Why do you think the prisoner-elect got as many votes as he did?

[mtnsnake]

If he really got as many votes as they are saying, do you think it's because almost half the voters are batshit crazy? Is that possible? Are we really that far gone as a nation? If not, what the hell is it then? I mean, the guy is a mass-murdering world class asshole, a sociopath with no conscience who is completely devoid of any empathy, and he is a complete moron to boot. Every time he opens his mouth, it's immediately apparent how fucking stupid he is. Plus, he's a white supremacist fear-mongering racist who without a doubt would kill any person in this country if he would benefit from it and if he thought that he could get away with it.

So please explain to me how someone like him, someone with such a consistently low approval rating as him, could possibly appeal to so many people that he could get as many votes as he supposedly did. I really would like to know. Thank you in advance.

[sandensea]

1. Touch-screen voting machines may have had something to do with it

We all remember the 2004 footage of the Ohio touchscreens that, when you pressed Kerry, switched to Bush - as if possessed by some evil GOPee ghost.

They've just gotten better at making sure you don't notice, that's all.

[patricia92243]

2. Fox News viewers are not exposed to any negative coverage of him.

[sandensea]

4. +1

Faux News and Hate Radio were the genius ideas of the GOPee over the last generation.

Straight from the fascist playbook.

[Siwsan]

3. Also, consider the The Ipsos/Reuters poll

Some 79% of Americans — including around 60% of Republicans — say Biden was the rightful winner, whereas just 3% said Trump won and 13% said the election remains undecided, according to an Ipsos/Reuters poll released Tuesday.

Trump has shown no inclination to concede and congratulate Biden, but 72% of American adults believe the loser of the race ought to concede.

70% of Americans, including a majority of Democrats and Republicans, trust their local election officials to be honest, roughly matching with a pre-election YouGov poll that found 63% of voters believe state officials will count votes accurately.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2020/11/10/poll-most-democrats-and-republicans-say-biden-won-he-did/?sh=7927772f39a9

[exboyfil]

7. Sorry but I think I have had enough of polls

No way do I believe that 60% of Republicans think Biden won the election.

[exboyfil]

5. This is what I think given many of my high school friends

and coworkers are firmly on the Trump train (albeit on a transactional basis - many would flush him for Romney for example).

1. Abortion
2. Guns
3. Libertarian Economics
4. Devolution of Federal powers to the states
5. Homosexual rights beyond basic ones to property and security (so no marriage recognition)

In Iowa and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast where I went to high school, the sentiments are almost the same. I think not knocking down the strawman Defund the police did considerable damage in Iowa.

[mtnsnake]

9. I think your answer is accurate, but it's a sad reflection of how those issues are

much more important to them than having a crazy madman in office who at the very least could ruin our nation or at the very worst could get us all killed.

[ooky]

13. Pretty much.

I would just add the "socialism" boogeyman to complete the list. Guns is a big one, I think bigger than we tend to give credit for, and a gateway to their acceptance of other nonsensical wedge issues.

[XanaDUer2]

6. it's a cult

No critical thinking. If they listen to RW hate radio, it reinforces all of this. Sadly, there are a lot of angry average Americans whose lives suck, but they're blaming the wrong people

[Laelth]

12. +1 n/t

-Laelth

[unblock]

8. if you listen to foxnews for even 3 minutes, you get it. it's a warped, delusional bubble.

they are relentless in pushing the worldview that democrats are all rotten and incompetent and push horrible things that will destroy america and turn us into a third world country.

meanwhile republicans are all patriotic heroes who make america great.

to support those inviolable conclusions, they varioualy invent, distort, ignore, or twist the facts and news of the day, always in a way that supports their right-wing conclusions.

republicans win every debate, every issue, all the time.

if you watch that uncritically -- and there are many who literally have the tv on foxnews all day long -- you can't help but get sucked into that worldview because it is relentless. they express their biased views as if they were confident and obvious facts and go from there. i can see how effective it is.


note that it's quite possible for masses of people to be part of a group insanity while a large number of them aren't individually insane (outside of their allegiance to that insane group).

[Turin_C3PO]

18. But something like only 3 million Americans a day

watch Fox News. Network news still has significantly higher ratings. My theory is that it's social media lies that distort most Americans' views of everything. Their algorithms are set to reinforce their opinions and keeps them in a false reality bubble.

[unblock]

26. there's also hate radio (rush limbaugh, etc.)

but these right-wing sources distort the "regular" media because they set the narrative.

the whole hillary email scandal, and the entire right-wing faux scandal machine, illustrates this.

the endless email saga officlally ended with comey saying she may have been careless but there's no crime here because there was no criminal intent and no evidence any confidential information ever fell into "enemy" hands. but they could have saved us a lot of time if they had asked those questions first. the whole thing was basically guaranteed to end in "there's nothing here". a minor administrative slip-up at the worst.

i used to work in a secure environment. no one would even get fired for doing what hillary (or her admin) did. you'd fix the problem, maybe say don't do that again, and move on. maybe it goes down on your record as a warning, but that's it.

it was basically a non-scandal from the get-go, yet it completely dominated all coverage of hillary during 2016, including in the "normal" media.

we have nothing like that to counter. there's never any relentless coverage of any republican scandal. people forget that he's accused of assaulting or molesting or otherwise sexually inappropriate behavior by i think 25 women. people don't even *realize* that his payment of $130,000 to stormy to keep a personal secret is a *massive* red flag for national security. people think hillary was a national security risk because of the email nonsense, but don't realize that paying to keep a secret is *exactly* the sort of thing they look for when evaluating if someone is vulnerable to blackmail or otherwise could be motivated to hand over secrets for money.


so people get a twisted, right-wing view even inspired by foxnews and the like, even if they never watch foxnews directly.

[Turin_C3PO]

31. Yes, I agree with everything you're saying.

The way Hillary was treated by the media was shameful. We Democrats need to figure out a way to outsmart the propaganda machine. I'm not sure how but we must effectively counter their bullshit if our nation is to have a long term future.

[unblock]

35. we definitely need to be more media-savvy, and much more coordinated.

one of the many less obvious ways the media tilts things toward republicans is by picking and choosing which democrat they bring on to their programs. sometimes they get someone who really represents the party, other times they get someone who only speaks for themselves.

republicans get together and coordinate their media efforts. they get their talking points for the day, down to using the same catchphrases and word choice. meanwhile democrats speak off the cuff. so republicans benefit from repetition and hammering on a particular notion and it sticks in people's brains much more than whatever the democrats say.

it's the same way the chorus of a song sticks in your brain far more readily than the verses. the verses are usually where the real story and meaning of a song is, but people remember the chorus.


we need to find better ways of hammering on republicans, like always calling them the lying party, the incompetent party, the dictator wannabe party, the coverup party, the fake scandal party, etc.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

10. How did it happen in Germany?

The had decades of antisemite and right-wing propaganda too. Hitler didn't just show up and tell his big lies, immediately swaying large numbers of Germans. The foundation of smaller lies were spread there for many years.

A cult might result in its members drinking poisoned Flavor-Aid, but they never lead with the poison. They build up to it.

Wealthy industrialists in Germany were very paranoid about communism or socialism (favored by some Jewish intellectuals) over there, so they supported the Nazis instead. That's similar to what has happened here for decades too.

[JI7]

11. Bigotry, Greed , Selfishness , Resentment , just plain assholes

[GreenEyedLefty]

14. White supremacy and toadyism

[Solomon]

25. I don't understand what folk here don't get about racism.

They keep deluding themselves with bullshit reasons. Its racism people. All the other reasons are just whitesplaining cover.

[Turin_C3PO]

15. Remember

that ~40% of eligible voters didnt vote at all plus the 76 million or more that voted Biden who absolutely hate Trump. That said, it's extremely disturbing and disappointing that 71 million people are apparently assholes, racists, bigots, etc. I don't know what the solution is.

[JCMach1]

16. Ask the Russian hackers

I have swampland I can sell you if you believe Trump got more votes than he did in 2016...

[Buckeyeblue]

17. I think it's Covid.

Low info/low IQ voters who were on the fence broke for Trump because they are overwhelmed by the way Covid restrictions have changed their lives. They don't like masks. They don't like online school. They wants bars opened the way they used to be.

Trump had really tapped into this group the last month or two. I think when he got infected (if he really did) and recovered quickly, this signaled to this group that it was ok to get Covid.

There are a certain percentage that will always vote Republican because of abortion, guns, religion, gay rights, etc. Probably in the low 40's for all of those issues combined.

[mtnsnake]

21. Interesting.

It makes sense that covid in that respect could make a difference in the vote count. I never thought of that.

[Buckeyeblue]

37. Initially I thought Covid would be his undoing

But I think with Trump voters, sometimes it is opposite of what is rational that drives their actions. It's the appeal of a mad man. Come to a rational conclusion and then do the opposite.

[onecaliberal]

19. Cheating and fraud.

[czarjak]

20. Obviously, tax reform...

You’d vote Republican too if you were getting a million dollar bump in the bottom line every 16 months? Like a miracle!

[onethatcares]

22. because some of these magats

are nutz. they don't have a long term view of the U.S. of A, or of the world. They try to keep themselves in a little bubble where they don't have to reason out anything they do, except, does it make them money or are they the ones on top.

[Statistical]

23. It isn't one thing but white-anxiety and Fox News are two huge factors.

By Fox News I mean the "alternative-facts" buble that Fox News perfected but now involves more than Fox News. If you are a right winger well you can never be confronted with any bad news about Trump. Nothing to break your bubble that Trump is great and libtards suck and Trump is making them cry.

[Crazyleftie]

24. VOTING MACHINES

mail in ballots saved the election for us

[Rice4VP]

27. More Latinos and Black people voted for

him because of the economy.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

28. White supremacy is a hell of a drug.

[Hotler]

29. It is all about the hate for democrats and liberals, period.

The repugs voted for the orange one because he was their best chance to hurt (own) us. It is past the partisanship stage.

[JT45242]

30. He hates the people that they hate

1. When LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, he said that he was delivering the south to the republican party for a generation... it's been closer to 3 generations. But all over the south, that hatred for the Democrats -- fueled by the audacity of the D's to put an uppity black guy in the white house and now even worse a super-uppity black woman drives out white hatred in ways that are visceral. My FIL has masters of divinity and was a birther.

2. Speaking of my FIL, the insidious nature of the NRA and other RW propaganda agencies. He first got into the NRA so that he could participate in some local shooting competitions. He grew up in a rural area and was always a good shot -- squirrel, deer, etc. supplemented the family groceries when he was a kid. He got on their mailing lists, he read their magazines, he watched their shows. Gradually, a man who had worked as a minister towards racial reconciliation was spouting diatribes that the FBI and ATF were jackbooted thugs.

3. Rupert Murdoch (see Australia looking to ban him and his companies). The biggest mistake that the US ever made was allowing a foreignor to buy TV stations. He has used Faux news and other outlets to push his crazy conspiracies theories for years. (also look at Rush Limbaugh and his father in law who owned the radio stations that gave him a platform)

4. The horror of Citizens United and other pretzel logic decisions brought about by dirtbag Scalia and his followers Alito and Thomas. In Iowa, the demonization of Nancy Pelosi (read uppity woman from not-here) was the major attack on Greenfield. It worked. It also worked on attaching the Pelosi brand (who has been demonized on the above echo chambers for years) to Biden here as well.

5. Decimating civics education in the US. There was a concerted effort to remove social studies from the NCLB and ESSA. As testing experts will tell you, only what is tested will get taught. Republicans fought hard to remove social studies from testing because an educated electorate is dangerous.

6. Facebook and their willingness to take any form of currency including rubles to peddle lies for Trump and the Repulicans as long as Zuckerberg's taxes stay low.

[GemDigger]

32. Someone on MSNBC last night said that republicans were NOT answering poll calls.

So that they didn't give that information to the polls which would go to the people.

It was a sucker punch and we fell for it. DO NOT trust the polls ever. Not because of the polls but because of the people that do (D's) or do not (R's) answer them.

[Arthur_Frain]

33. My dad and many seniors like him.

He’s a conservative at heart, in the ‘old school’ mode of thought. He’s lived in CA all his life, (a conservative part of it) and hates what liberal government has turned that state into. Specifically he blames this on the democrats, and will never vote for one again as long as he lives, no matter what.

Who am I to cast stones I guess? I used to vote issues and character, I’ve voted for republicans in the past when I thought they were a better option. But I’ll never vote for another Republican again. Ever. Specifically because of Donald. So I get him.

How many old folks in Florida are just like my dad? Quite a few apparently.

[burrowowl]

38. Does he miss the Robber Barons, old school

Conservatism leads to things like fascism.

[Yeehah]

34. Propaganda works

24/7 hate radio and hate TV.

[malaise]

36. Rec for the prisoner-elect

[moondust]

39. GNN

Goebbels News Network: Fox, hate radio, Breitbart, 4chan, Sinclair, ...

Alternate reality bubble for sociopaths, psychopaths, anarchists taught to hate gubment and buy guns, religious suckers, racists, lemmings, ...

His pandemic malfeasance alone was an absolute disqualifier and there's much more than that.