politics

Why do you think they are being fooled? If anything I think one of the appeal of Trump is the fact that he owns his corruption and shadiness.

I think this is an oversimplification and lets Democrats off the hook.

A large part of how he won is to do with how polarised US politics are. The Democrats and Republicans are polar opposites, to the point that no matter who the candidates are the core voters could never conscience voting for the other side. Some Republicans may hate Trump but they will still vote republican as they see the Democrats standing for things they just don't agree with (whether that's Immigration or abortion or conservative values or fiscal conservatism etc). It just takes one; things are so polarised that it's inbuilt that it's a binary decision. The Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans for carving up US democracy between the two of them. If you look at polls, they say 50:50 split but actually thats just "likely voters"; the underlying split is more like 1/3:1/3 with a whole 1/3 of the electorate disenfranchised and not bothering to vote. When they talk about undecideds, they're talking about 2% of people likely to vote; not the whole 1/3 of the election who don't vote at all. 3rd parties don't get a look in, and even get blamed for taking votes from the anointed of the two big parties.

On top of that, the Democrats really fucked up. The party leadership supported Biden running, and no serious candidates stood in the primary race even though he was already clearly a weakened candidate due to age. Then when he was finally persuaded to go at near the last minute, it was too late. They again didn't have a primary, they had a coronation, and then a short run to establish her. I like Harris but she inherited his team, his set up and was unable and unwilling to paint herself as a change candidate as she wouldn't criticise the perceived mistakes of her own incumbent white house. She focused on abortion, and could seemingly not address the economy in a meaningful way to appeal to voters.

I don't think it's because Americans are easily fooled. I think it's because both parties have created an extremely polarised political landscape which they have both used to their advantage to suppress 3rd parties and other views across the 50 states. In addition, the Democrat party tried to claim it was an election about "preserving democracy" and yet chose to do that by not enabling democracy in their own party.

Hopefully the Democrats will take a long hard look at themselves. And the good news, a slither of good news, is that in 2028 there will not be any Clintons or Bidens hanging around whose "turn" it is to run. The party can actually have an open primary and the best candidates can stand instead of feeling they shouldn't run. Would we be in this position if there had been a full primary and the candidate had been someone like Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsome, Josh Shapiro or even just a truly independent run by Harris?

Yup. With the high likelihood that Republicans get the trifecta, this country is about to become a lot more dangerous for my kids, both LGBTQ+, because dipshits believed that a "businessman" whose businesses all fail is good for the economy.

I'm tired of the "fooled innocent Americans" trope. Fuck that. They knew exactly what they did. Face the reality: half of Americans are now trumpists. FACE IT.

They weren't fooled. They knew exactly what he is.

They didn't care.

That's the fallacy that us lefties kinda fall into, that if someone was just educated enough or knew enough or could see the facts, the person would change their mind.

The thing is, this was all about trying to get back at the left and minorities. "Fuck you I don't like the changing world I want my pretend 50s universe with no blacks and gays"

And also because his base is a cult. Which would require deprogramming.

you left out consumer protections, labor laws, overtime, PTO, regulatory oversight, whistleblower protections, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom, the ACLU, the ALA, and everything else you thought was safe

i would say delete all your social media, but it's not going to matter

they also hate themselves.

The Democrats impeached him twice but there was no way he was ever going to be convicted with the Senate in its then-state. Meanwhile, his lawyers and Judge Cannon have been doing nothing but delaying until checks watch now! Unless you have an idea for speeding up the American judicial system? If there was enough support from any state to straight up not let him run, then they would have done so. But as we've seen, 40% of the American voting populace have the intelligence of a kindergartner and just votes for "the other party" when the economy isn't doing well.

I think its half that. The Dems need a reckoning.

But the other half is that they don't play dirty like Trump. They don't understand that engagement is all that matters, lying does not, because us Americans have the critical thinking ability of an ant.

If they want to win, they need their own reality distortion field.

I don't think that Republicans need to kill the filibuster further. It's already dead for judicial nominations, which they have used to full effect. Also, the map is much more favorable to Democrats in the next two Senate election cycles. The next election, in particular, there are 13 Democratic seats vs. 20 Republican seats up (really 21, counting a special election for Vance's seat, and more vacancies may be coming). That, combined with the standard midterm bounce for the opposition party, makes it very likely that Republicans lose their gains in the Senate next election.

OTOH, if Republicans do keep the Senate in 2026, that is a bad omen for Democrats in general. We may see the Senate kill the filibuster then, out of the belief that it will help Vance win the Presidency in 2028.

(And looking forward, the Presidential election in 2028 will be even more important than this one, because of the 2030 census. The Census is supposed to enumerate all people in the country, regardless of legal status. Trump tried, and failed, to add a citizenship question to the census last time. If Republicans are in charge of the Census, I fully expect them to attempt to apportion Congress based on citizenship status (in spite of the Constitution), which will directly affect states like NY and CA, where Texas and Florida have been bussing all their migrants to. We don't have a permanent minority government in fhe US right now, but if they pull off that Census trick we might as of 2032.)

They will kill the filibuster because they don't foresee Dems ever holding power again for some reason. I wonder what that reason could be...

The Harris campaign turned out great initially.

They fucked it up immediately by saying they weren't going to be any different from Biden on Gaza and that was one of the wedge topics that had been created about Biden.

Rather than compromise with the electorate to get people out to vote, they tried to use Trump to bully voters out of the house saying he'd be worse.

Trump didn't get any more votes than last time.

He won because the Democrats lost.

Surprise.... genocide is going to continue even faster and more so now that trump is in power. All the voters who sat out because of gaza are fucking idiots and will now get to see gaza completely destroyed and helped by the US even more with trump....and they get to watch Ukrainians die as well...and probably Taiwan.

So good job dipshits.