Personality certainly matters. But it might be more useful, in terms of the actual stakes of a contest, to think about the presidential election as a race between competing coalitions of Americans. Different groups, and different communities, who want very different — sometimes mutually incompatible — things for the country.
The coalition behind Joe Biden wants what Democratic coalitions have wanted since at least the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt: government assistance for working people, federal support for the inclusion of more marginal Americans.
As for the coalition behind Trump? Beyond the insatiable desire for lower taxes on the nation’s monied interests, there appears to be an even deeper desire for a politics of domination. Trump speaks less about policy, in any sense, than he does about getting revenge on his critics. He’s only concerned with the mechanisms of government to the extent that they are tools for punishing his enemies.
If you’re an American, and you like what the Democratic coalition is after, then get involved, help with money if you can, and pay attention to downballot races too, not just the top.
That’s exactly my point. If it wasn’t Manchin and Sinema it would have been someone else. You see stuff like this all the time in DC, where a party “supports” a bill but a couple defectors oppose it and it fails. It might have been those 2 this past time, but it will be another couple next time and we’ll say things like “oh, they’re in a purple state we have to just deal with it if we want to stay in power.” But what’s the point of “maintaining power” if dems don’t do anything with it? We KNEW an overturn of Roe was coming in 2020. What did Dems do? Nothing.
I’ve seen this exact play SO MANY TIMES that I know it when I see it. Hell, Biden WAS the Manchin in the Senate for a while, and now he’s supposedly a flaming liberal.
My point is, it’s often that there’s a group of people who will vote for a bill because of “optics”. Most people in the room know if a bill will succeed or fail before it comes up for a vote because it’s been decided behind closed doors before the vote is called.