I always thought part of Trump voters weren't really voting Donald, but sending the message "we are so sick of your crap that we prefer to vote an orange clown better than you" to the professional political (and media) stablishment. And it was a strong message that sent into a kind of paniked frenzy its target, btw
That is what I thought as well. But now I see many of them defending his tweets. Like the ones that think when told the 'squad' to go home that he meant to their districts.....
Basically, he has driven them into such an anti liberal frenzy so that they can't see straight. My concern is the left will put up someone far left and we are left with another decision with two bad choices.
He got votes for various reasons. He got protest votes (I briefly entertained the idea myself, but decided to throw away my vote on the Libertarian Party instead in the end), single issue votes (personally know some religious people who thought he was contemptible AF but voted for him on abortion issue), and of course MAGA True Believers. I do think the protest votes put him in office - don’t think MAGA-heads and single issue voters alone would have been enough.
It’s not just peeps on the right who are in a frenzy of insanity right now. The left has a loud loonie segment too. Worse is the loonie voices on both sides are the ones being amplified, and they just drive each other to act more extreme and outrageous. American politics is an absolute s*** show right now.
With the stuff being trotted out in the Democratic Debates (basically everyone trying to appeal to the far left / identity politics crowd) I’m afraid we’re going to have another 4 years of Trump... We have the electoral college; you can’t win presidency through the coasts alone, you have to appeal to middle America too. It seems insane to me for Dems to center and push identity politics in a majority white country - you get white people feeling like they need to tribalize on identity lines and vote in a block, they’re not going to vote for the party calling them racists. If the eventual winner from Democrats doesn’t level themselves out in the run up to general election, I don’t think they’re gonna win...