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> If this is what America wants, then it is what America deserves. It's not really "what America wants". You are drastically overestimating how democratic the

> If this is what America wants, then it is what America deserves. It's not really "what America wants". You are drastically overestimating how democratic the US system is if you think the fact that a very narrow majority picked one of the preselected candidates means that candidate has any kind of broad popular mandate. It's probably what a double-digit percentage of Americans want, but certainly not the majority, and only barely the majority preferred it over the other extremely unpopular candidate.

ein0p 2y ago
Nobody picked Harris. She hasn't won a primary even once. Trump won it three times. The primary is the only step in the whole election process where the actual "democracy" can even remotely happen.
- monero-xmr 2y ago
  The truth is so painful that I’m not sure people will mentally accept this for a while
- lpa22 2y ago
  Not sure who is downvoting this, it’s the truth and the exact reason dems lost
  - ein0p 2y ago
    I don't know why you'd expect any other reaction from a site where 80% of the readership loves to get high on their own supply from WaPo and CNN and reject the reality. The reality is we're 37T in debt, we're on the brink of a nuclear war due to our harebrained regime change efforts halfway around the globe, and your average American is barely surviving at this point. The latter, by the way is abundantly clear from the polls, too, including exit polls. I'm not sure the electorate particularly cares about the right to third trimester abortion or DEI as the mainstream media would like us to believe, especially when the DNC lost the airtight control over the narrative, and its ability to manufacture consent is getting more limited by the day. In 2020 they had enough control to elect a person who can't string two words together without a teleprompter. In 2024 they already could not. And the grip on the narrative is going to weaken from here on out. If they can still learn, they'll have to actually run capable candidates, who might even dare to have their own opinions about things. That's healthy and good. What doesn't seem feasible anymore are unilaterally anointed candidates who go from "nobody" to "our only hope" at the stroke of a pen of some unelected, non-replaceable bureaucrat.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago
  [dead]
- bena 2y ago
  That's not entirely true. In 2020, a lot of states just cancelled their Republican primaries and pledged their delegates to Trump. Mainly because it's assumed that the incumbent will be the candidate. And all-in-all, that's fair play. The GOP and DNC are private entities and they get to choose who they put forward as a candidate in the manner they choose. Voting in presidential primaries is fairly recent. The DNC picked Harris, as is their right.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  Fine and true, but setting aside the principle of the matter, did anyone actually prefer Biden over Harris? I held my nose as I voted for Biden in the primary, but I don't even recall anybody else being on the ballot. I was elated that he stepped down and endorsed his VP. Admittedly, it sets a scary precedent, I certainly won't disagree. But setting the implications aside, was it really the wrong choice? Did Biden really fare better than Harris in the general? I certainly don't think he would have. I think Trump's margin of victory would have been even higher against Biden.
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    > Fine and true, but setting aside the principle of the matter, did anyone actually prefer Biden over Harris? Probably not, but does it matter? Biden was also not chosen in anything resembling a democratic way. US political primaries are not democratic. The general population being presented a choice between two options that were selected by two ultra-partisan entrenched entities is not democracy. To have a system somewhat resembling democracy you would have to either (1) open primaries to everyone regardless of party registration with no control by partisan organizations over who gets nominated or supported (which would mostly defeat the point of having political parties at all) or (2) have a more proportional system where it is meaningfully possible to create new political parties that gain a nonzero share of representation.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      How did the "boot on head" guy run in the primaries? There has to be very little vetting, if any. Primaries where party members vote seems very much more democratic, than having the party elite decide in some meeting.
      - School-Cotton 2y ago
        > Primaries where party members vote seems very much more democratic, than having the party elite decide in some meeting. It only seems that way to you because it's practically impossible for there to be more than two parties with significant representation. If anyone could start a party and gain support, you would have enough parties to choose from that it's much more likely you'd find one who matches your beliefs, regardless of how they choose their candidates.
j0hnyl 2y ago
How is ~8% (eyeballing) of the popular vote a narrow majority in politics? It's a pretty substantial majority. Apathetic non-voters don't really count because they don't care.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  > Apathetic non-voters An important thing to keep in mind in American politics is the massive amount of voter suppression. Not voting doesn't inherently mean you were lazy or apathetic. It may well mean your vote was suppressed by any of a hundred tactics. Closing polling places in blue regions, requiring in-person voting on-the-day, restricting early voting, restricting vote by mail, failing at sending people ballots, spuriously dropping voter registrations...
  - blodstone 2y ago
    20M is too much of a number to be attributed to voter suppression alone. I think the main issue here is still apathetic non-voters.
    - yonaguska 2y ago
      20M ballots is not the same as 20M voters. I don't understand where those 20M people went. Kamala checked a lot more boxes than Biden.
  - bhelkey 2y ago
    > requiring in-person voting on-the-day Exactly three states don't offer early voting to all voters [1] and none of those three were battleground states. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-early-voting-mail-ballot-states/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-early-voting-mail-ballot-st...
  - xg15 2y ago
    All that is true, and to a great degree the reason why the concept of "swing states" (or rather the "non-swing states") even exists. It does not explain however why almost all the swing states aligned with Trump this time.
spacedcowboy 2y ago
[flagged]
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - kernal 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - subsection1h 2y ago
      > America has rejected your ideology, your violence LOL. Red states have the highest firearm death rates: https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-per-100000/ https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rat...
      - selimthegrim 2y ago
        I think they were talking about the literal assassinations
    - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
      > warmongering Republicans calling Democrats warmongers is probably one of those hypocritical things I'm seeing in recent years.
      - RpmReviver 2y ago
        That's because you're confusing the old definition of republicans and maga The republican party is now maga, they are not the same the maga base has been pretty consistent on being antiwar
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Exactly. Nobody waved a magic wand and conjured up Trump, causing people to become cruel and selfish. They are already cruel and selfish, and they simply found their man. It's not like people are just going to just stop being this way once he's gone.
slashtom 2y ago
I think you're double speaking here, the majority of the population who were eligible to vote, voted for Donald Trump in 2024.
- doubleyou 2y ago
  Less than 1/3 of eligible voters voted for trump in this election.... how did you come up with your numbers???? 78/244 (millions) https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/10-things-to-know-2024-presidential-election/ https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/10-things-to-know-202...
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  The majority of the population who were eligible to vote, and actually decided to vote, voted for Trump, yes. That's not "America" for two reasons: "the majority of the population who were eligible to vote, and actually decided to vote" is not the same thing as "Americans", and choosing which option you prefer in a binary choice (where you have no influence on the two options) does not mean you like the choice you made.
onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
Trump has had a ~43% approval rating from basically the beginning except for a very brief dip around Jan 6.
kenjackson 2y ago
Why do people keep stating that the choices are somehow not Democratic. Who else beats Trump? Seriously. It's not like there were some great candidates out there that just didn't have the party machinery behind them. These were honestly, IMO, two of the best that the country had to offer. Sure, I personally would've loved to have Pete Buttigieg as President, but I also realize that he loses to Trump 10 out of 10 times. The fact is America would be happy with no one. But we got who America wanted -- even if its not who I wanted.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  > Why do people keep stating that the choices are somehow not Democratic. Because they're not. It's virtually impossible to start a meaningful new party in the US due to the FPTP system, so you are stuck with whoever the two legacy parties decide to nominate according to their own rules. Compare Germany: nine parties represented in the federal parliament, a proportional system ensuring that getting 50%+1 of the vote doesn't mean you get 100% of the power, and relative ease of splitting and fusing parties making it so that previously unrepresented political views can easily gain representation (e.g. the socially conservative Russophilic left-wing party "BSW" recently splitting from the standard left-wing party). > Who else beats Trump? Most people selected out of the telephone directory at random could have beaten Trump. No, this probably doesn't include Pete Buttigieg. > The fact is America would be happy with no one. But we got who America wanted These two sentences contradict each other.
  - kenjackson 2y ago
    > Because they're not. It's virtually impossible to start a meaningful new party in the US due to the FPTP system, so you are stuck with whoever the two legacy parties decide to nominate according to their own rules. I just see no appetite for a 3rd party, much less nine in the US. It was amazing how people would complain that Harris provided no details about her plans, when 15 minutes on her website provided more detail than most people would care for (although certainly not at the level of detail any wonk would want). Do you think people are really going investigate nine candidates? > Most people selected out of the telephone directory at random could have beaten Trump. No, this probably doesn't include Pete Buttigieg. Given that every Republican can't seem to beat him there must be some odd bias in the phone books you have. > These two sentences contradict each other. They don't. We got who we wanted -- we just aren't happy with it. And wouldn't be happy with anyone. No contradiction.
gwbas1c 2y ago
It's because the primary system favors candidates who pander to narrow slices of the voting public. Primaries have low turnout: Most elections are between two unpopular candidates who are chosen from vocal political minorities. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Republican_Party_presiden..., there were ~22 million voters in the Republican presidential primary, ~17 million voted for Trump. (~17 million voted in the democratic primary) According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia..., there were ~139 million voters in the main election. So roughly 12% of voters got Trump to be the candidate. What if the other 72% showed up to the primaries and got different candidates?
coliveira 2y ago
> only barely the majority preferred it If true, this is not really a democratic country and should stop lecturing the world about democracy.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  Okay? I don't think this contradicts anything I said. Practically every country claims to be democratic (even North Korea). Doesn't mean they are.

ein0p 2y ago

Nobody picked Harris. She hasn't won a primary even once. Trump won it three times. The primary is the only step in the whole election process where the actual "democracy" can even remotely happen.

monero-xmr 2y ago
The truth is so painful that I’m not sure people will mentally accept this for a while
lpa22 2y ago
Not sure who is downvoting this, it’s the truth and the exact reason dems lost
- ein0p 2y ago
  I don't know why you'd expect any other reaction from a site where 80% of the readership loves to get high on their own supply from WaPo and CNN and reject the reality. The reality is we're 37T in debt, we're on the brink of a nuclear war due to our harebrained regime change efforts halfway around the globe, and your average American is barely surviving at this point. The latter, by the way is abundantly clear from the polls, too, including exit polls. I'm not sure the electorate particularly cares about the right to third trimester abortion or DEI as the mainstream media would like us to believe, especially when the DNC lost the airtight control over the narrative, and its ability to manufacture consent is getting more limited by the day. In 2020 they had enough control to elect a person who can't string two words together without a teleprompter. In 2024 they already could not. And the grip on the narrative is going to weaken from here on out. If they can still learn, they'll have to actually run capable candidates, who might even dare to have their own opinions about things. That's healthy and good. What doesn't seem feasible anymore are unilaterally anointed candidates who go from "nobody" to "our only hope" at the stroke of a pen of some unelected, non-replaceable bureaucrat.
oldpersonintx 2y ago
[dead]
bena 2y ago
That's not entirely true. In 2020, a lot of states just cancelled their Republican primaries and pledged their delegates to Trump. Mainly because it's assumed that the incumbent will be the candidate. And all-in-all, that's fair play. The GOP and DNC are private entities and they get to choose who they put forward as a candidate in the manner they choose. Voting in presidential primaries is fairly recent. The DNC picked Harris, as is their right.
Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
Fine and true, but setting aside the principle of the matter, did anyone actually prefer Biden over Harris? I held my nose as I voted for Biden in the primary, but I don't even recall anybody else being on the ballot. I was elated that he stepped down and endorsed his VP. Admittedly, it sets a scary precedent, I certainly won't disagree. But setting the implications aside, was it really the wrong choice? Did Biden really fare better than Harris in the general? I certainly don't think he would have. I think Trump's margin of victory would have been even higher against Biden.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  > Fine and true, but setting aside the principle of the matter, did anyone actually prefer Biden over Harris? Probably not, but does it matter? Biden was also not chosen in anything resembling a democratic way. US political primaries are not democratic. The general population being presented a choice between two options that were selected by two ultra-partisan entrenched entities is not democracy. To have a system somewhat resembling democracy you would have to either (1) open primaries to everyone regardless of party registration with no control by partisan organizations over who gets nominated or supported (which would mostly defeat the point of having political parties at all) or (2) have a more proportional system where it is meaningfully possible to create new political parties that gain a nonzero share of representation.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    How did the "boot on head" guy run in the primaries? There has to be very little vetting, if any. Primaries where party members vote seems very much more democratic, than having the party elite decide in some meeting.
    - School-Cotton 2y ago
      > Primaries where party members vote seems very much more democratic, than having the party elite decide in some meeting. It only seems that way to you because it's practically impossible for there to be more than two parties with significant representation. If anyone could start a party and gain support, you would have enough parties to choose from that it's much more likely you'd find one who matches your beliefs, regardless of how they choose their candidates.

j0hnyl 2y ago

How is ~8% (eyeballing) of the popular vote a narrow majority in politics? It's a pretty substantial majority. Apathetic non-voters don't really count because they don't care.

JoshTriplett 2y ago
> Apathetic non-voters An important thing to keep in mind in American politics is the massive amount of voter suppression. Not voting doesn't inherently mean you were lazy or apathetic. It may well mean your vote was suppressed by any of a hundred tactics. Closing polling places in blue regions, requiring in-person voting on-the-day, restricting early voting, restricting vote by mail, failing at sending people ballots, spuriously dropping voter registrations...
- blodstone 2y ago
  20M is too much of a number to be attributed to voter suppression alone. I think the main issue here is still apathetic non-voters.
  - yonaguska 2y ago
    20M ballots is not the same as 20M voters. I don't understand where those 20M people went. Kamala checked a lot more boxes than Biden.
- bhelkey 2y ago
  > requiring in-person voting on-the-day Exactly three states don't offer early voting to all voters [1] and none of those three were battleground states. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-early-voting-mail-ballot-states/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-early-voting-mail-ballot-st...
- xg15 2y ago
  All that is true, and to a great degree the reason why the concept of "swing states" (or rather the "non-swing states") even exists. It does not explain however why almost all the swing states aligned with Trump this time.

spacedcowboy 2y ago

[flagged]

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
[flagged]
- kernal 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - subsection1h 2y ago
    > America has rejected your ideology, your violence LOL. Red states have the highest firearm death rates: https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-per-100000/ https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rat...
    - selimthegrim 2y ago
      I think they were talking about the literal assassinations
  - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
    > warmongering Republicans calling Democrats warmongers is probably one of those hypocritical things I'm seeing in recent years.
    - RpmReviver 2y ago
      That's because you're confusing the old definition of republicans and maga The republican party is now maga, they are not the same the maga base has been pretty consistent on being antiwar
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Exactly. Nobody waved a magic wand and conjured up Trump, causing people to become cruel and selfish. They are already cruel and selfish, and they simply found their man. It's not like people are just going to just stop being this way once he's gone.

slashtom 2y ago

I think you're double speaking here, the majority of the population who were eligible to vote, voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

doubleyou 2y ago
Less than 1/3 of eligible voters voted for trump in this election.... how did you come up with your numbers???? 78/244 (millions) https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/10-things-to-know-2024-presidential-election/ https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/10-things-to-know-202...
School-Cotton 2y ago
The majority of the population who were eligible to vote, and actually decided to vote, voted for Trump, yes. That's not "America" for two reasons: "the majority of the population who were eligible to vote, and actually decided to vote" is not the same thing as "Americans", and choosing which option you prefer in a binary choice (where you have no influence on the two options) does not mean you like the choice you made.

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago

Trump has had a ~43% approval rating from basically the beginning except for a very brief dip around Jan 6.

kenjackson 2y ago

Why do people keep stating that the choices are somehow not Democratic. Who else beats Trump? Seriously. It's not like there were some great candidates out there that just didn't have the party machinery behind them. These were honestly, IMO, two of the best that the country had to offer. Sure, I personally would've loved to have Pete Buttigieg as President, but I also realize that he loses to Trump 10 out of 10 times. The fact is America would be happy with no one. But we got who America wanted -- even if its not who I wanted.

School-Cotton 2y ago
> Why do people keep stating that the choices are somehow not Democratic. Because they're not. It's virtually impossible to start a meaningful new party in the US due to the FPTP system, so you are stuck with whoever the two legacy parties decide to nominate according to their own rules. Compare Germany: nine parties represented in the federal parliament, a proportional system ensuring that getting 50%+1 of the vote doesn't mean you get 100% of the power, and relative ease of splitting and fusing parties making it so that previously unrepresented political views can easily gain representation (e.g. the socially conservative Russophilic left-wing party "BSW" recently splitting from the standard left-wing party). > Who else beats Trump? Most people selected out of the telephone directory at random could have beaten Trump. No, this probably doesn't include Pete Buttigieg. > The fact is America would be happy with no one. But we got who America wanted These two sentences contradict each other.
- kenjackson 2y ago
  > Because they're not. It's virtually impossible to start a meaningful new party in the US due to the FPTP system, so you are stuck with whoever the two legacy parties decide to nominate according to their own rules. I just see no appetite for a 3rd party, much less nine in the US. It was amazing how people would complain that Harris provided no details about her plans, when 15 minutes on her website provided more detail than most people would care for (although certainly not at the level of detail any wonk would want). Do you think people are really going investigate nine candidates? > Most people selected out of the telephone directory at random could have beaten Trump. No, this probably doesn't include Pete Buttigieg. Given that every Republican can't seem to beat him there must be some odd bias in the phone books you have. > These two sentences contradict each other. They don't. We got who we wanted -- we just aren't happy with it. And wouldn't be happy with anyone. No contradiction.

gwbas1c 2y ago

It's because the primary system favors candidates who pander to narrow slices of the voting public. Primaries have low turnout: Most elections are between two unpopular candidates who are chosen from vocal political minorities. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Republican_Party_presiden..., there were ~22 million voters in the Republican presidential primary, ~17 million voted for Trump. (~17 million voted in the democratic primary) According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia..., there were ~139 million voters in the main election. So roughly 12% of voters got Trump to be the candidate. What if the other 72% showed up to the primaries and got different candidates?

coliveira 2y ago

> only barely the majority preferred it If true, this is not really a democratic country and should stop lecturing the world about democracy.

School-Cotton 2y ago
Okay? I don't think this contradicts anything I said. Practically every country claims to be democratic (even North Korea). Doesn't mean they are.