Anonymous wrote:Here's the key difference: Trump 1.0 did not expect to win, did not really want to govern, and generally surrounded himself with and listened to career Republicans who said no to his craziest ideas. Trump 2.0 needed to win to stay out of jail, surrounded himself only with yes men, and has been discovered to be a useful tool by a bunch of horrible people who are now organized and know he will do what you tell him to as long as you suck up and insult the Democrats. So, I knew it was going to be much, much worse.

All that said, I am still amazed that Congress has seemingly no spine at all.

I actually think trump is just their puppet. HE got the out of jail card and the heritage psychos get to pull his strings and make him do all the evil things they have planned. This is evil and we do need the normal GOP to wake up.

Anonymous wrote:To say that everyone is worried for their lives is a stretch.

is it?

Anonymous wrote:Reading is all it takes to know it would be this bad.

This....I can't believe when people say they are surprised at what he is doing. It was all there and we all watched J6.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Democrats just aren't appealing to anyone.

That’s overstating things given Harris lost by 1.5% despite such a short and flawed campaign and almost definitely not being who Dems would’ve nominated if there had been a real primary. “There would be a Dem in the White House if Biden had bowed out before the primary” is a simpler explanation than “Dems don’t appeal to anyone despite nearly getting half the vote.”

This. MAGA likes to believe that he won by 25%, but he didn't.

I think a lot of Dems also don't want Trump or Republican lite. That would be a mistake. AOC is appealing to more than the Dem base. People wanted change.

These posts are so accurate!!! All the quarterbacking and delusional thinking doesn't change the fact that Trump isn't popular but change is.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What makes the gut punch extra hard was that it was either dictatorship or prison - there was no middle ground.

What?

Not the PP, but that was what Trump was facing. Either prision for the classified documents case, or dictatorship, which is what the rest of us are now facing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I continue to be confused by all the people who didn't see this coming from a mile away. Nothing he's done has been a surprise. If people are surprised, I can only assume they weren't paying attention. Trump was terrible during his first term, but at least he had to consider being re-elected and he also started his term with a fairly competent (albeit not who I would choose) cabinet. This time around all the competent people have left the building and we're left with a terrible person being advised by other terrible people.

Oh, FFS, get serious!

It is completely defensible and understandable that tens of millions of Americans didn’t believe that the entire facade of “ironclad” constitutional protections and institutions of government that we were all apparently brainwashed to believe in would crumble into dust like this!

This brainwashing was used to assure us that our law enforcement and justice systems were fair, objective, and just. It was used to cultivate xenophobia and a sadly false sense of American Exceptionalism. And it was used to convince us that what’s happening right now could NEVER possibly happen.

So no … those surprised or shocked or whatever are not idiots. They just believed the lies we were all sold.

Lies that we were sold because the GOP refuses to do its job standing up to a despot.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Democrats just aren't appealing to anyone.

That’s overstating things given Harris lost by 1.5% despite such a short and flawed campaign and almost definitely not being who Dems would’ve nominated if there had been a real primary. “There would be a Dem in the White House if Biden had bowed out before the primary” is a simpler explanation than “Dems don’t appeal to anyone despite nearly getting half the vote.”

Biden could not have bowed out earlier given the need to not be a lame duck on the Hill or before the world stage and there isn't anyone but Harris who could have picked up the mantel and made a serious run at the white House without totally fracturing the party with a lame "mini primary" in August before the election.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what I voted for.

How do you explain such poor approval ratings for the democrats?

A mix of many reasons.

50% the monetary policies that started under Trump 45 to ward off Covid-induced recession. It was known in 2020 the cost of avoiding a long, steep recession then would be major inflation years later. Remember there were worries in 2020 Covid could trigger the next Great Depression.

10% DEI reaching a fever pitch following Floyd’s murder.

10% The Taliban retaking Afghanistan practically overnight, wasting nearly two decades of war, following Trump 45 negotiating directly with the Taliban without the Afghan government a year before. That’s actually when Biden’s job approval turned negative and never recovered.

10% Russia invading Ukraine, which Putin knew would give Trump fans more to complain about 2 years later.

10% the war in Gaza, which simultaneously made Dems look too soft on Israel for its destruction of an entire civilian population’s home and too sympathetic of Hamas for criticizing Israel at all.

10% Biden not making way for a younger Dem candidate!

It's mostly the economy. You can tell yourself as a cope that the reasons why were Trump, but the Biden administration kept gaslighting everyone that the economy was great, when many people clearly felt otherwise. The problem with both parties is that they think winning an election is a mandate to move forward with some big agenda, but for most Americans it isn't. They get sick of distracting issues and vote in the other party for relief. I have no hope the Republicans will learn from this reality, and not much more Democrats will, but some hope is better than whatever this shit is.

Compared to the rest of the world, the economy was great. Those liberal rags "the economist" and "the wall street journal" even said so. Instead, voters listened to Trump's lies and bluster and if they thought the economy was bad under Biden (despite record GDP growth and record unemployment) they ain't seen nothing yet. We are about to embark on a sustained period of empty shelves, unemployment and basically a general economic depression that is completely man made by Trump and not external forces like Covid.

Anonymous wrote:OP I could have written what you said except I mostly support the "woke stuff". I was not as upset after Harris lost compared with 2016, and hoped it would be sprt of like Trump's first term. But in the back of my mind I knew the risk of a second Trump term was high.

I think the GOP has been capturing the working class for decades. They do it by catering to people's worst instincts - fear and animosity towards people who are different from them.

Instead of fighting for the working class the Democrats have focused on catering to a broad fractured coalition that is impossible to maintain. So even though, consistently, Republicans break the economy and Democrats fix it, Democrats too often lose to terrible GOP candidates. I think this will.continue to be an issue as long as Democrats pretend to cater to the working class but rely mostly on UMC voters while the GOP succeeds in winning the working class via racism and xenophobia.

BS...the democrats HAVE been focused on the middle class -raising minimum wages, safety in the workplace rules, collective bargaining and unions, healthcare, education- all bread and butter items. The GOP has been masterful at spinning the idea that the democrats are nothing but coastal elites focused on fringe issues, and clearly by your post, they have succeeded. Reality is, TRUMP is a coastal elite, Bannon is a coast elite, Musk is a coastal elite, Ivanka is a coastal elite, as well as all of the other billionaire financiers and tech bros who have gaslighted and used their media platforms to lie to the actual working class and as others have noted, preyed upon the worst instincts of "the other" taking something from the average white middle class worker.

Harris and Clintons platforms featured all of the things people complain about making better, and instead, voters opted for the carnival barker con man and his merry band of billionaires who are now setting out to make Hollywood's worst dystopian visions come to reality.

Anonymous wrote:It’s fine; doesn’t affect me.

so you have no relatives with disabilities and everyone in your universe is independently wealthy and not relying on Medicare/Social Security?

Anonymous wrote:What makes the gut punch extra hard was that it was either dictatorship or prison - there was no middle ground.

What?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is everything I expected in 2016. I take no satisfaction in proving the people who called me hysterical and a conspiracy theorist wrong. Just another of a million examples of how women are ignored.

Just stop. They don’t listen to men who disagree with them either. What a stupid and counterproductive comment.

You stop. You’re so obnoxious and identifiable. We had two great candidates against him who were women and who spoke up about exactly all of this. But one was “too serious” and the other was “not serious enough”. You stop
ignoring how women are treated differently and are held to an impossible standard while men with oatmeal in their brains who speak at a 4th grade level get elected to the most important job in the world.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Democrats just aren't appealing to anyone.

That’s overstating things given Harris lost by 1.5% despite such a short and flawed campaign and almost definitely not being who Dems would’ve nominated if there had been a real primary. “There would be a Dem in the White House if Biden had bowed out before the primary” is a simpler explanation than “Dems don’t appeal to anyone despite nearly getting half the vote.”

This. MAGA likes to believe that he won by 25%, but he didn't.

I think a lot of Dems also don't want Trump or Republican lite. That would be a mistake. AOC is appealing to more than the Dem base. People wanted change.

When did people stop reading The Diary of Anne Frank, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Animal Farm in middle school? Because everyone who read those saw this coming.

Trump has convinced enough prople that America needs "fixing", and that he's the only one who can do it.