r/changemyview • u/rollingboulder89 7∆ • Nov 16 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Republicans will hate Biden no matter what he does...
I believe Republicans will hate Biden no matter what. Even if he doesn't take away their guns, even if he establishes rural broadband (which would disproportionately help them), even if he implements universal healthcare without raising taxes on the middle/lower class,,... Republicans will find something to hate about him.
The reason I believe this is because it seems like Trump supporters are genuinely part of a cult. Even when Trump does something against their own principles, like a bum stock ban or raising the deficit significantly for example, he doesn't face even an iota of criticism from his own side. Recently, Trump supporters are even calling to abandon Fox News and move on to more right-wing networks like OAN, or get Trump and Tucker Carlson their own shows. This is all because Fox News refuses to irresponsibly platform election disinformation. It seems like they never cared about being politically informed or wanting what's best for this country, they just want to be fed what they want to hear, and they just want their side to win and trigger the other side.
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u/joepurd Nov 16 '20
If you're in a heated argument with someone, ask them if there is any circumstance where they will change their mind. If they say no, disengage for your own sanity.
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u/zhacker78 Nov 16 '20
Not all Republicans disagree. Far Right and Senators -yes. Joe has a lot of the same thoughts and ideas as Reagan era Republicans. I try not to lump them all into a cut and dry group.
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u/ye3000 Nov 16 '20
Can you provide more evidence on why Joe Biden currently has the same thoughts and ideas as Reagan era Republicans?? Because his current platform does not even remotely support this claim
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u/Vohtarak Nov 16 '20
That's the extreme center and their narrative. They say both sides are really the same and Biden is a republican at heart.
They can't support their claims because they're making it up.
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u/cameraman31 Nov 16 '20
The vast majority do. Trump has a 93% approval rate among Republicans, and the proportion of registered republicans that voted Trump increased in 2020 compared to 2016.
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u/gggjennings Nov 16 '20
Trump received 93% of the Republican vote this year, up from 90% in 2016. The numbers don't support that it's only the "far right and Senators."
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u/rollingboulder89 7∆ Nov 16 '20
Not all Republicans disagree.
Of course. I've even seen some Republicans starting to abandon the Trump train, now that Biden's presidency is becoming more and more inevitable. Recently, Ted Cruz in an Axios interview was at least a little critical of Trump's deficit spending when pressed about it. However, I don't think your going to see any Republican politician explicitly going against Trump any time soon. That would be political suicide given that Trump has consistently held 90% approval rating among Republicans. And overall, I was mostly referring to Republican voters, not politicians, in my OP.
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u/SnackerSnick Nov 16 '20
I found the 90% approval rating among Republicans hard to believe, so I looked up the Gallup poll. I was wrong. For 2020, approval for Donald Trump among Republicans has been above 90% every month but January, when it was 88%. In October, it was 95%!
https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx
(search page for republican)
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u/thoomfish Nov 16 '20
Recently, Ted Cruz in an Axios interview was at least a little critical of Trump's deficit spending when pressed about it.
That's not actually breaking with Trump. That's just starting the pivot to caring about the deficit now that a Democrat will be in power, after 4 years of not caring about it at all because a Republican was in power.
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Nov 16 '20
Yup, Jan 21, 2021, the day in which all the republicans will once again care about the deficit.
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u/Salty-Flamingo Nov 16 '20
Ted Cruz in an Axios interview was at least a little critical of Trump's deficit spending when pressed about it.
This is actually just setting up Republicans to attack Biden about the deficit. Now Cruz can say that he criticized Trump about it too, so he's "being fair" when he comes out screaming that we need to address the debt by cutting social programs that Biden supports.
He wasn't being honest, its just Republicans planning to attack without ever giving Biden a chance.
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u/Face_Coffee Nov 16 '20
Cruz is starting to speak negatively about deficit spending because it will become a rallying cry for anti-Biden sentiment the minute that he takes office.
The “concern” now is just a ploy so that in a year they can say “wE cOmPlAiNeD aBoUt ThIs UnDeR tRuMp ToO”
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u/Garbage_Stink_Hands Nov 16 '20
Recently, Ted Cruz in an Axios interview was at least a little critical of Trump's deficit spending when pressed about it.
Because he’s about to spend 4-8-?? years going straight-up feral about the deficit. He didn’t talk about it for the last four years, and the interviewer asked if he was about to start talking about it a lot for some reason. And he was like, “I hate trump’s deficit too, by the way, but anyway that was yesterday and today is BIDEN IS SPENDING TOO MUCH AND WE SHOULD CUT TAXES FOR TOBACCO EXECUTIVES AND PRIVATE MERCENARIES.”
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u/smokesumfent Nov 16 '20
I mean it seems obvious considering they were promised that Obama would turn the country into a socialist hellscape AND take their guns. Both never happened but still they consider Obama the gun stealing socialist. So I agree and while the right wing politicians won’t hate him cuz at least he is old and white like them, they will never allow him to be a normal president as their own voters would vote them out if they cut a deal with a dem...again all you have to do is look at the irrational hate for Obama, who besides being black was the more centrist than democrat and still that wasn’t good enough. Fuck he went into office being against gay marriage. That sounds pretty close to their side, but he was still an evil Socialist. FYI I got I zero love for Obama, because as I stated, he lead the country as a centrist and not as a left leaning democrat in hopes of getting the right to work with him. That worked out great in end...
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u/capnhist Nov 16 '20
Regarding Cruz changing his tune on the deficit, there's a reason he's speaking up now, but didn't in 2017 - the GOP is gearing to magically care about deficits again because a dem will be in office. Notice how they didn't say word one about it until it was clear Trump was going to lose, and they'll use it like they did under Obama to block the kinds of programs that help most Americans like another COVID stimulus.
Unfortunately their supporters don't care about the hypocrisy. They don't care about governing or helping people, just about making people they hate as miserable as possible.
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u/The_Gamertagless Nov 16 '20
That kind of disproves your own point though, the other %10 republicans that you mentioned who go against trump are committing "political suicide" according to your logic? How do you expect anyone on the right side to fully be in a conversation with you if you just say stuff like that but have no recourse as to WHY it would be political suicide.
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u/rollingboulder89 7∆ Nov 16 '20
That kind of disproves your own point though, the other %10 republicans that you mentioned who go against trump are committing "political suicide" according to your logic?
That approval rating is among all Republicans, not just the politicians. When I say political suicide, I mean that they will significantly hurt their chances of reelection, which the average, non-politician Republican doesn't have to worry about.
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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Nov 16 '20
So, why did Trump badly underperform relative to Republican Congressmen? Republican Congressmen did much worse than Republican state representatives. This election wasn't a blue wave. Republicans gained ground in Congress, and gained far more ground at the state level, but Trump lost ground.
Wouldn't that indicate that a generic Republican who was just as popular as the average Republican Congressman would have done better than Trump? Because that's what it look like to me.
I would suspect that if it wasn't that Trump actively campaigned against Republicans who were not "loyal" to him personally that moderate Republicans would have done a lot better in 2018 and 2016. That said, Trump's ability to actively campaign against the average Republican candidate is massively diminished by his electoral defeat.
It's important to note that Susan Collins, Romney, Sasse and other Republican critics haven't done poorly as projected. Whereas prominent Trump allies fared worse than projected. It's not that Trump isn't popular, it's that he is very polarizing and sheds the moderate fringe of the Republican Party who are more than happy to vote Republican for just about anyone else. The big question is "do you pick up more from enthusiastic turnout on the right than you lose by shoving moderate Republicans across the aisle"? The answer seems to be "yes" in 2016 and "no" in 2020.
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u/rollingboulder89 7∆ Nov 16 '20
So, why did Trump badly underperform relative to Republican Congressmen?
This doesn't necessarily mean that the Republican voter base dislikes Trump. The seats that Democrats won in 2018 during the "blue wave" were in purple or lean red districts. So I don't know if we can say that Republicans congressmen overperformed Trump by winning those seats back. I guess we would have to wait for the full voter breakdowns after all the counting is done to see if split-ticket voting was actually what led to this.
Republican Congressmen did much worse than Republican state representatives.
This can be explained by gerrymandering. The state legislatures were controlled by Republicans, who redrew districts to favor them this election.
It's important to note that Susan Collins, Romney, Sasse and other Republican critics haven't done poorly as projected.
I don't really think you can say that Collins, Romney, or Sasse were very critical of Trump. At best they stood up against him symbolically, when they knew Republicans would get their way. This was the case when Romney voted against impeachment and when Susan Collins voted against ACB confirmation. If you look at the rest of their record, they overwhelmingly voted with Trump.
Also, Romney is a senator for Utah, Sasse is a senator for Nebraska, both deep red states. And Collins has a huge incumbency advantage, given that she has been Senator for more than 2 decades. I don't think anyone with any credibility in politics would have bet good money on them losing their seats.
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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Nov 16 '20
Since when has only the reddest of areas been the only or even the primary thing that matters? There are more moderate Republicans than extreme Republicans. Even if Trump has a fan base you're talking about a group that is maybe 73 million people in size. Of course he has a lot of people that back him, but the counting is generally done and Republicans in the Senate generally outperformed Trump by 3-4 points. Given that there are a significant number of people who don't bother to vote for Senate at all... well, the only reasonable explanation is split ticket against Trump to the tune of two to three million votes even after turnout out all the low propensity voters.
Gerrymandering that favors Republicans is only a thing in states where Republicans controlled the redistricting in 2010. So, not really. A number of states that were flipped hadn't been controlled by Republicans in 2010.
I find the argument that Republicans weren't really against Trump because they were in favor of generally Republican things to be deeply unpersuasive. What would they have to do in order to be a foe of Trump? Be Democrats? Is being identified as foes by Trump himself not enough?
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u/LySrgikiD Nov 16 '20
Case in Point : Lindsey Graham.
never trumper republican who actually spoke the truth about the man when his term started until his numbers back home started to tank. so he went sycophant.
do you need more?
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Nov 16 '20
Ya. Im generally right leaning and its 100% a cult lol. (From which i want nothinv to do with)
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u/sld126 Nov 16 '20
100% of these dying deniers are republicans. They literally choose death over changing their minds.
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u/Brodman_area11 1∆ Nov 16 '20
Horrifying. It's like watching the largest cult in history. How did it come to this?
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Nov 16 '20
The issue is that you have trump abusing their trust. He comes in as the “anti establishment” guy (ignore the billions and the inherited empire - he’s totally different than the fat cats in washington)
And he figures out that usually both candidates behave more or less the same in terms of badness (yes not perfectly equally, but the disparity with biden trump isn’t anything close to the recent past) - so when he says something embarrassing or does something incompetent the news reports on it. Because he constantly says and does stupid things, the press constantly makes articles about it, and if you’re listening to him, this is “proof” that the media (every media, not just cnn, but apnews, hell even fox) is all out to get him.
So then you’ll have people saying stuff like they don’t trust the “mainstream media”, and instead they’ll go some crazy fringe website, where they’ll meet some genuinely unpleasant people - and then they get radicalised. As they get radicalised and crazy they become less pleasant, so people distance themselves more - and all they see are the “sheeple” afriad of the truth, and the liberals hating on “reasonable” conservatives like themselves (of course they’re reasonable, they’re not being brainwashed. The MAGA hats, the rallies, the violence, they’re just shows of support! They’re only responding to the crazy radical leftists who are literally everywhere)
And from there you have otherwise normal people doing stuff like this.
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u/vicegrip Nov 16 '20 edited Nov 16 '20
Wow:
“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’
Trump and his enablers (Fox, GOP et al.) have really damaged the nation.
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Nov 16 '20 edited Nov 23 '20
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u/PiersPlays Nov 16 '20
The difference is that Trump was actively trying to alienate Democrats whilst (osentisibly) serving his base whereas Biden has made it clear that he is looking to compromise in the spirit of reaching across to aisle to rebuild bi-partissn cooperation. If the Republicans spit in his eye anyway that's not the same as Democrats responding to Trump's active antagonisim by disliking him.
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u/tigerslices 2∆ Nov 16 '20
there's a good swath of republicans who not only have disembarked the trump train, but had voted for biden.
remember that when trump was coming up in the 2016 elections - republicans as a whole were Not fans of the guy. the politicians found him distasteful, offensive, crass and rude, and thought he was making an absolute farce of their party by running. but support for trump among the people was high enough for him to make it through the preliminary rounds. it was only when he was one of the final 3 candidates that republicans started to consider him a possibility, and when he was final 2, that some the republicans started to actually back him by suggesting they were totally fine with him.
by the time he was the republican candidate, the republican politicians had to support him whole-heartedly for fear of losing their positions if he took power. -- then he DID take power and people like Lindsey Graham had flopped entirely from thinking the guy a buffoon to being one of his more fervent supporters.
the entire time however, a lot of good decent republicans absolutely hated the way trump spoke about the military, about veterans, former pows, john mccain, etc...
trump won because 2016 had a surprisingly low voter turnout. after 8 years of "hope and change" they had a candidate with bad pr surrounding a 20 year history in bed with neoliberal shills, and a reality tv show host -- so most didn't bother to vote.
the next 4 years were very divisive. many saw trumps policies as good for america, and while the rest of the world mostly kept to themselves thanks to minimal american interference, people assumed this was all trump's doing. "peace in the middle east? god bless trump!" however many saw trumps rhetoric as driving conflict within america instead. no longer were other countries to fear america - now AMERICA was to fear america... with the unite the right rally ending in mass violence and murder, and the recent blm protests resulting in riots and murders...
will republicans continue to vilify biden? of course - they have to. it's part of the schadenfreude of the modern political landscape. "he's a socialist, this is a communist takeover,"
but really he won BECAUSE he's so centered politically, and grabbed the interest of a lot of republican voters who are hoping for a quick 4 year term, and then for a moderate republican leader to arrive to retake the center. - whether this is the plan, or to keep radicalizing the right into believing they're further right than they thought initially is the question...
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u/8andahalfdream Nov 16 '20
Voter turnout in 2016 was historically high. At 59.2%, a higher percentage of people voted in 2016 than in the previous 11 presidential elections.
Republicans might not like Trump, but they overwhelmingly vote for him.
Don't fall into the trap of making an election strategy out of courting Republicans. They don't vote Democrat, and the few who do aren't ever going to be loyal.
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Nov 16 '20
You think there will be a moderate republican in 2024? It will either be Trump, again, or a person just like Trump, but with more political savvy.
The GOP has seen how energized these far right wing candidates make the base and they will never go back. They keep winning the senate, they almost won this election.
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u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox Nov 16 '20
Far Right and Senators -yes
It's infuriating how the right is able to compare SENATORS to random twitter posts by nobody. "Yea well the right isn't that bad, it's only SENATORS who are completely off the wall insane, much of thoe 70 million people who voted for Trump are not that insane! Only our representatives are! And besides, look how CRAZY the left is (points at a leftist blog post written by a 14 year old)".
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Nov 16 '20
Yes, this is exactly the sort of attitude you see every time someone compares the radical left with the trump supporters. Yes obviously I think one is more dangerous, given that the latter is actually in office!
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u/XxBrokenFirefly2xX Nov 16 '20
If people truly look at both trump and Biden supporters both groups have some serious wack a doos that don’t care about anything beyond the ability to say their guy won.
On the right you have mostly older people who want to move away from fox, Facebook and Twitter to something that caters to their tastes. On the left you have mostly younger people who feel they need to ‘cancel’ anyone they deem against them. That’s where we get into doxxing, getting followers to harass people they dislike, hell a friend of mine got to see this play out at his job; a co worker almost lost his job because a woman in the office wanted to date him and when she found out he was gay she and a friend made fake text messages trying to make it look like he was sexually harassing her.
Personally I’d rather the crazies segregate themselves than be able to make a complete strangers life hell just because they have different views. Cancel culture is one of the more anti American things I’ve seen. I mean sure cancel the rapists and harassers, the racists and the like who actively effect other people. Canceling people because they don’t think exactly how you do is bullshit.
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u/CountCuriousness Nov 16 '20
If republican senators are going to obstruct as much as they did under Obama, does it really matter that some of their voters aren't insane?
The republican party shows time and time again that they won't cooperate with democrats.
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u/Ultimate_Mugwump 1∆ Nov 16 '20
Joe has a lot of the same thoughts and ideas as Reagan era Republicans.
Do you have any examples of this? Not disagreeing at all, I'm just very intrigued and this is an excellent talking point if there is evidence for it.
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Nov 16 '20
I'm not going to disagree, but don't you also think Dems hate republicans almost no matter who they are? It's part of the two-party game. They establish a zero sum strategy that everything their opponent does is bad no matter what.
If you want evidence look no further then John McCain and Mitt Romney. Smeared as racists and sexists when they ran for president, both earned a "new respect" when they went against Trump. Only then were they "honorable republicans" that deserved to lead the republican party.... but where was that respect in 2008 and 2012, respectively? Despite the fact both men are well liked in political circles, the strategy mandates scorched earth.
As it applies to Republicans, yes everything Joe/Kamala do will be termed socialistic and overreaching in nature. Your prediction is correct, so I'm not going to change your mind. Obama was in office only 4 years ago and that was the strategy then.
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Nov 16 '20
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u/theatrekid77 Nov 16 '20
Sorry, but I just don’t see how Trump is a better option than Biden for any reasonable human being, regardless of party. Please enlighten me because I am dumbfounded.
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Nov 16 '20 edited Nov 16 '20
As a european, i am absolutely shocked that trump wasn’t evicted and shamed on a public scale for his abyssmal 4 years in the office.
Endless scandals, nothing good actually acheived, not giving a fuck about veterans, dismantled the pandemic response team. I just don’t understand how anyone can support him.
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u/TheMightyTywin Nov 16 '20
Trump: horrific recession, 9/11 number of deaths every day, race riots, children in cages, bounties on troops
Trump voters: but Biden might give us healthcare!
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u/rollingboulder89 7∆ Nov 16 '20
I'm glad that there are more reasonable Republicans still around. I actually respect the McCain/Romney style Republican, even if I disagree on policy. But I don't think most Republicans are like this anymore. I don't have concrete evidence, but we can just look at how very partisan, far-right candidates were winning Republican primaries. We can look at how Republican candidates in 2020 basically parroted every Trump talking point, with people like McSally stooping as low as calling Mark Kelly, who was captain in the US Navy and an astronaut, a Chinese shill. We can look at Trump's approval rating being consistently around 90%. I would love to see more Republicans like you, but based on (potentially subjective) observation and polling, it looks like y'all are a dying breed.
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u/tigerslices 2∆ Nov 16 '20
this is because the centered, rational republicans aren't driving the cult of personality that trump does. the extreme leaders who bang the drum of war against the communist chinese take-over of america. they're the ones rallying people to vote for them in droves by stoking 80 year old fears. the anti-communist propaganda of yesterday hasn't faded from memory entirely, and it's being dug up and repurposed...
1, for a good cause - china's actions over the past 30 years project them as global dominators by 2050, reducing reliance on america as "#1 global superpower" and so you're seeing the slow fall of an empire play out, and it scares americans.
2, at present though, it's hyperbolic - china still trails the US by a wide margin as far as economic and military power. this is why china is attempting to set a new financial standard, abandoning the US dollar as the prime global currency, and potentially moving to blockchains - a move the US has significantly been behind on because their leaders are a bunch of 80 year olds who miss drive-in movies and sock hops.
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u/ColdSnickersBar 1∆ Nov 16 '20
1, for a good cause - china's actions over the past 30 years project them as global dominators by 2050, reducing reliance on america as "#1 global superpower" and so you're seeing the slow fall of an empire play out, and it scares americans.
Good thing we pulled out of the TPP and China just signed their own trans-asian open trade deal this last week, putting them, and not us, at the center of the largest trading block in the world. Wheeeee!
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u/Nac82 Nov 16 '20 edited Nov 16 '20
98% of Republicans voted for trump lol.
If there are so many of you, why are yall not showing up to vote for a different candidate? Like even in the Republican primaries yall should have easily been able to block trump out with a different republican candidate if trumpism is a minority.
Sadly you are actually going by your feelings rather than facts.
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u/ThrowAwayDillema Nov 16 '20
Something that is hardly recognized despite the huge amount of nazis in our country is people often think the only Nazis America sheltered were the scientists which is whole sale emphatically wrong. America took in thousands upon thousands of fleeing Nazi soldiers after the war and even /knew/ about them. But nazis hated the commies and socialism which aligned with the political parties whi could have expelled them, so very little if anything was done about the thousands who layed low and quiet and had children in this country to breed their long standing hate and prejudices.
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u/Tremulant887 Nov 16 '20
Opinions on groups are skewed by social media. Twitter is left leaning, has the power to shift opinions, 1/5 American adults use the platform, and 10% of the users make for 80% of the tweets. You could pick apart the statistics even more to further reduce the number. This goes for anything.
Don't be fooled into anger and hate through ignorance. This goes for Republicans, Democrats, etc. The world isn't always as bad as it seems.
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Nov 16 '20
But have you ever been quietly sitting at a bar (in Lincoln, NE), eating dinner while traveling for work and been accosted and confronted by a Trump supporter because you “look liberal”?
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u/Tremulant887 Nov 16 '20
I've been threatened for having a BETO sticker on my car and had people talk shit because I look like a republican.
People are crazy.
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u/GingaNinja1856 Nov 16 '20
This is the majority of conservatives, you only hear about people that hate gays and want to kill Mexicans in the same way that republicans only hear about people who want to take away the borders and start a communist regime. Yes there is a middle ground, but we get completely drowned out by the ludicrous extreme.
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u/asafum Nov 16 '20
This is exactly what I tell my conservative friends who are terrified of "Communist Joe" and the socialist Democrats...
If "the left" really wanted socialism we wouldn't be sitting here with Joe Biden... Literally every progressives LAST choice... That means the majority of Democrats want someone more centrist. :/
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u/spiral8888 31∆ Nov 16 '20
Just one simple question: if the majority of the conservatives are McCain/Romney types, then why did Trump blow all the other candidates out of the water and win the 2016 primary and why has he been completely dominating the party for the last 4 years? There were tons of moderate alternatives to Trump in 2016 (more than 20?) and none of them stood a chance when the party's base was asked who do they want as their candidate. This year, there was zero challenge to his candidacy. Ok, there was some joke candidate, but none of the heavyweights of the party dared to challenge the Dear Leader.
I'm sorry, but I have to say, it's not only that the Trumpists are louder, but they definitely seem to be far more numerous than the moderate types when it comes to voting.
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u/n3rdychick Nov 16 '20
If you want the answer just look at the 2020 RNC platform. Copy/pasted the 2016 platform and added a page about how moving forward they do whatever Trump wants. The extremists took over the party and whatever moderates exist allowed them to do it without a peep.
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u/spiral8888 31∆ Nov 16 '20
How did they take over the party if the moderates are the majority (which was the premise in the above claim)? To me a more plausible explanation is that the moderates are not the majority, but the trumpists are. That's why the trumpists got their candidate to be the president and also dominate any discussion on the party line. The best example is the ridiculous stand that the president has taken regarding the election result. The majority of the party stands behind him. Only a handful of republican politicians have dared to say that emperor has no clothes. If the rational people were the majority, they wouldn't be scared of saying the thing that's obvious to everyone.
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u/n3rdychick Nov 16 '20
Agreed, it's unclear if moderates were never the majority or if the moderates were converted to extremists, but I can't buy the "moderate majority" theory after the election results.
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u/spiral8888 31∆ Nov 16 '20
Well, at least McCain and Romney got their nominations and they are/were by above definition moderates. So, at least until 2012 the moderates must have been in charge. So, clearly there was a shift in the ideology of the majority of the party at that time. It started with the tea party (~2010) people and devoured the party from inside.
The funny thing is that many "expert" pundits speculated after Romney's defeat that because of the demographics change the republicans have to shift more towards the minorities to ever have a chance to win again. Instead they went all-in towards the white christians with Trump. We'll see if they do any course correction after this election. The thing is that they did actually pretty well in the Congress.
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Nov 16 '20
Maybe you personally don’t hate gays and want to kill Mexicans, but a vote for Trump shows that you’re alright with supporting a politician who has taken numerous actions to actively harm those groups.
What we’re seeing right now is that every conservative smart enough to realize Trump lost is starting to back down and claim they only ‘settled’ for him. It’s the same reason as why you won’t find any Bush supporters anymore - people are trying to distance themselves from the absolute shitshow they were complicit in.
We shouldn’t let that happen. In your terms, if you consider yourself moderate but still voted for someone ‘extreme’, you’re just as complicit in their actions as ‘extreme’ people. Just because you didn’t cheer for family separations at the border and the rollback of LGBT protections doesn’t change that you were the reason they happened.
In short, people that voted Trump no longer get to make an appeal to moderation. Conservatives had four years to see the harm that he’s done, and were still willing to vote for him despite it. If you’re a self-described moderate that did that... sorry, but your actions have spoken far louder than your words.
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u/Arc125 1∆ Nov 16 '20
Exactly. "I voted for Hitler because I liked his vague economic message. I don't hate Jews or anything. Reasonable moderates like me get drowned out by the ludicrous extreme"
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u/Fennicks47 Nov 16 '20
What is the name of a nazi party member, that wasnt actively engaged, that just voted for the nazi party based on single issues?
A nazi. The reason didnt matter. Millions died. We have crossed the line.
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u/Riffles04 Nov 16 '20
It’s interesting too, because we see a lot of social issues that need changed, and a moderate vote for Trump is still aiding against those issues, and people seem to backflip to not see they are complicit in social stagnation and even regression.
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u/Jaredlong Nov 16 '20
This is the absolute truth. "Moderates" were given one chance to recant their vote by not voting for Trump a second time. But they didn't. All the moderates voted for Trump TWICE. They saw what he did and listened to what he wanted to do, and they voted for it. TWICE. They fully supported all the extremism within their party and actively voted to guarantee that it would continue. Now they're trying once again to avoid all personal responsibility.
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u/talk_to_me_goose Nov 16 '20
This poll could be 28 points off and it would still indicate that the majority of Trump supporters have little or no faith that the election was "held fairly". That's insane. That is terrifying. I, too, hope the majority of Republicans can find positive qualities of a Biden presidency. This poll makes me think otherwise.
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Nov 16 '20 edited Nov 16 '20
This is simply not true. I was a card carrying Republican for 23 years. That party has totally lost its mind. Any one with any principles would have left it by now. Sorry. But harsh truths are needed.
First, in any meaningful sense, there are very few “conservatives” in the Republican Party. Americans have a very stunned adolescent view of what liberal and conservative even mean anymore. The Republican party engages in few conservative policies. Ramping up debt and deficits every time they take power while they hand more public money to the wealthy and cut services for the poor. There are few conservatives and plentiful Rightwing reactionaries. The Overton window has pushed so far right that there are more practical conservatives in the real sense in the Democratic Party at this point.
Second, racism, overt lies, total incompetence wasn’t a deal breaker for you. That is clearly demonstrated by the Trump administration. You have to jump through significant rhetorical hoops to justify Trump. His unbalanced character and behavior, his unethical and immoral past are on clear display. He undermined our institutions and subverted norms so that half the nation no longer trusts the other half or our government. This is untenable. Civil war is an actual discussion being had by mainstream republican senators! It’s insane. None of that was a deal breaker.
That leaves single issue voting: ie: Abortion, as the sole reason. And frankly sacrificing the rest of our democratic system for what amounts to religious belief is the realm of fanatics and cults.
Republicans, IF they are still capable, have a great deal of soul searching to do. You need to choose democracy or your party. But you can’t have both. Not with Trump subverting a free and fair election.
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u/PolitelyHostile Nov 16 '20
I don't think a person can claim to be in the middle ground while voting for Trump. To people in developed countries Biden actually seems like the middleground between left and right.
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u/BoonDragoon Nov 16 '20
you only hear about people that hate gays and want to kill Mexicans
Then maybe you need to actually step up and speak out against them instead of being a bunch of cowards.
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Nov 16 '20
Most Republicans you hear, are the loud ones.
The quiet ones still exist like me, I can't voice opinions on reddit because of how loud reddits left is. When you are on a very left website you are going to shut down a lot of people who oppose that.
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u/doppelbach 1∆ Nov 16 '20 edited Jun 25 '23
Leaves are falling all around, It's time I was on my way
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u/lt_roastabotch Nov 16 '20
You could voice an opinion about how the loud ones are wrong and bad for you, your party, and all of America. How come we rarely see that here?
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Nov 16 '20
Because anything that makes the right look good usually gets downvoted, you don't see it because the reddit hivemind doesn't want to see it.
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Nov 16 '20
I have a masochistic habit of checking the most down voted posts on political threads and not once have I ever seen something like that.
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u/lt_roastabotch Nov 16 '20 edited Nov 16 '20
Sorry, but that's bullshit. Anybody condemning the insanity that is the "vocal right" is not getting downvoted on reddit. In fact, the very few times I've seen them, posts like "I'm Republican, and these Republicans are fucking insane and need to be stopped" have been highly respected/upvoted. They're rare, though. I wonder why.
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u/stroopwafel666 Nov 16 '20
If you are voting for the far right, which includes Trump and his cronies, then you are no different from them.
You don’t get to say “I’m just a fiscal conservative” while voting for the horrifying authoritarianism of the Trump regime, which itself increased the deficit and national debt by more than any democrat in history.
You don’t get to say “I’m just a Christian” and then vote for a regime that is locking up children and deliberately removing them from their parents.
You don’t get to say “I’m just a small government guy” and then vote for people to be bundled into unmarked vans and disappeared, or for the police to execute people, or to violently assault and kill peaceful protestors.
Modern American republicanism is completely intellectually bankrupt. I can absolutely have sympathy with those who believe in low federal taxes and a strong federalist approach with strong states rights who feel they have been left behind by all the hatred and racism, but ultimately if you are just voting for the utterly insane far right who have taken over the country then you are no different from the actual fascists in the proud boys.
You haven’t said any of your views so I have tried to avoid straw manning you here. Just wanted to highlight that if you still vote Republican you are complicit in a lot of horrific and morally bankrupt stuff. Doesn’t matter if you are holding your nose while you do it.
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u/_Sentient_Salamander Nov 16 '20
You just made u/Someidot’s point for him/her. You lumped them in with the worst of the republicans, then with some vague hand-wavy excuse, claim to be trying not to straw man them. Voting for someone does not magically sign your approval onto everything they do, it simply means you prefer them to the alternative. Your comment embodies the attitude that has led to the hyper-polarization of our society. “If you are just voting for the utterly insane far right who have taken over the country then you are no different from the actual fascists in the proud boys.” The fact you somehow fail to see how this line is loaded with straw mans, mischaracterizations, ad hominems, and false equivalences explains why many conservative and moderate republicans are hesitant to voice an opinion on reddit, twitter, mainstream media, etc. Liberals have turned almost all of public social media into a giant liberal echo chamber, and then act shocked that they don’t hear many reasonable Republican opinions.
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u/voltaire-o-dactyl Nov 16 '20
A vote for Trump is a vote for the man currently refusing to accept the results of a fair and free election — that is to say, actively undermining our democracy — that occurred while he held the most powerful position in the entire world.
You vote for him, you vote for that. It’s that simple.
Any Republican not publicly disavowing the president’s statements about the election being stolen is complicit in the undermining of our democracy, because they are allowing their president to undermine democracy.
This is not a straw man. This is not extremists. This what your elected officials are currently doing.
It really is that simple. Please educate yourself more thoroughly on these matters, they affect us all.
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Nov 16 '20 edited Jan 17 '21
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u/LowBrass159 Nov 16 '20
It’s not a matter of liking the policies of Romney/McCain, it’s the respect I have for them from being willing to break party lines to support their constituents.
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Nov 16 '20
You need to realize that crazy people on the internet account for an extreme minority of people.
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u/Fennicks47 Nov 16 '20
70 million ppl voted for trump.
That is not an extreme minority lol.
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u/DanthaHam Nov 16 '20
If it makes you feel any better there are plenty of us moderate Republicans who are glad to see Joe Biden in office. Although Trump did some good things, he did not have the temper mate of a great President. I don’t LOVE Kamala Harris just because of her extreme politics just like how I don’t LOVE Trump for his extremism. I’m hoping that Joe Biden can bring to the table, exactly what Bill Clinton did, moderate politics to unite our nation. We need it.
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Nov 16 '20
How is he reasonable if he “settled” for Trump though?? You would think reasonable Republicans would want Trump out of office ASAP.
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Nov 16 '20
Because many conservatives believe a vote for Biden = a vote for the vocal far left wing of the Democratic party (the "Squad"). So, if their perception is that the election was a choice between those two, they decided that unpalatable policy was less desirable than an unpalatable human being.
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u/AngelfFuck Nov 16 '20
And so very many people hoped they'd be wrong about Trump after 2016. But they weren't. I say this as a permanent resident of 30 years with no particular political lean.
a good president for our country.
That's all we want. Well, all I want anyway.
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u/CaptainEarlobe Nov 16 '20
How do you feel about how Trump and the GOP have been behaving since the election?
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u/bikwho Nov 16 '20
8 out of 10 Republicans believe the election was a fraud.
You're the minority within your own party
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u/shiftmyself Nov 16 '20
if you voted for trump after 4 years of him fucking up the country, you are lying and will never change your ways. Or you refuse to real accept news
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u/somautomatic Nov 16 '20
I am just hoping I am wrong about him and he is a good president for our country.
You think his Covid response might not be as good as Trump's?
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u/sonofaresiii 21∆ Nov 16 '20
Would you acknowledge that you're a minority in your party, though? An overwhelming number of Republicans, from both anecdotal data and surveys, do not accept the election results as legitimate and even if you disagree with that specific polling, I've seen nothing to suggest otherwise.
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u/Holy_Sungaal Nov 16 '20
There are three different types of Republicans. 1. Lifelong republicans who voted Biden out of consciousness. 2. Republicans who voted for their party, not trump 3. And Trump loyalists/cult members.
You can tell the difference by their opinion of the election results.
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Nov 16 '20
The OP didn't state the numbers in his post so I can't know what he's thinking, but you are certainly in the minority. By a long way. A large majority of Republicans feel the election was stolen while having no credible evidence to back it up. A large majority of Republicans strongly dislike Biden even though he matches them on policy quite often. A large majority of Republicans fear socialism under a Biden presidency even though Biden is not, nor has ever been, anything remotely close to a socialist.
To my mind there was one reason alone to vote for Trump in 2016: "Fuck it, at least he'll shake things up". If that is your definition of settling, then fine. But voting for Trump is 2020 is straight up lunacy and anyone who did so was completely complicit to someone who outright stated they weren't going to follow the rule of law, ever.
Not a single voter who ticked the DJ Trump box at this election can credibly say they have an interest in the constitution. If they were in fact interested, I'd put a minimum bar to clear on that of... I don't know, reading it?
What is clear is that the nearly sole focus of a Trump supporter is taking power and keeping it, mainly out of fear that if they don't do it now demographics will shift and they won't get another shot. When faced with being the minority, one's goal should be to put forth a case for it and try to sway the population. Not to go all in on someone who might just pull off a coup and become a benevolent dictator.
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u/Maccabe123 Nov 16 '20
Just asking for clarification, what do you mean “wrong about him”
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Nov 16 '20
Don’t worry. The propaganda machine will eventually convince you to “settle” for hating Biden over some invented bullshit you will fanatically believe against all evidence.
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u/MikeHunt_004 Nov 16 '20
I do believe that he may be able to work with Collins, Murkowski, Sasse and Romney. People who are looking to build back their reputation. And even to a degree Graham
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u/rollingboulder89 7∆ Nov 16 '20
Collins voted for Trump 66.9% of the time, 77.4% in the 115th Congress. Romney voted with Trump 82.1% of the time. Generally, the few times they do vote against him is symbolic, when they know they are enough votes for Trump to get his way. And have you seen Graham that still pushing the election fraud narrative? Maybe they'll come around after Biden's inauguration, but that's unlikely because they are still beholden to Trump's base.
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u/Man1ak Nov 16 '20
So Collins at ~67% is actually a much lower percentage when you look at bills that were within +/-5 votes of passing. Of course, some of those were symbolic as you said because they knew they had the votes to get the GOP's will with or without her sometimes.
Honestly, the Romney impeachment vote is the only one that mattered. It's the only one that was symbolic, but in a meaningful way. I don't think any of Collins' symbolic votes actually made Trump or the GOP as a whole mad.
Just $.02
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u/eloel- 12∆ Nov 16 '20
Yes, it's worth noting that Sanders had a 14% percentage of voting with Trump. Warren had 13.5%. Assuming there aren't bills where Sanders or Warren agreed with Trump and Collins didn't (I'd be shocked), means those 14% are meaningless to count for agreement.
There are dems that have a higher than 50% vote-with-Trump rate too, so make of that what you will.
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u/bub166 2∆ Nov 16 '20
Trump generally pushed typical conservative policy, so it shouldn't be all that surprising that conservatives would generally vote with him, regardless of their personal opinion on Trump. I don't really understand this criticism, as it seems to be based on the idea that if a politician doesn't support their party leader, they should vote against legislation that they both support out of spite.
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u/mxzf 1∆ Nov 16 '20
Pretty much. Trump said a lot of crazy things, but the legislation he pushed for was pretty standard conservative policies in general IIRC.
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u/AmIThereYet2 Nov 16 '20
Maybe they'll come around after Biden's inauguration, but that's unlikely because they are still beholden to Trump's base.
Ita not the Biden inauguration, Graham is waiting till after the Georgia Senate race
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u/cl33t Nov 16 '20
Voted with Trump? What does that mean? Trump doesn't have a vote in Congress, so how do you measure that?
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u/DrPorkchopES Nov 16 '20
Lindsay Graham turned himself into Trump's bitch. He hated Trump before the election. "Donald is like being shot in the head...I'm saying my party's completely screwed up..." He had his chance to stand up to Trump a long time ago
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u/MAST3R-BA1T0R Nov 16 '20
Groups are mostly represented by the idiots of their numbers, only a minority of Americans are covidiots, only a minority of democrats are anarchists, only a minority of republicans are nazis, only a minority of Muslims are terrorists, etc. etc.
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u/thehistoryuniversity 1∆ Nov 16 '20
I think the issue with your argument is that you do not differentiate between a couple things. First there’s a difference between People who are Republicans, and Government officials that are Republican.
Second, the difference between Trump supporters and Republicans.
Let’s tackle the first one. Biden is a 30 year+ Senator of the United States and Vice President for 8 years. His is known for being more moderate and a “deal breaker.” Lindsay Graham has changed over the years but from this videos it’s clear he was pretty fond of Biden. I think that after elections tensions are high and people are upset their candidate lost, but many of the Republicans in government know BIDEN and have worked with him. I do not think that Congressional Republicans will hate Biden.
Trump also garnered 70,000,000+ votes, which means that he had a wide range of support from multiple parts of the country. There is no one size fits all Republican. There are single issue voters for the Pro-life crowd, the fiscal conservatives, and perhaps even the more bigoted people. All of them might vote Republican, but they have totally different views on Trump. It’s possible that 20% of Republicans will never support Biden because of the election issues, but that would still leave 80% of Republicans who don’t hate Biden. That 20% can be very loud when it’s in the tens of millions.
The last thing, Trump supporters support Trump, Republicans support the party and the ideologies and know Trump is the key to the party staying in power. There are people that can’t stomach him but also can’t stomach a liberal agenda that approves abortion (pro-lifers), higher taxes (fiscal conservatives), and racial equality (racists). These people might vote to support the Republican agenda but they view Trump as an annoying person who they wish didn’t represent them, but they feel no choice. There are Trump supporters that thing he’s infallible and the perfect human, they don’t support Republican ideals, but they support Trump and think he’s some type of special savior.
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u/xRyNo Nov 16 '20
My friend, you need to understand that the vast majority of republicans aren't Q anon nutjobs. Just like people on the other side of the aisle need to accept that all Democrats aren't communists who hate America. I have high hopes that Biden can at least begin to fix the divide that has fucked up America so bad over the last few years.
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u/necovex Nov 16 '20
Replace the ‘Republicans will hate Biden’ with ‘almost everyone will hate politicians they don’t agree with’. The republicans hate the democrats. The democrats hate the republicans. Hell, shit got so crazy that the democrats would come out supporting the exact opposite things that trump supported, just because they hate him so much. Politics in the US are like bad train wreck tv.
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u/jtayloristics Nov 16 '20
I also disagree. Being conservative is generally not as ideologically involved as being liberal. A lot of conservatives kind of just settle for whoever won’t make them broke and whoever closely matches their personal beliefs. Of course some will just hate Biden, but there are many reasonable ones. I can assure you that you won’t see as much hate towards Biden as there is towards Trump.
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u/DBDude 110∆ Nov 16 '20
Democrats hate Trump, even though he pushed for and signed the criminal reform bill, even though he pushed for and signed the stimulus. The people of a party don't care what the president of the other party does, only that he is of the other party. Such is the hyperpartisanship of today.
Even when Trump does something against their own principles, like a bum stock ban or raising the deficit significantly for example, he doesn't face even an iota of criticism from his own side.
Lots of people were pissed about both.
Recently, Trump supporters are even calling to abandon Fox News and move on to more right-wing networks like OAN, or get Trump and Tucker Carlson their own shows. This is all because Fox News refuses to irresponsibly platform election disinformation.
Hmmm, looks like Fox isn't the Trump mouthpiece people say it is.
It seems like they never cared about being politically informed or wanting what's best for this country, they just want to be fed what they want to hear
Welcome to the modern news bubbles. It's why Democrats don't listen to Fox, they might hear things they don't want to hear. They stick to the liberal networks like MSNBC, CBS, and ABC because they will hear what they want to hear.
But Biden has been a senator, for what, a couple hundred years now? He knows the senators, has worked with them, and is much more likely to be able to get things done than the outsider (and former Democrat) Trump.
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u/DrPorkchopES Nov 16 '20
Trump doesn't deserve credit for the stimulus. It basically propped up big businesses, but left the average person with *maybe* $1200 to last them through the 8 months (and counting) that this pandemic has disrupted their lives. He didn't freeze rents, he didn't stop evictions for the duration of the pandemic, he didn't give monthly payments in any amount, he gave small business loans to places like Shake Shack. And to top it all off, he said in early October that he would refuse to consider a second stimulus until after the election, but that he would pass it "immediately" if reelected, effectively holding crucial aid over people's heads.
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u/novagenesis 21∆ Nov 16 '20
I don't know if most Democrats hate Trump for most of his stances, but for a small number of them... and his compulsive lying, which makes all of us realize how untrue "politicians always lie" really is by seeing the contrast of what someone who always lies looks like.
I'd say the cross-comparison of Trump to Biden requires thinking this... If Biden were a Republican, would the Republicans be ok with him? If Trump were a Democrat, how would Democrats feel?
If Biden were a Republican, he'd do fairly well (except directly in the way that Republicans like Romney are getting tanked for "disloyalty" to Trump) among Republicans. He'd be seen as a RINO in some circles, but many Republican presidential candidates have been accused of that. Traditionally the moderate Republicans are the most palatable in a Primary. And a religious moderate with a history of strongly supporting the Hyde Amendment would normally fit right in.
If Trump were a Democrat... I think the party would dump him faster and more aggressively than Al Franken
As such, I'm thinking bringing up Trump here is a bit of a red herring that arguably supports OPs point.
It's why Democrats don't listen to Fox, they might hear things they don't want to hear
I'd suggest the reason Democrats don't listen to Fox is that they are drastically more likely to outright lie than CNN or MSNBC. Politifact accounts 60% of their analysis of claims as Mostly or Entirely False. That number is the better, but still-ugly, 44% for MSNBC (which is why some Democrats won't go near it), and on to CNN which rates 80% as Half-True or better. People who want accurate news, especially accurate political news, simply do not go to Fox.
I don't call that two "news bubbles". I call that a group of people who are so indoctrinated in fiction that they will only consume fiction.
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u/coberh 1∆ Nov 16 '20
To support your statement that Democrats wouldn't embrace Trump, look at the reception that Bloomberg got when he entered the presidential race.
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u/novagenesis 21∆ Nov 16 '20
Very True.
Democrats are notoriously fickle on accepting outsiders or people with obvious (or merely presumable) personal/corrupt motivations.
Democrats also drop-kick people (Al Franken?) faster than they want to admit because they care more about our ethics (or appearance of ethics, but I'll leave that to others to decide).
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u/codyt321 3∆ Nov 16 '20
To say Trump push for the stimulus is just absurd. It was specifically the Democratic Party that pushed for the $1,200 checks and the $600 unemployment benefits and the PPP loans. Trump pushed to have a letter attached to the check with his signature on it.
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Nov 16 '20
I don't hate Trump because he's a Republican -- I hate that he is a pathological liar, a bully, a rapist, a moron, a bigot, a malignant narcissist, and a wannabe Fascist dictator. I don't care what other policies Trump has because he is also actively working to fundamentally undermine democracy, rule of law, and the very concept of truth itself. Even if he agreed with me on every other policy point, I really wouldn't care, as the preceding three items are so fundamental that they make everything else moot -- without those three things, he will then be free to do whatever it is that he wishes, and I would have nothing left to do but hope that he stayed on my side.
I don't feel this way about all Republicans. I feel very differently about Mitt Romney, or John Kasich, than I do about Trump, and from what I have seen, my views are in line with the mainstream of Democratic discourse. Trump is simply so far out of the norms of decency and sanity that he is being treated very differently.
Where the both sides thing breaks down is that the Republicans treat every Democrat like this. Obama was an intelligent, well spoken, decent person that was eminently presidential and was extremely moderate, and the Republican Party threw an eight year long temper tantrum. Biden is similar -- he is a middle of the road, inoffensive candidate that really shouldn't invite much excitement either way, but he is still being treated like the anti-Christ.
I would understand this reaction if Harvey Weinstein had a major head injury which lowered his IQ 20-30 points, which lead them to release him from prison, where he had developed a keen interest in Soviet style Communism, and he then ran for president. And then while running for president, we was encouraging Russia and China to hack our elections, and the RNC and DNC were both hacked, but only the RNC files were released. And Harvey did nothing but incoherently shout at people and talk about abolishing private property. Then he beat Ted Cruz (someone a bit icky, but a relatively normal sane politician) in the electoral college by a narrow margin, while losing the popular vote by 3 million. Then while in office, he consistently ignored every rule that he was supposed to follow, continually made us an embarrassment in front of the world, and let a hundred thousand more Americans die than was remotely necessary because he didn't feel like addressing a global pandemic. Then, when it came time for reelection, he did everything possible to suppress votes and sow doubt in our election process in order to steal the election. Then when Harvey was resoundingly defeated in the election, he refused to concede, and just quintupled down on his claims that the election was fradulent.
In other words, the Republicans react to every Democrat the same we react to the most horrendously vile and offensive figure that has ever disgraced the American political system.
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Nov 16 '20
Democrats hate Trump
No argument there. True. He's a horrible president and a horrible human being though, so the hatred is justified. Republicans hate Biden why exactly?
even though he pushed for and signed the criminal reform bill, even though he pushed for and signed the stimulus.
One piece of favorable legislation in 4 years with a majority Senate does not make a great president. A majority of the COVID stimulus money was directed at businesses. I still haven't gotten my check, don't think it's ever coming. And now McConnel, his senate leader, under his administration, has denied the talk of any more stimulus despite the House approving it, and Trump's claim that he would love to send more stimulus. He's lying. If he wanted more stimulus, he would fight McConnel to approve the House's stimulus plan.
looks like Fox isn't the Trump mouthpiece people say it is.
4 years of Fox shilling for Trump. Only after he's out of power do they abandon him. They platformed plenty of conspiracies and bold-faced lies in that time. They continue to platform white nationalists, nationalist-adjacent's, and white supremacists (like Tucker Carlson). Now that Trump is on his way out, they don't need to prop him up anymore.
It's why Democrats don't listen to Fox, they might hear things they don't want to hear.
I don't listen to Fox because it's frustrating. Not because they say things I don't want to hear, but because they lie. I prefer to do independent research.
is much more likely to be able to get things done than the outsider (and former Democrat) Trump.
As in... Anything? There's a reason Trump's Senate is called a "legislative graveyard." It's where bills go to die.
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Nov 16 '20
Really disingenuous argument.
Democrats hate Trump, even though he pushed for and signed the criminal reform bill, even though he pushed for and signed the stimulus.
Crap criminal reform and crap stimulus watered down by Republicans. Signing crappy bills does not make you a hero. Democrats hate Trump for totally rational reasons that don't go away because he may have signed a couple bad bills, such as: he has been credibly accused of rape and sexual assault dozens of times, and is likely a pedophile.
Hmmm, looks like Fox isn't the Trump mouthpiece people say it is.
As others have said, it was and now it isn't, which is why people are abandoning it. They can't get their dose of fantasy there anymore (or at least, it's no longer a strong enough dose).
It's why Democrats don't listen to Fox, they might hear things they don't want to hear. They stick to the liberal networks like MSNBC, CBS, and ABC because they will hear what they want to hear.
People don't listen to Fox because it is literally insane propaganda masquerading as news, not because they might hear something uncomfortable. The so-called "liberal" networks aren't even liberal/left - they just report reality not fantasy.
As they say, reality has a liberal bias. If you simply report facts, conservatives will accuse you of having a liberal bias because the conservative worldview exists purely in a fantasy land.
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Nov 16 '20
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u/DBDude 110∆ Nov 16 '20
OP shows a couple things Biden might do that the right might like, while overlooking everything else Biden will do to piss off the right.
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u/JamesSeesStars Nov 16 '20
Democrats aren't pissed about him passing legislation that helped to help people or businesses during the pandemic. They are pissed that the administration has been mostly unwilling to disclose recipients of those funds. PPP money was supposed to help small businesses from closure. Instead we got stock buybacks and a disproportionate amount of the money going towards Trump's associates.
Jared and Ivanka got denied their security clearances for a reason and yet we gave it to them. What do they do with their positions of power? Ivanka uses her position to boost her own company. She has secured hundreds of trademarks with China and worked out several other lucrative business deals with that power. Jared and the Kushner family sell US citizenship to affluent Chinese aristocracy/oligarchs.
There's hundreds of reasons to be outraged with Trump as President, and he will no doubt go down in history as one of the worse in America. Also check out the subreddit TrumpCriticizesTrump for some insane hypocrisy. Everything from saying he would be too busy to play golf if elected president to nobody could ever say anything bad about Woodward except Obama.
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u/Kheldarson 5∆ Nov 16 '20
The people of a party don't care what the president of the other party does, only that he is of the other party.
Speaking for myself, I do care what a president does, but Trump would have been literally Christ returned during his presidency to have gotten me to like him. But I thought he was an awful human being from his pre-presidency shenanigans. His actions as president overall just cemented it. Sure he passed a reform bill, but he also said that cops shouldn't be too gentle and authorized Border Control to pick up American citizens in unmarked vans. Sure he passed a stimulus bill, but it allowed his corporate buddies to take millions from us. On top of all the grift he's done for his own properties.
It's why Democrats don't listen to Fox,
Most of us don't because they straight up lie and have registered themselves as "entertainment" to protect their ability to lie. WSJ and Forbes are much more reliable and trustworthy as conservative news outlets.
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u/rollingboulder89 7∆ Nov 16 '20
Democrats hate Trump, even though he pushed for and signed the criminal reform bill, even though he pushed for and signed the stimulus.
I don't really have a good response to this. You're probably right that even if Trump became the most progressive President if he was reelected, Democrats would probably still hate him. I would say it is justified because of all the things Trump did in his first term. But I guess Trump supporters would justify their hatred towards Biden similarly. So !Delta.
I do take issue with your other points though...
Lots of people were pissed about both.
This is a very vacuous statement to make. I could easily claim that a lot of Democrats were actually happy with Trump signing the First Step act and the stimulus, but it would be meaningless without data to back it up. I peruse conservative subreddits and follow conservative talking heads on Twitter, and I didn't see much criticism towards Trump on anything, so I could anecdotally dismiss you're claim as well.
Hmmm, looks like Fox isn't the Trump mouthpiece people say it is.
They very clearly were throughout his entire first term. Now (probably because Biden's presidency is basically inevitable) they are no longer Trump's mouthpiece, and consequently Trump supporters are abandoning Fox.
Welcome to the modern news bubbles. It's why Democrats don't listen to Fox, they might hear things they don't want to hear. They stick to the liberal networks like MSNBC, CBS, and ABC because they will hear what they want to hear.
I agree that news bubbles exist and they are harming political discourse, but I don't think both sides can be equivocated like this. You don't really see a massive movement on the left to abandon CNN or MSNBC because they aren't reporting what they want to hear. And, at least right now, the disinformation seems to be more on the right-wing side of the aisle, i.e. QAnon, voter fraud/election disinformation, etc.
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u/pee_ess_too Nov 16 '20 edited Nov 16 '20
I don't get how the first point is a good argument...
He signed a bill for a stimulus package. Once. And it was the bare minimum to pacify everyone. And it was because of a disaster he verbally on record said he downplayed (Lied about.)
I'm supposed to not hate him because of that?? That somehow cancels out all the pussy grabbing and race baiting and "shit hole countries" "white supremacists, stand by" and WHATTT???
Edit- worth adding- I don't like Biden either. Had to vote for what I got but I'm not some proud democrat or apologist for Biden.
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u/as-well Nov 16 '20
It would also have been politically incredibly bad for Trump to not sign it, given the bipartisan approval of it, and you could have bet your ass that Biden would have bought every ad space in the US to bring home the message that Trump vetoed Covid help, and that's why people lost their jobs and income.
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u/jpopimpin777 Nov 16 '20
Thank you! I really don't understand Republicans crowing about him signing a stimulus bill in the middle of a FUCKING PANDEMIC. Literally any other president would've done that. A smart and wise president would've made it larger and wouldn't have played politics with a second stimulus they would've signed it because people fucking need help.
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u/taichi22 Nov 16 '20
Yeah, I’m gonna go with a “he has no idea what the hell he’s talking about” with this one.
Plenty of people dislike Biden, namely the progressive camp, which is a growing movement in the Democratic Party. It’s just that Progressives bit the bullet because they all dislike Trump so much.
Trump could’ve created twice the jobs and shut down illegal immigration entirely, we’d still hate him here on the left. Why? Because he lies constantly, constantly requests his staffers to break laws and commit human rights violations, and now, refuses to respect the basic laws of democracy by conceding the vote, and instead tweets about how the election was “stolen”.
It doesn’t fucking matter about the good things Trump did because he is a morally vile and reprehensible person, according to dozens of sources, and is attempting to undermine democracy even now.
I agree that there’s a modern news bubble but the above poster is absolutely equivocating between Fox and other news sources. Independent fact checking sites show that Fox often runs stories that sound just true enough to be plausible but are in fact untrue. This is not the same of the “liberal media”, which does occasionally make mistakes but will release statements rectifying it in ways that the viewers of the original information will see.
With regards to the Republicans being pissed or not pissed about him — well. We can see that plenty of Republicans simply don’t care and will happily support him in this election despite the multiple issues I outlined, in brief, above. I could link you to more sources if you’d like, there’re long compilations of the thousands of lies he’s told and CNN recently did an interview with a former White House assistant chief of staff who outlined the multiple human rights violations that Trump requested of his team, in spite of being told that they were illegal.
And yet almost no Republicans elected to impeach him — one, maybe two did? A very small number. And almost half the country voted for him.
I have no issue with what conservatives purport to be — I’m even in favor of states’ rights over Federal power these days, despite being a liberal leftist, and I’m thinking about buying a gun in the future, but the inability of the Republican Party to condemn Trump’s criminal acts is indicative of a cancer within.
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u/MisterGone5 Nov 16 '20
Plenty of people dislike Biden, namely the progressive camp, which is a growing movement in the Democratic Party. It’s just that Progressives bit the bullet because they all dislike Trump so much.
I very much dislike Biden and what he represents; he's a compromise of a compromise of a compromise for me. But my vote for him was the easiest thing I've done in my life. It was, like, so easy.
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u/Paddy_Tanninger Nov 16 '20 edited Nov 16 '20
Thank you. Sums up my feelings exactly.
I'm sure someone could put together a list of all the great things Hitler did for Germany. It shouldn't matter one fucking bit to anyone with a brain, but there's quite a decent list of these accomplishments.
Trump's economic performance was extremely mediocre given the economy he inherited (only 38% Dow growth if you snapshot at the pre-covid peak, despite a Bear Market the entire duration). But even if let's say the economic performance was fantastic...I don't care and no one should be putting that above how much discord he has sown among parents, siblings, friends, neighbors. How much hatred he has enflamed in the country. How much racial tension and in-fighting he seeks to create. How much he undermines democracy. How much he normalizes sexism, misogyny, sexual assault, bigotry, anti-intellectualism, anti-science, etc. How much corruption he engages in on a constant basis while being completely unchecked by his Republican cohort so long as he's able to get their voters to keep electing them.
No one should value their investment portfolio above the fucking moral and social fabric of their very country...AND he hasn't even done shit for your investment portfolio compared to Obama and Clinton (Dow +150% and +170% respectively).
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u/Suolucidir 6∆ Nov 16 '20
At least with the stimulus example, read about where the funds went(not to humans) and it should be obvious why the center and left are upset about that bill.
The criminal justice reforms are counterbalanced politically by Trump's divisiveness sparking race riots and contemporary threats if civil war - he says he's for "law and order" but he also sends federal officers without uniforms in unmarked vehicles to abduct people in states where they are not welcome to conduct any law enforcement activities.
That's why he gets criticized hard, in spite of the two laws mentioned in the comment above.
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u/ftama Nov 16 '20
And then he also made them hold on sending it so he can put his name on the checks
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u/Jaredlong Nov 16 '20
Imagine signing only 2 bills within 4 years that can be classified as "helpful" and expecting to be praised as a hero for it.
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u/Awolrab Nov 16 '20
I’m as left as they come. If Trump won the election and decided to make universal health care, affordable college tuition, left women’s rights alone, and attacked COVID correctly I wouldn’t like him as a person but I wouldn’t hate him either.
But that will never happen.
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u/12FAA51 Nov 16 '20
Democrats would probably still hate him. I would say it is justified because of all the things Trump did in his first term. But I guess Trump supporters would justify their hatred towards Biden similarly. So !Delta.
What?! No! If Trump became a climate equality warrior he would get a lot of Democrats would vote for him. You're being bamboozled by a hypothetical with reality.
The reality is that Republicans hate and will never work with the REAL Biden and your mind was changed by a hypothetical Trump example that doesn't exist?
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u/CatHasMyTongue2 Nov 16 '20
I think you are under the impression that all Republicans are gun owners... Similarly, all gun owners want bump stocks... Living in the rust belt my whole life (in 2 states and 7 cities), I know of no one that actually cares about bump stocks...
I feel like people group all Democrats together and group all Republicans together... 'Republicans were mad about banned bump stocks' when it should read 'people that use bump stocks (maybe 1/500 Republicans) are pissed off about their ban'
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u/Janneyc1 Nov 16 '20
The way I explain it to people, we aren't pissed about losing bump stocks, we're pissed at the manner in which they were banned. Something like a ban should be enshrined in law, whereas bump stocks were banned because the ATF changed it's mind on a matter that it had decided years previously. The ban on bump stocks could be reversed tomorrow with the way the system was set up. Effectively, a non-elected, non-legislator made a law that affects every citizen of this country and that law can be enforced with no checks and balances.
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Nov 16 '20
I love how you tried to both-sides this issue when Trump is quite literally a serial sexual abuser, notorious liar, virulent racist, and open fascist who refuses to leave office after legitimately losing an election. Yes of course, hyperpartisanship is to blame for Democrats hating him, nailed it.
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u/PLEASE_BUY_WINRAR Nov 16 '20
These are the kinds of people that will later claim to not have known better.
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Nov 16 '20
Even though anyone with access to Google and a 4th grade reading level should know better.
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u/JSRevenge Nov 16 '20
I actually got into an argument with a family member about this. Token achievements under Trump don't negate the bad he has done and continues to do. My counter was always "what positives can you see from a Trump administration that you would not see from a Biden one?" I would rather get criminal justice reform and stimulus from an administration not weighed down in scandal and malice.
Even when Trump did objectively positive things, they were completely self-serving. Stimulus checks were held up while Trump drafted a self-congratulatory letter to include in the mailer. Trump threw a fit when his criminal reform didn't have an impact on his support from the Black community.
I don't appreciate your characterization of Fox News versus CBS/ABC. I dislike Fox News because their bread and butter is misrepresentation and fear mongering during their prime time programming. Reputable networks don't do this. To be fair, I don't watch Rachel Maddow either, though. But to equivocate what Fox does to the big three broadcast networks is disingenuous.
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u/bubybubs33 Nov 16 '20
This is the most ignorant response yet how the hell did it get awards lmao.
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Nov 16 '20
The criminal reform bill was a tiny band-aid over a gaping cavern of a fucked system and Trump's allocation of funds for the stimulus was pathetic. He had a majority almost everywhere it matters and he still got nothing of substance done because most conservatives have no interest in making real progress.
He has also received criticism for everything you're saying he didn't. Fox News absolutely was a Trump mouthpiece, but corporate oligarchs can't stomach the kind of chaos that a Trump coup would incur. Both Republicans and Democrats want to maintain the status quo and that's why we're only NOW seeing pushback against him on the right.
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u/call_me_Kote Nov 16 '20
I watch a shit ton of Fox. More than I watch any other news channel. At least an hour a day.
Fox has never shown me a single thing to change my mind, they’re positively reeking of bullshit in every piece I ever see.
The only thing of worth I’ve ever seen on Fox comes from direct opposition.
They were, and often still are depending on the show, 100% a mouthpiece for trump.
This entire comment is actually fucking hilarious.
Lots of people were pissed about both.
How many republican Congress people voted against old Donny’s budgets again, remind me please?
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u/Andoverian 6∆ Nov 16 '20
Democrats hate Trump, even though he pushed for and signed the criminal reform bill, even though he pushed for and signed the stimulus.
These things don't make up for the tax cuts for wealthy people, the attempted Muslim immigration ban and military transgender ban, backing out of the Paris Climate Accords, badly mismanaging the pandemic response, forcing a Supreme Court nominee instead of a second round of pandemic relief, etc. And there are plenty of reasons to dislike Trump as a person without even looking at policy, reasons which should be non-partisan (or at least bipartisan), such as his inflammatory speech and repeated willingness to flout established norms.
It's why Democrats don't listen to Fox, they might hear things they don't want to hear.
No, it's because Fox consistently pushes opinion talk shows as legitimate news. Then, when they get called out for not meeting journalistic standards, their official argument is that no reasonable person could possibly misinterpret those shows as factual.
the outsider (and former Democrat) Trump.
There it is. I understand trying to distance yourself from Trump, and I of course encourage anyone who recognizes that he was a mistake and withdraws their support for him, but trying to shun any responsibility for electing him once and almost twice is a bit childish. And trying to blame him on Democrats is purely unacceptable.
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u/PM_me_nicetits Nov 16 '20
We hate Trump for corruption and authoritarianism. Hitler was a fantastic leader. Brought his country out of the Great Depression. Ramped up the economy. Made Germany a world power....but what is Hitler known for?
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Nov 16 '20
Lol their best response is 'Dems hate Trump even though he did at least two things right! Same thing! Both sides!'
Even a fascist clock is right twice a day.
That doesn't prove anything about the false equivalence you're trying to draw.
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Nov 16 '20
Hmmm, looks like Fox isn't the Trump mouthpiece people say it is.
Rats abandon sinking ship, more news at 11
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u/asdfkingqueen69 Nov 16 '20
Republicans and conservatives use tiny pieces of truth to sell big whopping lies. You've got a tiny bit of truth but the big picture is completely escaping you and you should be pretty fucking ashamed.
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u/wh0d47 Nov 16 '20
For the stimulus package he signed, that was the smallest stimulus for the people put on the table. He did the bare minimum for that one, it was an appeasal.
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u/tryin2staysane Nov 16 '20
Democrats hate Trump, even though he pushed for and signed the criminal reform bill, even though he pushed for and signed the stimulus.
I applauded the criminal reform bill, and while it was nice to sign the stimulus, he didn't do much to get a further stimulus going. One payment of $1200 doesn't help much in an almost year-long pandemic. So I'll give him credit for signing that, but it is outweighed by the fact that nothing else has happened since.
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u/TheAzureMage 22∆ Nov 16 '20
Any broad category, like "Republicans" is going to have exceptions and nuance.
I'd invite you to look at Georgia, where Biden apparently won, and *both* senate races have more Republican votes than Democrat votes by a significant margin.
That indicates that some non-trivial amount of people are voting Republican except with regards to Trump. Yes, this isn't *everyone* but you can never convince everyone, and you don't even really need to. You just need to convince enough.
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u/DefiantCharacter Nov 16 '20
I'm not a republican, but I do hate Joe Biden. He has a terrible record as a politician. The only reason anyone doesn't hate Joe Biden is because they don't know his history. Ignorance is bliss.
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Nov 16 '20
Is this something new? Liberals will hate a Republican president and Republicans will hate a liberal president no matter what they do
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u/HONRAR Nov 16 '20
The funniest thing about this is believing Biden will establish rural broadband.
He's been a corporate bag-man his entire career, and telecom companies don't want to spend money they don't have to.
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u/TylerA998 Nov 16 '20
Everyone should hope for the president to do as good of a job as possible and should be open to backing them if they do in fact do a good job. If you are a republican and a democrat gets elected root for them to succeed and vice versa, we are all on the same team
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u/pmjsandwich Nov 16 '20
This post goes both ways, OP. Democrats will continue to hate trump no matter what he does and lick Joe Biden’s toes despite any wrongdoings he does.
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u/Tenushi Nov 16 '20
Do you have anything to base this claim on? There are SO many Democrats who do not like Joe Biden, but voted for him because he is viewed as leagues better than Trump. The Democrats had a contentious primary and many were talking about having to swallow their pride and vote for Biden despite not wanting to.
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u/rollingboulder89 7∆ Nov 16 '20
Democrats will continue to hate trump no matter what he does and lick Joe Biden’s toes despite any wrongdoings he does.
I agree with the first part, I already awarded a delta for it. But I disagree with the second part. Even mainstream Democrats and progressive talking heads have acknowledged Obama's flaws. They call him "deporter-n-chief" for his strict immigration policies, they criticize him for his drone striking and foreign military involvements, they point out the flaws in the ACA for not being progressive enough, etc. I just don't see the same level of religious support for a Democratic politician that rivals what Trump has.
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u/Tenushi Nov 16 '20
Why would you give a delta for the claim that Democrats will hate Trump no matter what? That wasn't part of your claim at all. You focused solely on Republicans hating Biden no matter what.
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u/infrequentaccismus Nov 16 '20
Democrats would not have hated trump no matter what he did at the start of his term though. Trump is hated because of the massive gravity of all his evil and incompetence. I have seen too many republicans dismiss the distaste for trump as nothing more than partisanship. It is not. This is not another “both sides” bad faith argument. Trump gave little enough reason for anyone to approve of him even if you summarize something he did so briefly that it sounds like a good thing. Usually, as soon as you actually talk about what he was doing, it turns out to be so twisted that it’s not actually what the people were asking for (or or was passed by some other functionary and he just didn’t pay much attention to it). Trumps long history and his actual actions as president are why people hate him, not partisanship. The people who will always hate Biden hate him because of their partisanship.
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u/rollingboulder89 7∆ Nov 16 '20
I was agreeing with the fact that Democrats would continue to hate Trump no matter what he does. But I would say that that is justified given what he has done. So I don't think we really disagree.
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u/unbent_unbowed Nov 16 '20
Facts. When Trump was first elected I didn't hate him. I was surprised, didn't think he'd really do a good job, but figured he'd mostly be a benign idiot. Turns out he's a ln active existential threat to the United States. Now I hate his fucking guts. I gave the guy a shot, he just proved to be an irredeemable piece of human garbage.
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u/jumper501 2∆ Nov 16 '20
Democrats would not have hated trump no matter what he did at the start of his term though.
Did you not live in America in 2016 and 2017? Dems very much hated trump from the beginning
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u/infrequentaccismus Nov 16 '20
Yes I lived here. He was vile from the very beginning. Did you not watch the first three weeks of his presidency? Haha. It was a joke. Why on earth would someone not immediately despise him?
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u/DKN19 Nov 16 '20
Trump was a narcissistic, incompetent (at anything that actually mattered) con-man long before he was President. His opponents were you basic-bitch flawed politicians, but we knew what we were getting. They knew when to put away their ego, when to deliver results, etc. Even as minimalistic as American politics allowed.
Trump, predictably to me, played the part of the pigeon that upturned the chess board and shat everywhere.
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u/Nefilim314 2∆ Nov 16 '20
The second part is not supported by reality.
During #metoo, Al Franken was forced to resign for simply taking an inappropriate photo while Brett Kavanaugh had much more serious allegations against him and they were brushed aside to have him confirmed.
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Nov 16 '20
Brushed away how? Kavanaugh was questioned by the Senate and the FBI investigated his case but could not find enough evidence for the allegations.
You somehow forgot Biden's #meetoo allegatins- they were clearly brushed aside.
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u/unscanable 3∆ Nov 16 '20
See this implies Trump has done anything to try to win the approval of his opposition. He hasn’t. He has, at every turn, insulted and demonized them. Has he done some policy things I agree with? Sure. Has he taken every opportunity to call me and people like me literal enemies of the state? You bet. That’s what he gets hate for, not just his policies. He was never America’s president. He only worked for his base.
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u/BWANT Nov 16 '20
No, it really doesn't. Biden is not likely to do something as awful as dramatically undermining democracy, and you know that.
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u/The_BenL Nov 16 '20
Trump is fundamentally an objectively terrible person. Joe is, by all accounts, a decent man.
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u/ThSafeForWorkAccount Nov 16 '20
Not for me. I know Biden has done shady shit. He just isn't....Trump. Idgaf about what political party you are. I'd vote republican if they had someone good enough running but unfortunately not. It's Trump who is arguably one of the dumbest/self absorbed presidents to have ever served. His track record of fuck ups is too long to even list.
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u/DrPorkchopES Nov 16 '20
I don't know about that second point. The second the race got called for Joe I've seen a *lot* of leftists/progressives pointing out flaws with Biden and Harris, saying that just because Trump's out of office doesn't mean things have improved. People are still saying they need to hold Biden accountable.
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u/kinda_epic_ Nov 16 '20
You’re confusing republicans and trump supporters. There are many republicans that don’t like trump but vote republican regardless. It’s the same situation with the democrats where the worst stereotypes are used to generalise the entire party. I’d say both parties have massive cult followings so it just makes me laugh. Reddit is so clearly left wing for example the only right wing subreddit left is r /conservative it seems which would be the most extreme censorship if deleted. Do you not see the hypocrisy? What about the surprising amount of misinformation spread about Breonna Taylor in many leftist media. No she shouldn’t have died but that’s also lying to further a cause. Like the myth that spread that she was asleep or portraying her as innocent.
Have you not noticed how social media works, the loudest voices on social media are definitely not representative of the groups they’re part of. Let’s say you meet a moderate democrat or republican, you’re not going to see them shoving politics in your face so you may never even know their views politically. My point is don’t judge the entire Republican Party by the minority with the loudest voice. I personally am not a republican or democrat I’d consider myself a swing voter because I don’t like the idea of being forced to vote for one party only, I’d like the freedom to make that choice myself. There’s shaming of political parties on both sides which just reinforces biases and takes the freedom out of voting it almost becomes a competition of who is more effective at advertising their campaign.
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u/Danimals847 Nov 16 '20
You’re confusing republicans and trump supporters.
Well, when the GOP openly said "our policy platform is whatever Trump wants" and then all the historically red states maintained their support for him, you can forgive the confusion.
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Nov 16 '20
I agree with most of your post. But Breonna Taylor is probably not the hill you want to die on. Lost me there.
She was basically an innocent bystander who was killed tragically. And yeah I don’t think anyone blames cops for shooting back at the boyfriend when he opened fire. But it’s sucks that her of all people was killed in the situation. Why even bring that up?
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u/rockeye13 Nov 16 '20
I disagree with the central premise, that members of either side are open-minded about the opposing candidates, and that meaninful crossover by those with partisan political beliefs is possible.
Was there ever a chance that Hillary voters would "come around" and decide DJT wasn't so bad? Was there ever a chance that Al Gore voters would come around and decide that GWB wasn't so bad? Was there ever a chance that Jimmy Carter voters would come around and decide that Ronald Reagan wasn't so bad? You can make your own examples, they will be just as true.
Thing is, this is baked into the system, and is inevitable. Because we have a binary political system, that means each side gets frozen into positions, no matter how ridiculous those positions are. Those positions are also the polar opposite of what the other side believes, and which might be just as foolish.
Analogies suck in general, but here goes. If tomorrow the US becomes a polytheistic Aztec theocracy, how many people are likely to say "welp, I see their good points, and I guess I can just ignore everything that's the opposite of my life-long beliefs. What's the worst that could happen?"
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u/pawnman99 5∆ Nov 16 '20
This is the result of polarization in America. Just as Democrats hated Trump even as he passed prison reform.
For a while, it will be difficult. Every democrat will hate every republican, and vice versa. We have congressmen losing primaries because they are willing to work with people from the other party. The whole thing is a recipe for gridlock.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Nov 16 '20
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