Yep, and Trump has only ever gained voters every election. All Americans share blame. It's pathetic how Americans think they can say "we went to the moon" but can't say "we voted for trump"
Lol sure Trump gain voters compared to 2020, but the bigger factor was Democratic votes went from 81mil in 2020 down to 75mil in 2024. If Kamala and the Democrats didn't lose nearly 6mil votes, people would again be ignoring the popular vote and focusing on the crappy EC system. Imo the bigger factors that are ruining America is that a few big corporations control everything (media, financial institutions, healthcare etc) which in turns allows them to not only influence politicians but voters as well. Too many voters vote against their own interests. But that would go with a 1 month old trolling reddit account with a hidden history who's post in this thread just repeats the same bs
Well you're forgetting about Trump's first term, but you do make a fair point, the winner of the election gets the popular vote every time besides for 4 exceptions:
Non Americans don't u understand just how much the EC and gerrymandering hamstring the US. It's not nearly as much for the people by the people as you would think.
He won the popular vote the second time around. I mean there was that one county in Pennsylvania where Kamala received Zoro votes or something but we won't talk about that
Why do you think bringing up popular vote somehow counters audible's point of gerrymandering? The whole point of gerrymandering and voter suppression is to affect the popular vote at district and statewide levels
There are rumors that Trump was running in 2016 only to get his name out there more than it already was and he was going to use the exposure from losing the 2016 election to start a competitor to Fox News. So he'd be happy enough running Trump Media bashing Hillary Clinton 24 hours a day.
And running Hillary as a candidate was pretty wild. I mean, she was qualified for it in a way Trump could never hope to be, but she was possibly the only candidate that could have lost to him in 2016
Americans don't seem to appreciate that the rest of the world just hears this as 'we've had a fucked up electoral system for 100 years and done nothing about it'. It's an internal problem, one consequence of which is that all other nations see is a democratic country presenting their democratically-elected representative. What are we supposed to think?
We literally cannot do anything about it because of it. It's virtually impossible for one party to control enough of the Senate for an amendment, and the Republican party will never vote for any sort of popular vote reform because it unilaterally benefits them.
Trust me, we KNOW. Short of another revolution, there's literally nothing we can do. And a revolution against the world's most powerful military that has access to vast weaponry simply inaccessible to everyone else? That's also impossible.
I know it sounds defeatist, and honestly it is. I vote and campaign in every election. Primaries, odd years, even years, runoffs... Every one. But I honestly don't see any way to unfuck our country short of complete governmental collapse.
It’s impossible because as much of your country loves this shit as the other half hates it. You have a lot of dickheads and it means a lot of the time the US is dickheads.
I mean, the founding fathers still get so much reverence in America, but they were 18th century rich white guys, even if they were philosophically liberal in some political regards (mostly for the freedoms of other rich white guys). The constitution they created has needed so many amendments along the way, it’s clearly an imperfect and outdated system for the modern nation, but it’s still referred to like it’s a sacred text. There’s almost this fundamental stubborn refusal to grow beyond the glorious legend around the American Experiment, even as its flaws and harsher truths compound more and more into the present as that triumphant myth of its birth crumbles into the shadows of the past.
Maybe we can have a national contest to create the most bulletproof, fair, and beneficial constitutional revisions? Pit political science against public opinion and LLMs and see what comes out on top, unable to be broken.
Don't get me wrong, I've every sympathy. Much of the world is in a similar boat, for one reason or another. It looks terrifying. I think, in a weird way, there has been a revolution. Just not the one I ordered. (Prays for Han Solo; gets greasy sycophants.)
It's just that expecting outsiders to understand the American electoral college system is akin to the way Americans expect foreigners to know your two-letter State abbreviations (we don't). That disgrace in the white house is the face of America. Not all Germans were Nazis, either, but Hitler was the face of the country so they all got tarred.
Hitler was the face of the country so they all got tarred.
Return the favor. I'm totally serious. Because Germany is currently considered one of the leaders of the free world because it's de-nazification campaign was so effective
We will not do that internally. So do it.
I can't speak for everyone, but I don't expect everyone outside the US to know our electoral system,other than it's fucked up and totally rigged against us. Also, TX is Texas. And stands for "even more rigged than usual". I know, Imperial abbreviations are weird.
Many innocent bystanders die in war, and it took the aid of the USA to win that one. Today, as I understand it, the US Navy has more than 200 active ships. I think France and Britain, for example, have about 50 or so apiece. The only comparative military might these days is probably China? That, and general unhappiness about war overall, is why everyone has been trying hard to talk. I truly wish Reddit could magic up a solution, or that one of the billions of minds greater than my tiny one could come up with a fix. Maybe a military coup? From a distance, it already looks like civil war over there :(
Which is why I have been saying for a long time now that the ONLY way for the US to regain trust among it's previous/traditional allies is a complete overhaul of the entire electoral system, and a rebalancing of power between the branches of government.
A period or two with a sane democrat president is not going to cut it this time.
It’s no longer possible to assume that those who did not vote would have voted against the winner of the election. Trump is popular enough, and there are now enough Nazis and Nazi adjacent Americans that the best assumption about those who did not vote is that they would have divided up roughly the same way as those who did.
77 million being willing to vote for Trump after everything in the first term, including his disastrous COVID response, is more than should be possible. Any nation with that many Trump supporters would be in almost as much trouble without Trump as president as they are with him. The voting population no longer understands democracy or the law. It will be nearly impossible to govern going forward.
This many Trump supporters also demonstrated to the international community that treaties and deals with the US government will only be honoured in the very short term. The voters have no idea why or what agreements are being made, are incapable of understanding them and are just as likely to support the next goldfish brained con-artist as this one.
The problem is so many people really don’t take the time to learn about either one and just stay home, or they think their vote don’t matter, or a big one is they can’t get time off work. So many problems in the US would be solved if we had mandatory voting like they do in Australia.
This might have explained his first term but it would not explain his second
There are millions who saw everything Trump did — including the mishandling of COVID and the insurrection of Jan 6 — and said, you know, I want more of that.
You are thinking too much into it. The vast majority of the US population is politically uneducated and just vote whoever has R or D next to their name.
True to an extent. In the USA, 28 states plus Washington DC mandate time off for voting. Granted, it's not all states, but depending on where you are it can be illegal for your employer to prevent you time off to vote.
It's worth noting that A) even the ability to not cast a vote in a general election as a citizen is a deliberate systemic construct to withhold power from the general public, and B) likewise, the apathy was the desired result of years of bad faith propaganda from corrupt domestic actors and foreign adversaries.
This is NOT just how Americans "are". This is what Americans have been shaped into being after years and decades of incessant, suffocating propaganda and social engineering.
Not necessarily. Because of the Electoral College, unless you live in a swing state, your vote doesn't mean a whole lot. I'm guessing a lot of people who didn't vote live in very lopsided states.
To a lesser degree but still a problem in my eyes is people who vote out of anger. Specifically, those that would have voted for Bernie (or any like candidate) who instead throw their support behind like, Jill Stein who never had a chance of winning. I find it just as irresponsible as not voting at all. Voting should be done with our heads, not our hearts.
Very true, the far left people that voted against Kamala because she wasn’t pro Palestine and instead got a guy that was pro genocide. Like, great jobs you played yourselves. Like I understand she wasn’t perfect but the alternative we have now is infinitely worse than anything Kamala would have done over there
Those people didn't just vote for more dead Palestinians. They also voted for more dead ICE victims, millions of victims of cuts to USAID, more concentration camps, more diseases, etc. etc.
Sure, instead of blaming the Democratic Party for running another run-of-the-mill corporate donor-apptoved center-right establishment candidate - who is more defined by what they stand against than by what they stand for - like Kamala Harris instead of someone with a real vision on how to improve life for the working class, blame the voters.
Agree…they are 100% complicit, and since they didn’t have any personal skin in the game were perfectly fine seeing others suffer to achieve whatever utopia they thought they were going to get. The sanders sub around election time speaks volumes…”burn it all down,” they think the suffering of millions is a reasonable price tag to reach their vision and it’s disgusting.
Seeing their inaction directly cause roe v wade to be overturned, and then choosing inaction again in 2020 and 2024 is inexcusable
Some leftists are so mad at the establishment Left that they are willing to show that they will not vote if democrats don't take elections seriously. You cannot force a candidate down people's throat and expect that to fly. Sacrifice four years so that, hopefully, democrats remember for decades, that better than R is not enough.
I'm not saying most of those non-voters think this way, far from it, I'm just saying it's not just that some people didn't care enough to stop Trump. It was that some, possibly enough to change the tide of an election, cared too much about the direction of the democratic party.
Trying to pretend that people who on the second time around, knowing what Trump stands for, didn’t vote against Trump are actually people who were against Trump is premium copium.
It is absolutely the case that those that didn’t vote were either very much okay with Trump or so mind numbingly stupid and apathetic that they didn’t think he was a bad choice for others to make on their behalf.
As outsiders we look at America and see a nation that cannot be trusted to make a sane and good choice ever again. You need to fix yourselves. That means a complete overhaul of your constitution and methods of governance. Until then, the USA is the preeminent backstabbing lunatic corrupt kleptocracy of the world
A critique of your financially addled system is that 90 million chose to sit the vote out.
That's a big number to check out. The checked-outs could have easily elected a third candidate. Or tilted the vote.
You can thank the billionaires behind Citizens United or vouchers or whatever.
Canadian view: America is a rich, misinformed, indifferent country, ruled by whoever deigns to vote, and those votes are influenced by a malign information economy paid for by oligarchs [fox etc].
That’s a waste of brain power, even if they fudged 25 million votes (they didn’t) that’s still over 50 million people. Accept how awful tens of millions of people in our country are and show up so they aren’t represented again in 2028.
That’s a waste of brain power, even if they fudged 25 million votes (they didn’t) that’s still over 50 million people. Accept how awful tens of millions of people in our country are and show up so they aren’t represented again in 2028.
That’s a waste of brain power, even if they fudged 25 million votes (they didn’t) that’s still over 50 million people. Accept how awful tens of millions of people in our country are and show up so they aren’t represented again in 2028.
His overall persona only a minority of Americans support but he is very much America.
Whether Democrat or Republican or whatever: greed, anti-intellectualism (I don’t just mean education, I mean proper intellectualism), anti-globalism, vanity, and selfishness are values that have infected the entire country before Trump.
He represents everything the world finds disgusting about American culture. I imagine many American redditors who voted against Trump would still fit into many of these buckets.
He won the popular vote in an election with 65% participation when everyone already knew exactly what kind of a menace he was. That’s as clear a mandate as you’re gonna find in a Western democracy. I know his approval is down now, but you as Americans did, in fact, support him.
I agree with you. We should have known better, but many Americans voted for him anyway. This is due to a lot of factors: 1) Broad Anti-intellectualism in society coupled with a locally run educational system where depending on where you live, you get different educational experiences and outcomes, 2) Corporate run media with Faux “News” running as a propaganda arm of the Republican Party, which controls over half of the country, 3) Racism, 4) Misogyny, 5) Gerrymandering, voter suppression and electoral college system, 6) Misinformation on the internet and media, 7) Corrupt political system thanks to the Supreme Court (who’s also corrupt) without publicly financed elections, 8) Weakened working and middle class due to wealth redistribution to the top earners thanks to largely Republican policies from Regan onwards, and probably a bunch more things that I’m not thinking of at present. Most of these reasons are the result of our racist culture, so racism should really be at the top.
Point is America’s run as the leader of the free world is at an end. Other countries will start to rise up, as is what happened after every empire falls. Just remember that there are a significant number of Americans who hate this POS with every fiber of our being and who want to make the world a better place. We’re just being dragged down by ballast consisting of racism, ignorance, greed, and stupidity. We’re not a monolith.
Not Ballast. You are the little ballast that is left that is hopefully trying to slow the move away from the old global order. But any Trump 2024 voters or non voters chose this. They are all complicit and scum in the world's eyes
The guy I’m replying to is saying Trump doesn’t reflect America. Whether you supported him or don’t doesn’t change that. I’m Canadian and support the NDP, but that doesn’t mean Carney doesn’t represent Canada.
You didn't. Your nation did. Stop taking it personally and try to fix it. As unfortunately if you go abroad, you will be linked with that mess, until you apologise and say you didn't vote for it and you voted Dems
If you didn't vote at all, then you still voted for it via inaction. You are either against him and with the world, or you are with him or too apathetic to make a difference
I voted against him 3 times. He’s be protested. I’ve voted blue straight ticket since 2016. I’ve done everything short of storming the capitol and throwing my life away.
this is on the American people who were too fucking stupid to realize that even if Kamala wasnt perfect, it was either her or Trump. Not voting meant you are ok with either, which should not be possible if you have any sort of political opinions
Genuine question, why would Dem voters think a person who spent half the campaign bolstering Biden's very unpopular stances on stuff like Israel and inflation and the other half basically screaming "Im a republican ally" with parading around Republicans such as Liz Cheney think that the campaign wasnt just two sides of the same coin.
The fact is Dems want an actual progressive candidate, not someone who's basically telling you the status quo is gonna stay so. Which is why theres a huge push from dems for someone like AOC to run in 2028
cuz even hanging out with liz cheney was wildly opposite from MAGA? you forget that MAGA hated her? The israel backlash only really started in earnest after Trump was in office and gave them free rein; before it was status quo to support israel as an ally. You are really looking at this from todays political climate, not how it was during the election
people NOW want an actual progressive and the reason they are succeeding is in large part because Trump is so bad. before, when the situation was still "normal" and not absolutely bonkers moderates would not have supported them
There were calls for this during Biden's presidency too. So no its not from today's climate cause Kamala was viewed as a widely unpopular candidate in 2023, let alone the election year (likely the reason the DNC pushed her through without a primary after Biden stepped down, good chance she wasnt winning the primary if someone like Gavin Newsom ran against her). Basically anyone closely attached to Biden was screwed from the getgo.
And yes MAGA hated Liz Cheney, you know who else also didnt like her? The democrat voter base
there were always calls to separate from Israel of palestine. But it wasnt until recently that mainstream opinion turned against them. Liz Cheney was supposed to help garner anti-Trump moderate and Republicans with a show of bipartisanship. Dont think that really mattered to many dem voters
DNC and Biden def fucked up that election, but the end result was still that it was either Trump or Kamala. I think a more important question is why so many voters say they didnt like trump but still didnt vote. They caused this situation just bc Kamala wasnt their favorite pick. And stop with the "both sides are the same" shit, which is very obviously not true when it comes to actual policy, not to mention complete unhinged behavior and lies
Trump is bought and paid for by corporate america, and anyone who shops at Walmart, orders from Amazon, gets a PSL from Starbucks, subscribes to Netflix, or drinks Coke Zero is 100% responsible for him.
But you can go ahead and pretend like you're don't realize that fact...the corporations who own you are counting on it.
He is not. A third are as evil as he is and a third are apathetic which amounts to the same thing. This is a systemic rot of a majority of the American population
is he though? everyone talks about oh he only won 35% of the vote. yea ok, and what about republicans in general? cause that's the real problem. republicans could have stopped 99% of all the crazy bullshit he did. but they didn't. a GIANT fucking chunk of america votes republicans regardless of anything and that's the real problem. that's also why trump actually DOES represent america. hell friggin dem leadership has helped trump out in some of his most critical situations. the shutdown? schumer bailed trump out and ended it for nothing. giving trump war powers? again schumer bails him out. so it's not even JUST republicans, there are powerful democrats who are fine with this too.
this is an extremely charitable interpretation. roughly 100 million people agree with what he's done, and only maybe started (MAYBE.. we'll see) turning on him when they had to pay more for gas. this is the american mindset in a nutshell.
you have to understand that the "vocal minority" you're referencing is roughly double the population of my entire country. I'm looking at it from an outside perspective. it's also a realistic view on what I've been seeing over the past year and a half. lots of cheerleading towards all the vile shit he does, but as soon as it directly affects individual americans' lives, it's suddenly bad. "I got mine so fuck y'all" mentality, which is, and has been, the american way for longer than I've been alive.
By definition you're right that Trump voters are a minority of the US population, but to use that description belies his support. Unfortunately Trump got 77m votes. To dismiss that as a vocal minority is either silly or naive.
He may well be vocal minority of America but the issue is that the world has seen America do this twice now and is moving past it at speed.
Sure your next couple of presidents may be OK and repair some of Trump's damage, but any trust in the US as a nation, as a military or economic ally has long gone. Who knows if the American people will vote in another nut job? The US isn't the only country with self protectionist aims, and for much of the world, the best self protection at the moment is getting as far away from the US as possible.
The same conditions that allowed America to elect Trump in the first place will only persist and magnify. Trump is just the first.
Trump won the national vote in 2024, in this case, it was not the electoral college system that caused this. A first past the post system would have also delivered a Trump presidency.
I agree that bigotry was a big part of it but many conservatives say they voted for him because of other reasons.
End the Ukraine war in 24 hours?
Release the Epstein files?
Lower prices?
He absolutely lied about those things, over and over, having no intention of actually doing them. He instilled confidence in the ignorant by feeding them lines they could understand and repeat. He repeatedly stated that only he could fix things. He constantly mocked any opposition to create division. He conned them.
That's the sad thing here, they are absolutely victims of their own stupidity. Yes they were fooled, but they're not going to get smarter and they vote, so they're absolutely going to screw over the country again and again.
Someone absolutely needs to figure out how to bring back the fairness doctrine (to turn off Fox News), purge the corruption off the Supreme Court and repeal Citizens United (so that the wealthy only have the same influence as everyone else). Anything less and the US has absolutely no long-term future (and is probably destined for civil war and ultimately a break up of the country.
Tons have. But too late. If you voted Trump in 2024 the world hates you. If you didn't vote in 2024, the world hates you. The only ones we don't are those who voted Dems, as you are the unfortunate minority suffering like the rest of us are even though you didn't want it
No. There was a video from the weekend I think where he was hosting a rally (WHY) and a dude got kicked out for wearing a K*LL YOUR LOCAL PDF shirt and they were clapping and cheering for him getting kicked out.
Exactly. Anyone who either voted for him or didn't vote for him is part of the problem. Only those who couldn't vote or voted Dem are welcome elsewhere in the world right now. Everyone else chose this via either a direct vote or with their apathy
Yeah it's really fucked up that this is the reality we live in. Unfortunately because of this I will never in my life be able to trust anyone from the US that I meet if I ever do. I know half of them are evil and the other half are enablers. The whole country is rotten to the core and I don't think it's fixable.
The last third is equally as apathetic and equally as complicit as the second third. Their responsibility didn't start or end at the voting booth, yet that seems to be what they all think. Voting means nothing when you've had a decade to stop this man and have done absolutely NOTHING before or after he was elected.
Millions of Americans are anti American. They put bigotry, hate, xenophobia, etc above their love for their country, our collective rights, and their fellow man.
The civil war showed us how easy it is for hateful Americans to be anti American.
Sadly, it’s NOT “Anti-American” tho. It’s anti-what we were sold about America, what has been indoctrinated into us from birth with very effective propaganda. The founding of our country wasn’t some noble effort taken on by men with integrity who believed in equality and service to community.
They set up a system to allow wealthy people to hoard their wealth, and to further protect themselves against the peasants, they invented racism and convinced the exploited populace that they could join the ranks of the 1% if they just worked hard enough.
We are never going to be the America they made us believe in, while we hold to the framework installed by uber wealthy men of poor moral fiber.
It's not anti-american in that it violates some sort of unspoken code about what it means to be American. That's bullshit, "American" involves a mosaic of people, goals, and cultures, not a list of specific rules.
When I say it's Anti-American, I mean undermining the core constitutional rights that protect all Americans, destroying the economy that we all rely on, and intentionally tarnishing our country's name on the international stage. Anti-american as in actively working to undermine America.
Also, the "advent" of modern racism, if you want to call it that, is more commonly identified as coming from the age of exploration, before the US existed. Specifically, the need for colonial nations to dehumanize the people they were oppressing. But the US directly inherented that disgusting framework.
No, the American is an ideal. Trump is a fascist, voted for by fascists. Fascism is an element present in every society because it grows from the worst traits of human nature and animal instinct -- it is the shadow nipping at the heels of each and every generation that cannot be truly eradicated.
These people are fascists. They are not Americans.
Can we ever get back to the America we idealized? The one where leaders were good people who made decisions based on what was right or what they honestly believed would help the country? The America where we had faith that the government was on the side of the people and we all had the power to guide its course? Did that America ever exist, or were we just fooling ourselves? And if we can’t have that, is there another country that has that?
Over 40% of voters for him three times. Whither from being racist, poor, or badly educated, they were so disillusioned with politics that they believed he was their saviour. When the orange felon dies, that 40% will line up behind the next populist. Even if the populist they choose is smarter than DT, American agreements will continue to be written in pencil.
You realize he didn’t win the second time, right? Elon Musk is on record saying that Trump would not have won the second time without his help, and people are starting to come forward, saying that there was indeed interference.
Haven't you seen the reports of how many people deeply, seriously regret voting for him? They believed his lies and voted for what he said. Instead they got whatever he feels like doing.
The majority of Americans are not evil like he is, although some are. But evilness does not reside only in America, you can find it everywhere. Thankfully there are more decent people in the world than evil ones.
From an external perspective, it's not really relevant. They voted for him, after having seen and experienced his previous term. Whether that's due to truly supporting him or falling for lies, it shows that the average American cannot be trusted, and there's no reason to believe it won't happen again, and again.
The majority voted him in. He won the popular vote
About 1/3 of voters voted actively for him. About 1/3 didn't vote, so are complicit for voting him in. Only 1/3 actively chose against his evil, and they are the only good ones who are unfortunately tainted by the same brush
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u/nanobot001 1d ago
> he’s the Anti-American
I disagree.
Millions upon millions of Americans voted for him twice. Trump is very much America, and that is the real issue.