Tweet
Inflation is down ... but everything still costs a lot more than it used to, and we can all remember the Biden presidency as an extended period of "oh god, the price has gone up again." Also, most of the long, miserable slog of Covid was under Biden. Covid isn't really Biden's fault, but most politically unaffiliated Americans, comparing life under Biden to life under Trump, are going to think of 16-20 as better times. Everybody's gotten used to this weird world where a politician can act like a grade school bully, so that disadvantage is attenuated, and without counting that, the Trump years were mostly this extended period of dumb congressional slapfights that got nowhere (not if you were an illegal immigrant! But they don't vote). You are correct that this is a heavy disadvantage.
Trump's big liability, abortion, is not that big when he can say, "yeah, I'm not going to push that any harder," and it's easy to believe him because nobody thinks he's sincerely pro-life (or sincerely anything else). Kamala's big liability, immigration, is ... something she was explicitly associated with by the Biden administration, though it's not clear to me whether she did anything substantial? Wasn't paying attention because I don't much care about immigration. Nobody's hiring illiterate Guatemalans to run ventilators and paying them under the table.
With all that said, my point is that there were still some serious unforced D errors here, and as a libertarian who has never voted for Trump or any of his three D opponents, I find it intensely aggravating to deal with all the sour grapes I'm hearing from Democrats here and elsewhere. Of course any number of things could have changed the outcome, but if your reaction to defeat is "it's the electorate's fault for being racist sexist fascist etc.," you deserve this kind of ass-beating, because you're refusing to learn from your mistakes. That's the hypothetical "you," obviously, but seriously, I heard this same crap when Hillary lost, and that was eight years ago. Trump has had an abysmal approval rating since he set foot in the WH. If you lost to him in a reasonably fair contest (electoral college is a disadvantage, but Trump won the popular vote this time!), somebody done ****ed up.
Trump's big liability, abortion, is not that big when he can say, "yeah, I'm not going to push that any harder," and it's easy to believe him because nobody thinks he's sincerely pro-life (or sincerely anything else). Kamala's big liability, immigration, is ... something she was explicitly associated with by the Biden administration, though it's not clear to me whether she did anything substantial? Wasn't paying attention because I don't much care about immigration. Nobody's hiring illiterate Guatemalans to run ventilators and paying them under the table.
With all that said, my point is that there were still some serious unforced D errors here, and as a libertarian who has never voted for Trump or any of his three D opponents, I find it intensely aggravating to deal with all the sour grapes I'm hearing from Democrats here and elsewhere. Of course any number of things could have changed the outcome, but if your reaction to defeat is "it's the electorate's fault for being racist sexist fascist etc.," you deserve this kind of ass-beating, because you're refusing to learn from your mistakes. That's the hypothetical "you," obviously, but seriously, I heard this same crap when Hillary lost, and that was eight years ago. Trump has had an abysmal approval rating since he set foot in the WH. If you lost to him in a reasonably fair contest (electoral college is a disadvantage, but Trump won the popular vote this time!), somebody done ****ed up.
Comment