- Joined
- Jun 18, 2018
- Messages
- 73,456
- Reaction score
- 76,001
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Progressive
"Harris decried Trump as a fascist, a petty tyrant. She called him divisive, angry, aggrieved. And that was a smart case to make if, deep down, most voters held democracy dear (except maybe they didn’t) and if so many of them weren’t already angry (except they were). ...But the voters heard her case, and they still found for the defendant. A politician who admires dictators and says he’ll be one for a day, whom former top aides regard as a threat to the Constitution — a document he believes can be “terminated” when it doesn’t suit him — has won power not for one day but for nearly 1,500 more. What was considered abnormal, even un-American, has been redefined as acceptable and reaffirmed as preferable.
The Harris campaign labored under the misapprehension, as did the Biden campaign before it, that more exposure to Trump would repel voters. They must simply have forgotten the mayhem of his presidency, the distaste that the former president surely inspired. ...It didn’t. America knew his type, too, and it liked it. Trump’s disinhibition spoke to and for his voters. He won because of it, not despite it. His critics have long argued that he is just conning his voters — making them feel that he’s fighting for them when he’s just in it for himself and his wealthy allies — but part of Trump’s appeal is that his supporters recognize the con, that they feel that they’re in on it.
...The rationalization of 2016 — that Trump was a protest vote by desperate Americans trying to send a message to the establishment of both parties — is no longer operative. The grotesque rally at Madison Square Garden, that carnival of insults against everyone that the speakers do not want in their America, was not an anomaly but a summation. It was Trumpism’s closing argument, and it landed.
...“We’re not going back,” Harris told us. The tragedy is not that this election has taken us back, but that it shows how there are parts of America’s history that we’ve never fully gotten past.
...The way to render Trump abnormal is not to insist that he is, or to find more excuses, or to indulge in the great and inevitable second-guessing of Democratic campaign strategy. It begins by recognizing that who we are is decided not only on Election Day — whether 2024 or 2016, or 2028 for that matter — but every day. Every day that we strive to be something other than what we’ve become."
Link
It makes sense when you study our violent, racist history.
The Harris campaign labored under the misapprehension, as did the Biden campaign before it, that more exposure to Trump would repel voters. They must simply have forgotten the mayhem of his presidency, the distaste that the former president surely inspired. ...It didn’t. America knew his type, too, and it liked it. Trump’s disinhibition spoke to and for his voters. He won because of it, not despite it. His critics have long argued that he is just conning his voters — making them feel that he’s fighting for them when he’s just in it for himself and his wealthy allies — but part of Trump’s appeal is that his supporters recognize the con, that they feel that they’re in on it.
...The rationalization of 2016 — that Trump was a protest vote by desperate Americans trying to send a message to the establishment of both parties — is no longer operative. The grotesque rally at Madison Square Garden, that carnival of insults against everyone that the speakers do not want in their America, was not an anomaly but a summation. It was Trumpism’s closing argument, and it landed.
...“We’re not going back,” Harris told us. The tragedy is not that this election has taken us back, but that it shows how there are parts of America’s history that we’ve never fully gotten past.
...The way to render Trump abnormal is not to insist that he is, or to find more excuses, or to indulge in the great and inevitable second-guessing of Democratic campaign strategy. It begins by recognizing that who we are is decided not only on Election Day — whether 2024 or 2016, or 2028 for that matter — but every day. Every day that we strive to be something other than what we’ve become."
Link
It makes sense when you study our violent, racist history.
