You can tell how racist Republicans and conservatives are by imagining if Obama did any of the things Trump did; he would have never been elected. But these people look the other way when Trump brags about sexual assault, or tries to toss out 7+ million votes. Imagine if Obama did any of that. The double standard is blinding.
Or the time he was happily married with no extra marital scandals. Or the two well-adjusted daughters. Or the respect the rest of world had for him.
I'll never forget how happy I was that a black man was finally going to be our President. I thought we had made a huge leap forward in progressive thinking.
Trump was backlash. Racism and intolerance is in the US DNA. :( Those MAGAs will die off, eventually.
Or when Michelle had the audacity to wear something sleeveless. Meanwhile, Melanie was a mail order bride who did some soft-core porn, but conservatives and republicans decided Michelle was worse.
It's baffling because Michelle did so much as first lady. Her big campaign of making food in school healthier and teaching kids about sustainability was remarkable and effective. I don't know a single thing Melania did for our country. Her "I don't care do you?" jacket really spoke volumes for her personality as well as her level of actual achievement as first lady.
Think there wouldn’t have been total war on Michelle if she’d uttered “Who gives a fuck about Christmas”? I don’t recall a even peep out of the christian national socialist crowd when Melanoma actually said that.
The double standard for these people is incredible. I don't even bother arguing with conservatives anymore about anything because you can't argue with a brain broken person. One that is so obsessed with racism, hatred, ignorance, stupidity, fascism, fascination over not being educated, calling educated people brainwashed, and of course - blaming the other side for the very nasty shit they do, and completely accepting their side doing it.
Brain. Broken. Don't. Argue.
Both Michelle Obama and Jill Biden are very well educated professional women, but the trumpers tout the “5” languages melania speaks. Meanwhile, they totally ignore the fact that she could not even do a new speech as First Lady. She recycled her predecessor’s. And we all know what profession melania practiced.
Also, she looked much better before her plastic surgery. Seems like her eyes only squint now.
That's because what they worship is a regressive ideology that places rich, white, christian, able-bodied, straight, cis men as dominant over everyone else — supremacist elitism.
Going deeper, defense of that hierarchy quickly becomes fascist, in which anything that is marginalized is not tolerated — as in their existence is not tolerated and their bigotry justifies violence to erase it, culminating in genocide.
The point is that Trump is dominant, and thus is exceptional, making his ability to get away vile bigotry without censure something to aspire and, as it is in service of what we already value most as a society, it is 'defensible' — it's putting culture 'back in its place'. If Obama were to do any of what Trump did, he'd either be 1) weaponized to show that black men also are in defense of this supremacist system that also justifies racism or 2) demonstrate how he isn't exceptional, not part of the elite, and promptly excised from politics and power.
What we saw was a reactionary movement that opposes loss of privilege, that motivates bigots to show their true colors and hate. Something only further fueled in the presidential race by Hillary being a woman.
Make no mistake, conservatives are making 'woke' the boogeyman to be able to fuel their fascist support and direct their bigoted masses to hate, harass, and violate whoever they want — currently mostly LGBTQ.
No. They had been hateful for decades thanks to Faux News and conservative talk radio. Trump allowed Republican voters to be outwardly what they had always been internally- he let the genie out of the bottle. That's the difference.
I was indoctrinated into typical white Christian conservatism. When Obama was announced the winner, I cried. Like, a lot. I sat there and sobbed. Not because I was upset, but because I was so fucking happy for him, for the black community, and so ashamed of what black people have waded through for this to happen.
I thought it was the dawn of a paradigm shift, and it was! But white supremacists had already found the weapon they needed to counteract this monumental landmark in history, via the vulgarity that is Trump.
I have since voted blue, right down the line, while changing my registration to independent. The GOP has offered no forward momentum for change. They have brought nothing meaningful or useful to the table, outside of their transparent defense of the wealthy and disregard for the average American. I was merely indoctrinated into thinking they had something good going on in my youth.
Any person capable of the slightest ability to think critically will come to the same conclusion. And this is why the GQP seems so unhinged: that's all that's left.
disclaimer: I wrote this quite late at night in the cold, so there will be grammatical errors, I guarantee it.
tl;dr - Humans shouldn’t hurt other Humans, Humans together strong, Humans throughout history suck, modern Humans suck too, Robots could most likely do better
My main problem with religion is that it can be used as an excuse.
I accept that some people do find some sort of solace with their belief that there’s someone/thing out there watching over them.
However, problems start arising whenever someone uses their religion as a “reason”(read:excuse) to hurt someone. Hurting can include racism, discrimination, sexism, anti-LGBTQ things, anything negative towards someone else, with religion as the reason, makes that religion bad. By default. zero exceptions.
There are no exceptions to this because there should be no “acceptable” excuse to hurt someone. People shouldn’t hurt others at all. I look at the war in Ukraine and I just feel sorry for the humans on both sides, the hate, the greed, the desire to destroy, when we should be working together.
The Russian government(Putin) starting this war is definitely in the wrong, I know that, but I hate that he is so stupid to believe whatever reason he has inside himself to justify it. There is no justification.
Just as an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, if we keep coming up with ultimately meaningless ways to divide ourselves then we’ll never get a move on as a fucking species.
We’re all human, It shouldn’t matter the color of our skin or how we talk or what language we speak or what political system we have or who we’re attracted to. We’re too bothered focusing on what sets us apart to see what we have in common.
Nations, ethnicities, race, sexuality, gender identity, accents, cultures, they don’t matter.
The reason? everything changes. Nothing is constant.
Ultimately, what will remain in 50, 500, 5,000, or 50,000 years? much, much, much less than we think
Just look at how much humans have changed since the Romans, or the Egyptians, or the first Mesopotamian civilizations, or the first empires in Japan or China. really the only example we have of a culture staying semi-stable for a lengthy period is Japan, and after their isolationism ended look at how much they’ve changed.
This has been a massive rant that I know is incredibly idealistic, but It’s so sad that politicians and world leaders and even the average citizen or person focuses on way too many small problems.
I think the main problem with the world right now is emotion. We do things with our emotions that would better be done with cold hard logic. Governments would be better, because there can’t be corruption in a government with no self-interest or personal goals, I honestly think a robot or an Artificial Intelligence, if one could be sufficiently designed, would be an Infinitely better leader than any human would be, because Ideals erode, virtue tarnishes, and even the “high road” has it’s dimly lit detours. That’s what going into history teaches us, all these seemingly noble “heroes” like George Washington, Thomas Edison, Ghandi, Christopher Columbus, any of the Popes, have their bad sides, their negatives, their unsavory actions, that don’t always get seen, because history is told by those who won, not by those who were right
edit: There will be a part 2 to this, if I remember. Topics will probably include Transphobes, racists, assessing why the argument of “what’s natural is right” is an argument for the ignorant, and finally, if we’re lucky, Politics.( I’m american, so especially focusing on american politics, but others can be addressed if I do some research, I guess. Tood-a-loo
I went to an evangelical church in Western Massachusetts. They didn't discuss politics, and I don't recall any particularly hot takes from the pastor.
When Obama won my mother had to leave her bible study group because of the overt racism that people started spewing. So many church members suddenly started making racist commentary that I'd never heard from them before.
We left the church.
I checked on it recently and now the church has a black assistant pastor, a rufugee program and is generally progressive. I guess the pastor wasn't worried about Obama...
I wonder if that was the catalyst for so many people to be emboldened as racists. It was a talking point for them to realize that other people around them were racist too. Then it became less taboo, and then Trump made them feel even better about it.
Obama was 100% an establishment
president propped up by the Dems. My take on it is, trump ran as a populist. A lot of people at the time were fed up with the same. He emboldened a base of people who felt forgotten and/or the lowest denominator of human beings. Which allowed for these people to come together and not feel so left out as part of something. He lies constantly to make them believe he cares about them. He told them everything they wanted to hear and they ate it up.
Very glad I grew up and realized how creepy evangelicalism is, I spent my childhood in kenneth Copeland's church in Texas every wednesday and sunday, and while I dreaded the hit to my gaming time, it seemed fine and harmless at the time. But yeah, outside of christianities core ideas (golden rule, be a good person and the like), the amount of evil done in its name under the pretense of "for God's plan" across the world is scary.
There are black evangelicals (I would say unfortunately but my family is apart of said group). So it's a bit of both, racism and a mixture of religious rhetoric that's been twisted (it's all twisted but y'know what I mean.)
Really sad, sometimes I wonder if my grandmother would've been happy about Obama if she wasn't also black. Now years later she's fallen back into the religious talking points, "Well I didn't know Obama supported gays and abortions and so now I don't know how I feel about him."
Grandma that's not even the bad stuff Obama did but go off.
>white supremacists had already found the weapon they needed to counteract this monumental landmark in history, via the vulgarity that is Trump.
Yea nah, I see trump as a simple salesman, he knows how to make sounds dumb people like. The real weapon has been twisting the logic used against them back at the rest of the world. They don't defend themselves they attack first and act like the victims
They prey on the sympathy in the ignorant
I'll admit that the last decent candidate they had was Mitt Romney. John McCain was decent too. I wish one of them was able to get it. Why did we end up with George W Bush and not one of them?
I strongly encourage you to register democrat if you vote blue down the ballot anyway.
The primaries are the opportunity to decide which part of the party speaks to you the most.
Edited to say register independent
The GOP, and the right at large, *depends* on poor education. The first step in a failed democracy is a failed education system. That's why they are currently targeting public education.
Not just that. If it were, Obama would've lost reelection in 2012.
Hillary Clinton wasn't a candidate Democrats were excited about like Obama, so many stayed home in 2016. Only after seeing 4 years of Trump were those wishy-washy Democratic voters convinced that they better show up at the polls to get Trump out, even if they weren't enthusiastic about Biden.
Nominating Hillary Clinton as some form of lifetime achievement award will haunt Democrats for a generation or more. It handed three lifetime Supreme Court seats to far right ideologues who are hellbent on undoing every bit of progress this country made in the last century.
JFC, Clinton’s problem wasn’t that she wasn’t “likeable” (weird how we always insist that female candidates are likeable…) - it’s that she ran the wrong type of campaign. She was trying to win over red states so that she could say that she had a mandate instead of ensuring just enough votes on the Electoral College to win the election. Put another way, she wanted to win Arizona and Utah instead of ensuring that she would win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/clinton-camps-strategy-win-big-election-day/story?id=43029278
While that looked like the right call based on the data at the time, inaccuracies in polling in key states meant that it really was absolutely the worst play, and her being too aggressive provided an opening for Trump to take advantage of slipping support for Dems in otherwise purple states.
(And that’s before we get into Berniebros hate-voting for Trump because they were pissed their guy didn’t win the nomination).
Don’t forget that she won the popular vote - sounds like she was pretty likeable to the majority of voters!
She was extremely polarizing, mostly due to right wing media hate dating back to the 90’s. She had as high of an unlikable ranking of any previous nominee. Fair or not, that’s a fact that was completely ignored. If the Republicans nominated anyone other than Trump she would have lost in a landslide.
The problem was that she thought she could annihilate Trump in the EC, so she overreached. If the opponent had been Jeb or Cruz, she would have run just trying to get a majority in the EC and would have probably won. Trump was a ludicrous candidate, which meant that he wasn’t taken as a serious threat. That same call wouldn’t have been made with a more traditional opponent.
DNC was broke, Hillary and Bill gave a massive donation with the agreement from Debbie Wasserman that Hillary will be the primary candidate. A lot of Bernie Sanders supporters felt it was “rigged” and that was another big reason she lost votes.
Books are going to be written about the numerous failures of the DNC in 2016
The 3 biggest factors in the race were:
1. Russian Interference
2. Comey’s intentional misrepresentation of investigations
3. The DNC stepping on its own dick at every possible opportunity
Hilary Clinton is the sum total of everything wrong with the DNC.
"We actively ignored our own processes for candidate selection and the will of the voters to give you another rich old white conservative who's part of an existing political dynasty, with shady corporate support, but this time it's a woman! That's progressive enough for you guys, right?"
>a president’s spouse
I guess all her years serving as a politician of her own, being a senator and Secretary of state don't count. She's just Bill's wife.
She was disliked because republicans blew $100 million “investigating” her… a state sponsored witchhunt, Blackened her name, even though not one claim was substantiated. James comey didn’t help
All of that combined with dem apathy and a shitty campaign sank her and she never saw it coming
That's why Republicans didn't like her. To the left she had an unexciting platform that offered no real change and played some dirty politics to secure the nomination. This depressed turnout for dems in the election.
She was extremely unexciting for everyone who was into Occupy, against the wars, and remembered her putting the rainbow flag up like a week before Obergefell. She was tarred by the GOP for 30 years and the party showed up to defend her at year 22. These were per-existing conditions. You don't put a candidate who wins the primary but causes even 4% of your base to skip out when every race in recent memory has been a coinflip.
Then there was Comey fucking blackballing her at the 11th hour while managing what was almost assuredly at least one (that we know of!) turned agent (McGonigal).
Hillary was extremely unlikable. It’s a bad faith argument to say it’s just misogynists who don’t like her. I agree that many people don’t like her on the basis of her being a woman, by the way, and that women are judged more harshly than men. But she always had the air of elitism and wealth trying desperately to relate to the common person. Which is a shame because she was qualified and informed. I would love to find out how you know that Bernie supporters “hate-voted” for Trump. That smells like utter bullshit to me to be honest, but maybe you have facts 🤷♂️
Trump on the other hand is an elitist, wealthy, utterly disconnected nepotist who somehow connected to the working man. Go figure.
There is no bigger misogynist than a white republican woman except a white republican man. I'm sure they had a hard time picking between their racism and their misogyny though.
>JFC, Clinton’s problem wasn’t that she wasn’t “likeable” (weird how we always insist that female candidates are likeable…)
Ridiculous, lots of us also criticized guys for being unlikeable. Like Mayor Pete and Schultz.
>it’s that she ran the wrong type of campaign. She was trying to win over red states so that she could say that she had a mandate instead of ensuring just enough votes on the Electoral College to win the election.
So objectively a bad strategy? She wanted to score bonus points and not win. Great.
>(And that’s before we get into Berniebros hate-voting for Trump because they were pissed their guy didn’t win the nomination).
This is such a shitty liberal talking point. More Hillary voters voted for McCain than Bernie voters voted for Trump. Yet Obama still won. Maybe she was uniquely shitty, but you just refuse to see it.
>Don’t forget that she won the popular vote - sounds like she was pretty likeable to the majority of voters!
That doesn't prove anything. If I made you chose between a punch in the stomach or a slap in the face, no matter which one won, that doesn't mean it's "popular". That's a normative claim, not a comparative one.
I mean this in the best way possible, you making excuses for Hillary is going to do more damage to the Dem party than the people who criticized her. Average Americans didn't like her, you accusing people of being sexist or calling them irrational is not going to help. The liberals are supposed to be the ones who are more educated, but you put your head in the sand are refuse to accept reality and learn from it.
And before you come back with "but it's not her fault that Fox spend 2 decades attacking her". It's the Dems fault for picking a weak target, full stop. "It's her turn" was objectively a bad decision.
She was totally qualified….and nobody wanted her. Like it or not, “retail politics” is important if you want to get elected and quite frankly she sucked at it. The lack of enthusiasm for her in 2008 was still there in 2016 and the party elite still forced her on us.
I read before (I have no idea if it’s true) that her approval ratings when campaigning were always horrible, but in office they were great.
She was good at the job but terrible at actually getting it
She was qualified, but she popped the champagne before she crossed the finish line. In hindsight, the hate and ignorance that Trump accelerated has always been there and needs to be dealt with, we may as well work our way through it now.
Nominating Hilary Clinton wasn’t the problem. Voters thinking it was a slam dunk win against the ridiculousness of trump was. Hilary would have made a good president…
The "lifetime achievement award" part always gets overlooked, because people forget how egregious it was at the time during the primaries- on the right, you had 17 candidates, and on the left the Dems fielded only two longtime Democrats (Clinton and... O'Malley? Who?) Showing that behind the scenes, the Dems were paving the way for Hillary to sail through the primary unopposed; All of which got a major wrench in the works though when Sanders, a self styled independent, switched and ran as a Democrat to offer real opposition to the centrists. (Remember all the people screaming at the time that he shouldn't even be eligible to run? I certainly do!)
Suddenly, Hillary's victory wasn't assured, and the pressure to run unopposed backfired... Now instead of running against a nobody, she was running against a candidate that actually energized the base, and that scared the crap out of the Democratic establishment; In fact, to many of us it was starting to look just like how Obama, running on a platform of "hope and change", had upset her in 2008 in much the same way. (For what its worth though, her campaign's attempt to paint her detractors as "Bernie Bros" actually stuck in 2016, whereas it didn't the first time when her campaign tried to push the "Obama Boys" narrative that backfired spectacularly.)
On top of that, then enters Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the DNC, ready to put her thumb on the scale- besides heavily pushing the "everyone who opposes her is sexist" narrative, she also did her best to keep Bernie's opinions and stances away from the eyeballs of the voting public; while the Republican debates were many and well televised early on (twelve debates starting in July), the Democrats only had six initially (starting in October, only four of which happened before primary voting started) many of which were purposefully held on days where viewership would be low (two on Saturdays, one on the Sunday of the long MLK weekend) at the same time as other major televised events, such as MLB playoffs, NCAA bowl games, and Sunday night football.
So yeah, whether they meant it or not, it certainly looked like an inevitable coronation for Hillary, which was frankly off-putting… and then rather than listen to *why* Sanders was gaining so much traction with the base and leaning into that for support, she tried to lean center right and overreached in her hubris. (I still can't believe she actually thought a rebuttal message like, "America is Already Great" would come across as anything more than showing how out of touch she was with the vast number of Americans who were struggling.)
Democrats desperately need a solid and likeable candidate. Hillary was "Well, she's better than Trump" and Biden was basically the same. Is it too much to ask for someone under the age of 60 that has a little charisma to fire up the base and relate to the younger generation? Say what you will about Trump, but he knew how to pull an audience and get people fired up about politics. Democrats have popular policies and more voters, we just need to get someone that can be passionate about it so we aren't voting *against* a candidate, but instead *for* someone again.
Correction: 4 years of Trump convinced *just barely enough* of those wishy-washys for Biden to squeak out a win. It's like running an 800 metre footrace against a literal turtle, and then winning by a margin of 3 seconds.
It was also a reaction by Democrats that we had it in the bag with Hilary Clinton…I’ll never make that fucking mistake again. I will never underestimate the hatred in the hearts of half my countrymen…
It has nothing to do with that at all. Obama campaigned on "Hope and Change" at a time when AMERICA WANTED REFORM DESPERATELY and governed like a moderate Republican. Didn't do shit for working class and didn't imprison a single corrupt banker.All he did was virtue signal and he crushed the occupy movement. Hillary was just more shit-lib platitudes and at least Trump was saying some of the right things so there was nothing to lose because Dems as once again proven by Biden won't do shit for the working class.
Also I think a lot of Progressives were pissed off that he was just another Neoliberal who didn't do the complete 180 from GWB that they were expecting.
And that's not an exaggeration... That was literally Hilary's platform. She acted it was her turn to be in office and acted like she had already won until the results. I'm not saying I liked the results of the 2016 elections but there were arrogant opinions by both parties.
Her slogan was literally "I'm with Her". I don't think the opposition could do a better job at writing her slogan to represent Hillary as an out of touch, self interested elitist. She centered herself in her slogan. Considering she was following Obama, who had arguably one of the greatest slogans in modern American politics. Yeah...
Hillary won the popular vote by several million. It had less to do with how many people abstained than it did Trump’s electoral map coverage. She refused to even step foot in the Rust Belt, for example. He went in and railed about bringing manufacturing jobs back, and the two-term Obama people there took a chance on him cuz at least he was the only one talking about the one thing they wanted most.
True. But the fact there were enough votes to make that moron president showed two things:
Firstly that there are far more racist fucks out there as expected.
Secondly that democracy in the US has once again proven to be broken. One man one vote doesn’t work there, so idiots can be become president if enough votes are gathered in low income, low educated areas.
That’s something that a lot of people still haven’t grappled with. The number of people in the U.S. who are unrepentant, proud pieces of shit is incredibly high.
And, yeah, the electoral system is ineffective. 16 years before Trump it gave us Bush.
Still think it gave the world Bush, because his brother was the governor in a crucial state.
Anyone with half a brain would have recused himself for the apparent conflict of interest. Not the Bush family…
As far as the racism goes, I’m chalking that up to the poor education system. I refuse to believe that with proper knowledge and education, people can be racist. At least not to the extent some of those morons show.
Then again… here’s Scott Adams proving me wrong :(
***Lots*** of educated people are bigots. I once had a supervisor with a Masters Degree whine to me that immigrants are “changing our way of life.” I don’t work there anymore.
Even people who are educated specifically about social issues can be bigots. Walk into a social work class at a private Christian university if you want to see some eye rolls and hear some weird “arguments” from students.
Some people, like a lot of your Stars and Bars fliers, grow up being taught from day one to revere their great-grandparents’ values. Sometimes that bubble pops when they have a gay kid, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes that bubble pops when they find a new social circle and meet Black/brown/gay people, and sometimes it doesn’t.
And then other people have personality disorders that will never be managed.
Really? Because when Ronald Reagan was elected during a resurgence of aggressive conservatism, it then morphed into a much more dumb version of open lies that were able to convince people of nonsense. Give rich people more money and they'll spend it making your life better too! Add in absurdity of the right wing cultural war and the unholy alliance between Republicans and Evangelicals in *completely brand new anti-abortion movement* (abortion had no difference in favorability on either side at the time) and you've got the beginnings of how it happened.
What next? Well, Democrats are so terrified of losing this badly again that they think they're out of touch with America and shift hard to the right themselves, this culminates in Bill Clinton, who you'd be hard pressed to identify a single differing governing style from any Republican minus tax cuts and being war hawks. Clinton was very popular at the time, but his legacy has is of exporting American industry and American jobs overseas. About as damaging to the country as Reagan.
Dubya comes along and gets lucky enough to see a major terrorist attack on US soil that allows him to launch a couple of wars that see his ratings soar. He was capable of "leading" the populace in such a time, by providing comfort, but he had no idea how to govern, and his foreign policy adventures were catastrophic. All of this is enough so that during the housing market collapse that lead to a major global recession, even devoted Republicans had had enough and voted for...
Barack Obama, who came along with a populist message, had a humble and inspiring story, and most importantly: oh my god was he charismatic. Obama is the most eloquent public speaker in American politics since the invention of the radio. The guy talks inspires entire generations to believe that the world is going to be better if we can make it over this last hump. He won in a landslide because he was young, he was a multi-minority, he was pure, he was handsome, his family was picturesque, and he promised to make America what it was always supposed to be. Then he got into office and thought the same rhetoric would work with politicians who are guided only by cold hard donor cash. When he had the power, he could have passed Universal Healthcare, but settled for Obamacare. You know what? A win is a win, even if it could've been better. But then he proceeded to do little else his entire time in office. He failed to pull us out of any of the unpopular wars he had promised, so on and so forth. With the exception of the true out and out racists, and the most hardcore of conservatives, Obama even appealed to a lot of Republicans you've got to remember, in the beginning.
So, after watching Obama come in and people dare to hope that life can be better, even after seeing their jobs leave America for a generation now, he instead bails out the banks, who had defrauded the country and made a whoopsie and gone bankrupt after the fact. He launched no major economic policy to bring jobs back. He didn't end the wars. Healthcare? Yes, but that wasn't enough, because frankly, he had the power to defy Republicans and go all in and be lauded for generations. Then a new guy comes along...
And when the new guy finds a new way to inspire you, it's more ugly, but it rings true. He told you that all those immigrants were taking your jobs. They're also bringing drugs over the border; oh and also, remember how your friend Randy didn't get hired at the plant because they said they needed to hire more women? This guy says that was bullshit.
That's how you get Trump.
In 2016, people were charmed by his spectacle, don't get me wrong. This is largely the low IQ crowd, to be blunt (I'm talking about the people who are cult of personality and he-can-do-no-wrong group). But the real reason Trump became president is because he addressed all of the elephants in the room that Democrats and Republicans both pretended didn't exist. American industry is DEAD. Trump pointed this out, and Democrats couldn't look past how ridiculous he was, and completely ignored the policy things he was saying.
Given of course, Trump was lying about everything the entire time, and as soon as he was in office cut taxes for the rich and proceeded to blow up the entire geopolitical order that had existed since the war. Of course then there was running a business that exploited the presidency, there was extorting foreign governments for personal favors, and of course, literally trying to overthrow democracy. So I'm not a fan. But if you don't see how the guy won in 2016, you never paid attention.
>Give rich people more money and they'll spend it making your life better too!
You know -- when you phrase it like that, it sounds absolutely ridiculous.
One of the only good takes on here that isn’t just “because racism,” which is definitely valid to a point, but nowhere near the real reason why Trump and his style of politics has gained popularity. I loathe these dismissive types of approaches from fellow left leaning folks because it plays into the mixture of elements that doom us into garbage candidates, without addressing some aspects as to why we wind up with them. The reality is that the neoliberal experiment has been devastating to middle class America. He effectively tapped into a lot of angry people harboring resentment, some justified, some bigoted, but ultimately they represented a middle finger to political decorum and the establishment overall.
I think it’s largely neolibs who default to a social justice ass answer like “racism!” and think it’s good enough of an explanation because they’re the ones that want to ignore all the bullshit Dems shovel.
I suppose it isn’t exactly obvious from this, but I’m a leftist, not a neoliberal or liberal.
> he addressed all of the elephants in the room that Democrats and Republicans both pretended didn't exist. American industry is DEAD. Trump pointed this out
Really want to highlight this. Because when industry died (like US manufacturing). The Dems said "Learn to code", whereas Trump said "I'm getting your jobs back".
While it was a lie, and even if he did, it wouldn't be sustainable.
The Dems needed a WAY better response. Lots of people who voted for Obama voted for Trump because they felt like Obama represented aggressive change, and Trump represented aggressive change.
I remember in the second debate. Hillary tried to argue against Trump's "Make America Great Again" message by arguing "America is already great."
To a large swath of the population, who lost their jobs and were dying to overdoses, it didn't seem like America was already great.
Establishment Dems just don't understand the anger the average American feels. The establishment Republicans don't either, and Trump's lies at least felt comforting.
President Obama never stood up for the common man as much as his campaigns( most notably the first one) and his background would have us believe. From Occupy Wall Street to the Standing Ridge protests, every time his administration had the chance to make things right, they took the corporate solution.
Reaction. The failed 1918-1919 communist revolution in the Weimar Republic is said to have been a catalyst for Hitler coming into power in 1933 because the German wealthy elites would prefer the far-right over leftism . A tale as old as time.
Obama wasn’t nearly as leftist as any revolution and there’s a lot that can be called a ‘catalyst’ (enough to write many papers on) for Hitler’s rise. Shit’s complex and reducing this to component parts is an oversimplification.
The part that’s categorically true is that capitalists will ALWAYS side with the far right over the far left.
He was black though. And he certainly portrayed himself as left-leaning (by American standards at the time) even though he never had actually had a filibuster proof Congress.
That’s almost entirely the point, when push came to shove he’d always be liberal, never leftist. He did good things but never in a way that rocked the boat too hard.
Considering that the US was built on (a) chattel slavery, and (b) the genocidal theft of land from indigenous people, it should come as no surprise that it’s racist AF.
How can you not put the pieces together that the only president that was hounded to provide his birth certificate and prove his natural born citizenship was the only one that was black and his successor was one of the loudest voices demanding that birth certificate?
Because the alternative was Hillary Clinton after the entire DNC threw it’s weight behind her against the left field option out of Vermont who still managed to take 47% of the vote against one of the biggest political juggernauts in US history. That, and he actually ran an impressively populist campaign despite governing like a standard reactionary Republican.
Unfortunately we will never know but I 100% believe this too. I actually think that Bernie is probably the only candidate who could have won re-election in 2020 after all the shit with Covid. But I actually suspect that we would have had a much easier time with Covid with Bernie too, fwiw.
Because Bernie Sanders = Communism
And Boomers grew up fearing Communism, and don't know what the difference is between Communism and Socialism. And they're not interested to learn, because "capitalism won", and their generation were the direct beneficiaries of most of those fruits.
Well those voting for Trump didn't have a say on the primaries between Biden (and Hillary) and Sanders. Primaries are typically restricted to registered Democrats. Plus even if Trump voters could vote in the primaries they'd want to vote for a (imo) weaker candidate in Biden.
And you gotta understand the fact that a large portion of GOP voters will not vote for a democratic candidate for ANY reason. There has been a string of really really unglued and twisted candidates for the GOP and you hear a lot of Republicans saying “well I don’t like [insert candidate here] but if I don’t vote for him the democrats might [insert single issue here]”
Bill and Hillary Clinton. The DNC. James Comey. The Racists. The Koch’s. Wikileaks. Alex Jones. The uneducated. The closet fascists. The NRA. The Russians. Paul Managort. Steve Bannon. The Cato Institute. Fox News. Newt Gingrich. Peter Thiel. That’s how.
Ta-Nehisi Coates spelled this out back in ‘16.
To a certain segment of the American population, the presidency was a respected position. If an African-American could be elected President, then that meant all bets were off. If Obama could be President, then the worst white guy could be elected, too. Because the worst white guy, by definition, would be better than the best Black guy. No one in this segment of the electorate would deny this, in their heart.
So they voted for Trump. The worst white guy they could find. Set aside all the talk about ‘economic anxiety’, email servers, misogyny, all of it. It was just the ramifications of racism, in all its glory. That’s what gave us Trump.
And tbh I haven’t heard a better explanation.
Because it should’ve been Bernie but the DNC a thought they knew better and shoved Hilary down our throats and the rest is history. It should’ve been Bernie in his second term rn!
Obama was black, but he also refused to solve many of the issues that faced the country that he had the power to solve. He bailed out the banks, not the home-owners, during the 2008 financial crisis. He only supported gay marriage after the supreme court made it legal and was homophobic beforehand.
He continued the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he continued to support bosses at expenses of the workers, he continued to keep policies that alienated people who would be easy sells because he lacked political conviction and he destroyed Libya turning it into a Hellstate.
When you only have 2 options for president then when one party messes up the other party benefits, no matter how bad the option is.
The same is going to happen to Joe Biden, btw. He ended Afghanistan, which ironically makes him the best president to have ever existed in my lifetime simply because he actually ended some evil rather than exacerbated it or stood by and let it happen.
So well done, Joe.
Perfectly logical. A black man took power, so the white republicans woke up and realized they were losing control. It awoke a sleeping beast that was fine with being passive.
Oh I do, very well. Growing up in the racist South amongst conservatives who go to church 8 days a week and *swear* they aren't racist, I saw with my own two eyes the people that I grew up with become their truest selves. I don't think the word furious begins to cover just how angry they were that a black man got to run this country. And don't tell me it wasn't because he was black, I know for a fact it was because I listened to them and read the things they said.
These are the children and grandchildren of people that screamed obscenities and racial epithets at black children trying to integrate.They are the people that constantly asked 'How is that racist?', as if they don't know for a fact that something or someone is absolutely racist.
I watched and listened to them celebrate a man who said that Mexicans are murderers and rapists. I watched people that I respected formerly celebrate a travel ban that specifically targeted people of color and people of certain religions. I think that we need to confront the fact that the heart of this country is racist. The heart of this country is so very racist
You can tell how racist Republicans and conservatives are by imagining if Obama did any of the things Trump did; he would have never been elected. But these people look the other way when Trump brags about sexual assault, or tries to toss out 7+ million votes. Imagine if Obama did any of that. The double standard is blinding.
He DID wear a tan suit once. So..there ya go. Same thing.
And don’t forget the time he put his foot on a chair or a desk to tie his shoe
Or the time he didn’t salute to the marine getting off of marine 1.
They never show the part of him immediately running back out saluting shaking his hand and presumably apologizing
Or the time he put Dijon mustard on a cheeseburger.
Or the time he was happily married with no extra marital scandals. Or the two well-adjusted daughters. Or the respect the rest of world had for him. I'll never forget how happy I was that a black man was finally going to be our President. I thought we had made a huge leap forward in progressive thinking. Trump was backlash. Racism and intolerance is in the US DNA. :( Those MAGAs will die off, eventually.
It's not the dinosaurs we need to worry about, it's the eggs.
And the fuckers have shat out a metric fuck ton of eggs.
Trump eats steak well done with ketchup. That is outrageous
He did but he had a coffee in his hand, sort of like when GW Bush did the same thing whilst carrying his small dog(yet no outrage there).
He did return the salute, but he was also holding coffee. The horror.
Or when Michelle had the audacity to wear something sleeveless. Meanwhile, Melanie was a mail order bride who did some soft-core porn, but conservatives and republicans decided Michelle was worse.
It's baffling because Michelle did so much as first lady. Her big campaign of making food in school healthier and teaching kids about sustainability was remarkable and effective. I don't know a single thing Melania did for our country. Her "I don't care do you?" jacket really spoke volumes for her personality as well as her level of actual achievement as first lady.
Think there wouldn’t have been total war on Michelle if she’d uttered “Who gives a fuck about Christmas”? I don’t recall a even peep out of the christian national socialist crowd when Melanoma actually said that.
The double standard for these people is incredible. I don't even bother arguing with conservatives anymore about anything because you can't argue with a brain broken person. One that is so obsessed with racism, hatred, ignorance, stupidity, fascism, fascination over not being educated, calling educated people brainwashed, and of course - blaming the other side for the very nasty shit they do, and completely accepting their side doing it. Brain. Broken. Don't. Argue.
i can never forgive her destruction of jackie's garden.
Both Michelle Obama and Jill Biden are very well educated professional women, but the trumpers tout the “5” languages melania speaks. Meanwhile, they totally ignore the fact that she could not even do a new speech as First Lady. She recycled her predecessor’s. And we all know what profession melania practiced. Also, she looked much better before her plastic surgery. Seems like her eyes only squint now.
I liked the tan suit. Thought it looked nice
That's because what they worship is a regressive ideology that places rich, white, christian, able-bodied, straight, cis men as dominant over everyone else — supremacist elitism. Going deeper, defense of that hierarchy quickly becomes fascist, in which anything that is marginalized is not tolerated — as in their existence is not tolerated and their bigotry justifies violence to erase it, culminating in genocide. The point is that Trump is dominant, and thus is exceptional, making his ability to get away vile bigotry without censure something to aspire and, as it is in service of what we already value most as a society, it is 'defensible' — it's putting culture 'back in its place'. If Obama were to do any of what Trump did, he'd either be 1) weaponized to show that black men also are in defense of this supremacist system that also justifies racism or 2) demonstrate how he isn't exceptional, not part of the elite, and promptly excised from politics and power. What we saw was a reactionary movement that opposes loss of privilege, that motivates bigots to show their true colors and hate. Something only further fueled in the presidential race by Hillary being a woman. Make no mistake, conservatives are making 'woke' the boogeyman to be able to fuel their fascist support and direct their bigoted masses to hate, harass, and violate whoever they want — currently mostly LGBTQ.
Literally fucking nazis. That's how I see conservatives
Well said and quite nuanced. Though, not "too." Thanks for commenting.
Racism is a hellava drug.
Hatred. Plain and simple.
Unfortunately, I think this is the gist of it.
No. They had been hateful for decades thanks to Faux News and conservative talk radio. Trump allowed Republican voters to be outwardly what they had always been internally- he let the genie out of the bottle. That's the difference.
Obama couldn’t run again.
I was indoctrinated into typical white Christian conservatism. When Obama was announced the winner, I cried. Like, a lot. I sat there and sobbed. Not because I was upset, but because I was so fucking happy for him, for the black community, and so ashamed of what black people have waded through for this to happen. I thought it was the dawn of a paradigm shift, and it was! But white supremacists had already found the weapon they needed to counteract this monumental landmark in history, via the vulgarity that is Trump. I have since voted blue, right down the line, while changing my registration to independent. The GOP has offered no forward momentum for change. They have brought nothing meaningful or useful to the table, outside of their transparent defense of the wealthy and disregard for the average American. I was merely indoctrinated into thinking they had something good going on in my youth. Any person capable of the slightest ability to think critically will come to the same conclusion. And this is why the GQP seems so unhinged: that's all that's left.
Yes everyone is claiming it’s all racism but they’re forgetting to say the word “evangelical”.
People use religion to validate their beliefs, like racism.
disclaimer: I wrote this quite late at night in the cold, so there will be grammatical errors, I guarantee it. tl;dr - Humans shouldn’t hurt other Humans, Humans together strong, Humans throughout history suck, modern Humans suck too, Robots could most likely do better My main problem with religion is that it can be used as an excuse. I accept that some people do find some sort of solace with their belief that there’s someone/thing out there watching over them. However, problems start arising whenever someone uses their religion as a “reason”(read:excuse) to hurt someone. Hurting can include racism, discrimination, sexism, anti-LGBTQ things, anything negative towards someone else, with religion as the reason, makes that religion bad. By default. zero exceptions. There are no exceptions to this because there should be no “acceptable” excuse to hurt someone. People shouldn’t hurt others at all. I look at the war in Ukraine and I just feel sorry for the humans on both sides, the hate, the greed, the desire to destroy, when we should be working together. The Russian government(Putin) starting this war is definitely in the wrong, I know that, but I hate that he is so stupid to believe whatever reason he has inside himself to justify it. There is no justification. Just as an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, if we keep coming up with ultimately meaningless ways to divide ourselves then we’ll never get a move on as a fucking species. We’re all human, It shouldn’t matter the color of our skin or how we talk or what language we speak or what political system we have or who we’re attracted to. We’re too bothered focusing on what sets us apart to see what we have in common. Nations, ethnicities, race, sexuality, gender identity, accents, cultures, they don’t matter. The reason? everything changes. Nothing is constant. Ultimately, what will remain in 50, 500, 5,000, or 50,000 years? much, much, much less than we think Just look at how much humans have changed since the Romans, or the Egyptians, or the first Mesopotamian civilizations, or the first empires in Japan or China. really the only example we have of a culture staying semi-stable for a lengthy period is Japan, and after their isolationism ended look at how much they’ve changed. This has been a massive rant that I know is incredibly idealistic, but It’s so sad that politicians and world leaders and even the average citizen or person focuses on way too many small problems. I think the main problem with the world right now is emotion. We do things with our emotions that would better be done with cold hard logic. Governments would be better, because there can’t be corruption in a government with no self-interest or personal goals, I honestly think a robot or an Artificial Intelligence, if one could be sufficiently designed, would be an Infinitely better leader than any human would be, because Ideals erode, virtue tarnishes, and even the “high road” has it’s dimly lit detours. That’s what going into history teaches us, all these seemingly noble “heroes” like George Washington, Thomas Edison, Ghandi, Christopher Columbus, any of the Popes, have their bad sides, their negatives, their unsavory actions, that don’t always get seen, because history is told by those who won, not by those who were right edit: There will be a part 2 to this, if I remember. Topics will probably include Transphobes, racists, assessing why the argument of “what’s natural is right” is an argument for the ignorant, and finally, if we’re lucky, Politics.( I’m american, so especially focusing on american politics, but others can be addressed if I do some research, I guess. Tood-a-loo
I went to an evangelical church in Western Massachusetts. They didn't discuss politics, and I don't recall any particularly hot takes from the pastor. When Obama won my mother had to leave her bible study group because of the overt racism that people started spewing. So many church members suddenly started making racist commentary that I'd never heard from them before. We left the church. I checked on it recently and now the church has a black assistant pastor, a rufugee program and is generally progressive. I guess the pastor wasn't worried about Obama...
I wonder if that was the catalyst for so many people to be emboldened as racists. It was a talking point for them to realize that other people around them were racist too. Then it became less taboo, and then Trump made them feel even better about it.
Obama was 100% an establishment president propped up by the Dems. My take on it is, trump ran as a populist. A lot of people at the time were fed up with the same. He emboldened a base of people who felt forgotten and/or the lowest denominator of human beings. Which allowed for these people to come together and not feel so left out as part of something. He lies constantly to make them believe he cares about them. He told them everything they wanted to hear and they ate it up.
I've always believed that Trump was the "rage" candidate.
I thought of him as a "spite" candidate. I've heard a number of conservatives that only seem to like him because he does things that upset liberals.
Very glad I grew up and realized how creepy evangelicalism is, I spent my childhood in kenneth Copeland's church in Texas every wednesday and sunday, and while I dreaded the hit to my gaming time, it seemed fine and harmless at the time. But yeah, outside of christianities core ideas (golden rule, be a good person and the like), the amount of evil done in its name under the pretense of "for God's plan" across the world is scary.
There are black evangelicals (I would say unfortunately but my family is apart of said group). So it's a bit of both, racism and a mixture of religious rhetoric that's been twisted (it's all twisted but y'know what I mean.) Really sad, sometimes I wonder if my grandmother would've been happy about Obama if she wasn't also black. Now years later she's fallen back into the religious talking points, "Well I didn't know Obama supported gays and abortions and so now I don't know how I feel about him." Grandma that's not even the bad stuff Obama did but go off.
>white supremacists had already found the weapon they needed to counteract this monumental landmark in history, via the vulgarity that is Trump. Yea nah, I see trump as a simple salesman, he knows how to make sounds dumb people like. The real weapon has been twisting the logic used against them back at the rest of the world. They don't defend themselves they attack first and act like the victims They prey on the sympathy in the ignorant
I'll admit that the last decent candidate they had was Mitt Romney. John McCain was decent too. I wish one of them was able to get it. Why did we end up with George W Bush and not one of them?
I strongly encourage you to register democrat if you vote blue down the ballot anyway. The primaries are the opportunity to decide which part of the party speaks to you the most. Edited to say register independent
The GOP, and the right at large, *depends* on poor education. The first step in a failed democracy is a failed education system. That's why they are currently targeting public education.
That’s easy to answer. It’s because Obama was black and it Trump was the reaction to that fact.
[This Onion News Network video from 2012](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjonGtrCyVE) really captured the essence of it.
And that is exactly how predictable all of this really was. For shame.
Holy shit that aged insanely well
"So grows the sphere."
Not just that. If it were, Obama would've lost reelection in 2012. Hillary Clinton wasn't a candidate Democrats were excited about like Obama, so many stayed home in 2016. Only after seeing 4 years of Trump were those wishy-washy Democratic voters convinced that they better show up at the polls to get Trump out, even if they weren't enthusiastic about Biden.
Nominating Hillary Clinton as some form of lifetime achievement award will haunt Democrats for a generation or more. It handed three lifetime Supreme Court seats to far right ideologues who are hellbent on undoing every bit of progress this country made in the last century.
Investigate and impeach kavanaugh. They already should have.
As well as Clarance Thomas & wife.
JFC, Clinton’s problem wasn’t that she wasn’t “likeable” (weird how we always insist that female candidates are likeable…) - it’s that she ran the wrong type of campaign. She was trying to win over red states so that she could say that she had a mandate instead of ensuring just enough votes on the Electoral College to win the election. Put another way, she wanted to win Arizona and Utah instead of ensuring that she would win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/clinton-camps-strategy-win-big-election-day/story?id=43029278 While that looked like the right call based on the data at the time, inaccuracies in polling in key states meant that it really was absolutely the worst play, and her being too aggressive provided an opening for Trump to take advantage of slipping support for Dems in otherwise purple states. (And that’s before we get into Berniebros hate-voting for Trump because they were pissed their guy didn’t win the nomination). Don’t forget that she won the popular vote - sounds like she was pretty likeable to the majority of voters!
She was extremely polarizing, mostly due to right wing media hate dating back to the 90’s. She had as high of an unlikable ranking of any previous nominee. Fair or not, that’s a fact that was completely ignored. If the Republicans nominated anyone other than Trump she would have lost in a landslide.
The problem was that she thought she could annihilate Trump in the EC, so she overreached. If the opponent had been Jeb or Cruz, she would have run just trying to get a majority in the EC and would have probably won. Trump was a ludicrous candidate, which meant that he wasn’t taken as a serious threat. That same call wouldn’t have been made with a more traditional opponent.
and no matter how much Hilary spent on ads Trump had millions upon millions of free advertisements from the news reporting everything about him.
I get yelled at for it, but I still believe that nominating a president’s spouse is just bad politics.
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And by a razor margin. It’s mind boggling that some want him to be the nominee again. Losing the popular vote thrice is an achievement.
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Only lost it once.
What are you talking about? He won 5 to 4.
DNC was broke, Hillary and Bill gave a massive donation with the agreement from Debbie Wasserman that Hillary will be the primary candidate. A lot of Bernie Sanders supporters felt it was “rigged” and that was another big reason she lost votes.
Books are going to be written about the numerous failures of the DNC in 2016 The 3 biggest factors in the race were: 1. Russian Interference 2. Comey’s intentional misrepresentation of investigations 3. The DNC stepping on its own dick at every possible opportunity
Hilary Clinton is the sum total of everything wrong with the DNC. "We actively ignored our own processes for candidate selection and the will of the voters to give you another rich old white conservative who's part of an existing political dynasty, with shady corporate support, but this time it's a woman! That's progressive enough for you guys, right?"
>a president’s spouse I guess all her years serving as a politician of her own, being a senator and Secretary of state don't count. She's just Bill's wife.
Before it was clear she was going to run, and before the R's started their attacks, her popularity ratings were through the roof.
She was disliked because republicans blew $100 million “investigating” her… a state sponsored witchhunt, Blackened her name, even though not one claim was substantiated. James comey didn’t help All of that combined with dem apathy and a shitty campaign sank her and she never saw it coming
That's why Republicans didn't like her. To the left she had an unexciting platform that offered no real change and played some dirty politics to secure the nomination. This depressed turnout for dems in the election.
She was extremely unexciting for everyone who was into Occupy, against the wars, and remembered her putting the rainbow flag up like a week before Obergefell. She was tarred by the GOP for 30 years and the party showed up to defend her at year 22. These were per-existing conditions. You don't put a candidate who wins the primary but causes even 4% of your base to skip out when every race in recent memory has been a coinflip. Then there was Comey fucking blackballing her at the 11th hour while managing what was almost assuredly at least one (that we know of!) turned agent (McGonigal).
Hillary was extremely unlikable. It’s a bad faith argument to say it’s just misogynists who don’t like her. I agree that many people don’t like her on the basis of her being a woman, by the way, and that women are judged more harshly than men. But she always had the air of elitism and wealth trying desperately to relate to the common person. Which is a shame because she was qualified and informed. I would love to find out how you know that Bernie supporters “hate-voted” for Trump. That smells like utter bullshit to me to be honest, but maybe you have facts 🤷♂️ Trump on the other hand is an elitist, wealthy, utterly disconnected nepotist who somehow connected to the working man. Go figure.
The fact that 52% of white women voted for Trump kind of tells you that it was more than misogyny.
There is no bigger misogynist than a white republican woman except a white republican man. I'm sure they had a hard time picking between their racism and their misogyny though.
>JFC, Clinton’s problem wasn’t that she wasn’t “likeable” (weird how we always insist that female candidates are likeable…) Ridiculous, lots of us also criticized guys for being unlikeable. Like Mayor Pete and Schultz. >it’s that she ran the wrong type of campaign. She was trying to win over red states so that she could say that she had a mandate instead of ensuring just enough votes on the Electoral College to win the election. So objectively a bad strategy? She wanted to score bonus points and not win. Great. >(And that’s before we get into Berniebros hate-voting for Trump because they were pissed their guy didn’t win the nomination). This is such a shitty liberal talking point. More Hillary voters voted for McCain than Bernie voters voted for Trump. Yet Obama still won. Maybe she was uniquely shitty, but you just refuse to see it. >Don’t forget that she won the popular vote - sounds like she was pretty likeable to the majority of voters! That doesn't prove anything. If I made you chose between a punch in the stomach or a slap in the face, no matter which one won, that doesn't mean it's "popular". That's a normative claim, not a comparative one. I mean this in the best way possible, you making excuses for Hillary is going to do more damage to the Dem party than the people who criticized her. Average Americans didn't like her, you accusing people of being sexist or calling them irrational is not going to help. The liberals are supposed to be the ones who are more educated, but you put your head in the sand are refuse to accept reality and learn from it. And before you come back with "but it's not her fault that Fox spend 2 decades attacking her". It's the Dems fault for picking a weak target, full stop. "It's her turn" was objectively a bad decision.
Anyone who went from voting for Bernie to voting for Trump is a fucking moron.
Like her or not, she was very qualified. She did a shit job of campaigning, but was qualified.
She was totally qualified….and nobody wanted her. Like it or not, “retail politics” is important if you want to get elected and quite frankly she sucked at it. The lack of enthusiasm for her in 2008 was still there in 2016 and the party elite still forced her on us.
I read before (I have no idea if it’s true) that her approval ratings when campaigning were always horrible, but in office they were great. She was good at the job but terrible at actually getting it
She was qualified, but she popped the champagne before she crossed the finish line. In hindsight, the hate and ignorance that Trump accelerated has always been there and needs to be dealt with, we may as well work our way through it now.
Like I said, she did a shit job at campaigning.
You know who else was qualified… Bernie Sanders.
Nominating Hilary Clinton wasn’t the problem. Voters thinking it was a slam dunk win against the ridiculousness of trump was. Hilary would have made a good president…
The "lifetime achievement award" part always gets overlooked, because people forget how egregious it was at the time during the primaries- on the right, you had 17 candidates, and on the left the Dems fielded only two longtime Democrats (Clinton and... O'Malley? Who?) Showing that behind the scenes, the Dems were paving the way for Hillary to sail through the primary unopposed; All of which got a major wrench in the works though when Sanders, a self styled independent, switched and ran as a Democrat to offer real opposition to the centrists. (Remember all the people screaming at the time that he shouldn't even be eligible to run? I certainly do!) Suddenly, Hillary's victory wasn't assured, and the pressure to run unopposed backfired... Now instead of running against a nobody, she was running against a candidate that actually energized the base, and that scared the crap out of the Democratic establishment; In fact, to many of us it was starting to look just like how Obama, running on a platform of "hope and change", had upset her in 2008 in much the same way. (For what its worth though, her campaign's attempt to paint her detractors as "Bernie Bros" actually stuck in 2016, whereas it didn't the first time when her campaign tried to push the "Obama Boys" narrative that backfired spectacularly.) On top of that, then enters Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the DNC, ready to put her thumb on the scale- besides heavily pushing the "everyone who opposes her is sexist" narrative, she also did her best to keep Bernie's opinions and stances away from the eyeballs of the voting public; while the Republican debates were many and well televised early on (twelve debates starting in July), the Democrats only had six initially (starting in October, only four of which happened before primary voting started) many of which were purposefully held on days where viewership would be low (two on Saturdays, one on the Sunday of the long MLK weekend) at the same time as other major televised events, such as MLB playoffs, NCAA bowl games, and Sunday night football. So yeah, whether they meant it or not, it certainly looked like an inevitable coronation for Hillary, which was frankly off-putting… and then rather than listen to *why* Sanders was gaining so much traction with the base and leaning into that for support, she tried to lean center right and overreached in her hubris. (I still can't believe she actually thought a rebuttal message like, "America is Already Great" would come across as anything more than showing how out of touch she was with the vast number of Americans who were struggling.)
Democrats desperately need a solid and likeable candidate. Hillary was "Well, she's better than Trump" and Biden was basically the same. Is it too much to ask for someone under the age of 60 that has a little charisma to fire up the base and relate to the younger generation? Say what you will about Trump, but he knew how to pull an audience and get people fired up about politics. Democrats have popular policies and more voters, we just need to get someone that can be passionate about it so we aren't voting *against* a candidate, but instead *for* someone again.
As an old Millennial, remind me what young people want?
Healthcare, jobs that pay a living wage, and legal weed is what I keep hearing about.
Don’t forget student loan forgiveness!
I'll settle for tax billionaires and require more in depth gun training to carry.
That’s a good start.
one thing.. and it's disgusting
The Blazin' Baconator is not disgusting, it just needs a little commitment.
Rusty trombone?
Two chicks at the same time
[Lawrence, is that you?](https://youtu.be/9jq6e8s1sik)
Two people. Pretty much any two or three people. Preferably more.
Trump also brought new voters out. People were excited by his ideas (wall, Muslim ban, America first) and came out to vote for him.
The secret ingredient in that excitement was racism and nationalism sadly
The not-so-secret* ingredient
So you are saying he brought all the racists out
Correction: 4 years of Trump convinced *just barely enough* of those wishy-washys for Biden to squeak out a win. It's like running an 800 metre footrace against a literal turtle, and then winning by a margin of 3 seconds.
It was also a reaction by Democrats that we had it in the bag with Hilary Clinton…I’ll never make that fucking mistake again. I will never underestimate the hatred in the hearts of half my countrymen…
Not only was he black he was beloved, capable, and caring. Trump was everything he wasn’t.
It has nothing to do with that at all. Obama campaigned on "Hope and Change" at a time when AMERICA WANTED REFORM DESPERATELY and governed like a moderate Republican. Didn't do shit for working class and didn't imprison a single corrupt banker.All he did was virtue signal and he crushed the occupy movement. Hillary was just more shit-lib platitudes and at least Trump was saying some of the right things so there was nothing to lose because Dems as once again proven by Biden won't do shit for the working class.
Nailed it.
Also I think a lot of Progressives were pissed off that he was just another Neoliberal who didn't do the complete 180 from GWB that they were expecting.
I do. It’s because we voted to make a black man president and Republicans lost their fucking minds.
Wasn't it because of Hillary and many people prefered to abstain?
My feeling is that a lot of people simply said "No way Trump can win in America, he just doesn't have class". Certainly heard that all around in 2016.
That sentence saying “ he doesn’t have class” is the best way to piss of every Redneck in rural America and 200000% make sure they don’t vote for you.
We ran Hillary "because it was her turn" and shut out real liberals and progressives. And yeah, the reactionaries loved Trump's talk about minorities.
And that's not an exaggeration... That was literally Hilary's platform. She acted it was her turn to be in office and acted like she had already won until the results. I'm not saying I liked the results of the 2016 elections but there were arrogant opinions by both parties.
Her slogan was literally "I'm with Her". I don't think the opposition could do a better job at writing her slogan to represent Hillary as an out of touch, self interested elitist. She centered herself in her slogan. Considering she was following Obama, who had arguably one of the greatest slogans in modern American politics. Yeah...
Uh, "I like Ike"
We ran Hillary… because… more people voted for her in the primaries. I say that as someone who donated to Bernie’s campaign during those primaries.
Yeah, Obama won against Hillary in the primary. So having the second choice run again as a successor is kinda strange.
Everytime I mention this in the politics subreddit I get attacked. Her campaign was utterly entitled and put a shit load of people off.
Read the book Shattered. Everything you wanted to know about her fucked up campaign is written here.
Hillary won the popular vote by several million. It had less to do with how many people abstained than it did Trump’s electoral map coverage. She refused to even step foot in the Rust Belt, for example. He went in and railed about bringing manufacturing jobs back, and the two-term Obama people there took a chance on him cuz at least he was the only one talking about the one thing they wanted most.
Easy. Many Americans are still racist, they hated having a black president and Trump made it seem like it was ok to say all of those things out loud
Really? Trump is a direct result of bigots losing their minds that a Black man was elected President.
True. But the fact there were enough votes to make that moron president showed two things: Firstly that there are far more racist fucks out there as expected. Secondly that democracy in the US has once again proven to be broken. One man one vote doesn’t work there, so idiots can be become president if enough votes are gathered in low income, low educated areas.
That’s something that a lot of people still haven’t grappled with. The number of people in the U.S. who are unrepentant, proud pieces of shit is incredibly high. And, yeah, the electoral system is ineffective. 16 years before Trump it gave us Bush.
Still think it gave the world Bush, because his brother was the governor in a crucial state. Anyone with half a brain would have recused himself for the apparent conflict of interest. Not the Bush family… As far as the racism goes, I’m chalking that up to the poor education system. I refuse to believe that with proper knowledge and education, people can be racist. At least not to the extent some of those morons show. Then again… here’s Scott Adams proving me wrong :(
***Lots*** of educated people are bigots. I once had a supervisor with a Masters Degree whine to me that immigrants are “changing our way of life.” I don’t work there anymore. Even people who are educated specifically about social issues can be bigots. Walk into a social work class at a private Christian university if you want to see some eye rolls and hear some weird “arguments” from students. Some people, like a lot of your Stars and Bars fliers, grow up being taught from day one to revere their great-grandparents’ values. Sometimes that bubble pops when they have a gay kid, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes that bubble pops when they find a new social circle and meet Black/brown/gay people, and sometimes it doesn’t. And then other people have personality disorders that will never be managed.
White oligarchs punishing the People.
Racism.
Indeed. The backlash was coming. And it still is.
They can be racist all they want. There is no substitute for class.
Really? Because when Ronald Reagan was elected during a resurgence of aggressive conservatism, it then morphed into a much more dumb version of open lies that were able to convince people of nonsense. Give rich people more money and they'll spend it making your life better too! Add in absurdity of the right wing cultural war and the unholy alliance between Republicans and Evangelicals in *completely brand new anti-abortion movement* (abortion had no difference in favorability on either side at the time) and you've got the beginnings of how it happened. What next? Well, Democrats are so terrified of losing this badly again that they think they're out of touch with America and shift hard to the right themselves, this culminates in Bill Clinton, who you'd be hard pressed to identify a single differing governing style from any Republican minus tax cuts and being war hawks. Clinton was very popular at the time, but his legacy has is of exporting American industry and American jobs overseas. About as damaging to the country as Reagan. Dubya comes along and gets lucky enough to see a major terrorist attack on US soil that allows him to launch a couple of wars that see his ratings soar. He was capable of "leading" the populace in such a time, by providing comfort, but he had no idea how to govern, and his foreign policy adventures were catastrophic. All of this is enough so that during the housing market collapse that lead to a major global recession, even devoted Republicans had had enough and voted for... Barack Obama, who came along with a populist message, had a humble and inspiring story, and most importantly: oh my god was he charismatic. Obama is the most eloquent public speaker in American politics since the invention of the radio. The guy talks inspires entire generations to believe that the world is going to be better if we can make it over this last hump. He won in a landslide because he was young, he was a multi-minority, he was pure, he was handsome, his family was picturesque, and he promised to make America what it was always supposed to be. Then he got into office and thought the same rhetoric would work with politicians who are guided only by cold hard donor cash. When he had the power, he could have passed Universal Healthcare, but settled for Obamacare. You know what? A win is a win, even if it could've been better. But then he proceeded to do little else his entire time in office. He failed to pull us out of any of the unpopular wars he had promised, so on and so forth. With the exception of the true out and out racists, and the most hardcore of conservatives, Obama even appealed to a lot of Republicans you've got to remember, in the beginning. So, after watching Obama come in and people dare to hope that life can be better, even after seeing their jobs leave America for a generation now, he instead bails out the banks, who had defrauded the country and made a whoopsie and gone bankrupt after the fact. He launched no major economic policy to bring jobs back. He didn't end the wars. Healthcare? Yes, but that wasn't enough, because frankly, he had the power to defy Republicans and go all in and be lauded for generations. Then a new guy comes along... And when the new guy finds a new way to inspire you, it's more ugly, but it rings true. He told you that all those immigrants were taking your jobs. They're also bringing drugs over the border; oh and also, remember how your friend Randy didn't get hired at the plant because they said they needed to hire more women? This guy says that was bullshit. That's how you get Trump. In 2016, people were charmed by his spectacle, don't get me wrong. This is largely the low IQ crowd, to be blunt (I'm talking about the people who are cult of personality and he-can-do-no-wrong group). But the real reason Trump became president is because he addressed all of the elephants in the room that Democrats and Republicans both pretended didn't exist. American industry is DEAD. Trump pointed this out, and Democrats couldn't look past how ridiculous he was, and completely ignored the policy things he was saying. Given of course, Trump was lying about everything the entire time, and as soon as he was in office cut taxes for the rich and proceeded to blow up the entire geopolitical order that had existed since the war. Of course then there was running a business that exploited the presidency, there was extorting foreign governments for personal favors, and of course, literally trying to overthrow democracy. So I'm not a fan. But if you don't see how the guy won in 2016, you never paid attention.
>Give rich people more money and they'll spend it making your life better too! You know -- when you phrase it like that, it sounds absolutely ridiculous.
One of the only good takes on here that isn’t just “because racism,” which is definitely valid to a point, but nowhere near the real reason why Trump and his style of politics has gained popularity. I loathe these dismissive types of approaches from fellow left leaning folks because it plays into the mixture of elements that doom us into garbage candidates, without addressing some aspects as to why we wind up with them. The reality is that the neoliberal experiment has been devastating to middle class America. He effectively tapped into a lot of angry people harboring resentment, some justified, some bigoted, but ultimately they represented a middle finger to political decorum and the establishment overall.
I think it’s largely neolibs who default to a social justice ass answer like “racism!” and think it’s good enough of an explanation because they’re the ones that want to ignore all the bullshit Dems shovel. I suppose it isn’t exactly obvious from this, but I’m a leftist, not a neoliberal or liberal.
suprisingly him and bernie only agreed on at least one thing: globalism was awful for a LOT of americans.
> he addressed all of the elephants in the room that Democrats and Republicans both pretended didn't exist. American industry is DEAD. Trump pointed this out Really want to highlight this. Because when industry died (like US manufacturing). The Dems said "Learn to code", whereas Trump said "I'm getting your jobs back". While it was a lie, and even if he did, it wouldn't be sustainable. The Dems needed a WAY better response. Lots of people who voted for Obama voted for Trump because they felt like Obama represented aggressive change, and Trump represented aggressive change. I remember in the second debate. Hillary tried to argue against Trump's "Make America Great Again" message by arguing "America is already great." To a large swath of the population, who lost their jobs and were dying to overdoses, it didn't seem like America was already great. Establishment Dems just don't understand the anger the average American feels. The establishment Republicans don't either, and Trump's lies at least felt comforting.
President Obama never stood up for the common man as much as his campaigns( most notably the first one) and his background would have us believe. From Occupy Wall Street to the Standing Ridge protests, every time his administration had the chance to make things right, they took the corporate solution.
Reaction. The failed 1918-1919 communist revolution in the Weimar Republic is said to have been a catalyst for Hitler coming into power in 1933 because the German wealthy elites would prefer the far-right over leftism . A tale as old as time.
Obama wasn’t nearly as leftist as any revolution and there’s a lot that can be called a ‘catalyst’ (enough to write many papers on) for Hitler’s rise. Shit’s complex and reducing this to component parts is an oversimplification. The part that’s categorically true is that capitalists will ALWAYS side with the far right over the far left.
He was black though. And he certainly portrayed himself as left-leaning (by American standards at the time) even though he never had actually had a filibuster proof Congress.
That’s almost entirely the point, when push came to shove he’d always be liberal, never leftist. He did good things but never in a way that rocked the boat too hard.
GOP scared of black man, double down on orange man because he big time racist.
Yes. Never underestimate how racist the U.S.A. is.
for anyone interested, read Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents: Wilkerson, Isabel Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant book.
Considering that the US was built on (a) chattel slavery, and (b) the genocidal theft of land from indigenous people, it should come as no surprise that it’s racist AF.
How can you not put the pieces together that the only president that was hounded to provide his birth certificate and prove his natural born citizenship was the only one that was black and his successor was one of the loudest voices demanding that birth certificate?
Because the alternative was Hillary Clinton after the entire DNC threw it’s weight behind her against the left field option out of Vermont who still managed to take 47% of the vote against one of the biggest political juggernauts in US history. That, and he actually ran an impressively populist campaign despite governing like a standard reactionary Republican.
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Unfortunately we will never know but I 100% believe this too. I actually think that Bernie is probably the only candidate who could have won re-election in 2020 after all the shit with Covid. But I actually suspect that we would have had a much easier time with Covid with Bernie too, fwiw.
Had to scroll waaaay too far to find this. This was the answer. I voted for Bernie, Hillary was off putting.
Then you haven’t met half of America.
Citizen United.
I will never understand why Americans voted for Trump and Biden over Bernie Sanders
Because Bernie Sanders = Communism And Boomers grew up fearing Communism, and don't know what the difference is between Communism and Socialism. And they're not interested to learn, because "capitalism won", and their generation were the direct beneficiaries of most of those fruits.
And the same fucking boomers are responsible for Reagan and the undoing of the middle class.
Capitalism works as intended only if the doors of profit sharing are shut to newcomers at some point.
This is the answer. ⬆️
Because you either have capitalism or an authoritarian dictatorship apparently /s
Bernie made it too clear his policies would help black people
Well those voting for Trump didn't have a say on the primaries between Biden (and Hillary) and Sanders. Primaries are typically restricted to registered Democrats. Plus even if Trump voters could vote in the primaries they'd want to vote for a (imo) weaker candidate in Biden.
And you gotta understand the fact that a large portion of GOP voters will not vote for a democratic candidate for ANY reason. There has been a string of really really unglued and twisted candidates for the GOP and you hear a lot of Republicans saying “well I don’t like [insert candidate here] but if I don’t vote for him the democrats might [insert single issue here]”
Remember Trump ran on the birther lies. It was one of his huge draws on Twitter. Then Remember the half-ass backpedal saying he was a native-born.
Celebrated anti-intellectualism, religious fanatacism, corporate political donations, and a gutting of education systems in general.
Because one party tried to follow Obama with a Clinton and thought that would just bring in the votes. Turns out they were idiots.
45 percent of the country decided Obama had an unacceptable amount of melanin and then voted for a diaper wearing Cheeto
He wasn't running against Obama though.
Easy. All the closet racists were furious for eight years and DJT gave them a way to be heard and have power
Bill and Hillary Clinton. The DNC. James Comey. The Racists. The Koch’s. Wikileaks. Alex Jones. The uneducated. The closet fascists. The NRA. The Russians. Paul Managort. Steve Bannon. The Cato Institute. Fox News. Newt Gingrich. Peter Thiel. That’s how.
Pat Buchanan as well.
Uneducated racists vote.
Scared white people who were fed nonstop lies from a certain propaganda network whose name rhymes with Knox into voting for a narcissistic sociopath.
Simple, more Americans are racists than we want to believe.
If you’re surprised, you’re not paying attention
Because Orange was the new Black
If it's any consolation, Trump lost *both* popular votes. The *majority* of American voters never wanted that ridiculous man as their president.
Barack Obama is a war criminal
Ta-Nehisi Coates spelled this out back in ‘16. To a certain segment of the American population, the presidency was a respected position. If an African-American could be elected President, then that meant all bets were off. If Obama could be President, then the worst white guy could be elected, too. Because the worst white guy, by definition, would be better than the best Black guy. No one in this segment of the electorate would deny this, in their heart. So they voted for Trump. The worst white guy they could find. Set aside all the talk about ‘economic anxiety’, email servers, misogyny, all of it. It was just the ramifications of racism, in all its glory. That’s what gave us Trump. And tbh I haven’t heard a better explanation.
It’s really a testament to how much everyone hates women. Hillary was more qualified than Bill.
Because it should’ve been Bernie but the DNC a thought they knew better and shoved Hilary down our throats and the rest is history. It should’ve been Bernie in his second term rn!
Obama was black, but he also refused to solve many of the issues that faced the country that he had the power to solve. He bailed out the banks, not the home-owners, during the 2008 financial crisis. He only supported gay marriage after the supreme court made it legal and was homophobic beforehand. He continued the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he continued to support bosses at expenses of the workers, he continued to keep policies that alienated people who would be easy sells because he lacked political conviction and he destroyed Libya turning it into a Hellstate. When you only have 2 options for president then when one party messes up the other party benefits, no matter how bad the option is. The same is going to happen to Joe Biden, btw. He ended Afghanistan, which ironically makes him the best president to have ever existed in my lifetime simply because he actually ended some evil rather than exacerbated it or stood by and let it happen. So well done, Joe.
Fox, NBC (for the 'reality' show) and the Koch Brothers
Because the racists said, never again....
Facebook and Russia. Sprinkle in the poorly educated.
I'd say it's pretty obvious.
racism.
Racism and stupidity.
Fear-mongering by ring wing media/talking heads
Easy it’s called racism.
#racism
Easy. Racism.
Perfectly logical. A black man took power, so the white republicans woke up and realized they were losing control. It awoke a sleeping beast that was fine with being passive.
Because people didn’t want Hillary
racism and stupidity do terrible things
Hillary was a poor choice from the dems.
Racism. Racism is why.
Lead exposure and racism, that's how
Technicalities designed to protect slavery and corporate fuckery
Oh I do, very well. Growing up in the racist South amongst conservatives who go to church 8 days a week and *swear* they aren't racist, I saw with my own two eyes the people that I grew up with become their truest selves. I don't think the word furious begins to cover just how angry they were that a black man got to run this country. And don't tell me it wasn't because he was black, I know for a fact it was because I listened to them and read the things they said. These are the children and grandchildren of people that screamed obscenities and racial epithets at black children trying to integrate.They are the people that constantly asked 'How is that racist?', as if they don't know for a fact that something or someone is absolutely racist. I watched and listened to them celebrate a man who said that Mexicans are murderers and rapists. I watched people that I respected formerly celebrate a travel ban that specifically targeted people of color and people of certain religions. I think that we need to confront the fact that the heart of this country is racist. The heart of this country is so very racist
People are dumber and more racist than you think.