Both things can be true, but it’s funny that two opposite sounding replies came to this one comment about US politics.
Regarding comment 2, there is nothing legal that can be done about the situation. What am I supposed to do? Enjoy a vacation to Gitmo?
If you’re successful then you don’t need to go
The main problem is that America is turning into a Nazi bar.
America might be past the Nazi bar and at the Nazi brewery…
Most Americans either voted for the orange moron or didn’t care enough to vote against him. And there was plenty of evidence about what he was going to do; there was his first term, and there were all his speeches about what he was going to do, and is now doing.
So there is no excuse. Most Americans approved this, either implicitly or explicitly, because they did not vote for the alternative. Honestly I’m surprised Harris couldn’t win simply with the message “I’m not Trump.”
Most Americans either voted for the orange moron or didn’t care enough to vote against him.
It’s understandable to be frustrated, but this statement ignores America’s long history of voter disenfranchisement.
This is the correct answer. Not to act is to act by deciding not to act.
That last part is the least surprising thing imaginable. Reveals a deep misunderstanding of how and why people actually vote
America is the epicenter of social media brainrot. ‘I’m not Trump’ would never be good enough there. It needs to come with a TikTok dance or something else flashy and provocative.
I just wish people would stop focusing on something from the past that cannot be undone. And if you voted for Trump and regret your choice and actually have achieved empathy in the process I have no reason to make you my enemy. This is not the time to be going after each other when everyone is going to get fucked. You can silently enjoy someone’s misfortune, but it’s a misfortune that we will all see and experience in due time and it’s not productive for the future we are all going to endure. And right now, whether you are a democrat or a republican, the rest of the world is angry at you. Nobody is going to come and save the US and we need to get our shit together and stop focusing on what can’t be undone.
If you look at polling there is a significant number of republicans that are just as angry as democrats. And we need to help them so they can help us. The only thing blaming and “owning” each other is going to accomplish is that nothing will change. It’s like being on a sinking ship while everyone laughs that the other guy is going to drown while making no effort to get off the boat.
Republicans made an entire industry out of hating democrats way back in the 90s. They’re not going to work with us. Ever. And every time Democrats try to work with them it has ended up badly.
Republican oligarchs aren’t going to change. Republican voters can and do.
Class warfare is in full effect and the billionaires need the rest us to stay divided so that they can continue their war on us.
People keep saying Republican voters change, but never enough of them for long enough to make a difference
I think this is certainly true of the Republican Party. But ignoring republican voters is political suicide. There are too many of them. They must be reckoned with, one way or another.
Republican voters cheered on the entire time.
They cheered for the party that said they were going to improve things, while the Democrats looked at the abysmal state of America and said “Yeah, things are going well, expect more of the same”.
Stealing Republican voters is a viable strategy, but the Democrats need to address the economic issues that drive those votes, not just buddy up with Republican war hawks like Harris did
Trump only got three million more votes in 2024. Harris got six million fewer votes than Biden.
Democrats and independents sat at home because of the lack of a plan to improve things from the Dems.
To be clear I’m not saying their behavior is harmless or excusable. But we fundamentally have to reach at least some of them, I just don’t see a way to stop what’s happening otherwise. I don’t like it but that’s the reality of the situation.
Maybe one way to avoid it would be to come to some kind of detante where the federal government more or less ceases to be the main seat of power and the states become far more autonomous. I’d be open to this but it doesn’t seem very popular or likely given that fascists won’t want to weaken their grip on power over blue states.
But we fundamentally have to reach at least some of them, I just don’t see a way to stop what’s happening otherwise.
Republicans have never taken that approach with Democrats, they’ve taken the exact opposite, and yet somehow they got into a commanding position. Weird how that works, huh?
The reality is that the “conventional wisdom” of the Democratic party of appealing to the median voter, reaching out to “moderate Republicans” by using people like Dick Cheney just doesn’t work. No matter how rational it may appear at first glance, it’s been tried over and over again and it just doesn’t work. The reality is that voters are more complex than that, and Trumpism cannot be defeated without understanding why it worked it the first place.
The left and right are not fundamentally symmetrical and cannot use identical tactics and expect similar results. Most crucially, the right can align with the wealthy and powerful in society and use their wealth and control of media to allow a minority coalition to win power. There is no equivalent strategy the left can pursue. Our only strength is that we want to help people and we are more accepting of diversity, which allows us to create mass movements more easily. But that’s really the only way we’re going to ever make real progress, and that means building a very large coalition that at minimum includes moderates, traditionally disenfranchised people, etc. We cannot win with just the base, it simply won’t work.
traditionally disenfranchised people
This is the most important group. A third of the population doesn’t vote. You have to give them something worth voting for, and being “not Trump” or “the party of reason” doesn’t cut it.
It’s a myth that independent is the same as moderate. This group includes people who are fed up with the establishment and the status quo, and it also includes low-information voters who vote based on vibes. You wanna engage them, you gotta have energy, you gotta have people who are enthusiastic to vote for someone and willing to promote them organically. Giving them more of the same thing we’ve had for decades isn’t going to reach disengaged voters, by definition, if it did, they wouldn’t be disengaged. It’s also not going to do anything to peel off Republicans, if you actually talk with them, they hate generic Democrats more than just about anything, and Clinton/Biden/Kamala had extremely low crossover appeal, despite putting substantial effort into it because they all read as generic democrats.
I have die hard Republican family members who the only democrat they ever had a nice thing to say about was Bernie Sanders, and the worst criticism of him they had is that “he’s not actually as different from the rest of the democrats as he puts on.” These people regard Clinton/Biden/Kamala as virtually demons. Why? Because for a lot of people, it’s not just about right or left, it’s also about “establishment vs outsider” and “fighter vs compromiser” and things like that.
You put a far-left candidate out there making fire and brimstone speeches about how billionaires are fucking you and we’re going transform the economy to work for ordinary people, someone who’s unapologetic and not afraid to pick fights with both parties’ establishment, that’s going to excite people, it’s gonna offer something new, it’s gonna cut across established cultural battle lines and bring more people into the political process. It could’ve worked with Bernie, if he’d been given a real chance, and it could work with someone similar in the future.
The thing is that this commitment to keep putting out moderate establishment centrists may not be far-left, but it’s far-Democrat. It’s far-blue tribe. The people these people appeal to were probably always going to vote Democrat regardless. Allowing left-wing policy may be more “extreme” on the left-right axis but it’s more flexible and adaptable on the other axes I mentioned. And at the same time, it would allow them to appeal to people’s direct material interests, and many left wing policies are broadly popular for that reason, even among people who end up voting Republican.
I just don’t see a way to stop this happening, period.
We’ve been trying to reach them for decades to no avail.
Nothing can stop this.
Username checks out lol. Many things are possible even if they don’t feel like it at the moment. And all things end sooner or later…
nelson mandela said “it always feels impossible until it is done” or something to that effect
Good luck. I’m sure it will work now that they’re even more radicalized and divorced from reality.
democrats working with republicans led us to weimar joe and the appeasement era
time for my catchphrase. biden was the best president of my lifetime.
which is so fucking sad. the last good president this country had was imo jimry carter. before that, probably fdr, and before that grant
Carter started implementing the neoliberal economic policies that Reagan would take further, he was the one who started tearing up the New Deal and abandoning unions and the working class. I’d probably say JFK was the last defensible president, but hell, I’d take Nixon over Carter. There’s a reason he lost in a such a landslide.
I don’t see what jimmy carter accomplished to rate him higher than half the ones after him.
Wha… how do yo…
Lord help us. It will be many years before I read something that stupid again…
What industry? And what happened in the 90s?
Rush Limbaugh and his ilk have been spouting bile and making bank from it for 30 years.
I’m glad he’s dead.
Deregulation of radio, end of the fairness doctrine (thank u Reagan) and the subsequent rise of “local talk radio” sponsored by evil billionaires and spouting the vilest shit imaginable.
which led directly to fox news and the tea party faction of Republicans and well, now here we are
The 90s was when Republicans first began the scorched earth tactics against Clinton. It was when all the conspiracy theory shit started. They planted the first seeds of populism then.
No working with fascist enablers.
It’s not like they suddenly appeared a few months before the election.
America is too large to make generalizations about it. Politics, culture, and beliefs are all very highly localized and even worse, it’s land that votes, not people. People who come from countries the size of a single US state will never fully understand.
This is something I think gets lost in discussions a lot. The USA is massive and fragmented, the fragmentation being intentional with state individuality.
I remember a German family that thought they could easily do LA, Vegas, and the Grand Canyon in a couple of days.
The US has more similarities to the EU diversity-wise than almost any other individual nation.
We all speak the same language, I don’t think that comparison holds up.
I love that you made one, single, tiny point to the contrary and decided that was enough
Because there was only one point made? The US is pretty damn homogeneous compared to the EU.
You’re the first person to bring up language? As if that’s the only thing that can differ between places lmao.
Having different languages is kinda a big deal. It means different stories growing up, different cultural practices, different emphasis across different interpretations of history. Americans may have a lot of geography between each other, but the cultural difference isn’t all that wide.
At face value and objectively it’s wrong.
Most Americans did not vote for Trump.
Here’s how it works:
*US Population, adult over 18: ~250 million.
*Of that population, ~244 million are eligible to vote.
*Of eligible voters, only 63.9% voted.
*Of the 63.9%, less than half, 49.8%, went to Trump. To re-emphasize that point, Trump did not get more than 50%.
*Harris got 48.3%
*The ~1% difference voted third party.
The math is pretty basic. 63.9% of 250 million is 159.7 million voting, 49.8% of that voting for trump is 79.5 million.
So out of 250 million, ~32% actually voted for trump. The rest is the issue with the electoral college, but we’re talking people, not the EC.
But wait, that’s just voters. What about people?
Pew shows 49% Democrats, 48% Republican, 3% other, so 52% are not Republican.
So by no metric are a majority conservative or Republican.
Maybe “Most Americans support Trump” is wrong, but “most Americans do not oppose Trump” isn’t.
This is the accurate assessment.
The vast majority of Americans allowed Trump to become president by either voting for him or failing to show up at the ballot box.
Out of all forms of governance, those that live under a democracy have the least credibility when claiming that their government does not represent them.
It should be known that the takeaway from this is not just that Trump cannot be trusted. That was already known. Many nations, including America’s allies, are learning that America’s voting base can no longer be trusted. The lesson here is that we’re always going to be 4 years away from attempts at global destabilization if we continue to allow America to be the world’s preeminent super power.
Which is why nearly every nation is putting together a plan to divest in the US. America, as a whole, is no longer a reliable partner.
Even if MAGA and its ideology dies with this presidency, America is going to be spending the next few decades winning the world’s trust back. China will likely take its place in the meantime.
The main point of contention between the 2 comments is: is not voting despite being eligible an endorsement of the winner?
is not voting despite being eligible an endorsement of the winner?
Context is king. For some places, sure, like in Japan the voter turnout is always around 40% and is typically seen as endorsement for the Japanese Liberal party that de facto rules the country for 70 years. But in the US, it is more nuanced than that. It could mean Americans who abstained don’t like either candidates, or felt that federal policies won’t affect their states and thus “Trump-proofed”. Or for the staunchly Republican states, they feel that voting for presidential elections won’t affect anything.
If Democrats really want to win the next presidential election, the party really needs to change and excite voters.
You can endorse the winner and not vote, or even the opposite, or vote for the winner. Whether or not you vote doesn’t take away your opinion on the results. It’s not really an issue that needs debating.
The research is out there on who non-voters are, why they don’t/can’t vote and what political opinions they have. Critics like OP and others in this thread just choose to ignore that and go with the narrative in their head.
This is a case where the outcome trumps process or rationale.
Regardless of whatever personal reason someone may have for not voting in the election, their lack of participation has allowed Trump to take power, leading to the global instability we see today.
They have therefore cosigned America’s role in leading the world into this period of uncertainty.
Which is why America’s standing in the world is about to diminish and the concept of the ‘Western world’ is growing increasingly fragile.
Non voters bear some responsibility for this, regardless of their personal views.
Which is why many outside the US put non voters and Trump voters in the same bucket. Both evil and apathy towards evil have the ability to do incredible harm, especially when paired.
A non-vote is supporting both sides equally so you can count them in the vote for the winner
That’s some logic all right.
On 2024-11-05, of the eligible voting population in the US, roughly:
- ⅓ voted for Trump.
- ⅓ voted for someone other than Trump.
- ⅓ didn’t vote.
As far as I’m concerned, if you’re eligible to vote and choose not to, you’re implicitly throwing your support behind whoever wins.
⅔ of the eligible US voting population to some degree support, and are responsible for, everything that is happening in their federal government now.
The rest of the world interpreted it as the US saying it doesn’t wish to be taken seriously for at least the next 2 years. We can resume discussion when they decide to choose adults to represent them again.
If you didnt vote, you voted for this.
“Why don’t Americans just launch The Revolution?”
If only all it took was the government doing a genocide
It’s your country and your representatives, those are the people you chose that our leaders have to deal with. Besides it does not matter if you support them or not, these people you chose as leaders clearly do not give a single fuck. I would feel sorry for you, but sadly you dug yourself into this hole no matter what. So it does not matter which most is the real one, all US citizens still will have to deal with the same shitty choices they’ve made.
If the situation was that of China or Russia, maybe individuals should be given a bit more benefit of the doubt, but you’re talking about the literal self proclaimed “land of the free”.
This is also the case in the UK, and it’s the size of . . . what, Alabama?
In area or population? As the UK is roughly double the size of alabama by land area and a little under double the population of california.
You’re right. Make it Michigan.
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I live in an area where most people think a certain way. And wouldn’t you know it! Everyone around me thinks that certain way. Extrapolate to all other areas.
I heard it on Lemmy, so it must be true everywhere.
Transcripts
Comment 1: It really bugs me when I see people say that a majority of Americans support this, because they don’t.
His policies are consistently polling negatively.
A minority of Americans even bother to vote, so the results of the election aren’t entirely representative of the opinions and viewpoints of the majority of Americans.
He didn’t even win a majority of votes in the election. He won with 49%, a plurality.
This isn’t “most Americans”. It’s a passionate minority that is ruling over the majority because of a broken system.
Comment 2: IDK why folks seem to think most Americans aren’t supportive of him, they are. If they weren’t they’d be doing something about it. I’m surrounded by majority Republican voters and they love what trump is doing. They rub it in to me all the time. Let’s face it, us Americans are vile selfish people.
The best when i wrote to someone how objectively you have to blame all USA because 2/3 help trump get elected, and 2/3 support genocide of Palestinian people ( both Democrats and republican ) and they told me to “fuck off”
It is sad because they dont even know that they dont live in a democracy and dont know that it is possible to have a system that allow for balanced power distribution.
I can see how the genocide comment could rub people the wrong way.
Well again objectively 2/3 of US are okay with it so it is expected to see 1 to 3 ratio of up and down votes when we call the genocide country what they are.
