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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I’m nearly three times your age and so will likely have a very different perspective, but…
I remember watching the news (from Canada) when Reagan was first elected. it felt HORRIBLE, and turned out to be just that - Reagan, Thatcher, and their psychophant hanger-on Mulroney ushered in a new era of “get fucked by the rich, fuck the poor” also known as trickle-down economics.
And yet, there was always a sense of decorum among them. Even Harper and Bush jr. at least pretended to be civil in the world of politics, no matter how corrupt and evil they were.
Trump changed everything. He was loud, abrasive, offensive, and off the rails. And he won! Suddenly the doors were open. Here in Canada, O’Toole did outhouse attack ads against Trudeau. Jingoistic, vapid, fear-mongering populism took root throughout Europe. And it just kept getting worse.
Now this election in the US was unhinged beyond description. Trump said things and did things that should have gotten him locked up. Musk should be facing either life in jail or the electric chair for his interference. There are no limits in American elections anymore - I would genuinely say including shooting someone onstage.
Here in Canada, Poilievre has been carefully fanning the same embers - stoking fear, instilling rage, creating groups to hate; and at the same time, throwing out meaningless attacks on his opponents. Unlike when O’Toole awkwardly attempted it, it is working very effectively. Having an entire room or stadium chanting “AXE THE TAX” without even offering an alternative shows that he’s winning by being the same empty bully as Trump.
(And meanwhile, Harper is chortling quietly from behind the curtain as he pulls the puppet strings.)
So yeah, this is crazy - and it’s the new normal, until we start showing politicians that it doesn’t work, and can get them arrested.
Since all of these politicians are at the same time ensuring that they are above the law, I don’t think you can count on getting them arrested.
This election was special, cause the candidate who got the most votes actually won.
US presidential elections have been approximately this way since at least 2016, actually I think this one may have been less crazy than the last two.
The hanging chad would like a word with you.
I wrote “at least”.
I am older than OP, but not old enough to remember the 2000 election very much.
Yes, it was really crazy. In the past few decades our politicians had different goals, but generally still followed the same rules. Trump has shown he wants to dismantle any and all systems that don’t serve him, and the Republican party is happy to let him do so, so this election seems like it might have far greater consequences than the ones in memorable past.
2012 was what felt like a more normal election where the candidates respected each other and it played out a lot more typically. (Same for 2008). Trump changed that up and it’ll possibly stay that way going forward.
Certainly, at the presidential level, however I recall Congress having a bunch of “tea party” nut jobs elected that shut down the government over the passage of Obamacare.
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.
And it should be said - politics should not be spicy. It should be boring. Just like investing, if things are getting too exciting you are not investing in the future - you are gambling.
Unfortunately it’s the exciting politics that gets all the attention. Democrats likely lost because they’re just too boring.
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.
“Obama was fine” ???
Did you not see his tan suit? The humanity…
Yes, he took all our guns, too. Look, there’s none to be found anywhere.
Are people forgetting his Dijon Mustard scandal? Unforgivable.
Don’t forget his terrorist fist jab.
Dijon? Sounds like socialism to me!
Basically it just gets more and more ridiculous every 4 years.
In former times if one candidate had promised to overthrow the entire system and abolish elections and democracy, then nobody would have voted for that clown.
It just goes to show how little faith people have in the system. They’d rather destroy it all just to see if something better comes out. Morons don’t recognize that the game is rigged. Unless nuclear war breaks out, it will just keep getting worse.
as a ~40 year old Canadian looking from the outside at the US election
this one was crazy for sure but the last couple have been kinda out there to say the least. before the internet we Canadians always knew when it coming, but it was never covered in a 24h news cycle like now. other than daily newspaper (that was a physical unit of paper that was like social media, where we could not really choose who to follow other than politically left or right and only updated every 24h) we’d get news at 6-7pm and 11pm. then the noon news showed up. while there have always been issues between right and left, there had never been violence on the scale we see now. like Reagan getting shot, happened just after i was born, so not like it was all sunshine and rainbows but nothing like the scale that’s seen now.
this could be from the mass news reporting and social media, or people have just gone off the rails. I’m guessing option 2.
No, they have been getting extra crazy lately.
Going forward? Maybe and I fear likely. Im over 50. voting for a republican when I was young was not completely crazy. Especially moderate ones in a liberal areas. Believe it or not there used to be institutional biases. Like senators were sorta snooty about the senate to the level they would be with a senator of the opposing party over a house rep from their own party. And party members in congress would be adversarial to their own parties president. A lot of this was a stay in your lane kind of thing. Like woa mr pres thats a congress thing and woa mr rep thats a senate thing. Also legitimately conern for the good of the country over party. If you have the patients read this wikipedia on ross perot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot# you can see he is a conservative rich bastard but then click on the presidential campaign. Higher taxes, investing in education, direct democracy. Granted he was third party stuff but it was a coming out of the conservative side. Back then drug, prostitution, and other victimless crimes legalization was a major part of the libertarian party. Over time the conservative side got worse and worse and voting for them became more and more unacceptable and also made voting third party a dangerous proposition. I was never really for the conservative party but I miss the days when they could be a legitimate option and individuals in the party could be decent.
No
No. It’s always been rather cordial if not a bit of mud slinging. Till trump entered and started questioning Obama birth certificate imo. Maybe I’m just too young to remember insane shit like that prior though.
Well luckily for you, it will never matter ever again.
Annoying isn’t it.
