AFAIK, and IIRC no, not on all of them.
Sure, plenty were not.
I think Bill Maher, who is often an idiot, really got it right in 2016 by saying(I’ll paraphrase but put it in quotes).
“We are guilty of crying wolf so much. We said Mitt Romney was terrible and would be bad for America, but he wouldn’t have been that bad. We said the same in every election. Now, an actual wolf has arrived and we are surprised no one listens to us.”
Very much paraphrased, but this is what I felt, too. I’m hardly a huge liberal, but every election we would hear how huge it is and bad the opponent is. Finally, when Trump arrived, people almost reasonably assumed it was just another “Romney” or another “Obama/Clinton” type situation.
It’s not. 2016 and 2020 is clear.
Trump is a wolf, so to speak. Voting Biden(or Clinton in 16) really is a vote for America while the vote the other way is against America. Forget Dems and Repubs. Vote for the country.
Heck, vote Republican in 2024 if Marco Rubio or some other person runs. Just don’t vote Trump!
I was recently reading about the 2012 campaign, and the fact that the Democrats attacked Romney so hard during it. Several Dem operatives openly admitted that they had to do this because, when they told undecided voters what was actually in Paul Ryan’s proposed budget (massive cuts to Medicare to finance a massive tax cut for the wealthy), people just flat out refused to believe the Republicans would run on such a platform.
At least some of this is on the general public for not paying attention to the issues and not believing people when they tell what they’re going to do if elected.
Not true at all. While I’m very glad Obama beat McCain and Romney, the outcome of those elections was not remotely as important as the 2000 election as it was the difference between Bush and his cronies dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 (and lead up to it, including the infamous “Bin Laden determined to attack America” memo), and a Gore government dealing with it. The reaction to those events and decision to use it as an excuse to invade Iraq defined US policy and politics to this day (not to mention killing 100,000s of people)