I’m sure there are SOME folk like Princhester describes, who will change their views. But I fear FAR MANY MORE are like Cervaise’s parents. In a weird way, it is a sort of continuing to blame the Dems. Or, if not negatively aimed at Dems, blind support for Repubs. Sure, Trump’s policies are causing a lot of pain. But it wouldn’t have been necessary if not for the Dems. And, tho painful, they will be worth it in the end.
For far too many such folk, add some intolerance or irrational social policy preference, and their support for Trump/MAGA becomes quite impervious.
Yet to see any comparsions, here, between the gullibility of your average MAGA voter getting strung along by the whole “the economy needs to be broken in order to restart, from the ground up, afresh”, and crypto suckers geting fed the line that “you must provide more money before you can make any withdrawals”.
Until it doesn’t. Then how will they rationalize it? My guess is the Soros Deep State Machine™ will be dusted off once again.
That reminds me. I still haven’t gotten my check for April 5th’s participation yet.
Precisely. At the time of the election they’d had nine years to figure it out. Now we’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of that goddam escalator ride and the wheels have been been coming off for 83 days now (seems longer). And there they are, still bleating about Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I agree with that - but I also agree with @Princhester that not all Trump voters are MAGA. I know more than one person who only voted for Trump in 2024 and even more who voted for him only in 2016 and 2024, not 2020. And some of them are even willing to admit it - they don’t think women are capable of being president so when it was Trump vs woman, they voted for against the woman and therefore for Trump.
My mother says she’s an independent. Never mind that she voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024 or her talking points are pretty much MAGA verbatim, she’s assured me she’s an independent. Either way, people like my mother were comfortable supporting an autocrat. Practically speaking I don’t see a difference between them and MAGA.
Heh. My mother has assured me that she’s an independent, based on how she voted for a Republican one time. Do you remember when Reagan carried 49 of 50 states? It was that time.
It is. The outsized performance of the economy under Democratic administrations was too small to detect casually (though small changes can compound). Honestly, political junkies like myself are weirder than low information voters. And plenty of engaged voters have sufficiently poor judgment to support MAGA. The latter need to question their information sources.
I’m curious though. You live in Europe. Transplant your parents to a multi-party system and what happens? My guess is that people in Luxembourg instinctively act like they live in a small open economy that needs to act responsibly or things will quickly go south. The bulk of US citizenry in contrast doesn’t need to care about the rest of the world, and are pretty ignorant of it. Not all though.
I think a lot of conservatives have left this message board, because it’s very difficult to defend a President who changes their position so often. Shifting justifications would just make you look foolish here. Far better to post in places like Reddit or twitter where you don’t encounter your discussant again and reputation doesn’t really bind.
Ah, yes. Gas fees, they call it. Part of a so-called pig butchering scam (a term I absolutely fucking loathe because of how it dehumanizes the victims). I had a client who needed help with an immigration matter. The major issue was that if did what he wanted for him, he’d probably get deported. The minor issue was that he also would have needed a fee waiver from the government, and the only way to get such a fee waiver is to demonstrate financial need. And it’s hard to demonstrate financial need when you (1) get $45k+ per year, tax free from the government (did I mention yet this guy who is at high risk of deportation is a 100% disabled veteran?) and (2) genuinely believe you have hundreds of thousand (or millions?) of dollars stashed away, that you’re just about to have access to if you just keep pumping in that “gas money” (which consists of basically all that VA disability pay you’re getting from the government, leaving you destitute and homeless).
Anyway, I don’t know what his politics were, but he definitely wasn’t a Trump voter (because as a noncitizen he was not eligible to vote, d’uh).
I just encountered an even more silly one: Tommy Tuberville claimed on FOX that entire mens teams are turning trans. (I like that the Advocate nailed it with their headline)
This is exactly how I feel. I’ll always accept there will be a certain number of people who have pretty abhorrent political and social views and will vote accordingly, but the sheer level of his support after everything that he’s said and done is incomprehensible to me. It feels like a parallel universe.
He’s bigoted, irrational, stupid, ignorant and malignant; and millions of Americans admire and desire all those things. And that’s why his support doesn’t go down, he’s inflicting harm on the world; promoting ignorance and cruelty and hate, and that’s what his supporters want. More than life itself, that’s what they want.
Yeah, I had co-workers who voted for Trump purely for perceived selfish issues. One’s a would-be crypto-bro, a couple of others were swayed by the promise of untaxed overtime (because they work a shit-ton of it). They’re otherwise mostly apolitical people who don’t much care about parties and fundamentally don’t much care who is in charge. They regard Trump as a dirtbag, but hey - their wallet comes first and they utterly dismiss stuff like trans rights as having nothing to do with them (and they regard such things with mild disdain anyway). Like Cervaise’s parents they assume that everything will tick along as usual and that arguments to the contrary are just exaggerations. “Sure Trump’s a loon, but the sky isn’t falling and hey, more money!”
They’re swayable in the sense that if the sky does fall they might say whoops and switch their vote next time (if there is one, of course). Also, they can obviously be bought and if Trump doesn’t fatten their wallet like he promised that will be an issue. But generally they are just selfish.
That is not the reason. Conservatives were made to feel unwelcomed here long before Trump ver. 2.0
More over “conservative” is not the same as MAGA or Trumpinista anymore than “liberal” is ultra-pinko progressive communists.
No-posters that played fast and loose with the rules, which were explained quite clearly to them more than once, were made to feel unwelcome here. No matter what they pulled, they claimed over and over and over again that the only reason for animosity was their political viewpoint.
Eh, I’m the same. Or specifically under California registration “no party preference.” As of 2023 that was 22.2% of CA voters (46.8% DP, 23.9% RP, 7.05% other) and googling they seem to split by polling to 25% “liberal”/54% “moderate”/20% “conservative” vs registered Democrats 62/30/6 and registered Republicans 3/25/73. Make of that what you will, with numerous grains of salt sprinkled.
I personally disdain political parties as a necessary evil and since I am not compelled to pick, choose not to do so. But I haven’t voted for a Republican for a major partisan office since 2006.