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> ... By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message That's how you read it. But the Trump election was america

> ... By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message That's how you read it. But the Trump election was americans sending other americans a clear an unambiguous message.

roxolotl 9mo ago
The other piece though is they sent an unintentional message to the rest of the world that American political system is hijackable in a way they ought to be concerned about.
- user32489318 9mo ago
  Not American here. Reading your guys replies it almost feels like you are rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance. Doesn’t this enforce their argument and created this situation in th first place?
  - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
    Correct. Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter. Progressive anericans refuse to accept that. Why they won’t accept that is anyone’s guess.
    - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
      > Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter On foreign policy? Probably not. Like, Biden wasn’t an accurate representation of the median American voter on e.g. transgender kids in school sports. That wasn’t just right-wing delusion.
      - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
        My point is that Trump is actually probably more representative of the median voter than Biden or any other previous president has been.
        JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
        > My point is that Trump is actually probably more representative of the median voter than Biden or any other previous president has been Why? You haven’t actually argued that point.
        AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
        Because he’s telling Americans exactly how he’s going to oppress and punish them, doing it publicly with no remorse and a patina of lying, and people still supporting
    - pianopatrick 9mo ago
      "median American voter" implies a distribution of views like a normal distribution, with a lot of people in the middle and a few people on extremes. If that is the distribution, then the median is representative of most people. I am not sure that is really a great way of thinking about American voters these days. It seems to me that American's views on many issues are tending to cluster around extremes, with fewer people in the middle. So I am not sure the median is as meaningful.
      - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
        Median does not assume anything about the distribution which is precisely why I use it. Median allows for us to count max total of one category because the variances are so small. Hence why medians can actually demonstrate the underlying distribution instead of commingling amplitude like the mean. In this case it’s “American Voter” as the category. This is what messes most people up, because they read “American Citizen” but I’m describing only the subset of citizens who successfully vote. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte... Using that number you’ll see what the demographics demonstrate: there are not as many progressive voters as there are “conservative” voters and only 2/3 of eligible voters even cared to vote. If you zoom out even further and you evaluate which candidates run, then it really does not matter who is voting or not because ultimately who is on the ballot is dictated by a small group of party leaders, who in turn are dictated by whomever has the most money for ad spending.
    - PlanksVariable 9mo ago
      Were Biden and Obama accurate representations of the median American when they won? Isn’t that a contradiction?
      - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
        No, but they they were somewhat accurate representations of the median American voter (note here VOTER is the key) - less so than Trump, given what he’s been able to get away with.
    - yongjik 9mo ago
      The median American voter voted for Obama, and then Trump, and then Biden, and then Trump. They are angry about inflation, hate billionaires, don't want to start a war, and don't know who pays tariffs. Basically, the median American voter does not have a coherent position. It's futile trying to build a narrative around them.
      - bonsai_spool 9mo ago
        That’s not true - the first time in over 30 years that republicans won the popular vote was 2024. In each of those other elections, most Americans (by millions) voted for democrats.
      - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
        I mean I think that’s exactly my point this concept that there’s some kind of like ideal or coherent version of the American voting public it just doesn’t exist Donald Trump is an irrational randomly reactive, incoherent person who doesn’t know what he wants other than to just be in charge and to do whatever he wants all the time If that doesn’t describe the median American voter I don’t know what does
  - bonsai_spool 9mo ago
    > rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations. I am unsurprised about the 2024 election and it's exactly what you'd imagine from a purely economic perspective. The 2016 election, however, has been studied extensively, and it's clear that several aberrations (large contingent of Republican candidates, the first black president, Facebook, Comey) tipped things in a way that you wouldn't expect if voters are acting rationally. So as someone who genuinely wishes to understand how people think about things, I don't know what's going on here. I can't tell what new lie will be pushed next week to distract us from the recently-disproven lie of last week. Were I outside all of this, I would have very little hope. (edit: re sibling poster, Trump is not a representative of the median voter but instead a representative of the median electoral college elector. We can't have it both ways, rejecting the popular vote and then failing to acknowledge that our politics represent the electors and not the man on the street)
    - NamlchakKhandro 9mo ago
      > I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations. same can be said about people on the opposite side.
      - bonsai_spool 9mo ago
        > same can be said about people on the opposite side. This is not true - the things that traditional Democrats supported in 1992 are largely the same things supported now. The point is not the echo chamber. The point is that the echo chamber has changed the party orthodoxy.
        nailer 9mo ago
        > the things that traditional Democrats supported in 1992 are largely the same things supported now. No. See Bernie Sanders in 2015 talking about how America needs strong borders and illegal immigrants are used by big business to rip American workers off. See Obama’s speech on the same. See positions on trans identifying males in women’s sports. See open support for hiring based on sex and race. Many democrat positions from 20 years ago are now considered right wing.
  - 1shooner 9mo ago
    > invalidating their stance This is perhaps true to an extent. But what is also true to an unprecedented extent for Americans is that this 'stance' is almost pure demagoguery. For many, there is no 'stance', their 'stance' is Trump, whether he hews close to a principle or completely contradicts it.
wrs 9mo ago
I have to say as an “other American” I’m still having a lot of trouble reading the supposedly unambiguous message. Was it “Hold my beer?”
- PlanksVariable 9mo ago
  The first message is “don’t open the border.” People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else. If there weren’t videos of thousands of people streaming across the border every day during Biden’s presidency, we wouldn’t be dealing with Trump 2.0 today. Second, don’t announce to the world you’re limiting your VP search to Black women, or any other Constitution-violating hiring criteria. Americans are tired of identity politics. And you’ve done a disservice to your running mate because they’ll be labeled as a “DEI hire” instead of the best person for the job. Third, don’t nominate an idiot as your running mate. Fourth, don’t force the idiot running mate on the world as a presidential candidate because you hid the president’s cognitive decline until the last possible moment in a humiliating live TV debate. I could go on, but you probably get the message.
  - jeromegv 9mo ago
    If Trump only hires people best for the job, why am I only seeing old white men next to him 99% of the time? Are they the best of the best?
    - PlanksVariable 9mo ago
      Who said Trump hires the best people for the job? That’s not what I said.
      - defrost 9mo ago
        The message sent, perhaps more accurately, was that the USofA electorate fully bought into the Trump / Project 2025 framing of the "problems" facing the USofA. eg: > People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else. And yet recently prior administrations famously did enforce contempory border protections and prioritised chasing down people with actual criminal records. Past administrations, eg. the Republican Eisenhower, have been in favour of open borders for the cheap labour and boost to the agricultural industry. His often cited border enforcement operation was undertaken at the request of the Mexican government who were losing labor to US agribusiness. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback All that aside, the USofA Democrat party has a messaging and PR problem of epic proportions and the USofA has spiralled into a two party Hotelling's Law cesspit despite the founders largely disliking party politics - a fundemental flaw in the forward iteration of an "adequate for now" electoral system centuries old.
Paradigma11 9mo ago
The US voters didn't care what the election meant to the rest of the world and the rest of the world doesn't care what it meant to US voters.
- mlrtime 9mo ago
  I was thinking the same. It's just a hunch, but very few people vote on what the rest of the world thinks of the candidate that they vote for. They think, how this president will serve me and my family.

roxolotl 9mo ago

The other piece though is they sent an unintentional message to the rest of the world that American political system is hijackable in a way they ought to be concerned about.

user32489318 9mo ago
Not American here. Reading your guys replies it almost feels like you are rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance. Doesn’t this enforce their argument and created this situation in th first place?
- AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
  Correct. Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter. Progressive anericans refuse to accept that. Why they won’t accept that is anyone’s guess.
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter On foreign policy? Probably not. Like, Biden wasn’t an accurate representation of the median American voter on e.g. transgender kids in school sports. That wasn’t just right-wing delusion.
    - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
      My point is that Trump is actually probably more representative of the median voter than Biden or any other previous president has been.
      - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
        > My point is that Trump is actually probably more representative of the median voter than Biden or any other previous president has been Why? You haven’t actually argued that point.
        AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
        Because he’s telling Americans exactly how he’s going to oppress and punish them, doing it publicly with no remorse and a patina of lying, and people still supporting
  - pianopatrick 9mo ago
    "median American voter" implies a distribution of views like a normal distribution, with a lot of people in the middle and a few people on extremes. If that is the distribution, then the median is representative of most people. I am not sure that is really a great way of thinking about American voters these days. It seems to me that American's views on many issues are tending to cluster around extremes, with fewer people in the middle. So I am not sure the median is as meaningful.
    - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
      Median does not assume anything about the distribution which is precisely why I use it. Median allows for us to count max total of one category because the variances are so small. Hence why medians can actually demonstrate the underlying distribution instead of commingling amplitude like the mean. In this case it’s “American Voter” as the category. This is what messes most people up, because they read “American Citizen” but I’m describing only the subset of citizens who successfully vote. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte... Using that number you’ll see what the demographics demonstrate: there are not as many progressive voters as there are “conservative” voters and only 2/3 of eligible voters even cared to vote. If you zoom out even further and you evaluate which candidates run, then it really does not matter who is voting or not because ultimately who is on the ballot is dictated by a small group of party leaders, who in turn are dictated by whomever has the most money for ad spending.
  - PlanksVariable 9mo ago
    Were Biden and Obama accurate representations of the median American when they won? Isn’t that a contradiction?
    - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
      No, but they they were somewhat accurate representations of the median American voter (note here VOTER is the key) - less so than Trump, given what he’s been able to get away with.
  - yongjik 9mo ago
    The median American voter voted for Obama, and then Trump, and then Biden, and then Trump. They are angry about inflation, hate billionaires, don't want to start a war, and don't know who pays tariffs. Basically, the median American voter does not have a coherent position. It's futile trying to build a narrative around them.
    - bonsai_spool 9mo ago
      That’s not true - the first time in over 30 years that republicans won the popular vote was 2024. In each of those other elections, most Americans (by millions) voted for democrats.
    - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
      I mean I think that’s exactly my point this concept that there’s some kind of like ideal or coherent version of the American voting public it just doesn’t exist Donald Trump is an irrational randomly reactive, incoherent person who doesn’t know what he wants other than to just be in charge and to do whatever he wants all the time If that doesn’t describe the median American voter I don’t know what does
- bonsai_spool 9mo ago
  > rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations. I am unsurprised about the 2024 election and it's exactly what you'd imagine from a purely economic perspective. The 2016 election, however, has been studied extensively, and it's clear that several aberrations (large contingent of Republican candidates, the first black president, Facebook, Comey) tipped things in a way that you wouldn't expect if voters are acting rationally. So as someone who genuinely wishes to understand how people think about things, I don't know what's going on here. I can't tell what new lie will be pushed next week to distract us from the recently-disproven lie of last week. Were I outside all of this, I would have very little hope. (edit: re sibling poster, Trump is not a representative of the median voter but instead a representative of the median electoral college elector. We can't have it both ways, rejecting the popular vote and then failing to acknowledge that our politics represent the electors and not the man on the street)
  - NamlchakKhandro 9mo ago
    > I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations. same can be said about people on the opposite side.
    - bonsai_spool 9mo ago
      > same can be said about people on the opposite side. This is not true - the things that traditional Democrats supported in 1992 are largely the same things supported now. The point is not the echo chamber. The point is that the echo chamber has changed the party orthodoxy.
      - nailer 9mo ago
        > the things that traditional Democrats supported in 1992 are largely the same things supported now. No. See Bernie Sanders in 2015 talking about how America needs strong borders and illegal immigrants are used by big business to rip American workers off. See Obama’s speech on the same. See positions on trans identifying males in women’s sports. See open support for hiring based on sex and race. Many democrat positions from 20 years ago are now considered right wing.
- 1shooner 9mo ago
  > invalidating their stance This is perhaps true to an extent. But what is also true to an unprecedented extent for Americans is that this 'stance' is almost pure demagoguery. For many, there is no 'stance', their 'stance' is Trump, whether he hews close to a principle or completely contradicts it.

wrs 9mo ago

I have to say as an “other American” I’m still having a lot of trouble reading the supposedly unambiguous message. Was it “Hold my beer?”

PlanksVariable 9mo ago
The first message is “don’t open the border.” People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else. If there weren’t videos of thousands of people streaming across the border every day during Biden’s presidency, we wouldn’t be dealing with Trump 2.0 today. Second, don’t announce to the world you’re limiting your VP search to Black women, or any other Constitution-violating hiring criteria. Americans are tired of identity politics. And you’ve done a disservice to your running mate because they’ll be labeled as a “DEI hire” instead of the best person for the job. Third, don’t nominate an idiot as your running mate. Fourth, don’t force the idiot running mate on the world as a presidential candidate because you hid the president’s cognitive decline until the last possible moment in a humiliating live TV debate. I could go on, but you probably get the message.
- jeromegv 9mo ago
  If Trump only hires people best for the job, why am I only seeing old white men next to him 99% of the time? Are they the best of the best?
  - PlanksVariable 9mo ago
    Who said Trump hires the best people for the job? That’s not what I said.
    - defrost 9mo ago
      The message sent, perhaps more accurately, was that the USofA electorate fully bought into the Trump / Project 2025 framing of the "problems" facing the USofA. eg: > People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else. And yet recently prior administrations famously did enforce contempory border protections and prioritised chasing down people with actual criminal records. Past administrations, eg. the Republican Eisenhower, have been in favour of open borders for the cheap labour and boost to the agricultural industry. His often cited border enforcement operation was undertaken at the request of the Mexican government who were losing labor to US agribusiness. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback All that aside, the USofA Democrat party has a messaging and PR problem of epic proportions and the USofA has spiralled into a two party Hotelling's Law cesspit despite the founders largely disliking party politics - a fundemental flaw in the forward iteration of an "adequate for now" electoral system centuries old.

Paradigma11 9mo ago

The US voters didn't care what the election meant to the rest of the world and the rest of the world doesn't care what it meant to US voters.

mlrtime 9mo ago
I was thinking the same. It's just a hunch, but very few people vote on what the rest of the world thinks of the candidate that they vote for. They think, how this president will serve me and my family.