I think there is a lot of merit to that argument. While there is large difference in rhetoric, the differences in actual policy outside of certain ‘hot button’ issues like abortion or LGBTQ rights are often vanishingly small even if the implementations are different. For instance, Biden has essentially maintained the same border and deportation policies but of course hasn’t engaged in the performative cruelty of intentional family separations. Meanwhile, ideas outside of that narrow spectrum aren’t even discussed unless a gadfly like Bernie Sanders forces them into the mainstream. There is an entire multipolar spectra of ideas under the broad label of ‘progressivism’ (which Americans read as ‘socialism’) which get at most a cursory mention before coming back to inflation, culture wars, abortion, and guns even though many of these proposals (or those like them such as Social Security) are broadly popular when implemented regardless of political affiliation.
And just to be clear, I think a lot of progressives don’t really have a clue about public finance and how you pay for such programs, but I also think that efforts that increase literacy, support useful public infrastructure, and raise working class people out of near or abject poverty have their own tangible merits and financial justifications even beyond the fact that these are just things that we should do in a morally just society. But those ideas are ‘too dangerous’ to discuss because a Democrat might be cut from the ticket by a party that is very comfortable in its position as center-right on a nominal bipolar political spectrum.
But I don’t think it is why Donald Trump got 75 million votes. He certainly wasn’t talking about universal basic income, or a loan-free post-secondary education fund, or tax credits for sustainable development. He talked in terms of grievance, regaining lost privilege, and vengeance against his enemies, real and imagined; basic despot stuff. And 75 million voters lapped it up (or at least considered it to be somehow, “the least worst of all options”), whether because they believe voting in Trump will bring them eternal salvation, or they think he’s an economic genius who has discovered ‘the cure’ for inflation, or just because they like his style of petty revenge and hatred and don’t care if it will upend American democracy or end with women dying in childbirth and immigrants rounded up into concentration camps with no place to actually deport them to.
Is there a degree to which voters may also decide to vote for Trump because anger looks like conviction (not the courtroom type of conviction) and so Trump appears “honest,” for some small value of “honest” while Democrats seem afraid to legitimize grievance and anger and so seem more hypocritical? Since there is no way I know to measure this, it is moot, I suppose.
Oh I am sure that this plays bigly with that audience segment. Anger looks like conviction, agitation looks like vigor. And if he goes into a wandering rant well “we would rant too.” To those voters someone being calm and rational about things and offering deep explanations is someone who’s not getting it or even straight out faking it.
To the extent that Donald Trump can be honest about anythings, I think he legitimately believes that he has been screwed over and deprived of a win in the 2020 and (for the popular vote) 2016 elections, not because there is any basis in fact for that but because he is a malignant narcissist who feels that he is entitled to a majority of the vote. The people that respond to that kind of entitlement are themselves given to a feeling that something (privilege, power, the ability to force other people to accept their bigotry, et cetera) has been taken from them by ‘wokeness’ or ‘inflation’ or whatever, and so Donald Trump is their expression of anger writ large. Of course, that there are people who have actual, multigenerational and culturally repressive grievances for which they want acknowledgement, they are in competition for that ‘scarce resource’ (if you consider that to be a zero sum game which Trump does about everything), so Trump is their team captain.
Democrats are, collectively, just trying to please everyone, and as you can see this pleases no one. This is the problem in being in the dead center; everyone is pulling you in opposing directions and you can’t ever satisfy any group without offending another. This is especially true when they focus on trying to ‘steal’ would-be Trump voters, and especially like bringing an odious person like Liz Cheney on stage to play pretend-gal pal with Kamala Harris (clearly to her own benefit of trying to distinguish herself in a presumptive post-MAGA Republican party as a true leader who never bowed to power). It literally is insincere and hypocritical because there is no fucking way Harris would otherwise cast bones with Cheney and vice versa.
I feel the huge Trump win is not because of what Trump is. It is inspite of him…many voters that I know in my extended family voted Republican first time although they don’t like Trump as a person.
I wonder if the democrats had a more charismatic candidate if it would have mattered
The voters that are up for grabs don’t care about the issues in the sense that they have a coherent idea of what issues they favor and choose the candidate that is the closest on those issues, but I think they are somewhat receptive to issue campaigning that is simple and convincing in the moment. Bonus points if it can function as a grievance or a policy proposal depending on who is listening.
It’s similar to how a lot of people make irrational impulse purchases, and as a result it might not be a good marketing strategy to dryly summarize why your product is the best, but a simple (even oversimplified) slogan that tells someone why they should buy your product is more effective than attention grabbing marketing that doesn’t pretend to actually sell you the product.
The Democrats used to be way too issue focused, but now it sometimes feels recently like the emphasis on avoiding a short sales pitch on their policies means that it sounds like the other guy has a plan and you just stammered about building back better or something that doesn’t mean anything.
My guess is that people have not regained trust in politicians since the 2008 financial crisis and a candidate positioning as an outsider and being angry is enough. People aren’t looking for sincere anger, just satisfying anger.
Tons of people say that they don’t like Trump even though they’re voting for him, but since Trump, nearly every Republican other than him has struggled to capture the electorate he can capture.
When somebody says they don’t like Trump but are voting for him, I tend to not believe them. They just know that doing so makes them look bad and are producing a threadbare excuse. They have just enough shame left that they don’t want to admit to people other than fellow Trumpists that they actively want all the awful things Trump represents.
I don’t like Trump, never have; but I voted for him. And since I’m reasonably familiar with the thoughts in my own head I can tell you that your post just isn’t correct. (I strongly suspect that this will shortly have to be spun off into its own thread.)
This is what I am hearing from many people as well.
I know it would be easier if they were all just racist transphobes who just loved Fascism, but that’s just not been my experience. For the most part, they’re just frustrated about one thing or another, and very misinformed as to why.
We can’t just write all of these people off, especially since even here in a deep blue state they make a good 40% of the population.
We need to find a way to actually communicate with them. Ideally, before the midterms.
I think voters like you are real but I think they’re the minority. Republicans other than Trump mostly underperformed him. I don’t think Harris was a great candidate but I also don’t think the Dems congressional candidates were so incredible by comparison that they explain the gap. I think the main voters who swung this election actually did gravitate towards aspects of Trump.
Since I’ve been following politics (which began in the 2000s) you would always hear a very vocal seemingly untapped voterbase. At the end of Bush/start of Obama it was fiscally conservative and socially liberal. The more politicians (who already left this group politically homeless) continued to move away from them, the more they got rewarded. The tea party even got elected by appealing to this sentiment, only to pivot to deficit spending and protectionism with essentially no consequences. Were these voters lying? I don’t think so. I think to some extent voters want a balanced budget but ultimately vote for the outcomes of deficit spending. But I think to a greater extent the people who don’t broadcast their opinions to the world are economically populist and have mixed but largely populist social views that range from tribalism to conspiracy thinking. It never seems like the latter group is the excluded middle that are available for politicians to grab because they are the actual silent majority.
I agree. I just cant understand why though…I’ve seen some of the kindest, good human beings (one uncle who volunteers during natural disasters like hurricanes spending his time, money and effort) vote Trump/Republican. I know for a fact they are not Nazis…not even bad people. Some of them in fact I wish I could be wrt their social work during natural calamities.
People like Democrat policy but hate Democrats, that is what it comes down to. Down here in FL both the abortion and legal weed measures failed, but that was only due to needing 60% of the vote to pass. If people had supported the Democrat with the same enthusiasm they support their policy it would have been like a 20 point swing in the result. If we voted for policy instead of candidates we’d be living in a liberal utopia.
Not being able to beat Donald Trump sank Hillary Clinton. Not being able to beat Donald Trump after we had already seen a Trump presidency and knew what he promised to do is going to sink the current Democratic leadership.
You’d like to think it’d sink them. It won’t. The completely useless leadership that has presided over every loss starting in 2010 are still there, being worthless career politicians, getting rich off insider trading in their safe seats, and afraid to do anything popular with the general public that might get them yelled at by some tiny interest group on Twitter.
Could Harris have done enough to change this to a win? I don’t think so, especially when the trend all over the world is to throw out whoever was in power since 2020. But that’s not a reason to not do some self reflection and figure out why their party keeps losing voters in demographics they thought they had locked up.
Meanwhile Mr. Donald and the MAGAs go at it in full DGAF mode and who cares who we piss off… and it works for them. One of the things that some of us saw already in the 2016 campaign in both the GOP primary and the general was that the Establishment candidates were Playing Not To Lose with the traditional motto of let’s not scare the potential swing votes. And we saw some of that now too. That only works if you have the lead secure.
(that’s a general eyeroll, not aimed at you).