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I am pretty liberal, but I have a-lot of family members who are republican and live in the midwest and they feel like they’re in the same boat as you.
I do have to wonder where he gets all his support.
He gets his support from the belts. Bible Belt and Rust Belt.
The Bible Belt I can believe, though I am not sure about the Rust Belt. It may have been true in 2016, but I think the 2020 election paints a different picture.
When I think of the Rust Belt, I think of places like Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. Of those cities, it seems only Missouri is hardcore republican (despite St. Louis’s and Kansas City’s best efforts). Michigan seems to have swung pretty left (though there are definitely still red areas), Pennsylvania voted blue and Wisconsin is on the verge of undoing a-lot of republican gerrymandering. Ohio looks like a red-leaning mixed bag, but it doesn’t strike me as a republican bastion.
Granted, most of these are major battleground states with both parties in almost equal numbers, but their conservative populations don’t seem to be anymore Trump-oriented than other states.
I live in NY as does my father. He was a die hard Trump supporter until a few months ago when he switched to DeSantis - though he might have switched back to Trump. I try not to talk politics with him.
As recently as last year, he was telling me that the Republicans were going to impeach and remove Biden and Kamala and install Trump as President again. I pointed out that the House could definitely impeach, but removal would take two thirds of the Senate - a number the Republicans couldn't possibly reach. (This was before the midterms.) My father responded that the Democrats would vote along with the Republicans.
Yes, my father honestly believed that the Democrats would decide to ditch a Democratic President and Vice President so that Trump could come back to power. He was willing to make a bet that this would happen. I didn't take the bet only because I knew he'd either deny ever making the bet or would try to gaslight me what the bet actually was about.
It's baffling to me, every poll I see like this I'm just confused and sad
Yeah, it is very disheartening to see. I still remember going back and watching previous debates before Trump, and they were all so civil! Even in the most heated moments, the candidates were actually discussing ideas and policy!
I cannot wait for Trump to fade away from the political scene. It’s just so sad to see how he turns everything into a debate about him.
Honestly, I think that was a huge problem and why the right got pushed so far out there.
McCain and Romney were incredibly civil reasonable candidates. But they got attacked constantly, magazine covers of McCain having sharpened teeth calling him a war monger, Biden yelled at everyone that Romney wanted to put black people back in chains.
The republicans saw this and were like 'wtf, no they're reasonable, why are they getting attacked?' then Trump comes along and he gets (rightfully) attacked, and the republicans were numb to it. For 15 years, as long as I can remember, every republican candidate was trashed by the media, and called racist, sexist everything-ist, that once someone who actually fit that bill came along, the republicans were numb to it.
Don't be fooled, the 2004, 2008 and 2012 elections weren't civil, despite most candidates being reasonable.
I actually agree with your assessment, though I was specifically referring to the debates, not the elections cycles themselves.
The democrats (and the left in general) had a propensity for hyperbole that labeled McCain and Romney as dire threats to democracy. At the time, I think thought of this as a viable tactic to win the election (in a way not too dissimilar from LBJ’s “Daisy” campaign ad against Goldwater). However, it essentially turned them into the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” when Trump came around, because huge swaths simply refused to believe them.
So, I do actually agree that democrats helped to create Trump, or at least helped to create an environment that allowed him to rise. How we stop Trump now though is beyond me.