This question may be kind of like asking whether Chernobyl was worse than Fukushima - they’re both meltdowns - but meltdowns still come in degrees.
ISTM that both sides have reacted with greater and greater intensity to defeat - at least, far more than in the 1980s or 1990s - but that Democrats/liberals are still likely to take defeat somewhat harder and more bitterly than Republicans. (Disclaimer: Based off of little but my own subjective, biased, perception) The liberal meltdown in 2016 far surpassed the conservative meltdowns in 2008 and 2012.
There are, IMHO, four reasons for this:
Losing to Obama is one thing, losing to Trump is another. The latter’s victory is more irksome, based off of persona and other characteristics, than the former. Hence Democrats took losing to Trump even worse than Republicans took losing to Obama.
Many Democrats/liberals have more to lose from a Republican victory than vice versa. For instance, nobody would ever worry that their heterosexual marriage to be banned, Democratic victories or not, but there is a chance that a Republican victory could lead to gay marriage being overturned (if it leads to enough of a conservative SCOTUS majority, etc. etc.) Likewise, no pregnant woman ever worries in America about having an abortion forced on her against her will, but there are indeed women who worry they can’t get an abortion if they want one.
Conservatives are likelier to skew older, liberals likelier to skew younger in age. Older folks are not likely to go out in the streets protesting an election outcome they don’t like. They are more rooted and set and less prone to action. Also, they often use social media less.
Trump’s election was a surprise; Obama’s election and reelection wasn’t. However, that being said…it still seems to me that even if the polls predict Republican victory all along, that Democrats still react worse to it than vice versa, for reasons 1-3# mentioned above.
I tend to agree with you (Dems take it worse), but I think the shock factor of President Trump’s upset victory (your #4) has contributed significantly to the ensuing meltdown.
Democrats aren’t upset because their team lost; they’re upset because of the real negative consequences of Republicans winning. When Republicans lose, they don’t face the negative consequences of Republicans winning; they face the positive consequences of Democrats winning.
Given how long Birtherism prevailed after the 2008 election (partly due to the enthusiastic participation of Orange Julius Caesar himself) the OP should not attempt to light any matches around his argument. Straw is flammable, y’know. :rolleyes:
It’s been harder for Democrats because the last three presidential losses have all been squeakers. It’s much harder to accept those types of defeats, just like no one wants to have their sports team lose in the last second. No one wants to miss an A in a class by a fraction of a percentage or miss passing a licensing test by one question.
It’s easier to accept the results of a blowout. 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012 Democratic wins were all blowouts or at least solid wins. If 2000, 2004, and 2016 had all been Democrats squeaking out wins and losing the popular vote twice, the Republicans would be the ones with the hard losses and taken those defeats worse.
No Democrats were hopping made after Dukakis got blown out in 1988. That race wasn’t close anytime after Labor Day and no one expected a win.
Good point; two recent Republican wins were due to the Electoral College, too.
Another issue is that, for many young liberals (say, those born 1995-2005,) Hillary’s loss in 2016 was the first presidential defeat they’d experienced. Up to that, they’d only really known the Obama wins. Whereas old conservatives (i.e., born in 1950s-1960s) had experienced numerous wins and losses alike in their lives and were more even-keeled.
Sure, many conservatives went all conspiracy-theorist on Obama, but I know of no conservative colleges that gave their students a day off from classes or counseling or therapy to cope with Obama’s 2008 win. Many liberals sincerely seemed to treat Trump’s election almost as if it were the equivalent of 9/11, an earthquake, school shooting or the like - something to be mourned as a national tragedy.
Well, mainstream Democrats have now largely taken over a lot of what used to be considered “conservative” policy positions (reducing budget deficits, being hawkish on intervention, etc.), and a substantial chunk of Republicans have moved from traditional conservatism to neo-fascism.
It’s not so much a matter of either side not being “enough” what it’s traditionally associated with, as the whole set of associations becoming far more chaotic.
Hmmm, if you take into account Republican willingness to resort to unscrupulous measures to let Republicans wiggle out of having to “take defeat”, I don’t think they really come out looking less “bitter” about it.
Well, considering that in 2008 their own party’s leadership had very recently brought the country closer to severely crippling financial collapse than it had been since the Great Depression, it is not all that surprising that even conservatives were a little bit relieved to see a more competent team take over. Hell, nearly a quarter of conservatives as Election Day 2008 neared actually supported Obama:
See, this is the problem with the OP’s naive “bothsidesism” that ends up trying to compare apples and oranges. It is not merely ideological bias that causes sensible liberals confronted by a Trump presidency in 2016 to be more upset than sensible conservatives confronted by an Obama presidency in 2008. Sensible people can tell that, irrespective of their personal partisan preferences, Trump is in very many ways an objectively much worse President than Obama, so his ascent to power gives greater cause for concern.
American politics is now a zero sum game, this has been true since the Florida recount and Trump has escalated the trend. There is now no incentive to cooperate as we do not share the same values and in fact our values are in direct opposition.
There were some yells back in '08 that Obama’s election meant “America was over.” But Obama has always taken a much more small-c conservative tack himself, whereas Trump’s self-aggrandizement and reckless rhetoric gives him a wannabe-dictator appearance. Obama is “foreign,” but Trump acts like a “dangerous radical.”
I don’t think comparing 2016 to 2008 and 2012 is at all useful in terms of determining which side takes losing harder. The 2016 election was a major upset that the Dems expected to win at a walk, and ended up electing someone who is by far the most ill-suited person in our history ever to hold the elected office. The 2008 and 2012 were contests between people of similar levels of competence went as expected according to the polls. You might as well say that New Yorkers are better than New Orleanians at handling adversity because they bounced back from Hurricane Sandy far quicker than the New Orleans bounced back from Katrina.
This is a very interesting observations. I take it to mean that Democrats see themselves as righteous and Republicans as Evil, but Republicans see it as a contest between co-equal but opposite philosophies. My apologies to the quoted poster if I misrepresented his intentions, but that’s how it comes off to me.
No, it’s that Republicans are selfish, so they think this is like a sports game – all about winning and losing for its own sake (see Donald’s tweet responding to Romney – “join the team, be a winner…”) – while Democrats are less selfish, so when they “lose” they are sad because they know that millions of people (NOT THEMSELVES – millions of OTHER people! I know, it’s a weird concept for Republicans)…millions of people will suffer because of the “loss,” for a hundred different ACTUAL REASONS (not because of the political defeat itself, but because of the ACTUAL POLICIES that will be implemented by the victorious Republicans).
I think the Dem meltdown has been very paranoid and zany. The Rep meltdown had its zany elements but it was mostly anger, especially among the gun nuts.
The Dem meltdown is funnier, while the Rep meltdown was more irksome, especially when it involved bizarre theories about how Obama was going to gut the military. The “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” Tea Party movement was frustrating.
The high brow conservatives mostly kept their heads about them and focused on policy, while even the high brow Dems have been completely out to lunch. NPR is in a fugue state.
It is a different meltdown, but I don’t know if it is more intense or not. The Dem meltdown does seem to have potential to lastlonger, but I wasn’t paying much attention to politics around 2007-2011, so I could be wrong.