The people. We voted for the people who gave the power, and we re-elected them. It’s really that simple. Is it “too late” now? maybe, but we had ~25 years since this all started post 911 to react, and chose not to.
> We voted for the people who gave the power, and we re-elected them.
That would be true if We The People were reliably informed when we showed up to cast our votes. However, in recent years, we have become detached from reality. "News media" companies pivoted away from keeping their audiences informed about things that mattered and instead focused on capturing audiences and keeping those audiences maximally engaged so that they could be sold to advertisers and otherwise exploited.
Now when people show up to the polls, they think they're voting to keep themselves safe from violent crimnals running rampant; they think they are voting to keep out the flood of strange outsiders coming to take their jobs and eat their family pets. But in reality they're voting for -- and getting -- something quite different.
> That would be true if We The People were reliably informed when we showed up to cast our votes.
Weren't the democrats criticised for campaigning on the message that voting for Trump was a significant risk to due process and democracy? I feel like every voter was aware of what happened on Jan 6th and still voted for him with some level of knowledge about that.
> I feel like every voter was aware of what happened on Jan 6th and still voted for him with some level of knowledge about that.
What a particular voter was “aware of” regarding Jan 6th and the events that caused it very much depended on where that person got their news. For example, one prominent network was found in court depositions to have knowingly reported complete BS about what Jan 6 was all about: “During pre-trial discovery, Fox News' internal communications were released, indicating that prominent hosts and top executives were aware the network was reporting false statements but continued doing so to retain viewers for financial reasons.”
That his vice president confirmed the result still should tell these people everything they needed to know. That at the very least the story peddled by sources like Fox was dubious and they should seek to corroborate that source with others. NPR is a reasonable source that all Americans know about, so I don't think its a reasonable excuse.
Do you believe that there is a large share of people who get their news from Fox News and also trust NPR? And vice versa?
More than ever before, people now live in news silos where they get only the news that engages their prior beliefs. And people who are in the Fox News silo have been told, repeatedly, that NPR is fake news from “far-left lunatic” Democrats. Do you remember all the air time Fox News gave to people arguing for the defunding of NPR? How much do you think a Fox News viewer is likely to trust NPR?
Think about it. If you are like the vast majority of people, almost everything you know about what is happening in the world, especially about the highest levels of government, is something you have been told from a source you trust. You are not a part of government policy decisions. You do not speak to people who are primary sources in those decisions. You know only what has been reported to you by third parties. Now imagine that you are getting those reports only from third parties that tell you something that is not true. How would you know that you are being misled?
I agree. People had already experienced one round of Trump before, and had every opportunity to see what he was planning for this term. There is no reasonable conclusion other than that they indeed wanted exactly what we got.
The US has very low voter turnout. Winning is mainly getting your voters to turn up, but usually apathy wins. Of course the media plays a huge part in this, but voter suppression is the US is fine art.
Personally I feel that non voters effectively voted for Trump, and they should own that as much as die hard MAGA types.
Don't disagree with you in principle but 2024 saw a very, very, very large turnout for US standards - the biggest one... Kamala's 75m+ votes basically are good enough (by very wide margin) to win any previous election (slimmer margin in 2020 than others but you get my point...)
thanks for the correction, I keep forgetting just how awful 2016-2020 years were that 81 million people came out to vote for a senile grandpa (exactly the point I was making, you need strong against case much more than anything else)
> 81 million people came out to vote for a senile grandpa
Yeah, people were getting fed up with the chaos. Biden owes his presidency to Donald Trump, for sure. He tried several times in years prior and could not win on the merits.
Weird, and why didn’t those people show up to vote for Kamala? How did Biden get more votes than Obama, but Trump won the popular vote four years later?
> why didn’t those people show up to vote for Kamala?
Enthusiasm gap. And not during COVID. 2020 was an interesting time as you may recall.
> How did Biden get more votes than Obama, but Trump won the popular vote four years later?
You will be less likely to fall prey to grifters if you look past absolute numbers and realize that the voting age population tends to increase about 10 million every four years. And with turnout generally abysmal, under 60% most times, there is a lot of room for variation.
His whole schtick seems to be getting voters to show up at the polls who otherwise don't bother to put forth the effort. I've heard it said that this was also Mamdani's trick in NYC (heck, maybe that explains why Trump is so smitten with Mamdani).
So GOP politicians do significantly better any time Trump is sharing the ballot with them. I won't be surprised if the 2026 midterms go very poorly for the GOP. And given that Trump won't ever be on a ballot again, I won't be surprised if his control over congressional GOP members starts to noticeably erode even before the midterms. They definitely know how the game works, and they are going to start looking for ways to keep their jobs.
Running against a President (especially one that is not on the ballot) is much easier than people think, all you have to do is pitch that while I may be terrible, your alternative is much, much, much worse which is exactly what the Trump campaign was all about.
It worked because a lot of people bought that story (and many continue to buy it evidenced by DJT's approval ratings among the GOP voters). The whole campaign basically had no platform other than your cookie-cutter "migrant crime", "economy bad" ...
It worked because as bad as the GOP platform was, the dems' strategy was just awful, and their tactical decision making was abysmal.
* focus on abortion, which is an important issue ... mostly to evangelicals
* focus on threats to democracy, which sounded shrill and got blown off
* no real message on the economy, which was widely perceived as floundering under Biden, and was very important to a lot of swing voters
On top of that, Trump's approval ratings on the economy were pretty good when he left office. People remembered that and thought he'd do better.
Then of course there's the whole "hey, let's not tell the senile old man that he basically promised to be a one-hit-wonder, and wait until the last moment to switch to his running mate instead".
In a way, it's impressive that the dems didn't lose by larger margins. Trump wasn't that popular, the dems were just that incompetent. I hope they pull their head out of their ass for 2028. But I'm not counting on it.
I don't disagree but I don't believe there was any way Democrats would have kept power in 2024. They were unable to sell any positive news about the economy (DJT does not seem to have learned this lesson and is doing same stupid thing as Dems did in 2024). The no real message on the economy was real but economy was doing great in post-COVID world especially compared to the rest of the world and there wasn't a reputable financial outlet that did not agree with this (Economist, FT, WSJ, Bloomberg...).
While I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said I do not believe there was a way for Democrats to beat DJT. His machine was just too good and no matter the candidate and no matter the message I don't believe it would have mattered.
Have you considered that you can be misinformed? Maybe you are in an echo chamber that makes it appear others are wrong. Maybe there are legitimate concerns regarding illegal immigrants. Maybe you should try to expand your understanding of the situation.
instead of "just asking questions", mayhaps you could answer them? what are you legitimate reasons regarding immigrants who lack documentation? do you have your documentation on you as all times, as a united states citizen?
However, in recent years, we have become detached from reality. "News media" companies pivoted away from keeping their audiences informed about things that mattered and instead focused on capturing audiences and keeping those audiences maximally engaged so that they could be sold to advertisers and otherwise exploited.
This is true, but it is only one part of the picture. I feel journalism in general has stopped asking controversial questions and investigating. There is no more difficult interviews where they are, if need be, confrontational and try to get answers that mean anything, that deeply clarify an item or a stance. It's all become so docile, nobody goes digging deep into facts anymore, euphemism everywhere. For example: a couple of weeks ago I watched a Johnny Harris video re. America/fascism and he really managed - after spending most of the video on Hitler and Mussolini - to arrive at the conclusion that the US is trending towards an illiberal democracy while depicting Victor Orban as fascist. Orban called his vision for Hungary an illiberal democracy.
But his self-described quest to create a so-called illiberal democracy in...
Nobody ever voted for mass surveillance. There's no party you can vote for in the US that doesn't advocate for total mass surveillance by the federal government. Don't pretend this is a red/blue thing. The military-industrial complex is fully integrated with both parties in the US.
Maybe if the US had a sane voting system, but they don't. I'm of the opinion that their flawed voting system is a huge factor in why the US government is the way it is.
Unfortunately that is how it works. A vote for the green party is simply a vote not cast for D and favors R; and a vote for a libertarian is a vote not for R, so it benefits D.
A solution is Ranked Choice Voting where you can say, "Green, and if they don't win, D (or whatever)."
Fwiw, I vote my conscience, not to win. Not the best for my political positions maybe, but I hope to send a signal to others that maybe something other than R/D is one day possible. But, yeah, RCV would help with that conundrum.
While this is true, very often that is the impact of a third party vote in a federal election. See the election of one George W. Bush and the impact of Mr. Nader.
Trump recently posted a diatribe about ranked choice voting in Alaska (calling it "disastrous, and very fraudulent").
Do you know why the modern GOP hates ranked choice voting? Because they rely upon getting clown votes wasted on the Tulsi Gabbard, Jill Stein's and Kanye West's of the world as a way to get elected. They just need to entice just enough fool-vote drawers, knowing the cult will not sway an iota.
There's no mechanism for pressing politicians except threatening not to vote for them again, and politicians are exceptionally cowardly and avoid picking up hot potatoes that could incur criticism. I'm in a district with one of the safest seats in the country, and getting my representative to state a position on many issues is like getting blood out of a stone.
There's no formal mechanism of accountability for members of Congress. Representatives hold a few town halls a year where they might be subject to social shaming by their constituents, but there's no legal obligation to do so and even when they're publicly embarrassed they often dismiss public opposition as 'a few paid agitators' or the like.
This is doubly and triply true for complex policy issues which require a lot of explaining, making it virtually impossible to build grassroots support. So you just end up with a nonprofit industrial complex that needs to constantly raise funds for lobbying and publishes slates of endorsements at election time that relatively few people have the time or inclination to read.
The answer is to vote in the primaries. That's how you unseat a 'safe' seat. I'm not going to say its a good answer, because the primary system and the two party system in general are terrible, but its the best choice you have besides running yourself.
I wonder how the dynamic between members of Congress and their constituents would change if we had a larger Congress. Instead of the ~786k people per representative, having ~107k like the UK. Would it be feasible? Probably not. But Congress is way too small and it results in some poor incentives.
It also doesn't help that in situations like this, both major parties are moving in lock step. You cannot vote against something that both party stand for.
Terrance McKenna once said that the worst president was the one in power, regardless of when it is. It is because for the most part, they just keep building on the existing frame work, standing on the shoulders of those before them.
Now one could argue that Trump is doing the opposite this term, but depending on were you stand, this might not have been a great out come.
