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> It's been confusing since the first trump term how many dems held this position. How can you call trump obviously reprehensible and irredemable... and then lose?

How is that in any way contradictory ?

It implies that either they themselves are even more reprehensible and irredeemable, or the majority of US voters are so morally bankrupt that they prefer reprehensible and irredeemable candidates. The latter is probably true, but why would they say that and then continue to run for elections? Why do they want the approval of morally bankrupt people who prefer reprehensible candidates?

Another option is that voters are just very stupid and fail to see that which is "obvious", repeatedly, despite billions spent on trying to make them "see". Or perhaps their claims are not actually "obvious", and they ought to be... kinder to the other side.

> Another option is that voters are just very stupid and fail to see that which is "obvious", repeatedly, despite billions spent on trying to make them "see".

Fox News. The folks who voted trump watch only Fox News, which has crafted an alternative and immersive world view that appears coherent if you only watch Fox News and reject conflicting information as lies.

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I have another take, the democratic party is incompetent.

If they can't convince voters to vote for them given how bad the other side looks then they must be really incompetent.

What's the point of having all the feel good rallies in cities with famous people if you can't reach people in rural areas.

The democratic party is too elitist, too far from regular people.

You are asking why they would say true things.
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> the majority of US voters are so morally bankrupt that they prefer reprehensible and irredeemable candidates.

Well, to make this non political.

Look at how many sports players have a history of domestic abuse; the character of a player is secondary to their ability to play the sport.

Voters everywhere are stupid but in the country of exceptionalism, they lately seem to have become exceptionally stu... tolerant!
> It implies that either they themselves are even more reprehensible and irredeemable > or the majority of US voters are so morally bankrupt that they prefer reprehensible and irredeemable candidates

You dont need to go that far. You just need to create an information environment that is beyond the ability of the average person to navigate.

At that point, the other side is just evil, and your team, even if they are convicted for crimes, have ties to Epstein or anything - doesn’t matter.

——

I mean, you can have privatized thought policing, there aren’t any laws or regulations to prevent. Everyone reads about Big Brother and worries about government control.

So you can create enough of FUD shared till it’s believed.

Don’t forget - we had to deal with Creationism, and that was wildly successful for a completely unscientific argument.

> why would they say that and then continue to run for elections?

Are you suggesting that the USA should have a single political party? Anyone that cares for democracy would be against that, regardless of their other political views.

My guess would be what they meant was that they should quit. Ie either you respect the intelligence/morallity of the people who you want to vote for you, or maybe you shouldn't be trying to represent them.

And not quit as in leave only a single party, but quit as in leave a vacuum for another party/candidate/etc to step in.

Note these aren't necessarily my personal views, just trying to help clarify what I believe the commentator meant.

One side has good marketing and the other has bad marketing. That simple really.
> Another option is that voters are just very stupid and fail to see that which is "obvious", repeatedly, despite billions spent on trying to make them "see".

I think this is the correct options.

I mean, look at the people who worked for him in the last administration:

> So how do we explain this near-universal rejection of Trump by the people who worked with him most closely? I guess one explanation is that they’ve all been infected with the dreaded Woke Mind Virus. But it’s unclear why working for Donald Trump would cause almost everyone to be exposed to the Woke Mind Virus, when working for, say, JD Vance, or Ron DeSantis, or any other prominent right-wing figure does not seem to produce such an infection.

> Of course, not everyone who worked for Trump has abandoned and denounced him. Rudy Giuliani, who is now under indictment in several different states, is still among the faithful. Michael Flynn, who was fired by Obama for insubordination and then removed by Trump for improper personal dealings with the Russian government, is still on board, and is now threatening to unleash the “gates of Hell” on Trump’s political enemies. Peter Navarro, the economist1 who served four months in prison for defying a Congressional subpoena, is still a Trump fan. And so on.

> You may perhaps notice a pattern among the relatively few people who are still on board the Trump Train from his first term. They are all very shady people. I don’t think this is a coincidence; I think it’s something systematic about Donald Trump’s personality and his method of rule.

* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/trumpism-is-kakistocracy

The GOP party has changed:

> As many people have noted, Trump’s movement is a cult of personality. Since Trump took over the Republican party in 2016, essentially every tenet of modern conservatism has been replaced with belief in a single leader. Trump appointed the judges that killed Roe v. Wade, but he constantly goes back and forth on the topic of abortion rights. Trump didn’t cut entitlement spending, but whether he wants to do that in his second term or not depends on which day you ask him. Trump has flip-flopped on the TikTok bill, on marijuana legalization, on the filibuster, on SALT caps, and so on.

> But these flip-flops do not matter to his support at all. His supporters are sure that whichever decision Trump makes, it will be the right one, and if he changes it the following week, that will be the right decision as well. If tomorrow Trump declared that tariffs are terrible and illegal immigration is great, this would immediately become the essence of Trumpism. Trump’s followers put their trust not in principled ideas, but in a man — or, to be more accurate, in the idea of a man. That is what Trumpism requires of its adherents.

* Idid.

> or the majority of US voters are so morally bankrupt that they prefer reprehensible and irredeemable candidates

Correct, yes.

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So your opinion is that elections are a referendum on the moral virtue of the candidate, or that you shouldn't run for office if you think the electorate is morally bankrupt?

I'm sorry, but I have to be blunt. That is an extremely narrow view, and a single second of critical thinking should present a million other possibilities. The former is obviously untrue, considering Trump's long list of vices. The latter is a complete non sequitur. Power is power; the electorate's morals only matter insofar as they're willing to check the box next to my name.

Trump can be reprehensible and irredemable, and still win if he's more believable on the issues Americans care the most about. He could be a fraud, a cheat, even a traitor, so long as he's persuasive. That's how democracy works, how it should work.

It's like being a pastry chef and mocking someone's cake as if it's the worst cake ever, but you can't even make a better one even though it's your profession.
Or you do make a better one but still lose because people did not actually care about the cake but about the messaging.

Or in meme form:

https://i.redd.it/g0r0x1ldi0e71.jpg

I think it’s more about taste being subjective. So if my “better” cake is actually less preferred, then it’s not actually better.

Making an objective statement about subjectivity is kind of silly in the first place. Then losing shows it to be stupid.

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It's more like making an edible cake but the customers preferring the one containing rat entrails because they'd rather eat rat entrails than let anyone else eat an edible cake.
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The median person is pretty dumb and half of the population is dumber