At 100 years old Jimmy Carter voted by mail today, Republicans would love to have made that impossible for him to do
Current Affairs 2024 POTUS race
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davek
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He's an uncouth ignoramus. Just for that alone, regardless of his other faults, he should be trounced in any civilised society.
Got 'er done.
Couldn't agree with you more
But there are a series of events that have occurred over the past 30 years to get us to this point in American politics. Countless books to read on the subject.
It's why once Trump is defeated in November, the movement he was able to tap into and ignite won't go away easily. You cannot de-program 30 years of propaganda quickly
you got fancy stickers!
davek
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Trump is an avatar for that menacing new politics.
There'll be plenty more harder edged successors.
The United States is a deeply racist country and all the culture wars; red state v blue state, liberal v conservative are merely proxies for that. America is a country that'll struggle to come to terms with its increasingly non-white population. And there's no way round that other than some mythical race war.
It's crude, I know, and it plays down other motivations, but it's the undercurrent to the rise of a populist like Trump.
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I listened to the first season of Ultra by Rachel Maddow and now half way through the second.
The history of fascist politics in the 20th century is scary.
(cue the ususal suspects screaming about Maddow being a left wing hack etc...)
It's well worth a listen and it's all eerily familiar.
tsubaki
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TBF I think this is a viewpoint that excuses the other side in that democracy of a lot of the responsibility for this.
The status quo is, for probably most of the electorate, rubbish and this is one thing both sides of the otherwise divided electorate believe in large majorities. A competent party would have responded to the disaster of 2016 by sacking those responsible and developing new policies and new candidates who could deliver meaningful positive change.... but instead they doubled down on the "its the status quo or fascism!!!!111one" argument, whilst crushing those who tried to deliver reform, and lo and behold we discover that significant number of people don't want the status quo and will vote loon instead.
This scenario - Trump vs Hillary, Leave vs Remain, Boris vs Communism, Macron vs Le Pen (twice). Merkel/Schulz vs AfD, Wilders vs whoever it is in Holland - has come up so often in the West that its hard not to see it as a conscious decision by "centrists" (the centre-right really) across the world to embolden real or imagined "extremist" opponents in the hope that normal people are forced to vote for them against the "extremist" candidates. It is not hard to see why this is so appealing to them, because none of them have any kind of decent record of improving their countries that they could ever hope to run on.
They've repeated many of the same mistakes in this election as well, repeating the same failed arguments when what they should be sending out 24/7 across all messaging is that Trump will never deliver anything of what he promised except when it benefits him personally and financially. The Epstein tapes will not be released because him and Musk and his other backers are in them. Taxes will not go down except for multimillionaires and above. America will not be great again but it will be great for the likes of him etc etc. Anything that goes wrong, and there will be loads of that, will be everyone elses fault but his. It should be easy to substantiate that argument as well given that everyone saw what he was like as President.
You’ve spelled Moscow wrong
While I hear what you are saying in theory, i'll punt on your first two paragraphs and jump to the third - With respect to your last paragraph, I respectfully disagree. Been there, done that, it's obvious for those who critically think to see this - but these aren't the people we need to change over.
And while your last sentence should be easy to substantiate, because of the carefully curated alternative reality many live in, this is just simply not the case any more
In addition, there is enough data out there to suggest that for many, they don't vote Trump to help their lives in any tangible way - as long as he is a mouthpiece to bring others down to their level, or keep them below their level.
Essentially the Own the Libs argument we've made countless times on here. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that really is issue #1.
Easier to feel better about yourself when you have others to be better than; And easier to accept your plight/situation in life when you have others to blame it on.
Trump just happens to be the first candidate ever that has been able to get white working class, white college educated, the Evangelicals, Catholics and minorities to come out all at once and support him in a very long time. Sure he lacks support with black and some college educated young women but his ability to draw so many different groups and unify them in a single group is a phenomenon that has never been seen in American politics before. Even Reagan struggled to get votes from any of the minorities at the time.
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