I’m only 20 years old, I’ve never voted or even really bothered paying attention to any other election, and I dunno it kinda feels like I started on one that was really crazy? But I’m not sure maybe every election has been insane and I just didn’t know because I wasn’t paying attention.
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No, they’ve been getting progressively crazier since 2016.
2000 was fairly divisive, it went to the Supreme Court after all. But it wasn’t even a fraction this dramatic, people mostly shrugged and figured GWB would be like his father, which was unfortunate, but sane at any rate. Nobody was really predicting 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.
2004 was pretty dull. John Kerry challenged GWB but felt sort of like an empty suit.
2008 was nice, Obama was a strong and exciting candidate vs the very known quantity of McCain, who was a moderate repub known for bipartisanship. Sarah Palin provided for hours of entertaining impersonations by people like Tina Fey, but since she was the VP candidate nobody really cared.
2012 was dull. Romney was a strong candidate, another moderate repub. But Obama was fine, he hadn’t broken the country or anything. Brought us out of a recession, even if people were upset about bank bailouts and stuff. Lot of people got health insurance.
Then it starts getting spicy.
“Obama was fine” ???
Did you not see his tan suit? The humanity…
Are people forgetting his Dijon Mustard scandal? Unforgivable.
Don’t forget his terrorist fist jab.
Dijon? Sounds like socialism to me!
Yes, he took all our guns, too. Look, there’s none to be found anywhere.
I actually feel a lot like I did in 2004. I felt sure that Bush’s lousy wars would be his undoing. Then people signed up for more of him and I realized “Oh, he isn’t the problem. It’s the electorate.”
You can say with hindsight that we shouldn’t be surprised, blah blah, but the truth is that a couple of days ago, most of us were saying “there’s no way people would actually RE elect this criminal, crazed, orange clown!”
And here we are. He could take a bullet tomorrow and we’d still share a country with all these deplorable people. Hilary took shit for using that word but she’s a smart lady and didn’t stutter.
I kind of understand Bush vs Kerry. Bush had a vision. It was a crazy neocon vision, but it was a vision and he used it to communicate effectively enough that we still occasionally meme about bombing people into freedom.
Obama had a clear vision, and communicated it well. Hope, prosperity for the middle class, international leadership. Biden had a vision, a less divisive America where we came together and worked on overdue problems. Hilary didn’t really, nor did Kerry or Gore. They were more policy administrator types who focused on specific policies and administration, and the idea of incremental improvement just didn’t resonate with people.
Trump, for all his failings, does have a vision he is capable of communicating to the American people. Harris did too, better than Hilary anyway, but it didn’t really come online until fairly late into the campaign and stayed a little too nebulous. I do think she was hurt in this regard by getting such a short campaign with no real prep time, she was evolving in the right direction.
I think we need a Bernie or AOC, someone with a powerful vision and ability to clearly communicate it, to the point of literally cudgeling people over the head with it. And we need to vote them in during the primary, over any competent administrator types, despite the fact that we are fully aware of how effective and necessary those policy administrators can be. Our valuing of them is a place where we’re out of touch with the broader American electorate though.
edit: MLK Jr was good at this. He had a dream, and it was a simple one that any person could visualize in their head. It didn’t require any policy expertise to understand it. We need that.
Not normal at all. This was America’s 1932 Germany moment, there’s no going back now. 70 plus million of the dumbest Americans on the planet welcomed the Nazis with open arms.
It’s not Nazis, it’s different. It’s probably just as bad but it’s a weirdo mix.
Trump is a mobster wannabe. He is also dumb as fuck and a useful idiot who is controlled on the one hand by foreign powers, but also by right wing extremist Christians, some of whom actually see him as a Messiah figure. I fully assume he is going to install himself as a dictator fast, as that’s what the past 4 years of preparation were about. He’ll also die, probably. He’s old, fat, doesn’t exercise, eats unhealthy, in a super stressful job and loads of people want him dead.
I can’t remember the time (in my time anyway ) that so many people wanted a US president dead.
Anyway, he’ll die soon and the the christo fascists will start the infighting who can become the next US dictator.
I fully expect chaos in this year with chaos being the sweet synonym for that mass deportation starting, people will resist, people will get shot and die, people will start terrorist attacks. Whenever you work for years to pit one group of citizens against another, it’s not going to end well.
Man this is fun…
I started paying attention in 2000, even though I didn’t really understand it and couldn’t vote, however my first voting election was 2004 and I remember being disappointed when John Kerry lost to Bush, who had already gotten us involved in two wars that would cost trillions of dollars.
My experience has been that Republican administrations tend to be rife with corruption, cut taxes for rich people and run up the deficit.
Eventually, people get sick of the moral decay and tanking economic prospects and put a democrat back in, who tries to undo all the damage, but is blocked most of the time by Republicans in Congress acting in bad faith.
Then, the right wing media environment drums up a load of fear about immigrants and actual lies about the economy to get everyone voting for a Republican again.
That’s the cycle, except the Republican media ecosystem gets more extreme over time, and so do the candidates.
It’s remarkable how effective that strategy has been.
Reagan/Bush run up the deficit by 300%+ due to tax cuts and massive military spending, foreign wars
Clinton pays off the deficit, gets the economy booming, scales back military spending and foreign entanglements
GWB campaigns on a platform of tax cuts and increased military spending, along with denying climate change, barely wins
deficit skyrockets due to tax cuts, multi trillion dollar wars, lack of financial regulation collapses global economy
Obama has to save the economy again, extricate us from foreign entanglements again, while fighting against a republican establishment that refuses to pass any legislation
Trump administration completely fails to deal with COVID pandemic and tanks the economy yet again
Biden has to clean up that mess, and the resultant inflation is blamed on the Democrats
How many times are people going to fall for this shit?
Liberals screaming that the world is falling apart when they lose? Yeah
