i think part of the problem is people on the right remained blindly loyal to Republicans for way too long while thier reality got increasingly worse, especially compared to blue regions. The left is typically more cynical of their politicians. As an example there’s been a quite vocal opposition to Pelosi on the left for a long time while you haven‘t really heard any dissenters against Mitch except from extremists Trump supporters. Meanwhile his obstruct everything policy hurts the right’s voters too. So on the left there’s been kind of a constant steady anger, especially from progressives. On the right it was more like they were in a political trance and they finally snapped out of it and now they are flashpoint pissed, and Trump and Trumpism is the only thing that’s offered on the right that isn’t the status quo.
I sometimes wonder if Trump would be more popular in general if a major part of his tactic wasn’t demonizing half the country, a nationalist approach mins the “fuck you, blue states!" One could argue part of it is because of the attacks on Trump from the left, but all presidents get heat from the opposing side. Most Presidents ignore it for the most part. Trump turned firing back into his favorite most time consuming activity.
The former prez Trump seems never to have given thought to the fact that half the country voted for not-him in 2016. Once he had won that election, he seemed to assume it meant that he alone had control over American policymaking, legislation and legal interpretation of our laws. In fact he campaigned that he alone could fix what was wrong with America. The precursor to that idea was his assumption that he alone would define what was wrong...
Trump wouldn't even take direction from his own hijacked party during his 2016 campaign. The weird thing is that the RNC leadership in 2016 was fully aware of that. They had to threaten to withdraw financial support mid-campaign after Trump had managed deep public insult of Senator McCain, then then House leader Paul Ryan and now former Senator Kelly Ayotte of NH, all inside of a week. They made him go out and read a scripted apology, which he did in his usual petulant manner when he'd gone too far even for his supporters.
That to me was a turning point. It was one of the USA's first glimpses of Trump doing a wink and nod to his rally base, while walking back from something a vast majority of the American public had found totally unacceptable. Yet the Republicans tried to paper that over and make excuses for why Trump had disrespected those officials.
Bottom line they KNEW that Trump was big trouble ahead, and yet they went for the fake-gold of his draw of new blood to their base electorate.
As for that new blood, wow. Trump and the GOP have essentially capitalized on how passive-reactive that crowd really is.
You're right, they were in a trance and when they snap out of it in a rage from time to time, it's still just to take direction from him and do the equivalent of chanting "two legs good, four legs better" straight out of Orwell's
Animal Farm.
Those voters are angry at their own situation but are easily guided to point their anger wherever Trump's GOP has decided to project that anger for a given day. No insight into the fact that the GOP's actual if unadvertised policy and lawmaking (or law blocking) do nothing to improve their lot in life. Some argue that Trump kept his promises to appoint conservative judges and Supreme Court justices, but what does that really mean? Those voters have helped fashion the federal courts into a machine nearly ready to step on the necks of everyone but billionaires for decades. Oligarchs' paradise. "Money talks, all others walk." And the talk is scripted by dark money in large part. Dark money running constant psy-ops on American voters...
What else should we have expected after electing an amoral billionaire with no sense of American government to our highest office in 2016?
But this is where populism (and McConnell's obstructionist use of the USA's racist backlash against Obama ) finally took us in 2016. Everyone was unhappy by 2016. Trump was a Pied Piper who came along at a vulnerable moment in our celebrity-crazed modern history. The voters were forced to choose between two aging if well known candidates, each with a truckload of decades-old baggage. Trump was a more entertaining candidate...
A valid concern is that the next one like him won't be such an ignoramus about how to run a fascist government. That's the (belated) focus also of the anti-Trump Republicans now hoping to defang him and any wannabe successors of like mind.
I'm hoping Jaime Harrison will be able to shake up the DNC and make it more able to enlist activists across the board at state levels in Democratic politics. The Rs managed to hang on or expand their control of a lot of state legislatures in 2020. The Dems have been playing at superstar levels of federal contests for far too long and I remain unhappy that they wrested the next-gen baton back out of Obama's hand in 2016. The DNC really need to take a cue from progressives running for more offices at state and lower levels since 2016. Harrison is aware of that and their fundraising letters are starting to reflect that focus.
theslot.jezebel.com
gizmodo.com
