Trump makes small people feel important, then he promises retribution for anyone that ever made them feel small. His supporters don’t care about facts and are happy to bask in their perception of being a winner.
And this tough guy, mobster nationalist persona is apparently a world wide phenomenon right now, the ruling class is feeding the disenfranchised to themselves.
Already well past Obama’s record from 2008 with millions of votes yet to count.
I’d say it’s more of a case of “fuck you got mine”. The Cuban demographic in Florida is reliably Republican leaning, and has far different priorities than other Latinx populations living in, say, the SW. This is a big reason why Biden did well in AZ and NV but poorly in FL.
Even if Biden wins (please!) - he’s going to be a weak President, not because of his personal qualities - but because the GOP will still have two major levers they can pull. The Republicans will have the Senate and you can bet Ol’ Mitch will frustrate his every move and the Supreme Court will be more than willing to uphold cases sent up by Republicans.
Okay, it’ll be nice to wake up and not wonder what the President tweeted from the toilet, but American politics will remain paralysed.
Though as a Brit, a Biden victory will be a body-blow for our own governing semi-sentient ball of pus.
I’ve always enjoyed reading your comments. Can I come and sit with you at the freaks & geeks table for lunch ?
Not to be a total Debbie Downer but it’s even feasible that Trump himself could run again in 2024 and STILL be elected.
Hopefully he’ll drop dead in the next 4 years and we won’t have to worry about that.
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I can say with some certainty that this is correct. Add to that the Cuban-American tendency to believe that they are superior to all other Spanish-speaking folk in the US (because their roots are in Europe, you see) and you get Trump.
My Cuban relatives are really upset today. My stepdad said it best “can’t these fools see that Trump is a wannabe dictator like Castro? This is the same exact shit but from a different asshole!”
He fled Cuba as a small child and his uncle was a political prisoner there for many years.
This is what I can’t wrap my head around. 5-10 million more people voted for trump after the past 4 years. More people voted for trump this year than for either Hillary Clinton or Obama (with the votes left to be counted likely will end with more votes than Obama in 2008 and already has more than 2012).
In short Donald Fucking Trump after 4 years of hell, racism, misogyny, fraud, impeachment, environmental disaster, and grossly mismanaging a pandemic likely recieved more votes this year than any candidate in U.S. history before this year. There are no words to convey the level of confusion and grief that I feel about that.
there’s a point to be had that real racism requires policy and legal power discrepancies. prejudice is something every person can have, where racism is something unique to the power structure. anyway, it’d be off topic but maybe food for thought.
This is pretty on the nose.
Americans are fed the dream that they will be successful on their own merits and anybody who isn’t successful just isn’t trying hard enough. A lot of people earnestly believe this. Then there’s a small minority of very influential and shrewd politicians that have been successfully gaming the system for the past 40-50 years to stamp out what the majority of Americans actually want.
A good assessment.
That’s not harsh, it’s true; your friend basically described the Dumbening in a nutshell…
It used to be a nation where the rich paid their fair share. Back then, they built the interstate highway system, helped hundreds of thousands of veterans get their first house, and sent men to the moon.
Now there’s a fox for every hen house, and the foxes have convinced the chickens that only the foxes can bring chicken prosperity.
i’m totally with you on the grief but i’ve spent the last 4 years listening to relatives of mine gloating about, glorying in, the meanness and cruelty of trump and how he’s “sticking it to the fucking libs” too much and too often to be at all surprised. i have realized that around half of my fellow citizens believe that i am sub-human scum and we need people in office who will make us pay for “ruining america.”
edited for spelling
This is what is killing me too. For whatever reason, be it belief in lies, ignorance, or a desire for cruelty, a sizable minority of this country enthusiastically wants to keep a corrupt con man in power, turning out in record numbers to vote for him. This con man and his enablers own an entire ecosystem of “news” that happily feeds the masses lies, propaganda, conspiracy theories, and just enough truth sprinkled in to fig leaf themselves into some version of legitimacy.
I don’t know how we go forward as a nation from here. My last hope was that Trump would be soundly repudiated. But at this point, no matter who wins, “Trumpism” as a governing philosophy has won the day. I fear that we truly are at the beginning of a civil war that will likely last for years if not decades.
i think the aspect of the election that is making my brain hurt the worst is the increasing likelihood that the next two years will be dominated by de facto president mcconnell throttling every possible potential good thing biden will try to do and then in 2022 our goddamn low-information electorate will blame everything on the democrats and return republicans to a majority in the house and increase their majority in the senate.
You assume McConnell will live that long.
I’m still hoping whatever is wrong with him is fatal.
“from your keyboard to god’s timeline.”
yeah – supporting the status quo by not voting is definitely a thing.
lack of participation here also has to do with things like: the electoral college ( ex. people feel like their vote doesn’t count ), active disenfranchisement ( ex. felons often can’t vote ), barriers in getting registered and getting to the polls ( ex. voter purges, limited ballot access, election day isn’t a holiday. )
i just read that oregon ( with universal mail-in voting ) has had a record breaking 80+% voter participation rate. that’s way beyond the us average 50-60% rate. so there’s clearly barriers to voting in other states.
unfortunately, none of that really changes – like @Mindysan33 and others say – that so many people still voted for trump even after everything we’ve seen in the last four years.
