• Ibaudia@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    11 days ago

    Very few people voted for Trump based on his policy decisions. Most people just see him as a Washington outsider who speaks his mind and that’s where it starts and ends. They like him as a person.

    • ChillPenguin@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      11 days ago

      Which is ridiculous in my opinion because the dude is such a big piece of shit. But I guess that explains why we’re all in this position.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      11 days ago

      People flabbergasted how anyone could “like Trump as a person” don’t realize that the average American worker spends 6 - 7 days a week stuck in traffic, working overtime, working side jobs, struggling to maintain a house or family, and gets all their news and information from a few minutes of social media and talk radio every day.

      Most people have not seen the countless clips and stories of Trump’s incompetence and rotting brain, they see what Facebook wants them to see, or what their friends say, and they don’t really give it a lot of thought. The average Trump-voting conservative might not be very informed but they genuinely aren’t all bad people. Just dumb people.

      If you’re here reading lemmy or reddit, you’re someone who can read lemmy and reddit on a friday afternoon and that means that some part of your life allows for such luxuries, or you already have formed a strong opinion and have tuned your recreational reading to match. This isn’t the case for everyone.

      We need to understand this fact a lot better to undo the polarization that the real evil conmen have set up in this country.

      I had family members who were planning on voting for Trump and all it took was talking about his failed policies and playing a few clips of him saying how he really feels about things like guns and poor people and they changed their mind. That simple. Do not underestimate your powers to change hearts and minds.

      • jballs@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        11 days ago

        I remember growing up hearing that most people voted for the candidate they thought they could sit down and have a beer with. Then I started paying attention to politics and kind of forgot this really basic idea. It’s almost like a trap, the more you educate yourself, the more you assume that other people are doing the same thing. Then you’re flabbergasted when people vote against your preferred candidate since it seems so obvious. But seriously, look at the last few decades of presidents:

        • Bill Clinton seemed more relatable and someone you could have a beer with than Bush Sr, then also with Bob Dole.

        • Dubya, bless his dumb little heart, felt more down to earth than Gore or Kerry.

        • Obama was infinitely cooler than McCain or Romney.

        • Trump, as much of a jackass as he is, certainly seems more fun to hang out with than Hillary.

        • The major outlier here was that Biden beat Trump. It kind of goes to show you just how bad Trump fucked up. Had he just somewhat competently managed COVID, there’s a good possibility he would have won in 2020.

        Most people don’t give a shit about appointing Supreme Court Justices, immigration policy, monetary policy, disaster preparedness, etc. They just wanna look at a politician and say “Yeah, they’d probably be my friend if we met” and that’s it.

        Edit: this made me think of this Dave Chappelle stand-up before he was an asshole. https://youtu.be/KQ2dquaHO7Q

      • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        11 days ago

        Those with college education and who are politically active tend to lean towards the left, it’s good to remember that. A lot of people, especially right-leaning people, have no fucking idea what policies they’re actually voting for and operate purely off vibes and buzzwords.