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>class action What you describe is voting We’re in this mess because people are not interested enough, educated enough, or engaged enough politically to make

>class action What you describe is voting We’re in this mess because people are not interested enough, educated enough, or engaged enough politically to make their position explicit to drive the direction of legislation and executive action. Citizens of The United States have every tool available to to work together to shape their communities. The reality is the overwhelming majority do not do that, and you can come up with a lot of reasons why, which are structural in many cases, but the fact remains that the majority of people are not involved in the political process at all, have no desire to be an actively reject any opportunity to be. Assuming that citizens would all of a sudden become involved because it requires a lawsuit, means that there’s the capacity to do so, which does not exist, and all we need is a catalyst. If the number of possible catalysts that have already happened in the last decade we’re not sufficient then nothing short of a literal terminator Skynet scenario is going to cause people to take action and I’m increasingly doubtful that even that would do it. Based on my observation from my work position, people are ready to just roll over onto their backs and have robots slice them from the belly up, because it’s easier than actually doing something that would prevent it.

hakunin 1y ago
I think this often gets confused. Voting a president in doesn't give them a blank mandate to do whatever they want, such as break the law. And knowingly doing things that might not get approved by courts, but veiling it in a "novel legal theory" disguise is still breaking the law. Just because slow and thorough processes need to take place to adjudicate these actions doesn't mean that these actions aren't worth adjudicating. So while voting is important, keeping the voted-in president accountable is important too.
- jfengel 1y ago
  According to the Supreme Court, that's exactly what it does. The President simply isn't accountable. I would not have thought that this is what the Constitution says, but the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what the Constitution says. That's not in the Constitution, either, but they've appropriated that job for two centuries, so we let them get away with it. The "it's not illegal if the President does it" part is new, though they've been leading up to it for decades, so it's not really surprising.
  - timr 1y ago
    Or, more charitably: the Supreme Court has says that the president has this authority, in this specific area, and your characterization of this as "breaking the law" is not correct. Edit: actually, even that is overstating it. This is an extremely narrow ruling that is mainly about the powers of federal judges. It's the sort of ruling that the "other side" will trumpet as settled law when they're the ones in power again.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      Less charitably, the Supreme Court has said that this president has this authority. Forgive student loans? No authority! End birthright citizenship? Well, he's the boss!
      - timr 1y ago
        That's nice rhetoric, but they're not the same issue at all.
        watwut 1y ago
        That is actually what is going on and how right wing justices think.
        ceejayoz 1y ago
        Yes, there's always some reason it's different when Dems are President with this crew. You're right, though, it is different; birthright citizenship is spelled out, very clearly, in the Constitution. It's an even plainer wrong. It's Calvinball.
        timr 1y ago
        [flagged]
        ceejayoz 1y ago
- cmurf 1y ago
  Except voting this person to the presidency has given just over 1000 convicted criminals a pardon, as promised in advance. It’s an unlimited and irreversible power. The Court has long considered that the president has a duty to follow the law, but also that the Court can’t compel the president to follow the law. That is a political question. Congress alone can stop a president by impeaching and removing them from office. Not only can’t the Court initiate impeachments, impeachment is unreviewable by the Court. If there’s a servile Congress, it means voters can elect a law breaker as president. They are going to get a president who breaks the law. And this is what’s happening. People voted for an abuser, a rapist, a felon, a conspiracy theorist who lies about the outcome of elections, lies that VPOTUS can and should overturn them, and even sent a mob to have that VPOTUS assassinated for refusing to comply with that illegal order. Then boasted he’d pardon all those criminals who were in his service. And despite all of this, people voted for him again. The people got exactly what they voted for.
- tshaddox 1y ago
  Also, any time anyone actually brings up any details about Presidential elections you'll quick get many people rushing to explain how the people do not in fact directly elect the President and how this is such an incredibly brilliant idea.
Henchman21 1y ago
[flagged]
- benreesman 1y ago
  I did two things this year that had nontrivial effects on my state of mind. 1. I quit drinking for the time being. This had a modest but real effect on my mood and general wellbeing. It has pros and cons, but on balance it's a win for where I'm at and what I'm trying to do. I might choose differently in the future. 2. I installed GrapheneOS and built NixOS, from source, with fairly extreme choices about networking. This had a staggering effect on every aspect of how I think and feel: cutting the surveillance capitalism at the network level is like having a mass of rage and angst and blurry confusion taken out of my head. I will never, ever go back to that. Its time for everyone to cut the cord. Get a Pixel, an 8a open box at best buy can be 200-300, install Lineage or Calyx or Graphene, and reclaim ownership of your brain.
- ericras 1y ago
  If your contribution is to quote an old rap song and make a meta complaint about how people will react to you, then you're right - you don't deserve a positive reaction.
rayiner 1y ago
[flagged]
ada1981 1y ago
There is some compelling research from Princeton that for 90%+ of the American voting population, there opinions have zero impact on federal policy. It's all lobby driven money. “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba And they actively vote against the will of their constituents 35% of the time. http://promarket.org/2017/06/16/study-politicians-vote-will-constituents-35-percent-time/ http://promarket.org/2017/06/16/study-politicians-vote-will-...
- rayiner 1y ago
  That’s not quite an accurate description of the Princeton Study. What the study actually shows, if I’m thinking of the correct one, is that for the most part average americans agree with the elite. The results of the study are driven by the fact that when elites and average americans disagree, the politicians tend to side with the elites. A prime example of this is the immigration system. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/election-immigration.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi... (“On the Ballot: An Immigration System Most Americans Never Wanted”). Americans never asked to import tens of millions of people from the third world. When Congress reformed the immigration system in 1965, they promised that wouldn’t happen. But for decades, there’s been a coalition of pro-foreigner liberals and pro-cheap-labor conservatives that have facilitated massive immigration that average americans never asked for. Trump, ironically, is a reaction to the very thing the Princeton study identified.
  - Retric 1y ago
    > is that for the most part average americans agree with the elite. The results of the study are driven by the fact that when elites and average americans disagree, the politicians tend to side with the elites. The case when everyone agrees doesn’t tell you anything. It’s only when people disagree that you can find who has actual power and in this case the general public has effectively zero actual meaningful power day to day. Systematic voter suppression plus gerrymandering etc may win you rigged elections, but ultimately voting isn’t about the system in place it’s avoidance unrest. We’re entering uncharted territory with how strongly people disagree with what the government is doing, which is where the general public actually has a say, namely by destroying the existing power structures rather than voting. It’s not even a question of insurrection, not having kids plus 60’s style dropping out at scale is ruinous.
kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
I vote but have little influence because I won't join a party and live in a state with closed primaries where the real selection process is carried out. If the remaining 30 closed states cared about civic engagement they'd switch to one of the established open primary models.
shams93 1y ago
There is also the damage done by the Supreme Court ending the Voting Rights Act, had the act been in place in 2024, Kamalah would have won by a landslide. Millions of minority voters were targeted for disenfranchisement in 2024.
- EasyMark 1y ago
  between that one and citizen's united the GOP takeover was assured.
  - underlipton 1y ago
    Not until the one-two punch of Obama not insisting on his SCOTUS nominee being pushed through, and RBG not retiring in time for him to have a second. You could put it as late as the DNC pushing Clinton as the 2016 presidential nominee and/or pushing for Trump to be the GOP nominee (with the rationale that he'd be easy to defeat).
- dh2022 1y ago
  Huh? Kamala lost because Trump made in-roads in Latino and Arab voting population in Michigan and Wisconsin. Almost half of Latinos voted for Trump [0] and more Arabs voted for Trump than Kamala [1] and [2] and [3]. Quite the opposite of minority voters were disenfranchised - minorities exercised their right to vote the way they wanted. [0] https://www.as-coa.org/articles/how-latinos-voted-2024-us-presidential-election https://www.as-coa.org/articles/how-latinos-voted-2024-us-pr... [1] https://www.voanews.com/a/in-historic-shift-american-muslim-and-arab-voters-desert-democrats/7854995.html https://www.voanews.com/a/in-historic-shift-american-muslim-... [2] https://www.npr.org/2025/03/03/nx-s1-5249686/arab-muslim-voters-dearborn-hamtramck-trump-gaza https://www.npr.org/2025/03/03/nx-s1-5249686/arab-muslim-vot... [3] https://thewash.org/2024/11/07/arab-american-voters-shift-to-trump-in-michigan-citing-peace-promises-and-opposition-to-middle-east-conflicts/ https://thewash.org/2024/11/07/arab-american-voters-shift-to...
- andrekandre 1y ago
  > There is also the damage done by the Supreme Court ending the Voting Rights Act that is true, but > Kamalah would have won by a landslide im not so sure. after a great start she sudenly veered off and campaigned by appealing to disaffected republicans (eg. touring with liz cheney, militaristic posturing (in her words 'the most leathal') military etc) and ignoring/downplaying the gaza issue which affected voting trends [0] in the battleground states just enough to loose there... also the prolonged conflict in ukraine didn't help things with many voters either (eg. lie or not he said he'd end the wars immediately) and aside from some bread-crumbs like paid leave, she was very silent in economic issues that affected many minorities... her campaign was in la-la land [1] [0] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/kamala-harris-what-went-wrong-1235183829/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/kama... [1] https://readsludge.com/2024/11/18/the-corporate-consultants-behind-harris-for-president/ https://readsludge.com/2024/11/18/the-corporate-consultants-...
scarface_74 1y ago
What people don’t want to admit is that this is exactly what more then half the people wanted. Because of the way the electoral college works as far as the President, gerrymandering with the House and 2 seats per state in the Senate, more people voting who disagree wouldn’t do any good. You can’t shape your community to overcome the power of the federal government.
- tshaddox 1y ago
  > this is exactly what more then half the people wanted Donald Trump received only 49.8% of votes in the 2024 United States presidential election.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    You’re really pulling at straws. Despite what Michelle Obama says, this is exactly “who we are” and who we have always been from slavery, to Jim Crow, to the dog whistles of Reagan to Willie Horton, to “Obama is a secret Muslim who wants to bring Sharia law”, to “the Haitians are eating our pets”, to the segregated proms that have happened in the rural south as late as the early 2000s. This is what the American people voted for.
    - tshaddox 1y ago
      I'm not grasping at straws, because I don't have any particular conclusion in mind. It looked to me like you were specifically contrasting the electoral college with the popular vote while explicitly claiming that Donald Trump received more than half of the popular vote. I responded with a correction to your technicality.
LorenPechtel 1y ago
What *meaningful* action would you have people take? Remember, force is out of the question because it will provide justification for the oppression and make people more willing to accept it.
- esseph 1y ago
  Force is never out of the question. The illusion some want you to believe, is that it is.
  - LorenPechtel 1y ago
    Force that the individual can employ would be counterproductive. Remove any of the problematic people and the remainder get more support. Look at how history has played out. When a government is nearly universally despised by it's people it can be overthrown by mass action, basically bloodless and sometimes with a good outcome. However, so long as the government has a reasonable sized core of support the outcome is always bad. Violent overthrow always brings the most ruthless, not the best for the people. Note that this does not apply to throwing out a colonial power. There are multiple examples of good outcomes from throwing out colonial powers by force.
    - esseph 1y ago
      A single individual with a couple of drones and some bad intentions in the modern era could easily do billions in damage in one afternoon. The world is always in flux.
- underlipton 1y ago
  Brian Thompson's death didn't seem to have any major consequences along those lines. Targeted assassinations seem to be kosher for avoiding crackdowns. If someone were to shoot Peter Thiel in the head, do we REALLY expect to see a sudden descent into oppressive authoritarianism? Or, as with Thompson, do most people say, "Eh, he had it coming," and keep it moving?
  - 1y ago
tshaddox 1y ago
It's so silly to blame the American people though, considering the vastly greater resources required to politically organize millions of people to counter the what a handful of people in the executive branch or a couple dozen people in the legislative branch can do with a flick of the wrist.
- collingreen 1y ago
  I don't understand this argument or the implications of what follows. If this is a government via consent of the people who intentionally elected a criminal who promised to do more criminal things and then did them, who else could possibly be responsible?
root_axis 1y ago
Voting and engagement is not the issue. Trump would have won even if all eligible voters voted. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-election-non-voters-coalition https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec... The problem is that Dems are just culturally irrelevant. Most people don't care about issues, policy or the economy, they just want to cheer for a team and will justify everything their team does regardless of efficacy or outcome. Trump is the fun underdog team that everyone is talking about, the Dems are the boring party-pooper team we all love to hate. During covid, that boring became a source of needed stability, but after boring stewarded us through the crisis, nobody wanted to be associated with them again.

hakunin 1y ago

I think this often gets confused. Voting a president in doesn't give them a blank mandate to do whatever they want, such as break the law. And knowingly doing things that might not get approved by courts, but veiling it in a "novel legal theory" disguise is still breaking the law. Just because slow and thorough processes need to take place to adjudicate these actions doesn't mean that these actions aren't worth adjudicating. So while voting is important, keeping the voted-in president accountable is important too.

jfengel 1y ago
According to the Supreme Court, that's exactly what it does. The President simply isn't accountable. I would not have thought that this is what the Constitution says, but the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what the Constitution says. That's not in the Constitution, either, but they've appropriated that job for two centuries, so we let them get away with it. The "it's not illegal if the President does it" part is new, though they've been leading up to it for decades, so it's not really surprising.
- timr 1y ago
  Or, more charitably: the Supreme Court has says that the president has this authority, in this specific area, and your characterization of this as "breaking the law" is not correct. Edit: actually, even that is overstating it. This is an extremely narrow ruling that is mainly about the powers of federal judges. It's the sort of ruling that the "other side" will trumpet as settled law when they're the ones in power again.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    Less charitably, the Supreme Court has said that this president has this authority. Forgive student loans? No authority! End birthright citizenship? Well, he's the boss!
    - timr 1y ago
      That's nice rhetoric, but they're not the same issue at all.
      - watwut 1y ago
        That is actually what is going on and how right wing justices think.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        Yes, there's always some reason it's different when Dems are President with this crew. You're right, though, it is different; birthright citizenship is spelled out, very clearly, in the Constitution. It's an even plainer wrong. It's Calvinball.
        timr 1y ago
        [flagged]
        ceejayoz 1y ago
cmurf 1y ago
Except voting this person to the presidency has given just over 1000 convicted criminals a pardon, as promised in advance. It’s an unlimited and irreversible power. The Court has long considered that the president has a duty to follow the law, but also that the Court can’t compel the president to follow the law. That is a political question. Congress alone can stop a president by impeaching and removing them from office. Not only can’t the Court initiate impeachments, impeachment is unreviewable by the Court. If there’s a servile Congress, it means voters can elect a law breaker as president. They are going to get a president who breaks the law. And this is what’s happening. People voted for an abuser, a rapist, a felon, a conspiracy theorist who lies about the outcome of elections, lies that VPOTUS can and should overturn them, and even sent a mob to have that VPOTUS assassinated for refusing to comply with that illegal order. Then boasted he’d pardon all those criminals who were in his service. And despite all of this, people voted for him again. The people got exactly what they voted for.
tshaddox 1y ago
Also, any time anyone actually brings up any details about Presidential elections you'll quick get many people rushing to explain how the people do not in fact directly elect the President and how this is such an incredibly brilliant idea.

Henchman21 1y ago

[flagged]

benreesman 1y ago
I did two things this year that had nontrivial effects on my state of mind. 1. I quit drinking for the time being. This had a modest but real effect on my mood and general wellbeing. It has pros and cons, but on balance it's a win for where I'm at and what I'm trying to do. I might choose differently in the future. 2. I installed GrapheneOS and built NixOS, from source, with fairly extreme choices about networking. This had a staggering effect on every aspect of how I think and feel: cutting the surveillance capitalism at the network level is like having a mass of rage and angst and blurry confusion taken out of my head. I will never, ever go back to that. Its time for everyone to cut the cord. Get a Pixel, an 8a open box at best buy can be 200-300, install Lineage or Calyx or Graphene, and reclaim ownership of your brain.
ericras 1y ago
If your contribution is to quote an old rap song and make a meta complaint about how people will react to you, then you're right - you don't deserve a positive reaction.

rayiner 1y ago

[flagged]

ada1981 1y ago

There is some compelling research from Princeton that for 90%+ of the American voting population, there opinions have zero impact on federal policy. It's all lobby driven money. “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba And they actively vote against the will of their constituents 35% of the time. http://promarket.org/2017/06/16/study-politicians-vote-will-constituents-35-percent-time/ http://promarket.org/2017/06/16/study-politicians-vote-will-...

rayiner 1y ago
That’s not quite an accurate description of the Princeton Study. What the study actually shows, if I’m thinking of the correct one, is that for the most part average americans agree with the elite. The results of the study are driven by the fact that when elites and average americans disagree, the politicians tend to side with the elites. A prime example of this is the immigration system. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/election-immigration.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi... (“On the Ballot: An Immigration System Most Americans Never Wanted”). Americans never asked to import tens of millions of people from the third world. When Congress reformed the immigration system in 1965, they promised that wouldn’t happen. But for decades, there’s been a coalition of pro-foreigner liberals and pro-cheap-labor conservatives that have facilitated massive immigration that average americans never asked for. Trump, ironically, is a reaction to the very thing the Princeton study identified.
- Retric 1y ago
  > is that for the most part average americans agree with the elite. The results of the study are driven by the fact that when elites and average americans disagree, the politicians tend to side with the elites. The case when everyone agrees doesn’t tell you anything. It’s only when people disagree that you can find who has actual power and in this case the general public has effectively zero actual meaningful power day to day. Systematic voter suppression plus gerrymandering etc may win you rigged elections, but ultimately voting isn’t about the system in place it’s avoidance unrest. We’re entering uncharted territory with how strongly people disagree with what the government is doing, which is where the general public actually has a say, namely by destroying the existing power structures rather than voting. It’s not even a question of insurrection, not having kids plus 60’s style dropping out at scale is ruinous.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago

I vote but have little influence because I won't join a party and live in a state with closed primaries where the real selection process is carried out. If the remaining 30 closed states cared about civic engagement they'd switch to one of the established open primary models.

shams93 1y ago

There is also the damage done by the Supreme Court ending the Voting Rights Act, had the act been in place in 2024, Kamalah would have won by a landslide. Millions of minority voters were targeted for disenfranchisement in 2024.

EasyMark 1y ago
between that one and citizen's united the GOP takeover was assured.
- underlipton 1y ago
  Not until the one-two punch of Obama not insisting on his SCOTUS nominee being pushed through, and RBG not retiring in time for him to have a second. You could put it as late as the DNC pushing Clinton as the 2016 presidential nominee and/or pushing for Trump to be the GOP nominee (with the rationale that he'd be easy to defeat).
dh2022 1y ago
Huh? Kamala lost because Trump made in-roads in Latino and Arab voting population in Michigan and Wisconsin. Almost half of Latinos voted for Trump [0] and more Arabs voted for Trump than Kamala [1] and [2] and [3]. Quite the opposite of minority voters were disenfranchised - minorities exercised their right to vote the way they wanted. [0] https://www.as-coa.org/articles/how-latinos-voted-2024-us-presidential-election https://www.as-coa.org/articles/how-latinos-voted-2024-us-pr... [1] https://www.voanews.com/a/in-historic-shift-american-muslim-and-arab-voters-desert-democrats/7854995.html https://www.voanews.com/a/in-historic-shift-american-muslim-... [2] https://www.npr.org/2025/03/03/nx-s1-5249686/arab-muslim-voters-dearborn-hamtramck-trump-gaza https://www.npr.org/2025/03/03/nx-s1-5249686/arab-muslim-vot... [3] https://thewash.org/2024/11/07/arab-american-voters-shift-to-trump-in-michigan-citing-peace-promises-and-opposition-to-middle-east-conflicts/ https://thewash.org/2024/11/07/arab-american-voters-shift-to...
andrekandre 1y ago
> There is also the damage done by the Supreme Court ending the Voting Rights Act that is true, but > Kamalah would have won by a landslide im not so sure. after a great start she sudenly veered off and campaigned by appealing to disaffected republicans (eg. touring with liz cheney, militaristic posturing (in her words 'the most leathal') military etc) and ignoring/downplaying the gaza issue which affected voting trends [0] in the battleground states just enough to loose there... also the prolonged conflict in ukraine didn't help things with many voters either (eg. lie or not he said he'd end the wars immediately) and aside from some bread-crumbs like paid leave, she was very silent in economic issues that affected many minorities... her campaign was in la-la land [1] [0] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/kamala-harris-what-went-wrong-1235183829/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/kama... [1] https://readsludge.com/2024/11/18/the-corporate-consultants-behind-harris-for-president/ https://readsludge.com/2024/11/18/the-corporate-consultants-...

scarface_74 1y ago

What people don’t want to admit is that this is exactly what more then half the people wanted. Because of the way the electoral college works as far as the President, gerrymandering with the House and 2 seats per state in the Senate, more people voting who disagree wouldn’t do any good. You can’t shape your community to overcome the power of the federal government.

tshaddox 1y ago
> this is exactly what more then half the people wanted Donald Trump received only 49.8% of votes in the 2024 United States presidential election.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  You’re really pulling at straws. Despite what Michelle Obama says, this is exactly “who we are” and who we have always been from slavery, to Jim Crow, to the dog whistles of Reagan to Willie Horton, to “Obama is a secret Muslim who wants to bring Sharia law”, to “the Haitians are eating our pets”, to the segregated proms that have happened in the rural south as late as the early 2000s. This is what the American people voted for.
  - tshaddox 1y ago
    I'm not grasping at straws, because I don't have any particular conclusion in mind. It looked to me like you were specifically contrasting the electoral college with the popular vote while explicitly claiming that Donald Trump received more than half of the popular vote. I responded with a correction to your technicality.

LorenPechtel 1y ago

What *meaningful* action would you have people take? Remember, force is out of the question because it will provide justification for the oppression and make people more willing to accept it.

esseph 1y ago
Force is never out of the question. The illusion some want you to believe, is that it is.
- LorenPechtel 1y ago
  Force that the individual can employ would be counterproductive. Remove any of the problematic people and the remainder get more support. Look at how history has played out. When a government is nearly universally despised by it's people it can be overthrown by mass action, basically bloodless and sometimes with a good outcome. However, so long as the government has a reasonable sized core of support the outcome is always bad. Violent overthrow always brings the most ruthless, not the best for the people. Note that this does not apply to throwing out a colonial power. There are multiple examples of good outcomes from throwing out colonial powers by force.
  - esseph 1y ago
    A single individual with a couple of drones and some bad intentions in the modern era could easily do billions in damage in one afternoon. The world is always in flux.
underlipton 1y ago
Brian Thompson's death didn't seem to have any major consequences along those lines. Targeted assassinations seem to be kosher for avoiding crackdowns. If someone were to shoot Peter Thiel in the head, do we REALLY expect to see a sudden descent into oppressive authoritarianism? Or, as with Thompson, do most people say, "Eh, he had it coming," and keep it moving?
- 1y ago

tshaddox 1y ago

It's so silly to blame the American people though, considering the vastly greater resources required to politically organize millions of people to counter the what a handful of people in the executive branch or a couple dozen people in the legislative branch can do with a flick of the wrist.

collingreen 1y ago
I don't understand this argument or the implications of what follows. If this is a government via consent of the people who intentionally elected a criminal who promised to do more criminal things and then did them, who else could possibly be responsible?

root_axis 1y ago

Voting and engagement is not the issue. Trump would have won even if all eligible voters voted. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-election-non-voters-coalition https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec... The problem is that Dems are just culturally irrelevant. Most people don't care about issues, policy or the economy, they just want to cheer for a team and will justify everything their team does regardless of efficacy or outcome. Trump is the fun underdog team that everyone is talking about, the Dems are the boring party-pooper team we all love to hate. During covid, that boring became a source of needed stability, but after boring stewarded us through the crisis, nobody wanted to be associated with them again.