service.
Oh I thought it was the dumbfucks in the Democrat party who chose to run a shit campaign and marginalised their voters into not showing up while they focused on getting lobbying money and chasing right wingers fault 🤷
Implicitly. But if you look at the responses given in the article, I do not believe these people knew what they were choosing implicitly.
So many of them seem to be rejecting the government as it is, and stupid as it may be, Trump republicans are the only ones filling that void.
For whatever reason, when I’m hearing about Dems in the swing state I’m in, I’m hardly ever hearing why you should be excited to vote for the Dem candidate, but instead why the Rep candidate is so awful that you simply must vote Dem to stop them. Like, there was about a week(?) that Harris and Walz seemed to be coming out of the gate going “we’re gonna be so awesome, don’t even worry about the weirdos on the other side”, but then it became “please, it is of Vital Importance you do not vote for Trump, we promise Harris will be better than him”, and I just don’t understand why they changed.
This is fucking nuts. Some of those answers are people being so uninformed and then acting like they’re the ones that are informed. Some even voted for Trump because they think he’s anti-war and will stop the Genocide in Gaza despite him wanting to turbocharge it. It’s just. Fucking depressing. I don’t know how to counter this. The far right has created a media ecosystem that allows them to feed trash into their viewers brains even if it’s a blatant lie and those people will go from voting for a blatant racist and fascist who thinks people of color are not real Americans, to voting for a left leaning woman of color.
It’s almost like they don’t have any actual morals or beliefs and only care about being anti-establishment. Some say they’d vote for Bernie but instead voted for Trump despite them being completely opposite people. These people don’t have media literacy. They’ve been brainwashed, and I don’t know how to fix it.
The thing AOC, Bernie and Trump do have in common is that they are all populists. That they would also have accepted AOC or Bernie means that they dont necessarily want a demagogue, but its also not a deal breaker for them.
We need to stop with the brainwashing talk. A few people on the fringe were clearly mentally ill, but the rest of them had agency and they made a choice.
I get what you’re saying. And agree somewhat. But I think you don’t have to be mentally ill or an idiot or whatever to be brainwashed. But being brainwashed is 100% what a lot of people on the right are and refusing to use that term might make sense in some regard, but it also doesn’t properly address how we could go about fixing things. While I don’t fully know how to fix this, treating it like brainwashing is the only way we can address it, as long as we also approach these people with patience and compassion and try to show them why what they spout is brainwashed.
It’s a cult ya know? And cults are brainwashed. And calling people mentally ill or idiots for falling for it will definitely just make them double down. But it’s still brainwashing.
If half the population is actually susceptible to brainwashing over Facebook then democracy itself is unworkable. These people clearly have preferences and are making choices, including the choice to know very little about what they vote for. Im afraid that patience and compassion will only encourage this behavior.
We’re all brainwashed in the US though. We’re all in the USA cult here while our taxes bomb and starve millions of people. We still vote for blue even when they continue the embargo on Cuba and we bomb the poorest countries in the world.
Trump is a pseudopopulists, he fools people into thinking he is fighting for them while fighting for himself.
Everyone thinks their populist is the real deal and the others are frauds, but at the day populism is not about good policy, it’s about making a show of putting up a fight. There have been many populists in political history and only a very small percentage have been materially helpful to their constituents.
It’s the delivery.
Delivery is everything.
Trump reached these people, and Biden/Harris did not. It’s that simple. The message does not matter if it doesn’t get there. And this is a tremendous failure, considering the war chest the Dems squandered.
And I have zero faith they will learn from it. All the arguing I see is over policy that these people clearly never even laid eyes on.
If it wasn’t for The Voice I wouldn’t have seen a single political ad. I recall very few if any YouTube ads, a buttload of Instagram ads, but pretty much every one of them was asking for money. Okay? Money to do what? Buy more ads asking for more money? I’m sure political ads aren’t super effective in changing people’s minds but they do get people start to think about the issues and ways to compare different candidates. Also, the most things I remember about the campaign were when Trump said something crazy and when Kamala responded to Trump saying something crazy. Her entire campaign was pretty much, “You don’t want this other guy do you?” I have voted for very few candidates in my life and this time I definitely voted against Trump.
I see zero ads beyond billboards and the occasional radio at if I happen to be at a store.
Other than one guy going around to make sure people had a plan for voting the only interaction I had with the Democratic campaign was them begging, PLEADING for money. A dozen texts a day. Two dozen emails. Three or four phone calls a day that never left a voicemail and have stopped since the election. (I didn’t answer them.)
If that’s what the rest of the Democratic base was subjected to it’s no wonder they had a bad taste in their mouth about the election. Even though Trump won a part of me is glad the harassment has stopped.
I don’t know if this kind of thing is captured very well but I wonder how many voted blue for other Federal offices but simply skipped President. I understand the general motivation behind “sending a message” and “leaving this one up to chance” but good Lord.
This is like me refusing to “play chase” with my kid even though he’s running right towards the street. It’s annoying as fuck every time but the consequence of me “refusing to play” could be dire. After I save the little shit for the 10th time I punish him, but in a way that doesn’t kill or cripple him for life.
I don’t know if this kind of thing is captured very well but I wonder how many voted blue for other Federal offices but simply skipped President.
Trump won PA by 144,739 votes, but Casey is only trailing McKormick by around 40,000 votes, which may get narrower as all the ballots are counted. So I’d rate this plausible.
Edit: In the other statewide races the democrats lost by even more than Harris did, so I’m not rating this plausible.
