I legitimately did not believe it was possible for this to happen. There’s always a hateful minority but I believe people as a whole are good. How did this happen?

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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    11 days ago

    The hateful minority have run a campaign championing selfishness and ignorance and the vicarious absolution thereof.

    it’s much easier to be selfish and ignorant than it is to be considerate and responsible.

    conservatives are selfish and ignorant and their party is very successfully campaigning selfishness and ignorance.

    on the other hand, the democrats have to convince people that childish short-term desires are not always the best decision for themselves and others.

    Trump is telling everybody that if you want to steal a cheeseburger from somebody else and eat it, then you should.

    Harris is telling everybody that stealing is wrong and counterproductive, and cheeseburgers are not healthy.

    or, since Trump is a rapist:

    Trump is telling conservatives it’s good to rape people If they want to rape people.

    Harris is telling people that it isn’t good to rape people because it violates their dignity and free will.

      • myrmidex@slrpnk.net
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        11 days ago

        Thomas MacDonald (born September 21, 1988) is a Canadian rapper and singer. He is known for his anti-establishment subject matter in his music, in which he also criticizes “woke” culture, herd behavior and groupthink. In 2024, he emerged as a figurehead of “MAGA rap”, a Trumpist subgenre of hip hop.

        wikipedia

  • leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl
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    11 days ago

    imo propaganda. memeship. education policies.

    propaganda is easy because all the mainstream media is about Trump doing unhinged things. Free PR.

    memeship is likely a product of propaganda where the internet regurgitates controversial topics to milk more engagement.

    As others have said, a lot of people already have almost zero critical thinking and the elections are just a test of who they remember the most.

  • Orbituary@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    Liz Cheney will save the day! Let’s see if Jimmy Carter can vote us out of fascism in 4 years! No, no, Muslims-Americans, shut up… The soon-to-be ex-VP is talking.

  • GrymEdm@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    Lots of reasons. Left-leaning Canadian’s take:

    • Biden/Kamala have acted against the American majority for months now in Gaza. This isn’t a sabotage take, it’s as close to fact as can be determined of national attitude. Look at my post history before you accuse me of “both sides”. A lot of Dems and especially young people are very vocal about hating support of the ethnic cleansing of Occupied Palestinian Territory. Millions of people chose to stomach it until the election, but I think other millions felt unrepresented and betrayed by protest suppression and bipartisan condemnation.

    • I don’t want to insult anyone, but even moderately detailed political plans may not work in America. Trump’s campaign was run on vague promises and angry rhetoric that was emotionally engaging. Clearly people don’t know how much Trump’s policies like tariffs are going to hurt them personally, but like promises of a strong “America for Americans”. Kamala ran on a detailed platform that took effort to understand and clearly it failed to motivate enough voters.

    • “Try to please everyone and you will please no one.” Instead of solidifying support and inspiring hope among the Dem base, Kamala’s campaign assumed their support due to fear of Trump and went after undecideds and Republicans. Republicans aren’t going to switch and many undecideds are that way due to apathy.

    • No Dem primary meant people couldn’t choose the candidate they might actually want to support. They were given Biden then Harris without being asked for input.

    • Related to that: Biden’s campaign soured voters, and Kamala wasn’t able to climb out of the hole left to her. His low approval rating didn’t help given Kamala felt like a younger version of more of the same.

    • Misinformation and propaganda by foreign and domestic right-wingers kept a lot of people from switching sides.
  • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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    11 days ago

    Both times Trump won the nomination and ran against women, he won. The only time he ran against a man, he lost.

    Clearly the Democrats should avoid nominating women until the electorate is ready for one.

  • Erasmus@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    NPR was just discussing this a few minutes ago.

    The Democrats put the majority of their push behind abortion thinking that would be the turn out vote and it didn’t seem to be.

    More people voted for Trump because of the economy based on exit polling and (surprisingly) more women voted for him this time as well.

    There was also more votes coming from younger people who hadn’t been through a recession before and were just basically voting ‘opposite party’ because they were tired of their money going nowhere. The voting trend was something that had been seen in several other countries recently.

  • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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    11 days ago

    This will probably be an unpopular take, but this my best guess at why Trump won.

    On the election coverage I was watching (ABC), the biggest point they kept coming back to were questions of if people thought that the economy is better now vs when Trump was in office, and if people feel like they’re better or worse off financially that they were during Trump years. If I remember right, the poll data they showed had twice as many people say that things were worse economy/financially then they were during Trump era, vs people who thought things were better financially now.

    I know that matches with my personal experience, I live in a rural area, and my company primarily does work for other small businesses. The Trump years had a huge amount of negative news, but my business grew a lot over those years. In comparison, the last 4 years have been very stagnant in growth. We’ve picked up some new clients, but many of the small businesses we did business with have closed down or had to sell to new owners. I wouldn’t say our business is doing worse, but everything costs more and our company profit/wages haven’t kept up. And I know it’s worse for a lot other businesses, at least from seeing how many I’ve seen go out of business.

    A lot of the economic troubles came from Covid, so it’s not fair to place them all on the Biden administration. But I think a lot of the country is unhappy financially right now, and they think Trump has a better chance of changing that. I’m guessing a lot of the “undecided voters” that decided the election picked the option they thought would help them financially over all other considerations.

    • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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      11 days ago

      I suspect US economy is in a much worse state than it’s obvious just looking at the numbers. Most of my contact with Americans is with relatively well-off people working in the tech industry. And even they are feeling serious financial constraints. I can’t imagine how the rest is doing.

    • Riskable@programming.dev
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      11 days ago

      “I’m unhappy, financially so I’m going to vote for the felon, racist, sexist, fascist” still doesn’t add up.

      What does add up is that enough of the American people didn’t know or fully understand just how much of a racist, sexist, fascist and total scumbag Trump really is. Or they heard about his misdeeds and absolutely abhorrent statements/views but didn’t believe it; “fake news”.

      They had all the time in the world to just pay attention or ya know, just look shit up but they didn’t do those things. Now those very same people are going to be surprised AF that their friends and family are being rounded up, arrested, detained, and/or deported. They’ll say they had no idea that Trump planned to do that or that “they didn’t think he’d actually do it.”

      They suck. There’s no excuse at this point. Just like the article suggests.

      Then there’s his actual supporters who like the awful things he says and nod in agreement. If anything, this election has revealed that your Republican neighbors absolutely are horrible human beings. Again: If someone is still a Republican at this point they’re saying to the world that they’re in tacit agreement with these things. They share the same values as the Republican party and Trump is the Republican party platform at this point.

      • BlueLineBae@midwest.social
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        11 days ago

        First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

        Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

        Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

        Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

        —Martin Niemöller

  • NoLifeGaming@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    The real question is how do you end up in a situation with two terrible candidates that will be happy to commit genocide with no consequences. It’s a mutlistep issue.

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      no, no more questions.

      I’m done questioning. I want results.

      I want these red hat Nazis out in my fucking country. I want the 15 million Americans that withheld their vote this election to suffer. To suffer like they’re about to make every minority and LGBTQ+ American suffer.

      Don’t you fucking dare look away. Your apathy or sense of justice or some other bullshit reason made this happen. You don’t get to look away.

      First they come for the LGBTQ+. Then they come for the minorities. Then they come for the educated. Then they come for all of the people who ever spoke out against him.

      And while I’m rotting in some mass unmarked grave with my friends and family, I’ll be holding onto a truth you can’t see through your own hubris.

      they will come for you too.

  • Computerchairgeneral@fedia.io
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    11 days ago

    At this point we can only really guess. It’ll probably be days or weeks before people can dig through the voting data and do substantive post-mortems on the 2024 campaign. Th economy seems to have played a big part. People are angry at high prices and they naturally punish the incumbent party even if the President doesn’t realistically control how much eggs and gas cost. Along with that it’s looking like there was a collapse in Democratic turnout in the Rust Belt while Republican turnout stayed steady, handing Trump narrow wins in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. It also looks like the Harris campaign’s bet on Republicans who didn’t vote for Trump in the primary breaking for her failed to pay off.