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Seriously, what the f*** is keeping Donald Trump in this presidential race?

Kamala Harris running a damn near flawless campaign, with just a month 1/2 of campaigning. She’s been holding rallies nonstop with Tim Walz & not making her talking points about her race or gender like Hillary. She’s offering expanded healthcare, reinvestments back into public housing, wants to take on corporate greed, protect reproductive rights and chose a pro labor, pro education running mate.

Yet, she’s either barely leading or ties in most polls with a guy that:

Is a convicted felon.

Liable Sexual Predator.

Gets sentenced in November.

Has several more pending cases.

Increased Drone Strikes by 300%. (Joe Biden dosent use drones anymore).

Illegally killed an Iranian General unprovoked with a missle strike.

Increased tensions in Israel/Palestine with the Abraham Accords.

Wants war with Mexico (his words).

Tried to coup Venezuela.

Will bend the knee for Netanyahu’s potential war with Iran.

Lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% (lowest in history).

Obvious tax cuts for the rich.

Told people to drink bleach during the pandemic.

Is the main driving force for America’s current division.

Constantly attacks marginalized groups.

Tried to steal the 2020 election (Find Me 11,000 votes in GA).

Did Fake Elector Slates to pressure Mike Pence to not certify the 2020 election.

Caused a riot on the capitol that lead to his OWN supporters dying.

Just got washed by Harris in the last debate, was completely unprepared on anything but immigration (“I have concepts of a plan”).

And so much more. So seriously what is it? Is it just the attraction to bigotry/racism? Is it to end “wokeness”. Is it because Kamala is a woman of color? You can’t use the both sides argument like Hilary or Biden, Kamala is the obvious better choice. Could you imagine if Kamala had as much baggage as Trump? The media would lose their minds.

Seriously, how the f*** is this guy still in the race?

Chocrates ,

Why is he still in the race or why are his supporters?

For him I think it’s obvious. Narcissism and the fact that he has a lot of federal crimes in the courts that he can stop when he is elected.

His supporters are more complicated. He pretty decently still owns the GOP so even if they are getting cold feet, they don’t seem to have a plan to overthrow him. I feel like they are planning on just stonewalling for 4 more years and then try to win the next one and cut the checks to the billionaires then.

I got nothing on his base though. I haven’t understood them for 10 years now. Not sure I ever will.

DarkCloud ,

Part of the checks cut get reinvested in the propaganda that gets more checks cut. It’s a whole corrupt system, as attested to by this list of think tanks backing someone like a Jordan Peterson:

reddit.com/…/jordan_peterson_and_the_think_tanks/

…you can research most rightwing media and personalities and make lists and connections (some if Trump’s for instance run through Roy Cohn, the original red scare and the mafia for instance).

It’s likely the same for some leftwing individuals to. It’s the reproduction of this culture, and the economic loops that perpetuate the toxicities of the current systems.

…and it will keep going long after Trump is gone.

coffee_with_cream ,

The Overton window has shifted dramatically in the last 10 years. He represents aversion to that

DarkCloud , (edited )

Propagandizing a proclaimed shift, and there being an actual shift are two different things.

Trump’s side have proclaimed a shift which isn’t actually a significant reality. Things change over a decade, but nothing notably significant has changed in terms of the over all running of the system, or the reproduction of culture/society.

It’s mild progress being pushed by right wing propaganda as “civilization ending chaos”.

coffee_with_cream ,

I would be cautious about writing off an entire side’s viewpoint as overdramatic. When they do that to the left, does anyone change their mind?

This is all about division.

We need to work on understanding the root cause of issues and working towards fixing that.

I think economics is actually at the core of the problem.

A lot of people don’t have the basics right now, and they lash out at anything they can to try to fix it.

DarkCloud ,

I didn’t write them off as overly dramatic, nothing of the sort. They’re dangerous (for some of the reasons you point to, division), and it’s a very well organized, well funded, and well oiled machine that keeps them dangerous. Funded by technocratic and Libertarian billionaires.

So I agree with you, that it’s an economic issue, but we can’t just all sit down and “fix it” (that’s a pipe dream) - you can’t sit down with those invested think tank billionaires to solve the problem any more than you can play Jenga with someone who wants to smash the tower before it’s built.

It doesn’t work that way.

coffee_with_cream ,

Thanks! Good response. I think it is always worth the effort to try and understand and talk to people and use words to convince them. I think everyone can be convinced, we just have to pull the right levers.

But if it’s the community’s opinion that that is not an option, and only violence is the answer. I have very low hopes for our country’s future.

FlashMobOfOne ,
@FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world avatar

What’s keeping Trump in the race is the fact that most Americans are working 2-3 jobs to main a basic standard of living and have to actually look at their grocery, utility, and medical bills.

Crazy doesn’t seem so crazy when the other candidate promised to make your life better and failed.

sexual_tomato , (edited )

I have to do the same thing but my natural response isn’t to attack others based on physical traits or religious beliefs. My natural response is to figure out who’s hoarding the most resources and convince them it’s in their best interest to share lest others take a more violent approach at a more desperate time.

shalafi ,

Nothing I’ve read has ever explained Trump’s appeal like this article.

cracked.com/…/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-t…

Nothing in there makes a cute soundbite. “They’re racist!”, is far easier than having to digest what the author lays down.

Seriously, read it. It’s important.

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Honestly, hadn’t read this one and it’s got some seriously solid points in it.

AwesomeLowlander ,

That was an amazing read.

rustydomino ,
@rustydomino@lemmy.world avatar

It’s a good article. It explains rural America. It doesn’t explain the well off assholes living in Huntington Beach CA. It doesn’t explain the well off assholes living in suburban Inland SoCal. It doesn’t explain rich privileged shitheads like Musk and Thiel.

magnetosphere ,
@magnetosphere@fedia.io avatar

It doesn’t explain them because that’s who the author assumes he’s speaking to.

roscoe ,

Exactly. I get the frustrations of the son and grandson of factory workers that finds it hard to imagine anything more than working at Walmart wanting to tear it all down. What I don’t understand is my neighbor in Dana Point.

Today ,

Good read. Thanks!

Wav_function ,

Good read thanks

tacosanonymous ,

I remember reading this and thinking it had some points. Then I remembered that despite having some of the same issues, we have vastly different responses. When I’m lied to and beaten, I don’t look to the person that did it for help.

For instance, the church being the only social space. They could have a community center or a library. Sure funds are hard to come by but what kind of political party would even consider that? The answer is probably further left than democrats but fifty years of red scare won’t let anyone accept that.

The “writing them off” part comes from their willingness to not ostracize evil people when they get something they want. We can all be bullheaded or blinded by bias from time to time but accountability and decency shouldn’t be political.

gamermanh ,
@gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

They could have a community center or a library. Sure funds are hard to come by but what kind of political party would even consider that?

Funny enough here in the rural parts of CA I’ve seen Raleys and Holiday Markets putting in large community areas with amenities like cheap (sometimes free) printers, office space, children’s areas, etc.

They’re not perfect or anything but its wild to see capitalist behemoths pull off something actually close to what the ideal would be, even if it’s likely to manipulate people somehow

Make it law that communities with a dollar general or fuck it any grocery store we all have to eat have a community center of halfway decent quality in it like those places have done willingly and you’ll have an improvement, guaranteed

DarkCloud , (edited )

This explains a demographic analysis without explaining anything meaningful or unique. The article could be about any post-Regan Republican campaign (such demographic analysis is used by all modern campaigns, on bith sides), so it wasn’t a satisfying article. Combined with all the pop culture references, it comes off as quite immature and an unextraordinary explanation. Mediocre.

danciestlobster ,

I mean it’s definitely an interesting read. I’m just not sure what to actually do with this information. The fundamental problem feels like a generally small bubble, and at times a specific disinterest in venturing outside of it. If anyone’s whole worldview is shaped entirely by their tiny rural hometown, it’s easy to understand why others with radically different backgrounds feel scary.

But at the end of the day, it doesn’t feel like a good enough reason to drag the rest of the country through rigid christofacist moral dogmas and support the industries that prop up those small towns at the expense of the planet as a whole. But as long as those people aren’t interested in venturing outside their communities and meeting other different people, im not sure how to convince them of this.

Maybe if the cost of living becomes too untenable in major cities and work from home continues in certain industries rural areas will see more growth and this will improve somewhat? Idk

BigDiction ,

Great read. There’s 70+ million people out there choosing to vote for Trump, why? Even if the answer is complicated you can’t dismiss them all outright.

I see a decent amount of comments painting all republics with one brush. I think it’s low effort and unproductive.

Waldowal ,
@Waldowal@lemmy.world avatar

I feel like this is just gift wrapping being a dumb racist hick in prettier paper. They are scared of cities because their full of black people, gays, and Mexicans. They like assholes who show the same level of hate as they do - who will keep the black people, gays, and Mexicans away. And they like someone who justifies hiding behind religion so they can tell themselves that God made them this dumb and rascist. So they can delude themselves into thinking they are really the good guy.

jjjalljs ,

Low density places are always going to kind of suck on a lot of metrics. You just don’t have the people to support a lot of stuff. I’m sorry that small towns are dying but like there’s not really a reason they’d thrive.

Cities have been important since like the dawn of history. At least farms grow food. Suburban sprawl is the worst.

Cost of living needs to go down and wages up, but no one should be vying for low density.

aesthelete , (edited )

I remember the summer of 2016, when I was playing Pokemon Go in the parks and people I had never talked to and that lived nearby were playing it next to me. We were all celebrating when we caught a pokemon when we were after, and comparing which ones we’d caught with each other.

At the time I thought…who would buy Trump’s conman routine? Who actually thinks that the country is in a terrible enough place that we need to elect this person who seems to actively hate the country and seemed to want to set the entire thing on fire?

I left my Californian home and went back to my original state to visit my family. We went to several different areas of the state in fall of 2016 because my wife was from a rural area and I originally grew up in a slightly more suburban area. I saw the signs in the yards, I saw the discontent, and I saw how people did not seem to be reacting the same way to his craziness. I saw how casually they would put on his rants in the background while talking about other issues. I saw how some of them were amused by his antics. It had been a couple of years since I had last been back and it once again struck me how much worse the area appeared to be from the last time I was there. I was in a rural area when the “Access Hollywood” tape dropped. People seemed to visibly shrink at even the mention of the news. I thought he was done for, and that this was a bridge too far for his supporters to cross. That people would vote third party, or not vote at all. I did not get the sense that my thoughts were shared by those around me.

When I came back to California, people were talking about the debates. It was sunny and nice out, and people would talk about the projects they had going on in their houses, or they’d talk about work related affairs. People were sometimes amused by Trump’s antics, but everyone uniformly thought it was impossible for him to win the election. Having seen what I had seen in the weeks prior, I was no longer one of these people. “They’ll never let him win”, one of my co-workers said. I was stunned…who are “they”? Does the rest of the country actually believe this?

It turns out quite a few of them did. Many people thought there was just simply no way that Trump would win, because either the system was already rigged against him and would not allow him to win, or because the country was just not in dire enough straits to elect such a madman (as I once thought).

Hindsight is 20/20 but when I thought it was bizarre that he was even a viable candidate at one point in 2016, and I saw the decaying state where I grew up, I thought “if he wins the election, then we are in a much worse state as a country than I thought”. And we undoubtedly are.

Of course he won, but the reason that I have this somewhat rambling response to this question is that the answer to “why is he still in the race?” ultimately comes down to the overall state of this country.

He is in this race because this is where we are as a country: barely able to imagine a possible future that is brighter than the present, because we are still caught up in degenerative non-sense that keeps us thinking that our broken down towns, and our poor social bonds are caused by some horde of “others” instead of their true causes: our ever-widening wealth inequality, our ever-decaying moral responsibilities to each other, and our national instinct to absolve ourselves of our responsibilities by claiming that not only is it correct to be forever self-serving, but that even the idea of altruism is a lie.

half_built_pyramids ,

even the idea of altruism is a lie.

Wow. You’re right. Helping others is as politicized as abortion. One of the tribes can’t even fathom uplifting their neighbors because that could be equated to socialism and it would get them kicked out of their in-group.

Kaboom ,

Better policy namely. I mean, the Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot with gun control. Like honestly, do they need medical help?

Buffalox ,

But this is not even true, it’s just something Republicans say.

Kaboom ,

Did you not hear about the assault weapon ban?

nightwatch_admin ,

Stop getting “news” from Truff Surrshial please. See politifact.com/…/kamala-harris-once-backed-mandat…

Kaboom ,

I didn’t say “mandatory assault weapons buybacks”, I said another AWB, like the one passed in 1994 if I must be more specific.

Buffalox ,

That expired 20 years ago, oh such horror!! 🤣🤣🤣

Kaboom ,

Yeah, so they showed they did it once and can do it again

Diddlydee ,

Please name, for the sake of argument, 3 good policies Trump has. He himself has been unable to mention one in any of his recent delusional rants. He has nothing but bigotry and narcissism.

Kaboom ,

Compared to Harris?

Gun control.

Border security.

Tariffs.

Pretty easy.

Sylaran ,
@Sylaran@lemmy.world avatar

What gun control? His platform is just to let everyone keep their guns, school shootings be damned

Kaboom ,

Yes. That’s better than an AWB to a large chunk of America.

samus12345 ,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

Americans and their fucking obsession with guns. It’s so, so, stupid.

dhork ,

Many Conservatives have been conditioned to stop looking for facts and believe what the TV tells them. Trump admitted as much during the debate. When challenged on the cat thing, he dismissed the reporter’s research and said that he believes it because he saw it on TV. His voters will, too.

Roger Ailes was Nixon’s media consultant during Watergate, and the lesson he learned was that if the media was on Nixon’s side, he could have gotten away with it. Ailes went on to run Fox News. That is no accident.

MimicJar ,

It’s honestly madness.

The former President, running a multi-million dollar campaign, with access to the best information in the world, has nothing to say but rambling “but the TV said, but the TV said!”

Just an absolute fool.

dhork ,

But he’s always been like this. He had the world’s largest intelligence apparatus at its service, but didn’t believe what they said when it contradicted what his buddies Vlad and MBS told him.

MimicJar ,

Oh I agree, you just want to believe that even the world’s stupidest person could eventually learn something. It’s not like this is a case of him being deliberately obtuse, which we often see, he truly believes his own nonsense.

Aviandelight ,

My mother in law who’s a staunch Republican told my husband that she shouldn’t have to learn anything new at her age. This is the type of people we’re dealing with. They are willfully and spitefully ignorant.

ShepherdPie , (edited )

People eat that shit up because it’s they same way they’re fed all their propaganda too. They think Trump is just like them and not some NY socialite.

DarkCloud ,

Conservatives who are capable of good quality research, and honest self-reflection barely exist because those two qualities often destroy their affiliations to modern conservativism as it stands today.

So some become neocon-neoliberal hybrids, others become economic Libertarians or Fascists in sheeps clothing, but most, are just as they seem - people who feel betrayed and shut out by the prevailing liberalisms of the day (often personified in the form of an ex-wife, ex-boss, or minority on the street), and it’s something they don’t want to investigate or research honestly.

In fact, most conservatives of this “follower” ilk, are deeply and psychologically invested in their sickness, in maintaining their “honest dogma” as it explains past traumas and the state of their lives in easy and convenient ways.

Get them together in groups and it becomes a self-reenforcing system. Self-propagating. It’s a self-sustaining set of problems and problem mindsets.

Some for conspiracy theorists, gets to be a real problem when they get a platform too.

tiefling , (edited )

It’s simple. Bigotry and greed. Trump plays to people’s fears that “others” will soon have the same rights they do while also assuring his rich handlers that he will make them richer. He’s convinced the poor to cut off their nose to spite their face.

Conservatism is a mental illness, it can’t be defeated with logic and reasoning

InternetCitizen2 ,

it can’t be defeated with logic and reasoning

YouTube channel Knowing Better made a video about the Seventh Day Adventist. Basically the same conclusion.

BackOnMyBS ,
@BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place avatar

Found it! It’s almost 3 hrs long, so you know what that means: a glass of wine, your favorite easy chair, and of course, this YouTube video streaming on your home system. So, go on, and indulge yourself. That’s right, kick off your shoes, put your feet up, lean back and just enjoy the rational documentary. After all, knowledge soothes even the savage lemming.

Banichan ,
@Banichan@dormi.zone avatar

Offspring?

BackOnMyBS ,
@BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place avatar

Yeppers, peppers! 🫑

tburkhol ,

Have an updoot, Offspring-fan.

Zachariah ,
@Zachariah@lemmy.world avatar

Have an updoot, recognizer of Offspring-fans.

DogPeePoo , (edited )

FOX “News” has effectively divided, conditioned and massaged Republicans for decades to regurgitate the message disseminated by Rupert Murdoch through their favorite flavor talking heads (Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and more recently Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters).

They went from ‘Russia bad’ in the 1980’s to ‘Russia good’ and ‘America had it wrong’. The viewers lack critical thought under scrutiny and regurgitate the talking points of their favorite broadcasters.

shalafi , (edited )

Yep, I lay the majority of our political insanity on Fox’s door. Look, we all know they’re the GOP’s propaganda arm, but how many of you have actually watched a good bit?

I was stuck with a week of it during the Snowden revelations. In the space of an entire week, I didn’t hear a single word on what was worldwide news. Stunning, and I still can’t explain it, but it happened. Point being, a lot of the lies are in what they don’t say. Early afternoon of 01/06, not a blip on the website. (Which BTW, is far more sane than the TV version.) I checked the wayback machine and FOx reported nothing until hours after kick off. I presume they prayed it would blow over or at least die down. Imagine the spin control behind the scenes! Hell, even Tucker Carlson pleased with Trump to make a sane statement and cut it off.

After hearing “Obama” thousands of times, over and over and over, I was sick of him! The whole time my friend’s step-mom was screaming at the screen, “The KKK ought to do their got damned JOB!” These people sat in their armchairs 24/7 (never saw them go to their bedroom), smoking weed and watching nothing but Fox. We tried to put on a movie or another show exactly twice and it promptly got switched back.

One time I was stuck with Fox at the doctor’s office, some kind of round-table show going on. A metric showing black people doing better under the Obama administration came up, something about pay I think. One of the hosts slams his fist of the table and shouted, “Obama’s a RACIST!” Constantly listen to crap like that and you are, eventually, getting brainwashed.

DarkCloud ,

It’s not conservativism, conservativism has been captured by think tanks funded by oil and banking billionaires. They’re framed conservativism, gutted it, and replaced its insides with Libertarianism (and sometimes technocratic fascism), as that’s what gives them the lowest taxes, the most corporate welfare, union busting capabilities, and defends their wealth accumulation most efficiently.

They’re not good members of society, this is demonstrated in Trump’s fascism (which is based on Roy Cohn’s fascism). It seeks to destroy society, the nation, and government.

Emerald ,

Constantly attacks marginalized groups.

That’s a feature, not a bug

EdvinYazbekinstein ,

There’s a lot of reasons people have already mentioned, but I’ll add this.

Your applying logic and reasoning to people who are illogical and unreasonable…

radix ,
@radix@lemmy.world avatar

If the race were between The Literal Devil ® and Jesus Christ (D), the vote total would be 45%-55% just based on the letter they choose to run after their name.

Policy doesn’t matter when people base their entire personality on their political party identification.

dhork ,

Jesus was a socialist Jew. We had one of those run for President, too, but couldn’t make it past the Democratic primary.

MeekerThanBeaker ,

But see how evil he looks…

/s

Birdy Sanders

I_Has_A_Hat ,

If you completely forget everything about Bernie; who he is, what he’s done, how he speaks, everything; he does look like a CEO who would lay off half his staff for a discount on a sandwich. But thats more because he’s an old white guy in a suit and they all look like that

Feathercrown ,

He has joyful eyes

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

Wanting us to become fiscally responsible, like not get into new wars into we’ve paid off previous ones? i.e. pay less money to the rich via the Military Industrial complex?

Wanting to tax the wealthy?

Wanting to redistribute money to take care of the poor?

Yeah, obviously evil indeed 😂 (from the POV of “I got mine, now I’m pulling up the ladder🪜”).

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA ,
@HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world avatar

needs more puppies and rainbows

vaxhax ,

He got my first D primary vote… but NOT MY LAST.

lath ,

Jesus is a Mexican name. Check mate.

dwemthy ,

Like the real Jesus would run as a Democrat. At least with the Devil you know where you stand! /s

OlinOfTheHillPeople ,

Closer to 50/50 with the electoral college.

Today ,

And it pisses me off that people will vote for the dipshit because he’s an R, but i would vote for a half-dead horny toad on the other side.

circuitfarmer ,
@circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

At one time it would have sounded like a conspiracy theory, but you don’t get here without a massive disinformation campaign.

Trump’s supporters have been so programmed to accept everything he says at face value or, in some cases, just to ignore what he actually said in favor of the party’s updated spin. In all cases, they believe it is impossible that he could do any wrong, so any semblance of incongruity or poor leadership or any negative aspect of Trump at all must be due to lies of his opponents – even if that means the entire system would have to be rigged against him to an extremely unlikely degree.

The last time the world saw these tactics used to such an extreme extent and with such success required a widespread campaign of so-called “denazification” after a very prolonged war.

DarkCloud ,

The left have been asleep at the wheel since 2014 (this is the smaller of the two problems), and centrist neoliberals will not wake up because they’re inculcated into the systems that keep them asleep at the wheel (this is the larger of the two problems, and likely includes establishment leftists like Kamala).

It’s the problems of “the one dimensional man” where we can’t even think outside of the systems we know to be the problem… and most people don’t even make any serious efforts to try to.

barsquid ,

In 2010 a group of unelected theocrats decided that billionaires can put however much money they want into propaganda. That’s on top of the most widely watched media in the nation already being a billionaire’s propaganda.

They have used this power to terrify their voting base into action. Their voting base are fear-addicted racists who willingly allowed themselves to be brainwashed.

ivanafterall ,
@ivanafterall@lemmy.world avatar

Yep. There were literal meetings on Capitol Hill between Republicans and billionaires planning to buy the failing newspapers for more propaganda reach. I was invited and my then-boss attended.

Blackout ,
@Blackout@fedia.io avatar

Hatred of brown people and Adderall

ivanafterall ,
@ivanafterall@lemmy.world avatar
  1. Yes, 2. Huh?
hperrin ,

Racism and cult mentality.

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