Passively? Actively. A majority of voters handed over all the keys to these guys in full knowledge of the kind of people they are and what they wanted to do.
>I keep wondering where the line is, for those on the right. It seems like wherever you would draw a line in the sand … we're past that point.
Been thinking about this for years. I've come to the conclusion that there might be two seperate groups.
1. People that have nothing left to lose. Their life is ruined due to their community falling on hard times and if they see the people they perceive at fault suffering then they are satisfied.
2. People who love to watch the other side suffer but have themselves not felt enough pain yet. It has to really hurt for them to stop. I think the economy crashing in 08 was a moment where many of them quieted down for a tiny bit until the pain stopped.
The people with truly nothing left to lose are probably worried more about existing than voting, but I do generally agree otherwise. I think some resentment is possibly along lines of smarts/education and the roles and trappings those normally bring?
Assuming I did my sums right, DT won by approximately 1.5%. Hardly a ringing endorsement. He got 31.59% of the voter-eligible (VE) population. I count active yes votes as for a candidate and non-voter passive no votes. Some non-voters support a candidate, but since they didn't vote, their non-votes count against each candidate.
EC %EC pop vote %of ballots %of VE population
Democratic Kamala Harris Tim Walz 226 42% 75,019,230 48.34% 30.66%
Republican Donald J. Trump J.D. Vance 312 58% 77,303,568 49.81% 31.59%
voter eligible population 244,666,890 non-voters 89,278,948
> Passively? Actively. A majority of voters handed over all the keys to these guys in full knowledge of the kind of people they are and what they wanted to do.
I wouldn't say "full knowledge," but it's not like the other guys were any good either. There was a huge spike in inflation and right before the election it became clear they were lying about their leader's obvious incapacity. All the options voters had were bad.
Personally, I blame the Democrats for this. Winning against Trump should've been easy, but they managed to fuck it up in all kinds of ways. They knew the stakes (and said so, loudly), but for some unfathomable reason they thought that meant they could coast. They also don't appear to know what the fuck they should be doing now, and seem to want to keep coasting.
We had a full four-year trial period for this administration, plus four years of additional public shenanigans, plus a published detailed action plan (Project 2025). I don’t know what else they could have done to make it obvious what you were voting for.
The Democrats put up an alternative that wasn’t very exciting, but it’s ridiculous to claim the choices were somehow equally bad. One of them was boring, the other was an unprecedented level of bad, like literally historically bad.
> The Democrats put up an alternative that wasn’t very exciting, but it’s ridiculous to claim the choices were somehow equally bad. One of them was boring, the other was an unprecedented level of bad, like literally historically bad.
Well, the Democrats lost to that "unprecedented level of bad," so I think you're missing something.
Is there any reason in particular people should not be blaming Republican voters for "this"? The US had four full years of Trump and it was plain as day what he'd get up to from his campaign, and voters still think he was a good choice. At what point does the US stop coddling Republican voters and blaming Democrats, even if they ran a bad campaign?
The idea that a voter is ignorant and stupid to realize the consequences of their actions that they need a "campaign" telling them is frankly absurd.
I think this is a great point, and people honestly don't say it enough.
There was a clearly worse choice this cycle, even if you felt both options were not ideal.
Apparently, though, most people do not have a memory capable of spanning back past four years time. That and, depressingly, many people are woefully uninformed voters.
But this is a natural consequence of poor labor structure. Work the wage earner to the bone so that they have no time to actually consider their options, learn, and make informed decisions. Cut their leisure to a minimum so that every vote is a vote of vibes and gut feeling.
I feel this myself when assessing local candidates. I would love to develop a complete picture of each candidate and their beliefs, but with what time?
I’m baffled. Are you saying the Republicans were acting more like grownups? I think the Democrats learned too late that the voters didn’t want grownups and weren’t sure how to respond.
You would think the republicans did themselves in by claiming tariffs would lower prices. And not really having an economic policy, claiming to have a concept of a plan, but really not even that. The lack of substance, and the effectiveness of that lack of substance, was definitely enough to throw the Democrats off their game.
Seriously, how do you even begin to counteract whatever it was the Republicans were throwing around? Narcissistic wild claims (Gaza/Ukraine wouldn’t have been attacked if I was president!), exaggeration (Biden’s non-recession was the worst ever!), the downright bizarre (I’m prettier than Kamala). It’s like running against Bizarro, what sane person would have even considered voting for him anyways?
The American voters are definitely at fault here, not the Democrats. They were given the smelliest, harmful garbage and they actually voted for it. What consequences come from this are their fault, not the Democrats that didn’t run a crazy bizarre candidate.
I think this is a bit disingenuous. It was more like "he sucks, he has no plan for X and his plan makes no factual sense for Y, vote for me, here's my plan for X and my plan for Y" (remember the whole concept of a plan thing?)
The bad leadership is still there so they will try to continue this nonsense next cycle. Whats worse is they are beginning to groom the next generation of grifters. We saw this with the start of Gen-Z Democratic 'influencers' this cycle.
