> This is the political will of a plurality of American voters.
This fallacy gets repeated over and over, but it's obviously false.
Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with? It's a quintessential fact of politics that voting for a candidate is not equivalent to an endorsement of everything that candidate does in the future. It's a premise that is obviously false when we consider our own votes, but it feels cathartic to force the claim on to the other side.
This administration's net approval rating flipped net negative very quickly after his election and has been trending downward. It's just navel-gazing to pretend like what he's doing has high approval.
> It's just navel-gazing to pretend like what he's doing has high approval
Then how is it being reflected in Congress? Where are the Republicans speaking loudly on behalf of their dissatisfied constituents and voting on bills accordingly? We shouldn't have to wait every two years for a midterms or general election for the negative approval rating to make itself known, politicians can choose any time to act in a way that shows they're listening to their constituents.
they're basically fucked. they can't turn against Leader, because their base would abandon them immediately. But they desperately wish they could hold him back, because they are well aware they are going to get creamed in November.
as far as "bills", there's no bills because that's up to Mike Johnson who is a super loyalist. His district is very safe (Cook R+26).
> their base would abandon them immediately...they are going to get creamed in November.
These seem contradictory. So they risk losing their voters if they oppose Trump, but also know voters will vote them out?
>that's up to Mike Johnson who is a super loyalist. His district is very safe (Cook R+26).
That's part of why we've had so many forced votes around Johnson.
And I guess we'll see in Novemeber which branch is true. Either the R's are safe and the voter base is strong/popular enough to keep them in, or they are actually unpopular and at best scared of Trump (and at worst, super loyalist) and they will go down with the ship.
their base alone is not big enough to give them electoral victory. they always need more. but they need the base too. Because of Trump's lawlessness, they can't have both, hence you see a lot of retirements etc. this year.
> Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with?
I personally haven’t, no. And I definitely have never voted for a candidate who claimed they’d do horrible things if elected. There is no one who voted for Trump the second time around who has the excuse of him “doing things I don’t agree with”. He told everyone what he was going to do, and people still voted for him. Either they agree with his actions or they’re stupid. If the former, they’re irredeemable; if the latter, they need to take responsibility and act. This was not an “oopsie” you can simply regret and vote better next time, irreparable damage is being caused to the world. Negative approval ratings mean nothing to a despot.
Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with?
I'm having a hard time thinking of things this admin and their party has done but hasn't directly campaigned on, directly praised someone else doing, etc. On the flip side of that, which empty promise, if fulfilled, would be worth the situation we're otherwise in?
well they had quite a few contradictions. They campaigned on "No new wars" and meanwhile the US hit Venezuela and might be trying to do the same on Greenland and Mexico. Campaigned on jobs but manufacturing has been plummeting all year. Campaigned on cheaper groceries but things are more expensive.
It's a big maybe, but maybe if Trump actually managed to end the Ukraine War and push out Russia the chaos would have been a net benefit (from a utilitarian POV). Instead, he berated Zelensky on camera.
Trump campaigned on "No new wars", but given Trump's history in his first term, his party's history in general, you'd have to have be a rube to believe this. Also why does this earn Trump a vote when his opposition was also running on the status quo in this regard, especially the considering the historical US uniparty approach to foreign affairs?
But, go ahead, set that aside. You think that is a worthwhile tradeoff for Trump sending federal agents to gun down his political enemies (US citizens who hurt their feelings)?
I think we can both admit there's a lot of rubes in this country.
>why does this earn Trump a vote when his opposition was also running on the status quo in this regard, especially the considering the historical US uniparty approach to foreign affairs?
To be frank, because we're applying logic to irrational actors. It shouldn't change anything, but Trump yelled it louder, looked more like the people who voted for him, and it's just one of the many ways they rationalize what they already wanted deep down (but need the not say out loud).
>You think that is a worthwhile tradeoff for Trump sending federal agents to gun down his political enemies (US citizens who hurt their feelings)?
Hard to say, I'm not a utilitarian. But I can see it from that lens. You'd save hundreds of thousands of lives, further constrain Russia on the global level if Ukraine can get into NATO, and even curb off other tensions like China vs Taiwan and Israel v. Palestine. That's a lot of good.
These aren't good directly reflected in the US economy nor jobs, though. That's the issue with utilitarianism in that it ignores the micro socio-economic situations, and those can build up into even worse timelines.
> It shouldn't change anything, but Trump yelled it louder,
No, he did not. This is simply not true. The thing about Trump being pro peace was just one more pure bad faith lie. And people who voted for Trump did not believed in Trump for peace thing.
Maybe we should stop projecting positive motivations on people who were about something else entirely
>The thing about Trump being pro peace was just one more pure bad faith lie.
Okay, the reverse logic works as well. People didn't trust either candidate so it came down to all the above, superficial factors or much deeper, unspoken motivations.
My main point is more on "people already knew who they wanted" more than whatever their outward facing words say.
> People didn't trust either candidate so it came down to all the above, superficial factors or much deeper, unspoken motivations.
They liked trump, because he promissed to harm trans, liberals, dominate women, dominate international politocs and because he is proper masculine per conservative outlook.
Nothing unspoken about that.
> Okay, the reverse logic works as well.
It does not. You need to ignore what candidates said, what people supporting them said, what poloticians said and what people wrote on social media.
You need to literally ignore what republicans, conservatives and were saying praising and doing, just so you can whitewhash and sanewash their choices and opinions.
> My main point is more on "people already knew who they wanted" more than whatever their outward facing words say.
They wanted to cause harm to people they dislike. They want to liberals others suffer as they watch how "proper manly men" mistreat people.
This is not a fallacy, simply an opinion you disagree with. But one which I strongly agree with.
I'm not American, and though I may not agree completely with the politicians I voted for, I have not been blindsided yet. The second election of Trump is a symptom of Americans either unable or unwilling to look beyond single issues or sports team politics.
To then turn around and act surprised is just a way to conveniently absolve themselves of the responsibility of electing him to begin with. If this wasn't the case, Trump voters themselves would be calling for his impeachment, not Democrat voters.
Approval rating means nothing if it enforces nothing.
If you're not American, then you may not understand the way the American voting system works.
We only have two parties. (Technically, there are some third parties, but they're effectively worse than negligible—voting for them is guaranteed to either do nothing or harm the cause you're interested in, unless the candidate is already a member of a major party and merely cross-endorsed.)
This means that if you care about one thing that one of the two major parties ostensibly supports (or is ostensibly better at than the other), more than any of the things on the other side, you have no choice: you have to vote for that party's candidate.
We also have a mainstream media landscape that is fully captured by the wealthy on the right. It is hard to overstate the extent to which our media carries water for the Republican Party.
And finally, we have absolutely abysmal civics education. It has been steadily gutted over the course of decades. To some extent, this is a deliberate move to make it easier to use the aforementioned media capture to control the average voter.
So if you're a low-information voter, you think the economy is bad, and you want to fix that, you're going to vote for the candidate of the major party that media has been telling you for 50 years is the party that's good at the economy, despite the fact that every time they're in office the debt goes up, regular people's lives get worse, and more protections go out the window.
> If you're not American, then you may not understand the way the American voting system works.
This is incredibly unlikely, given how pervasive American politics is, and how much the results of the American elections affects the rest of the world. Additionally, having a two party system is unfortunately pretty common.
I've seen plenty of comments from people outside the US that clearly don't understand how the US system works. For that matter, that's not limited to people outside the US.
As a german, i can assure you, GPs comment was spot on and is very transferable to germany, no matter how many serious parties are listed on the ballots. Its is the elites, slowly undermining democracies and public/private institutions all over the western world in similar ways.
I've talked with a number of people online from Europe (particularly the UK) who came in with the assumption that a parliamentary system was the default. (I don't consider this a mark against them: everyone is likely to start out with the assumption that the first thing they learn about is the default. They were just part of that day's lucky 10,000.)
There are a great many reasons why people might misunderstand why so many people voted for Trump, and most of them start with assuming your own experience is universal, at least in certain realms. I suspect that, for people outside the US, not really understanding our voting/electoral system is one of the top ones, and it's a very understandable one. I prefer to go for it first, because the one I consider next most likely is a bit less charitable: assuming that everyone shares your privileges. (ie, "surely no one could possibly be so uneducated as to think that Trump was anything but a liar and a fascist." Buddy, you can't even imagine how bad the American education system can be, or how hard it is to care about anything other than the bare necessities when you're poor...)
That is exactly the problem. The first past the post single representative systems all have this feature. It seems almost inevitable that they will just because of that. Some sort of representative system will reduce this disconnect between what voters want and what they get because it allows more parties to flourish. The downside is that you end up with coalition governments. These are seen as “weak” although I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.
You're missing some history that pushed former Democratic vorers to vote Trump. Taxpayer funding of NGOs that were writing grants to organizations that were effectively censoring onlinespeech. This and the Disinformation Board, and the direct phone calls from US senators and Congressmen to takedown opposition ideas n social media was a direct attack on the First Amendment by the Democrats. Yes Trump's FCC threats over Jimmy Kimmel were also wrong, but he didn't have a government agency doing it to citizens. Trump ended that system. Also, DNC threw working class under the bus and chastise them for leaving the party that screwed them. If sports team politics is what you're hearing, you're being lied to.
He's clearly alluding the fact that the Biden admin did far worse.
The great sin of Trump's FCC was a single ill-advised tweet by FCC chair Brendan Carr... in which he threatened to enforce the law as written. For comparison, the Biden admin's FBI actively engaged in purely political media manipulation in service of the sitting president's campaign, such as when they lied to Facebook (and presumably others) to "prebunk" the Hunter's Laptop story, which directly lead to a near-total ban of a factual news story.
He wrote that the FCC wasn't a government agency. Hard to argue that is correct, or that their political pursuit of one of trump's "enemies" isn't actually political.
It was more that a tweet no, but an interview with Benny johnson, an avowed political figure paid by Russians at one point?
> He wrote that the FCC wasn't a government agency. Hard to argue that is correct
You're harping on a detail that hardly matters in order to avoid the broader point, which is rather silly. The FCC is a government agency. Brendan Carr made an ill-advised tweet, which doesn't hold a candle to Biden's use of the FBI to spread misinformation and induce censorship for political purposes.
> or that their political pursuit of one of trump's "enemies" isn't actually political.
Of course it's political. It's political when both sides do it.
When you're ignoring the comment talking about people arrested for criticizing a political pundit to argue about minutae and claiming "both sides are bad", yes.
You got me. I am avoiding the comment about the Perry County Police Department, as it's so incredibly damaging to my worldview. The cognitive dissonance is simply too great to bear.
Someone would have have to be deeply ignorant to think that Donald Trump, notorious for his numerous lawsuits and public threats to silence any critique of himself in the press, and whose campaign was coordinating with Twitter to take down posts while he was sitting president (just as the Democrats were, but they weren't in office) would champion Free Speech in any, way, shape or form.
This “both sides” bullshit is so tired. You’re exaggerating and misleading with most of this, but even if all of this was true, it represents about a week’s worth of what Trump has done. They just shot a woman in the face, immediately started calling her a terrorist, and show no intention of even investigating it. I don’t give a single fuck about the DNC “chastising” someone when held up against this kind of slide into fascism.
Peek mind virus would be now, to dismiss your rebuttal as "extreme left censorship" or something and not think further about anything you brought up. I have seen this delusional behavior too many times, it is really tiring.
I'm convinced that abortion is the worst thing the Democratic party could have ever taken up. You simply cannot sway a vote of a person who believes you support murdering babies. (I am pro abortion, but a substantial amount of people think it is morally murder.) Those people have to vote R their whole life no matter what. Nothing is worse than murdering babies.
Democrats would probably never lose again if they publicly dropped support for abortion.
This has the same energy as "Democrats would fair better if they let slavery be legal again". Aren't democrats critisized by their actual voter base by trying to continually appeal to a party that will never vote for them? It really just shows that the major parties are either center right or far right.
Abortion is an emblematic example of how this kind of triangulation doesn't do what you're expecting. The Democratic party didn't take abortion up on the federal stage, repeatedly declining to create any new statutory protections and endorsing things like the Hyde amendment that acknowledge it's a contested issue. I think that was probably the right decision even in retrospect, but it didn't earn them even a modicum of goodwill from anti-abortion advocates.
You simply can't convince the public that your party doesn't stand for things your members care deeply about.
I mean, everyone knows that D widely supports abortion. It's been shouted from the rooftops for decades. It wouldn't be very believable in one cycle even if they tried, which they didn't; neglecting to bring up the topic is not close to publicly dropping support. Part of why it's so bad for them is because it will be very difficult to get disentangled from it.
From a pro-life perspective, "well they didn't make it easier to murder babies or bring it up much" is not compelling.
To me your phrase "publicly dropped support for abortion" sounds like "neglecting to bring up the topic". If you mean that Democratic leaders should somehow convince their members to support abortion restrictions that they oppose, I'm not sure why you would presume that's possible.
I'm imagining a candidate saying something like, "I want to help America with x y z [blue team related] issues. I want to bridge the aisle with Republicans and voters. To that end, I vow to not support any measures for the expansion of abortion. I believe that right now it's more important to help Americans in other ways. This is a contentious issue, but if we can set it aside for the moment, I believe D and R can come together to solve x y and z."
Maybe Democrats would never vote for this, but that's kind of the problem.
Again, Democratic politicians routinely made such statements in the era before Roe was overturned. The longstanding Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funds from being used in any way to expand, promote, or perform abortions. There was just no way to get around the fundamental problem that, to a critical mass of Republican voters, "I'd like to maintain the status quo so we can focus on other issues" was an unacceptable pro-abortion stance.
The official Democratic platform for every cycle from 1976 to 2000 (except 1984-88 when abortion was not mentioned at all) explicitly acknowledged that abortion was controversial, that abortion opponents were welcome in the party, and that decreasing the number of abortions that are necessary is a worthy goal. The issue got more polarized when it became clear that no compromise or detente less than overturning Roe v. Wade would ever be accepted. I don't know of any specific pledges not to expand abortion access, again because the Hyde amendment prevented any proposals to expand abortion access.
> This is a contentious issue, but if we can set it aside for the moment, I believe D and R can come together to solve x y and z
I'm curious: Where does your line of thought actually end? Do you agree that they should perhaps meet Republicans in the center around vaccine issues and dismantle vaccine requirements? What about issues of climate change? Corruption?
It ends when they can win powerful majorities in elections again. What I said is only controversial because the topic is relatively well supported. But if you look at it as a party supporting a topic that is preventing them from winning elections, it doesn't really matter what that topic is, they need to rethink their platform until they can win elections again.
It might sound unsavory to say that they should drop <issue you think is important>, like climate change, but if that were genuinely the reason they're losing then of course they should drop it. The alternative is you just have a party of ideologues with no power. They can still do good things without doing <important thing>.
I just don't think any issue is as contentious as abortion, or having as much of an effect, because you can hold your nose about a lot of things, but not about 'murdering babies'. Again, this is a moral hard line that a lot of people have. They seriously think that Democrats are ontologically evil because of this; it's far beyond the political. I don't think they need to drop those things you listed from the platform because I don't think it would help them win.
From talking with Republican or centrist or ex-democrat peers and family, some of them would vote Democrat "if they stop killing babies", and others would "if they stopped the racial shit". I've never heard anyone say such a thing about anything you listed.
I asked you, specifically, where your line was at. If the dems were losing because they thought people getting shot in the street by government agents were bad, should they instead say 'actually, a little murder is alright'? What about gay marriage? First amendment rights?
The notion that they should compromise with people whose ideals align with literally killing people or taking away rights is a notion I reject. I will never, ever vote for a democrat that compromises in the way you suggest so they can choose which side they want to try and get votes from.
Well I typically vote Republican, so I can only speculate. But let's imagine that 70% of people support ICE, and those people would never ever vote against ICE, because they think that is evil; everything else is the same.
In such a world, the Dems have no power, because they get 30% of the vote at most. They should stop fighting ICE so that they can at least do something on their agenda. The choice is between passing some good legislation unrelated to ICE, or never being able to pass any legislation. Obviously the former is better.
At the end of the day it's a democracy. The people vote for what they want, and then get it. The people originate the ideas that are available to be implemented. The notion of a democratic representative refusing to do what is needed to get votes is meaningless. It's the notion of a political idea that is refusing to be believed in, so must become irrelevant.
Anyway, your whole train of thought presupposes correctness and righteousness and that change to certain things is not on the table. If somehow the Democrats shrunk to the size of the Libertarian party because they held onto all that, you could keep voting for them, but real politics continues without you. I am suggesting they change before that shrinkage occurs, not after or never.
But your whole train of thought presupposes that activism can't change people's support and votes. The hypothetical you're describing played out with gay marriage over the past few decades, and the folks on the 30% side of the issue won completely - gay marriage is now completely legal, supported by a majority in every state, and so well-established that opposing it would be electoral poison.
True and good point, however I do not believe that activism can change anyone's support for abortion, for reasons I've stated. That specifically is a special case. Maybe it can implant ideas into the youth so they don't need their minds changed, but that's a long game.
i.e. Abortion is generally supported by 63% of the overall population, 85% of Democrats and 67% of moderate/liberal Republicans. I don't see how you'd ever convince Democrats to drop it to cater primarily to conservative republicans.
>I want to bridge the aisle with Republicans and voters.
Anyone saying this in 2026-2028 is going to be eviscerated by democrats. The bridge was long burned and now they are throwing citizens into the burning wreck. You don't "bridge the aisle" with people who threaten your life.
Also, anyone who wants to protect kids but isn't pushing the Epstein files to be released spoke wide and loud on what they really care about. So many motte and baileys out there.
So, we've seen large disproportionate electoral success from pro-life democrats? Referenda protecting abortion rights in red states were totally crushed?
Wait no. That's not what has happened.
Further, democratic voters are democrats because they support the policies that the democratic policy supports. Democrats suddenly being down with a federal ban on abortion isn't going to exactly get pro choice dems (the huge majority of their voting population) to run to the polls.
Dems tried the "actually we are right wing too" approach on immigration. Do people who hate illegal immigrants vote dem now? No.
Roe v. Wade isn't gone because of the will of the people. Nobody voted to overturn it. It's gone because of a unique scenario involving the balance of power in the SCOTUS.
Congressional Republicans simply refused to confirm a legally appointed justice, allowing a conservative justice to be appointed in their place after the next POTUS was elected. Then, another liberal justice passed away creating another vacancy which was again filled by a conservative. If either or both of those things hadn't happened, Roe v. Wade would not have been overturned.
And sure, you can say it was the will of the people that a conservative was in office at the time, and appointed the justices, but that's not the same as voting for or against federal abortion rights.
Appointing judges to overturn Roe v. Wade was a focal point in the 2016 election. Dangling that possibility was the entire point of the confirmation shenanigans.
That was the point. democrats often point out those rare cases where the womens life is in danger and then use that as the absolute we must allow all abotions. Nobody will argue for the compromise and so you lose a lot who won't acpept the absolute.
any bill to ban abortions (because "muh sacred life") should include funding for childcare, medical coverage, and school lunches. Pro-lifers are unfortunately only pro births when it comes to voting.
So many people didn't vote for the Democrats in 2024 because they didn't support Palestine and they lost as a result. If the Democrats become identical to the Republicans then why would any non-Republican even bother voting?
You are so correct in your first statement yet imply something in your second I think is so incorrect in a wider context that it strikes me like whiplash.
Paying lip service but not addressing that friction was a significant part of what killed the Harris campaign, IMO.
well yes. That's the big issue. Trump didn't get more votes, Harris got drastically less than Biden. People didn't come out.
She had a bad hand needing to start out 6 months into an election cycle, and she played it poorly to boot. That's why this "we need to appeal to moderates/right wing" narrative is so frustrating. That's exactly what Harris did by trying to downplay Palestine/defend Israel and refusing to talk about the tensions in the job market. She established herself as "more of the same". That doesn't win votes in increasingly bad times.
They were generally good at making sure whoever is "really running the country" stayed in the Lawful Evil alignment. If the trump regime was smarter we may have been truly cooked.
Instead we have cartoon supervillains trying to pick fights with our allies in the open, and police openly shooting citizens. Pretty hard to defend that.
As much as I hate what’s happening, that’s how democracy works. Sometimes the majority chooses to burn the house down and all you can do is sit and watch
Trump still has plenty of support from large swathes of Americans despite his increasingly more overt actions.
For many, he _is_ doing what he was elected to do. This _is_ what the American voter wants. The American voter wants illegal immigrants out, does not care how it happens. They also want cheap oil and are willing to overlook the implications of international military action if it means they get it. They also don't care about the environment enough to curb their consumption or invest in alternative energy sources.
These preferences are all aligned with Trump's actions.
His supporters are down with whatever he says needs to be done. It's about him--there's no ideological consistency at all. As long as he's for it today, his supporters are for it today. If he's against it tomorrow, they will immediately fall in line and be against it tomorrow.
This is why he's a Republican. He said it in his book (who knows if he actually wrote it) that if he ever ran, he'd run as a Republican because they don't think, they just fall in line.
Minnesota occupation is not about illegal immigration. It is about terrorizing a blue city. It is about terrorizing non whites regardless of citizenship.
I agree that Trump voters want that. But, we should not lie about them caring about illegal immigration or "not caring about the method".
They care. If Trumps thugs murder, beat or kidnap people, if non whites and suspect liberals suffer, they actually prefer it. Trump voters prefer it when an agent throws a tear gas into a car or on the crowd just as a goodbye package.
> They also want cheap oil
Oil is so cheap, oil companies are slightly at loss when producing it.
... and many just post-hoc rationalize their already irrational decision to vote for him. If you would ask them, illegal farm workers are still very welcome in red states, i guess.
>> This is the political will of a plurality of American voters.
> This fallacy gets repeated over and over, but it's obviously false.
And it's used to condemn and justify. Most politicians, including Democrats, like to pretend that winning means the unpopular policies they happen to like are the will of the people. They will constantly gaslight you on it.
In reality, American politics gives people coarse choices that few are entirely happy with and many are very unhappy with. It's really hard to justify radical partisan action without denying that fact.
It's true that partisan politics provides only coarse choices. That's true of America's bipartisan system as well as multiparty parliamentary systems. But the parties are still dynamic coalitions that can change dramatically over time. Just look at the difference between the 1950s Democrats vs the 2000s Democrats, or the 2015 Republicans vs the 2020 Republicans.
The coarse options that are available at election time can be massively influenced in the years leading up to the election.
> It's true that partisan politics provides only coarse choices. That's true of America's bipartisan system as well as multiparty parliamentary systems. But the parties are still dynamic coalitions that can change dramatically over time. Just look at the difference between the 1950s Democrats vs the 2000s Democrats, or the 2015 Republicans vs the 2020 Republicans.
You're missing my only point, which is how (say) a coarse 51% victory for a coalition gets frequently and deliberately misrepresented as "the American people" wanting that coalition's unpopular policies.
American politics isn't really about representing the American people, it's about minority ideological factions jockeying for power to subject the American people to their vision. Hence the rise of campaigning that's mostly attacking the opponent. A recent example is the Democrats vis-a-vis Trump: despite all their rhetoric, their behavior over the last decade belies an attitude that they think they use the repulsion he generates to avoid moderating themselves and still win.
>which is how (say) a coarse 51% victory for a coalition gets frequently and deliberately misrepresented as "the American people" wanting that coalition's unpopular policies.
I think the larger point is "we have 2 bad choices, but we chose the worse one". Because "both sides are the same".
> it's about minority ideological factions jockeying for power to subject the American people to their vision.
Yeah, the current vision unfortunately sucks much worse than status quo neoliberalism, though. But we overall chose that. People ignoring the issues with Trump only reinforces how bad things have gotten.
> Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with?
If we are talking about past culpability, this one does not works at all. Trump is being exactly who he was and what he campaigned on. This is not the case of someone switching up after being elected. This is case of who openly or tacitly supported Trump, because they thought they will personally benefit on top of having fun of watching liberals suffer.
By tacitly I mean all those bad faith "both sides" and "Trump is dove, Harris is aggressive". As an example, Latino Trump voting men were attracted by the misogynistic and male dominance content. They thought they wont be personally affected. Rural people still cheer to occupation and terrorization of cities ... and still think they are the only true Americans. They though they will be able to keep their farms like the last time. And so on and so forth.
People knew full well what is going on when they were hiding behind euphemisms about conservatives and blamed liberals when those said the truth. They just liked the project and thought they will be affected only a little.
The most compelling and resounding message of his campaign was that he promised to grief MAGA's perceived enemies.
Whatever stuff he said in his stump speeches about foreign policy, domestic policy, economic policy, whatever, was largely ignored by his base. The real reason they voted for him (and the reason they still support him) was his promise of cruelty and to hurt people they didn't like, and that's the one promise he is delivering on and boasting about every day.
When brown immigrants' doors are kicked in, people are black-bagged and dragged away in an unmarked van, when families are torn apart, when "city people" get shot and are crying on TV, that's what really gets MAGA motivated and that's what keeps them excited about politics.
> Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with? It's a quintessential fact of politics that voting for a candidate is not equivalent to an endorsement of everything that candidate does in the future.
You can look back on everything Trump said and campaigned on. He's a liar, a cheat, and a fraud but he openly campaigned on making people suffer, hurting specific groups and demolishing the government. The people either voted for him assuming he was blustering about his claims or liked what he was going to do. There's countless examples of people who when asked why they regret voting for Trump, they say because he's 'hurting the wrong people', while also saying that they would gladly vote for him again.
If it's obviously false, can you show research that proves it?
Because from what I see most of this was part and parcel of a published plan. [1] People on both sides either bragged about executing Project 2025 or tried to warn their base about it. People still voted for this, and those who didn't vote at all, by staying home, also voted for it.
This move slots in well with the overall exploration of eliminating the fed completely. [2]
In this case the candidate they voted for was a convicted criminal and pathological liar.
Dishonesty is the through line of Trump’s entire life. There was no reasonable expectation his second term would bring anything else. Anyone expressing buyer’s remorse at this point is impossibly naive.
He is the most popular Republican president, among other Republicans, we have had in our lifetime. Anecdotal: I live in a red state with red friends and red family. They might not like this or that but they are unwavering in their support for Trump the man. It is still very uncomfortable to say even the most superficially negative thing about him or his policies. So, maybe there is some internal dialog going on there that I'm not privy to, but outwardly the support is 100% there, and that is all that really matters.
What you observe is cognitive dissonance resolved by ignorance. I dont have any advice for you, since i dont know your close ones, but a warning. When these conflicts dont get resolved in a constructive way, this behavioral conditioning might lead to repulsion targeting you. I have lost a long time childhood friend, even though my approach to him was always calm but persistent for over a decade.
Yes. The hardest thing about all of this is watching people I've known for years defend the indefensible. It is really difficult to stomach hearing your grandma call for the insurrection act.
What do you feel makes their support so unwavering? Are they fine with anything as long as they feel the "bad people" are hurt? Do they genuinely see themselves getting richer? Do they simply only watch Fox News and other conservative media and never consider what's happening in their neighborhood?
They built an entire identity around it. They're in too deep to just back off and admit to being wrong. It's the same reason why doomsday cults are stronger and more united the day after the predicted end of the world: It's too late to back off, the only solution is to dig deeper.
There are as many answers to that are there are Trump supporters I know. These aren't stupid or evil people, and I don't think its as nefarious the things you are suggesting, at least in most cases. On the other hand, as I sit here and try to answer your question, I can't come up with anything that paints anyone in a very good light and I just end up with more questions.
Ultimately I think there is a common personality trait that allows a person to rationalize pretty much anything. And I think most people have that personality trait. Maybe I do for all I know.
The exchange in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls always comes to mind:
“But are there not many fascists in your country?"
"There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the times comes.”
I agree with your sentimen. I'll use a favorite quote of mine as well
Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.
Robert A. Heinlein, Assignment in Eternity
Whether they know the evil or not, they will go out of their way to to find a way to justify it. That's why those scare news on networks works so well. It gives them "permission" to accept something they wanted to believe,and now they have "proof".
Moreover, it's part of a core issue many in this society fall into (all across political spectrums) : it is shameful to be wrong. And apologizing makes you "weak". Even if you do change your mind, you can never admit it. And some people will be on their deathbed spouting a belief they changed on rather than "showing weakness".
I don't know how and if we can change that cultural element. That seems deeper than any billionaire regime.
We have to teach kids about cognitive biases, best by example or demonstration, and how you keep your sceptic guard up for life. We needed this even before the internet started to actively target these cognitive biases.
When you say "our lifetime" you must be talking about people who were born after 2004? Reagan was certainly more popular among Republicans, and I think W was at the end of his first term (he definitely was right after 9/11 when approval ratings for anything American were approximately 100% within America).
Your intuition about this is wrong. Reagan's approval among Republicans averaged about 83%, Trump's numbers are typically over 90%, although currently he's down to an all-time low of around 85%.
You are quite wrong about GW as well. While he had a mandate, at first, for Iraq, he was deeply polarizing in pretty much every other regard.
seeing Dem numbers be in the single didgits and republican numbers in the high 80's really exemplifies how utterly divided the "United" States has become. I don't think any other president in the last century has been so divisive.
There's basically no more room for Dem's to disapprove, so I guess it's up to "Independents" to wake up.
My intuition is not wrong, and I am absolutely not wrong about GW Bush's approval ratings right after 9/11 (a peak of 99% approval among Republicans) and his approval ratings afterwards through the rest of his first term: https://news.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ra...
Concerning Reagan, I was looking at his 93% approval rating when he left office, and comparing it to Trump's approval rating at the end of his first term, but I am aware there are metrics where Trump would be seen as more popular than Reagan among Republicans, such as minimum approval rating): https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/ronald-reaga...
Trump's militant support among Republicans is irritating to say the least, but there's no need to rewrite history or double down on incorrect statements on your part.
Your own sources show that Trump is more popular than Reagan among Republicans. Just because there was a moment in history where his numbers were better than Trump's doesn't undo the fact that over the long term, on average, Trump is more popular with Republicans than Reagan was. Demonstrably. Is there a conservative left in America willing to have an honest conversation?
I explained why I mentioned Reagan and acknowledged that Trump is more popular by some metrics, but he doesn't matter ultimately because GW Bush was more popular than Trump with Republicans more recently by absolute highest level of support, an average over basically any time period over his first term, or the lowest level of support, which is why I said you must only be talking about people born after 2004.
You're just as bad as the conservatives you dislike, because the issue is that you're all ideologues, not the specific ideology.
All I have anymore is an undoubtedly flawed moral compass, but I know these things are wrong and, up until the last few years, they were not at all partisan. And this is just to name a few:
* Law enforcement should not wear masks.
* The military should not be used to police US citizens.
* The US should not threaten to invade peaceful allies. Canada. Greenland.
Anyone who violated any of these, regardless of party, would immediately lose my support forever. These aren't "mistakes", they are evil deeds. So, tell me who is an ideologue.
This fallacy gets repeated over and over, but it's obviously false.
Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with? It's a quintessential fact of politics that voting for a candidate is not equivalent to an endorsement of everything that candidate does in the future. It's a premise that is obviously false when we consider our own votes, but it feels cathartic to force the claim on to the other side.
This administration's net approval rating flipped net negative very quickly after his election and has been trending downward. It's just navel-gazing to pretend like what he's doing has high approval.