Bernie Sanders appeared to sum up Donald Trump's campaign tactics in a video decades before the now-president-elect won the 2024 election. The Vermont senator, then 61, spoke to high school students about the value of public service, the political process, and his experiences as an elected official as part of a C-SPAN and Comcast project to encourage dialogue between students and national leaders. He described how Republicans would "split people up instead of working together." "You split people up, and then they end up if you're a middle-class person voting against your own interests and the rich go laughing all the way to the bank," he told the students.
I voted for Bernie (and later Hillary somewhat begrudgingly), but doesn’t it piss you off though that Not Trump didn’t work, though?
Like for a reasonable, ethical individual, that should 100% be enough.
So it speaks to the disinformation war going on and just how strongly Republicans control the national narrative. All of course further exacerbated by the internet, social media, and Citizens United.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware Democrats need to embrace their own flavor of populism. Still, it pisses me off that Not Fascism isn’t enough.
You’re damn right it pisses me off. Over half the country voted to have a rapist, racist, felon, Russian asset as its face. For better or worse, Trump will become the default American for at least the next 4 years. I hate the thought of being associated with him in any way that makes a positive correlation. I’ve got co-workers and truckers coming into work praising this vile, atrocious excuse for a human being, not realizing they fucked themselves and the rest of us over. I’m more angry than I can accurately put into words. I really hope the people who were “on the fence” feel good about themselves. The first time was bad enough. This time, we knew the brown log wasn’t a tootsie roll. We knew it was shit, and over half the country willingly took another bite. I just hate how the rest of us now have to smell it again.
Ultimately, it’s still on the Democratic Party’s campaign for failing to drum up enough turnout. There are plenty of popular progressive policies that would have not only brought out much more turnout from Democrat voters, but that are also popular with Republican voters
Conservatives have never been reasonable, ethical individuals. Slavery, Jim Crow, against women’s suffrage, against the equal rights amendment, against social security, against gay and trans rights, the list goes on forever. The country’s fight isn’t to change a conservative’s mind, it’s to get enough of the non-conservatives to engage, protest, and vote such that they overwhelm the small but galvanized conservative base.
When you win on those issues, those conservatives don’t change their mind. They continue to support slavery, or voter suppression, or the issues of their time, but eventually they die off. Then you have new fights with the new conservatives.