My wife’s brothers and sisters, with one exception, are MAGAbots. They voted for DJT in 2016, 2020, and will vote for him in 2024, 2028, and 2032. They would vote for his rotted corpse rather than cast a vote for Democrat Jesus. My siblings and I would never vote for the nutjob. My brothers in law post on FB about things like inflation, the Afghan withdrawal, abortion, and of course immigration. If they see a FB meme that smears a Democrat, they will post it. It’s all social warfare issues with a side dish of “oh, he’s such a smart businessman” thrown in. They’re beyond all hope of redemption, the only cure for the cult is embalming fluid.
My side of the family is, as far as I know, completely anti-trump, but there’s not much of my immediate family left.
Mrs. solost has a fairly large family, and I pretty much know who is pro and anti-trump, but blessedly they don’t talk politics much at holiday gatherings. So I didn’t have enough intel to answer your poll definitively, but I made some educated guesses (all but the last one, to which I have no idea, so did not answer).
Anyone I know, family, friend, or casual acquaintance, who voted for Trump in 2016, and didn’t turn away from him in 2020, isn’t going to change their mind this year.
I only know one person for sure who voted trump. I only know because a mutual friend told me that friend 1 voted for trump. Friend 1 didn’t want me to know. I don’t know why she voted for him, but I suspect it’s because she’s quite influence by what she sees on fb. She once announced to me that “Our governor is an idiot.” I asked her why and she told me it was because the governor had only put Covid protocols in place because other governors did. What she didn’t say is all her friends on line were saying this. We’re in MI by the way. I don’t think Whitmer is an idiot. Apparently most of MI voters didn’t either.
I have extended family that are trumpers. I only know 'cause my sister mixes it up with them on fb. I don’t use fb or talk to them. We just don’t see them anymore except for funerals.
Most of my siblings, their spouses and my parents have gone from Never Trump in 2015, to Hold Your Nose And Vote For Him in 2016, to He’s Still Better Than The Antifa Socialists in 2020, to OMG This Is Too Much in January 2021, to They Are Both Equally Bad in 2022, to Hail Trump our Lord and Savior, Persecuted by Heathens and Their Lawfare now.
I have mentioned some of this in another thread but - my brother and sister-in-law who live in Dallas voted for DJT in 2016 and 2020. Both recently shared with me they will NOT be doing so in 2024. They were really pulling for Nikki Haley.
They are evangelical/Southern Baptist and the big issue for them has always been abortion. My brother is a huge Reagan fan. My sister-in-law recently told me she voted for Ann Richards and Mark White for Governor of Texas but not to tell my brother so she is less rigid in her fealty to the GOP, or has been in the past.
Not sure what my brother intends to do but my sister-in-law told me a month ago she will probably vote for RFK Jr. My initial reaction was to argue against that but since they are in TX I figure a vote NOT for DJT is a vote for Biden in a way.
Plus, their three adult children and spouses will definitely be in the Biden camp and they live in TX as well. Additionally my sister and her husband are also Southern Baptists and have made it clear to me they never have and never will vote for DJT. My BIL is a minister and Russell Moore is a friend so I think that has been a major influence. Again, not sure if that means they skip over the POTUS race on their ballot or not but I take that as a victory of sorts. And this will be the first election both of their children can vote for President and I know they will be voting for Biden.
So of the 11 members of my immediate family who still live in Texas, this is the first election where NONE of them will be on team Trump. This makes me very, very happy.
They have several months to come around to “holding my noses and voting for the candidate whose name I prefer not to say”
Doubtful in the extreme either will vote for DJT a 3rd time. Jan 6th was deeply upsetting to both of them and they have expressed to me it looks like he should go to jail. And my sister has been very vocal with both of them about DJT’s immorality.
Plus your snip of my post totally ignores everything else I said. All of their children have been very vocal about DJT’s incompatibility with the moral values they were taught by my brother and SIL. While they are unlikely to vote for Biden, I’m confident they won’t be voting for DJT.
I didn’t vote in the poll above. But I have some in-laws that are Trump supporters. And will continue to be so.
When explained to them that Trump is a cheat and a liar (among other things) their answer is ‘Every politician is’
Trump was a cheat and a liar WAY before he was a politician. Shit, I don’t even consider that asshole a politician.
Anyway, something is holding them back. I think it’s mostly that it’s hard to admit you got conned by an idiot.
My birth father (a lifelong Democrat) went MAGA and moved to Florida in 2016. I don’t know what triggered the change, we had never been close and did not speak frequently.
I have not spoken to him since and anticipate that the next time I see him it will be at his funeral.
I’m good with that. The man was always a dissapointment.
A million times this (I mean, I’m sure this is a big factor for many, many people).
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
― Carl Sagan
There is only one. I think this person will stay home. Or not vote for president. They will vote for state politicians, though.
While Trump’s Xian minions have stated flatly that if you go to the “wrong” church that is exactly what’s going to happen to you and your congregation if he wins.
I was thinking on this part overnight while trying to sleep, and really wonder what things would have been like without COVID. NOT passing judgement on success and failures of the measures for isolation and national pause, but talking about how it affected people.
I know a lot of people who were, even with social media (and especially those without) felt super isolated, while simultaneously threatened, and worst of all, utterly without a way to control any of the above.
I responded by (gasp!) going from being a lurker to being active here when the board transitioned to new software that I was already comfortable with. But others, by reporting, spent more time with their Churches and faiths, which were in the US feeling persecuted for not being able to meet in person. Which probably didn’t help the conspiracy/paranoid minded.
Others spent a lot of time at other places on the web FAR more divorced from reality than this place, or followed the rabbit hole of Google/Youtube “suggestions” into dark places that promised to explain why it was all happening, again giving a feeling of power and understanding.
And when the person at the top, is echoing all of that, you feel he is just like you. Reflected power as it were. And once again, and it cannot ever be stressed enough, the Fox/OAN “news” picked it up and fed it right back to them.
None of this musing is new of course, but it feels like it ties into how Trump went from a spoiler (sticking it to the swamp), to a great leader (as he benefited from a booming economy he didn’t create), to a near messiah figure in the leadup to 2020 to his followers. And of course, I’m not discounting his delivering of conservative judges and empowering of White/Christian hate. But the degree of change, especially among people I had previously considered rational, never fails to boggle.
I’m very fortunate that no one I know or am related to supports Trump. The one exception in my 90 year old mother in law. She’s not terribly political, but a lifelong Republican (actually, maybe only since the mid 60s, when the Dems started supporting civil rights) She doesn’t talk about Trump (thank god) but when it comes up, she just says “they never gave him a chance, they were against him from the beginning.” She watches Fox. I assume she’ll vote for Trump again.
I’ve never met a true MAGA, or seen a MAGA hat in the wild.
Until you notice all the fallacies and rhetoric he is bombarding you with, where you immediately bail the fock out?
When I first heard Limbaugh in the 90’s sometime, I INSTANTLY identified all of the said tactics, quite independently of the actual content of what he was saying (which was equally abhorrent). Conservative OR Liberal, I instantly knew he was up to no good and was trying to sell me a bill of goods of some sort.
THAT’S what I don’t get, how ALL the signs that these pundits are the slimiest of the slime are 100 googolplex percent obvious, but people still swallow everything they say, without any sort of questioning, no “Wait, that’s not right!” moments.
I say this as having a friend, who went from an extreme liberal to an extreme wingnut in the 6 years that I was out of town pursuing my degrees. Before he went Christian, he looked at me like I was totally crazy when I was reading a Christian book (for some class IIRC). Even now still don’t get it. [Tho I found out last year that a drunk Arabic driver killed his girlfriend in the car he was driving that night…]
My mother was also being poisoned by these assholes before she died last year.
I -think- part of the problem is that we tend to judge by our own standards. THIS place is far from the norm in terms of analysis when it comes to the internet, thanks to the traditions of the OG, and a endless amount of work by mods and posters to keep it there. I doubt though, that the sort of nearly reflexive analysis for fallacies and unsupported BS being reported as “Fact” is common anywhere in modern media and the internet.
People seem to love it when someone speaks with confidence or authority, without ever evaluating the credentials of said person. This is a world in which “I’m not a doctor, although I play one on TV” is a trope, and for good damn reason - there’s a strong feeling that the character you’re presented with is the person, and it’s just as true for many/most politicians, actors, and talking heads.
If it’s on TV / FOX / OAN whatever, it must be true, or they wouldn’t let them say it, right? Which takes us right back to the misinformation sphere, and people as the product. Create the outrage, report on it, which generates more, which in turn lets you keep the clicks viewership coming back, etc.
And what I’m trying to look at is the how/why people take the first step in, or the first step out. We sadly know a LOT about what happens in the middle, but identifying the cusp points may be helpful in understanding the past and (sadly) anticipating the future.
My closest friends and nearest living family members are all quite liberal, to the best of my knowledge. I’m not aware of any of them having voted for Trump.
Couldn’t answer any of the polls as I have no living immediate family members. My mom and dad did not vote for Trump in 2016, but by 2020 they were gone.
Man, this describes my brothers-in-law to a T. My sister’s husband, and my wife’s two brothers. Which is why our family get-togethers, on both sides, are becoming fewer and fewer. All 3 of them have dug in their heels and now refuse to admit that the man has ever done anything wrong.
Goddam Trump.