A broken country elected a broken leader.
America was already broken, that’s why trump got elected. Everything from education to financial security is an ongoing disaster. Then trump & co. destroyed the rest.
The USA has been falling apart since 1975 and voting for MAGA, not once, but twice is accelerating the process.
Gosh… Who enabled this I wonder. What major informers of voters was a key proponent of ‘actually Trump is probably a better choice than Biden’.
Fuck… if only we had the capability to search the past for answers.
What % of NYT readers voted for Trump? It has to be minuscule.
The election was so close, there are dozens of but-for causes that could have tipped the scale, but the NYT not being sufficiently alarmist about Trump (which is what that CNN article you linked claims - not that the paper was a proponent of Trump, as you say) probably wasn’t one of them.
Democrat turnout was pretty abysmal, and the media sanewashing of trump certainly contributed to some of that.
Running a candidate who nobody voted for in a primary probably contributed to it as well.
WELL I FUCKING VOTED FOR HER. She was right there on the ticket, under Biden. I have enough of a brain to realize if Biden couldn’t run anymore she would naturally be the candidate.
What’s natural about that? If the incumbent can’t run again what would be natural is another primary.
No the VICE President would be the next person in line for the job. Who else better prepared to be the president than the person who spent 4 years studying the position in case they had to step in to do the job?
You’re saying this better serves the Democratic voters than running a legitimate primary election?
yeah. Not being a member of political party is terrifying to many people. Joining the republicans is an impossibility to many people, so they hold their nose and join the Dems, who couldnt give two shites what the voters want. As we saw in that election.
It’s really shitty that the Democrats have to appeal to leftist, liberals, independents, Democrats and everything in between with the platform and messaging, Republicans have to appeal to their base, that’s it. Makes it really hard to win elections when you have to be the perfect candidate for 10 different groups of people all with different ideologies.
They don’t have to be perfect, just not alienating to 80% of their potential supporters. They didn’t appeal to anyone but supposed “centrists” that are actually right-wing and would never vote D, and their real constituancy of wealthy backers.
I agree there must have been a sizable chunk of voters who were unaware that Trump posed a threat to democracy itself, but I assume those people are just generally relatively uninformed. The way I knew he was a threat to democracy was through consuming mainstream media (and some podcasts).
By 2024 Trump had been on the political scene for almost a decade. This was post Jan 6. There was no excuse for putting him back in power. The voters sanewashed him to themselves. People are very adaptable. We are the same species who owned slaves, walked on the moon, tore out peoples hearts at the tops of pyramids, sit in boxes for 8 hours a day, and hunted giant fuzzy elephants to extinction by hand - and all of it is “normal.”
Even today, 37% of Americans think Trump is great!
I see so the voters are the problem, you’re saying?
Yes.
Well, a problem. Because I don’t see the world in black and white and believe there is just one problem, unlike some idiots.
thats good to hear, because in your last comment you were just harping on the one thing-- the voters, so you sounded like an “idiot” (your choice of word not mine) for a second but sounds like you didnt get your whole viewpoint out. Have a nice day.
There was an article EVERY FUCKING DAY from 2020 to 2024 about Trump in the nyt. If the media would have ignored him, and not platformed him every fucking day maybe just maybe he would not have had a chance
The media coverage leading up to the election was infuriating. If that’s how the masses get their information, then it absolutely does skew the outcome of elections.
Maybe NYT was just one slice of the cake, but add up all the other major media outlets that were sanewashing trump and skirting over his many glaring issues, while piling on Biden and later Kamala and nitpicking them with the finest-toothed of combs, and the problem becomes obvious.
America didn’t give Trump a second chance. That implies he was caught and convicted, and punished for something he did wrong.
He did not spend a single day in jail. His sentence in New York was effectively commuted.
He was never even charged at the federal level.
He was allowed to continue his tyranny.
Because Democrats refused to actually hold him to account.
Because Democrats refused to actually hold him to account.
because they don’t want to set any precedents for their own fuckery.
It’s all gotta go
You’ll never convince me that Elon didn’t rig the election.
He literally paid people to vote for trump. In the open.
Nobody needs to be convinced of that. That is a fact. What you need to do is convince the people in power that that should be a punishable offense. But he put the people on power on power, so why would they punish him.
He definitely influenced it. Like, massively. But directly, hands on…? Yeah maybe lol
Seriously, though, i wish we knew. On character judgement and history and intent and everything? Yes 100% absolutely. But have evidence? Hard to investigate with Nazis running almost all of the government.
If only there had been a recount, even any small investigation
But directly, hands on…? Yeah maybe lol
Is that a puppet? Why does his face look like a race horse’s ass? Do you think billionaire blood tastes different? Why is his torso so big? Why don’t his eyes look alive?
Do you think billionaire blood tastes different?
What do you think the chances are that society is ready to find out?
The New York Times is partly responsible for this. The bullshit centrist coverage by mainstream media allowed the Democrats to shift to the right, which led to Hillary and her loss.
Seriously, NY Times and all of Mass Media gave us Trump by sane washing his absolute batshittery for clicks.
The US put a gun to its head in 2016. In 2024, it pulled the trigger.
A Project 2029 cannot be a collection of Democratic Party agenda items. It must articulate a broad new conception of the nation’s political order — one that will guide the way a future Democratic-led government might wield power. Above all, Democrats must have a plan for reconstruction — for building something new on the wreckage of what President Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party have wrought — not restoration of what was.
The whole article puts eloquent prose to the thoughts in my head (looking from outside the US) as to what the USA needs to recover post-Trump; it’s more than striving to going back to normal.
The issue is that centrist Democratic voices have been kind of developing their vision by committee over any aims to make it cohesive and comprehensive. In my view the plan has to recognize and tackle these three things:
- Internal complacency within the Democratic party to do good things for people rather than just talk about them
- Reforming the outdated systems that simply relied on trust that the system wouldn’t corrupt itself or overlook corruption.
- Fixing the destruction caused by the Trump administration, then taking steps to prevent a cult like Congress and a bought-and-paid-for judiciary to surrender the republic to the executive.
The important thing is you can’t grandfather in the corruption while you fix it.
The important thing is you can’t grandfather in the corruption while you fix it.
100% this (from an Americanist’s perspective). Just think of slavery and how it was enshrined in the constitution despite being on the way out. You had to have a whole-ass civil war, shooting and all, to fix it. And arguably still didn’t, cf. the pervasiveness of Confederate nostalgia and the prison industrial complex.
The same forces that successfully lobbied to keep slavery going are lobbying to keep systemic corruption going. Telling you at every opportunity in all the media outlets they bought that it’s the American way, baby!
The only solution to this mess is to finally redefine who “We the People” actually are. If it’s still going to be a bunch of rich white dudes with an aversion to taxes, woe betide you.
Of course that raises the question who would have the authority to perform this redefinition and how they would gain it. Barring a bona fide revolution, I just don’t see it at this point.
Thoughts and prayers from Europe.
He also writes
They need, in particular, a commitment to a constitutional order centered on the power and prerogatives of Congress
which yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me as a European – but as I understand it, congress is not a very popular institution in the US. I’ve been following the aggregators for Trump’s favorability/approval ratings - and while they’re not very high, they are a lot higher than the ones for congress. This is going to be tough to do.
Still possible, but I think it depends on the “good things” you mentioned being very clearly good and noticeable in peoples’ lives.
Also, nice to read a comment from someone who actually read the article
They’ve not been popular because they made themselves impotent by refusing to do anything to fix anything since the '80s.
We broke it giving him a first chance.
This. When he won for the first time it was clear US is not a serious country anymore. Everyone just kept pretending it is for as long as they could.
You realize he lost the first election, right?
For values of “lost” that include “won”, sure.
He lost the popular vote. Not the electoral one though.
How does that change anything? He still won the election.
Nope. He lost. And a bunch of people who choose to live in a country without democracy let him steal it
It must be nice to not live in reality.
Because he won in a broken system yes, but thats still winning…
My will to live (edit: In the US).
They broke my will to live (edit: In the US).
You need to recast that. They broke your will to live in the U.S… There are still some nice places in the world.
Example?
Australia and New Zealand are pretty great
New Zealand
They’ve slipped a bit since voting in Luxon and his merry band of cunts, but it’s still not bad
Switzerland
Good luck. Everything is expensive. You’ll be broke in a few months
Yeah :(
Trump is a symptom of a problem that’s been brewing since the heritage foundation formed in the 1970s.
No, when the American Civil War was ended without ending all of the enemy leadership. Giving clemency to traitors who are fundamentally evil, was and is a foolish thing to do.
If there is a 2nd American Civil War, it is a lesson worth remembering.
America was broken before this. Giving Trump a second chance (or a first) was a symptom.
Joe Biden broke America when America rallied around him as the only other option and his first action in office was to tell his voters if they thought he’d do anything they don’t know how politics worked…
That crashed 2028 turnout and is why trump was elected the second time.
We already had the negative consequences, we have to understand why it actually happened.
Biden’s inaction, and his appointing Merrick Garland who also did far too little far too late, are only two of many events in a long chain that built up to this.
Before Biden there was the failure to do anything about Obama’s war crimes, the failure to do anything about GWB’s numerous war crimes and lies that started two wars, the failure to do anything about Reagan and the Iran-Contra scheme or the rigging of HUD, the failure to actually prosecute Nixon… all the way back to failing to prosecute the confederates that murdered 1.5 million people. Jefferson Davis was never even prosecuted, and was released from jail after two years without a trial.
The US is broken because it has never held powerful people responsible for their crimes. The revolution to escape a king only established an oligarchy of the wealthy.
Trump stalled the trials until he became president. That is why Merrick Garland had the same success as everyone else that has tried to hold Trump accountable.
Biden took office Jan 20th, 2021. Garland didn’t appoint Jack Smith until November 18th, 2022 - one year and almost ten full months later. Almost halfway through Biden’s term. What Trump did on January 6th was obvious and well known before Biden took office, the fact that Jack Smith wasn’t appointed IN EARLY 2021 is a colossal failure on Biden’s part.
The January 6th insurrection involved tens of thousands of people that had to be interviewed, interrogated and investigated. It involved people from across the country and mountains of evidence to be processed. Everything from social media posts to surveillance footage. To top it all off there was no room for error because Trump has always used corruption to escape consequence.
Trump loyalist that were involved did everything they could to help Trump by slowing the process.
When you attack someone for trying to hold Trump accountable you discourage others from trying to hold Trump accountable.
Trump is old as fuck and a lifelong criminal pedophile felon rapist that has never been held accountable and that has nothing to do with Biden or Merrick Garland or Obama.
Yes, there was a lot of work to do. Which is why waiting almost two years to start working is so fucking appalling. They should have started in early 2021!
It took that long because Merrick did things by the book. Because any other way would increase Trump’s chances of winning.
In the end the timing didn’t matter because U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon permanently blocked the Department of Justice from publicly releasing Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final investigative report regarding Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents.
Starting earlier would not change that outcome.
The classified documents in his bathroom should have been a slam dunk and a short trial but Cannon did everything she could to drag that one out.
In the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attack, the government captured and held hundreds of men without due process, which it justified as exigent circumstances. In the aftermath of the nation’s democratic institutions being attacked, which was an exigent circumstance if I’ve ever seen one, it did nothing. There were thousands of people involved, and lots of evidence to collect, but we knew who the ringleaders were. They should have been in Gitmo by the end of the day on January 21st, 2021.
But, as the OC said, this country never holds the powerful accountable.
In the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attack the court of public opinion was in agreement that it was justified as exigent circumstances. No Americans were defending the terrorist.
In the aftermath of the nation’s democratic institutions being attacked, it was a large portion of the voting populous that was actively contributing, primarily due to psyop campaigns from Russia and the Trump administration that convinced a large amount of the populous that the election was stolen. The people that were victims of this campaign were judges, politicians, military leaders and many other roles that allowed them to do things like Judge Cannon when she dismissed the 40-count federal indictment against Donald Trump and two aides, ruling that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.
The difference between these two scenarios are so obvious they shouldn’t need explaining.
Not ar all. The GOP were angry, or left in stunned silence for weeks; it was fascinating at the time to watch them re-frame the narrative in public, in real time. In the first days, though, I doubt they would’ve objected. And so what if they did? Biden was the President, how would they stop him? If there had been a MAGA uprising, it could have been crushed, just like Occupy Wall Street was.
Also, plenty of people objected to the flouting of due process in 2002. The difference is not that some people objected.
MAGA is made up of people with systemic power like judges, cops, military leaders, the billionaire class.
The occupy Wall Street movement never had members with that much power. Or anywhere near the same numbers.
The majority of Americans were ok with the reactions to 2001 terrorist attacks.
That was the point, wasn’t it? That the U.S. has never held the powerful to account.
It’s almost like the political system incentivizes and relies on its presidents committing mass atrocities in order to exist!
This is why the Democrats will never save us. The Democrats need these wars, and war crimes, and corruption, and over policing, and the most authoritarian criminal justice system on the planet, and the military spying on citizens, and international drug running, and black market arms selling, and genocide, and millions of deaths by depravation. They need just as much as the Republicans need them.
And that’s because the US government, like all liberal governments (which is most of the world’s governments), are actually systems for managing the interests and conflicts of the powerful. The masses are powerful, the billionaires/merchants are powerful, the military is powerful. There are factions within all of these power centers and the government’s function is to prevent civil war at any scale to prevent the destruction of capital assets and to create the conditions for the success of these factions.
The masses aren’t in power. So the government’s function relative to the masses is to prevent them from revolting and keep them laboring for profit and filling the ranks of the military
The military’s primary function after ensuring no domestic revolt is to destroy the capital of competitors in other countries and to prevent coalition building against the enemies of the American billionaires and, because kf historical relationships, the Western European billionaires.
The billionaires are the ones that fight amongst themselves the most. The tech faction, the industrial faction, the finance faction - these faction has different theories about how to remain in power and wealth. And the problem is that the entire world system that made them powerful and rich is waning. The ecosystem is under immense pressure. Many nations have established effective resistance against both US military power and US financial power, and more are developing them and forming coalitions. The Chinese outmaneuvered the American billionaires and created a situation where destroying Chinese capital results in the destruction of America and European wealth and the ability of the government to keep the masses docile with cheap commodities.
The whole American system, and by historical process, the whole European system, is facing down a fundamental shift in global economics that threatens to completely undo their entire power structure. They don’t give a flying fuck about abortions or trans people or voting rights or whatever wedge issue they pick next. They are doing that to manage the masses, keep them scared, keep them fighting amongst themselves, and keep them collaborating with the “good cop” faction (the Democrats). They have never cared to hold their leaders accountable for crimes because they all fundamentally agree with the motivation and outcomes of those crimes. They are scrambling to figure out how to keep their gravy train running and they do not have an answer. They need to take drastic actions and they don’t know if they’ll work, so they need lightning rod presidents to absorb all the negativity and so they can perform “resistance” to maintain the allegiance of those they oppress.
The Rs are the bad cop and the Ds are the good cop. You do not work with the good cop just because they perform higher moral positioning or because they soothe your anxieties about or claim to be protecting you from the bad cop. They are collaborators. They are working for the same department, they have the same goals, they just need you to participate.
Merrick Garland who also did far too little far too late, are only two of many events in a long chain that built up to this.
More people didn’t vote than voted for Kamala or trump…
The problem is voter turnout, because people thought even if Kamala won, Dem.votersbwouldmt.
It ain’t that complicated.
lol what?
Yeah, you heard them. Everything trump does is Bidens fault. Don’t blame the people that voted for him, or the entire party continuing to enable him and not holding him accountable. Obviously this is entirely on Biden.
That’s not what he said. The turnout for Biden was lesser because his “nothing will fundamentally change” message was for the donor class and the literal opposite of what people needed to hear. Then Kamala was finally “allowed” to take over the campaign and when asked she essentially said “everything Biden did was great, I wouldn’t and won’t do anything different.” which was also the literal opposite of what people needed to hear. It’s what the monied class needed to hear though, but although their money can break a candidate they can’t force people to vote or be excited so the turnout wasn’t enough to beat the trump cult of personality.
Everything Trump did was Trump’s fault, but Bidens inaction and Kamalas intent to keep doing “nothing” doomed their campaign. Of course add to the mix “Israel is perfect and doesn’t ever do anything wrong, we’re never going to confront them” didn’t help either.
Except my entire point stands for trumps first term when he regularly broke the law and failed to be held accountable. Long before Biden was relevant again.
That’s fine, but that’s not what you said so that’s not what I was responding to. You were responding to a comment questioning what givesomefucks said. Now you’re saying it’s about Trump’s first term, but that’s not what the original comment was about.Edit: I think I was the one misreading the original comment
Democrats lay the foundations for the actions committed by Republicans, fascism didn’t happen in vacuum, it required the assistance if a perceived weak liberal party. Liberal voters refusing to hold their own people accountable led to where we are right now. You’ve told them they can do anything they want, including a genocide, and you will still come back for more. Your lesser evil, which doesn’t exist, allowed for a larger acceptable evil the next time, compounded over 50 years you’ve allowed the evil to grow so large someone like trump became possible.
‘lesser evil, which doesn’t exist’ ‘larger […] evil’
Compelling argument contradicting yourself in the same sentence.
It’s not a contradiction, you believe a lesser evil exists, your lesser evil grows at an ever expanding pace. At one time Democrats thought Dan Quayle misspelling potato was an outrage, now you turn a blind eye to genocide. See how that works, how it continually grows?
Lesser evil does not exist, only evil.
trump likely wouldn’t have won 2028 from blue collar run of the mill prison
Definitely wouldn’t have won from Gitmo
I think it’s pulling the bandaid off. The US was already on its way to being the capitalist beast it is. Getting eyes on this is great and gives the chance for other countries to get more leverage.
And the folks that weren’t planning on waking up got their call.
capitalist beast
I agree with the sentiment but this phrasing in this era makes it sound like a good thing. May I suggest monster?
I’m for second chances…when the stakes are lower. A waiter messes up a few people’s orders, you give him a chance to improve. A president of a country steals classified documents and attempts a violent coup to stay in power, you ban from ever being in a position of power again
The people capable of preventing him from to getting back into office condoned what he did. The oligarchy will never charge one of their own
