Opinion: Trump wins 2024 election. America needs to admit it's not 'better than this.'
Opinion: Trump wins 2024 election. America needs to admit it's not 'better than this.'
Donald Trump won, and I never want to hear the words 'America is better than this' again. I never want to be told about America's better angels.
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We can no longer hide behind the excuse of "the electoral college". We can no longer say that Trump did not win the popular vote. Trump won the Presidency, retook the Senate, and are poised to retain the house. Progressive candidates and initiatives either underperformed or failed nationwide. A majority of voters nationwide saw everything that came with a Trump presidency and a MAGA agenda and said "Yes. We want more of that."
We are not better than this.
I dont get how someone can vote for Obama twice and then just say fuck it at some point. Isn't that what more or less keeps happening, how does one make sense of all this?
How is there so much turnover and churn every election, how can someone who says he's going to make everything harder for you have any appeal?
My only guess is he's promising to go even harder on people they don't like which magically makes it all palatable
That was my brother-in-law. In West Virginia. Votes for Obama twice then Trump.
Near as I can tell, they want “change” and doesn’t matter much what that means. They feel powerless in the face of the “other”. The government itself is “other”. It’s who they blame for problems whether it’s taxes or complicated rules for their small business or the way “elites” get away with doing the stuff they can’t do. They have some legitimate gripes with the government and “elites”.
Obama sold “change” really well. So did Trump. It’s not the same kind of change. And, he employed many more “others”. Trump’s change is a lie but Obama’s change never materialized even though he was probably more sincere about it.
These people are dealing with feelings of frustration, inadequacy, envy and shame. They’re lashing out and their only power is their vote. Trump fed those feelings and gave them a target and convinced them that only he could help them.
If you were to put on your diagnostician hat, what do you think he actually needs and would be satisfied with. Like what actual change does he seek and would it actually satisfy him?
What kind of change was Obama actually selling, what ideas did your relative have that Obama was going to fix that he became disillusioned by?
I think making them financially and emotionally comfortable. Reduce the wealth gap and convince them that government is advocating for them in concrete ways.
This would be real change and I’m not sure many places in the USA—especially where it’s most needed—are capable of making that change.
Certainly, Trump and his ilk are working to do the opposite while waving panaceas in their faces.
Sometimes, I think Democrats and the left get too caught up in the big picture issues and ignore the ground work that’s needed. They’re trying to grow a forest without clearing the rocks and weeds. You don’t combat transphobia, misogyny and racism just by preaching the virtues of inclusivity. You have to address the insecurities that lead to that kind of hate. That means helping the despicable people and I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to help them. But, that puts us in a vicious circle.
I don’t think change will ever come from the top. It’s got to start very local. Think about conservative talk radio and how influential that is/was. It was someone talking directly to them even if it was a syndicated show it was on a local AM station. They sowed the fear and anxiety that lead us here. The Dems/liberal/left still seems to mostly ignore that.
Do they have patience for this? Everything you’re suggesting is a long term change. No President can do this during their term. The constant search for change just means any progress gets thrown away every four years. And as you said, much of it has to come from the bottom up, from the very people who are frustrated with the status quo
Are he just doomed because people don’t have the patience for long term societal change, or don’t see that they need to be part of it?
Are we doomed because people can’t get beyond outrage media?
Are we doomed because complaining about a problem is easier than fixing it,or easier even than learning the truth about it?
Post scriptum: This got way longer and way more opinionated than I intended. I still believe there is some fundamental argument in there, but it's not delivered rational. Sorry.
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Something I have repeatedly heard and read in criticism of modern democratic governments is that they don't actually do anything.
The calculus of political compromise, the promise and ideal of stability, and over complex systems they over see make them fundamentally incapable of changing anything. The way democracies govern cannot adapt to outside change and will not deliver on inside demands. Change is opposed to how they calculate decision paths, how they understand incentive.
They promise you that the continuation of injustice will guarantee price stability and then inflation happens. They ask you to cut back your carbon footprint and climate change escalates anyway. And when the fascists are appearing on the horizon they ask you to defend democracy, the system that fails you over and over again, by sacrificing your ideals, your needs, and in many cases your personal safety and security by opposing fascism.
Democratic governments have proven that they cannot and will not protect you from economic hardship, war, climate catastrophe, wealth inequality, and your neighbor's tree standing to close to your fence.
This is nothing that is necessary or inherent to democracies, it is how the internal way of thinking of democratic governments incentives their decision making.
People want things to change. Past governments have shown that they won't deliver on that ever.
And to make that clear I don't think minority rights are nothing, but they are for minorities. There is no fundamental change to the lives of the majority populous on the scale of same sex marriage.
What they choose instead is burning books and people, because that is an expression of their internal suffering and pain, which they feel is ignored. They don't care that they might be next on the chop block, as long as they get to chop for a time.
It's a nihilistic reaction to political frustration.
That’s interesting. Where have you read this? I would like to read it too.
If I remember correct there is a [Edit] video recording from a [/Edit] Chaos communication Congress on the failure of democracies in which this is discussed. I'll see if I can dig it up. Might be in German though, but we'll see...
[Edit] Yeah sorry it is in German https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12056-ist_die_demokratie_noch_zu_retten
Selk, the presenter also has seemingly published mostly or exclusively in German, but I guess one can find similar researcher with publications in English.
Edit3 there is a English translation audio track available
Obama’s change never materialized
Is ObamaCare a joke to you?
Yes, yes it is
These people should consider taking a bullet to the head next time. Would save the rest of us a lot of trouble, while brining the exact same change they voted for.
This was the UK electorate with Boris Johnson.
It takes an absolute economic shitshow for people to stop wanting "change" and wanting simple good governance.
Every cycle there is a fresh new batch of voters. I'm sure most of the people who voted for Obama the first two times didn't throw their vote in for Trump.
I hate to say this, but from what my kid tells me, Trump is more popular at his middle school than Kamala, just because he's the goofy meme president and they aren't aware of much else. This is in the middle of Baltimore. So I imagine a lot of voters choose based on that alone. We never got any Biden or Kamala centipede memes. Just that lame, forced, "dark Brandon" shit. The Democrats have become the stuffy old boomer party in the eyes of the youth, even though that's almost the exact opposite. Their Internet game is weak as hell, and that's what matters these days.
That’s crazy, the Democrats also had a better internet game. Are you saying the Democrats success with memeifying Trump is actually what made him more accessible to younger voters?
They clearly didnt. Look at the youth, what do they follow. Joe Rogan, redpill, tiktok; they vote based on memes and vibes
Could be, or, dare I say, the left just can't meme. Because they aren't willing to meme about the type of fucked up shit the right always memes about. Even in memes they "take the high road" and play it safe.
Trump got about the same amount of votes as he did in 2020. Harris got about 16 million less than Biden did.
It’s less that voters changed their mind and more that millions of voters will show up and vote Democrat when they care and stay home when they don’t.
If they didn't vote in 2024, that's because they saw trump and said "yes, this is fine". If they didn't, they would've voted.
Even if they didn't like Kamala, they would've voted for her if they didn't think a trump presidency was acceptable.
Anything more positive for trump than "trump's presidency is not acceptable" means that America is not "better than this".
Simply because Obama did awful stuff too. He's a war criminal as much as bush or biden or trump.
I thought their messaging to voters was patronizing/insulting as well.
I'm German, and non-Germans always find it weird that most of us don't have a very strong sense of national pride and are even very critical of our country, sometimes maybe even excessively so.
We have learned what uncritical, unreflected national pride leads to. What the price is to not confront the dark side that every society has.
And now, sadly, the US has to learn the same lesson the hard way too. I only hope the US and the rest of the world can come out of it with as little bloodshed as possible. But I fear for the worst.
"Remember, remember the 5th of november." has a altogether new meaning now.
cough AfD cough
Yeah, that's the tragedy of it. Even in a country where it already happened once and millions of people died because of it, there are people eager for another run at it.
Even a country formed by survivors of the last round is engaging in genocide.
Yeah, that's also wild.
Learned? Oh no. We haven't done that yet I'm afraid.
Instead of doubling down on our beliefs with authenticity as the Right does (I mean, many abortion referendums did pass), we repeatedly cede ground to the Overton Window.
The problem is we don't actually engage in the same degree of activism in the off-season and always let conservatives control the narrative on largely manufactured issues and half truths.
Well, there is the fact that that right-wing activism is bankrolled by some wacko billionaires, while even the DNC works against progressives where it can.
Money in politics is what it boils down to, again, and wealth inequality.
We've all been saying that high turnout means a Democrat win and low means a Republican win, and that's exactly what happened. People staying home in swing states have doomed us all.
I do think we can blame the electoral college to a certain extent. How many people sat home in deep red states because their vote never matters? Unless you live in a handful of states there is almost no point. Take that away and let the people have a voice, not some bullshit system which was designed to prevent leaders like him getting elected.