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What scares me shitless is the idea that Trump is what the US is and what the US has earned. Who's ready for that conversation?
100% this. Im German and I feel so strange that americans are choosing this guy for president. Not to be offensive, but damn.
As an American I feel that a majority of Americans loathe him. The issue lies in not all those people vote.
What scares me is that any Americans vote for him. How can you be so blinded and not see what a lying, cheating grifter that he is. The man is not intelligent, doesn’t read, is petty to a fault, vindictive, spiteful, narcissistic, nepotistic and just generally not a good person. Why would you choose that for a leader? It’s because you share those traits. That’s what scares me.
The issue lies in not all those people vote.
Partly. There's also the issue with the electoral college, because that makes some votes worth more than others (depending on where you live).
The crazy part is they think Biden makes the US look bad. When you present evidence to the contrary they say, "who cares what other countries think. "
My aunt thinks Jill Biden is controlling the country from the shadows and wants to run in place of Joe in 2024. We are fucked
Fellow German and... yeah. People joke about the Hitler comparisons, but you won't see us laughing. (I mean, in general, but that's a different topic.)
You should be offensive, we deserve it.
We picked an absolute trash human as our leader, a sizeable portion of which chose him specifically because they wanted him to hurt people (see: "he's not hurting the right people" woman.) That same group will often cite their desired outcome for any given thing is "to see liberals cry/get mad."
Hillary Clinton made a mistake by saying it out loud, but she was 100% correct when she said a large portion of Trump supporters are "a basket of deplorables." They absolutely are and are deserving of scorn.
I just hate how well propaganda works and how much money a random grifting asshole can make by parroting bullshit on YouTube, they boost each other and perpetuate this garbage era we're going through...
Please remember he never won the popular vote.
That too is scary. The guy didn't win and still ran the country. WTF
The American political system is literally incomprehensible.
Everyone votes and then you find out who the winner is. And then, at some later point you find out who the president will be, and it's not necessarily the same person for some reason.
And yet apparently democracy has happened so that's all.
They're called representatives for a reason.
We all should be. But that won't happen if people go out there and vote, godamnit.
And don't just vote to keep Trump out.
Vote to keep him and his party out of office.
We don't get a vote of no confidence. There's no box to check that says "No Trump".
Also, Hillary got more votes than Trump did, so simply having more voters on your side doesn't necessarily mean that Trump will lose.
So .. don't vote? There absolutely is a No Trump voting option - only one - and it's voting for Biden. There are several Yes Trump voting options: vote for Trump specifically, vote for a third party candidate, or vote for no one. It's not that complicated.
Do the electoral map and electoral college make this difficult to achieve? Of course. But we can only win if we vote, and are guaranteed to lose if we don't.
The fascists love voter apathy. Don't do their job for them.
True, but remember "did not vote" was higher then either Hillary or Trump first time around.
I was apathetic in 2016, I didn't care enough to vote for her, or know enough to vote against Trump.
I voted against Trump on 2020, and now I've seen enough I will vote for Biden in 2024, assuming he is the nominee. Otherwise, it's another vote against Trump.
My point is, there was a real disconnect back in 2016, and a lot of people just couldn't be bothered.
Trumps base has only gotten smaller, but the people who know and want to keep him out has grown. I suspect we will see both significant turn out, and significant voter suppression in 2024.
""In a normal society, a former president—let’s call him Donald Trump—who’s been indicted three times in under four months, on charges ranging from obstruction of justice to conspiracy to defraud the United States, would have absolutely no chance of ever being president again. It straight up would not be a scenario anyone would have to even contemplate; even if this individual were not in prison, the idea that they would be able to run for and win higher office once more would not compute.
But unfortunately, we don’t live in a normal society; instead, we live in a place in which millions of people not only still support Donald Trump, but grow fonder of him with every new criminal charge. Which means that, despite the aforementioned indictments*, the twice-impeached, thrice-indicted ex-president is dominating every other candidate for the Republican nomination, and currently looks to be the most likely GOP nominee in the 2024 general election. That, of course, scares the shit out of a lot of people—including, apparently, one Barack Obama. Whose fear, it has to be said, is extremely unsettling!
The Washington Post reports that during a private lunch with Joe Biden in late June, the 44th president “voiced concern about Donald Trump’s political strengths—including an intensely loyal following, a Trump-friendly conservative media ecosystem, and a polarized country—underlining his worry that Trump could be a more formidable candidate than many Democrats realize.” According to people familiar with the conversation, “Obama made it clear his concerns were not about Biden’s political abilities, but rather a recognition of Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party.”
Obama’s concerns are certainly warranted: In a New York Times/Siena poll released on Monday, Trump led his closest competition, Ron DeSantis, by a whopping 37 points. An even wilder data point that seems to validate Obama’s fears was that Trump beat DeSantis even among Republicans who believe he committed “serious federal crimes.” To be clear, that means these people believe Trump is a criminal, and want him to be president anyway.
As FiveThirtyEight optimistically notes, should Trump be convicted before November 5, 2024, voters might be less inclined to cast a ballot for him, and presumably they’d be even less so if he’s sentenced to time in prison. (In the case of the most recent indictment, two of the charges carry up to 20 years behind bars, and compared to her colleagues, the judge assigned to the case has imposed the toughest sentences for January 6 defendants.) Though, who knows!
As for a potential Trump-Biden rematch, another Times/Siena Poll poll published this week put the two in a tie, with each receiving 43% of the vote—which, for people who think democracy is worth preserving, is pretty pants-shittingly scary.
In somewhat happier news, Obama reportedly promised at the same June lunch “to do all he could to help the president get reelected.” And in a statement, a spokesman for Biden’s campaign told the Post: “President Biden is grateful for his unwavering support, and looks forward to once again campaigning side-by-side with President Obama to win in 2024 and finish the job for the American people.”
*And everything else!
Mike Pence giveth and Mike Pence taketh away
Yes, he tweeted yesterday that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President,” but then he basically suggested today that Trump was just listening to his lawyers’ advice when he tried to overturn the election—which, coincidentally, is a defense Trump is reportedly planning to use."
Honest question, how can we ever get out of this? Is it just human nature for most of the population to not have critical thinking skills? Is it possible to reach a world where the majority of people have even just a little empathy?
It's just so sad. It's so clear to anyone even kinda paying attention that we possess the technical capacity as a society to meet everyone's needs and eliminate so much human-caused suffering at the detriment to absolutely nobody. We could be working toward a society where everyone has community, safety, security, opportunity. We could do so much if all we did was kind of give a shit about each other.
But no. Let's elect the guy who mocked a disabled reporter, encourages white supremacy, committed treason, etc.
Donald Trump is just a guy. A shitty guy, but just a guy. He's not what is ruining the world, but the fact that so many Americans want to vote for that shitty guy as president shows that a massive portion of the population is also just some shitty person, and fuck if that doesn't just burn up all my hope for this world.
Education is the only way to overcome this tsunami of stupidity and misinformation. But it’s slow and costly.
Conservatives with a capital "c" are not brainwashed; they're not tricked; they're not progressives who've been misinformed. Trump is who they are and what they want.
The Dominion discovery documents demonstrate that Fox News opinion hacks changed their coverage to appease the deplorables. In the case of the big lie, it was the viewers who radicalized right media, not the other way round. Maybe it's been that way the whole time?
The deplorables number in the millions. We need a plan to defeat and marginalize them in our democracy, not fantasies about changing what they are.
the fact that so many Americans want to vote for that shitty guy as president shows that a massive portion of the population is also just some shitty person
They are scared and have been convinced that he is the only one that can help them. They are not just "shitty people voting for a shitty person" they really believe that the deep state is out to get Donald and these charges are overblown and that Donald will really save America. They won't realize that Trump only cares about Trump; even if Trump gets another term and burns down the government and fucks everyone they still will think Donald is just one week away from unveiling his plan to fix it all.
Too much of our democracy relies on good faith
100% true.
We also like to parrot shit like "no one is above the law" while requiring perfect situations before ever questioning elected leaders like the president when they blatantly break the law. The US has inverse responsibility, where we blame the poor for being poor and give the wealthy every possible chance to buy their way out of crimes.
Look, anyone with a working brain should be worried about the prospect, because if he wins, then that means we're in for the worst four years (and probably much longer than four years) of our lives here in the United States. I don't think we come back from that.
If Trump wins re-election, I think it's entirely non-hyperbolic to say that democracy in this country is over. Think of the things he tried to do with some, obviously-too-small, guard rails. He attempted a literal coup. Literally throw away votes. Literally has one of his chief advisors saying that if people protested said coup, they would use the insurrection act, or more directly, use the military to put down to put down those protesting the coup. There is a very small number of things that prevented this from happening, not the least of which is just a tiny handful of people being like "uh, we can't actually do this, right?"
We haven't come back from his actual four years yet, and probably won't for a very long time. The prospect of him returning to finish the country off is a nightmare.
As should we all.
I'm more surprised that he's allowed to try for another term.
I'm not, USA politics is pure corruption wrapped up nice with a bow. It's a joke and that's been extremely apparent since 2016
Bush pretty much set the stage for all this shit with his stolen election, fear mongering, illegal wars....
We thought Obama could fix us, but we underestimated the amount of racism in this country.
So the rednecks lashed out at seeing a black, kind, educated, honest, funny man in power, so they decided to elect the exact opposite of him.
The USA was as inch away from becoming a dictatorship. You're lucky to just have pure corruption.
2016? Let me tell you about a little supreme court decision from 2000 called Bush v. Gore.
Obama has the resources to flee the country. The rest of us do not. What are we as individuals do when half of the country decides to abandon democracy and the rule of law? Asking for a friend…
Part of me, I guess the defeatist part, just kinda wants to get it over with.
I have no problem with allowing him to run (as of today) because (as of today) there's nothing prohibiting him. I do have a problem with more than a third of this country willing to vote for him. How stupid and/or bigoted can we possibly get?
The founding fathers of this country established rules that (as of today) both ensured and prevented what's currently transpiring. If it were the case that a subset of the government were trying to oust a political leader, The People should still have a say as to who represents them and bring "balance"(?) to the government. But also, if The People are being a bunch of idiots, the Electoral College can overrule their stupidity. It might be worth noting that the founding fathers also owned other humans as if they were livestock and didn't believe a woman had the same rights as a man. So, to say "some mistakes were made" would be understating it. RANKED. CHOICE. VOTING.
It's good to be concerned. If that treasonous rapist trump got in again, it's game over for freedom and democracy globally.