@blackjack21 , in response to my comments you wrote;
It could be, but there are a lot of people who believe the Democrats are the living embodiment of all that is good, and the Republicans are the living embodiment of all that is bad; and vice versa. I left party politics due to my disgust with the Republicans, but being independent has made it clear to me that some people cannot be swayed because their need to belong to a group is more powerful than any policy position.
It's tribalism. And often tribalism works when it narrows down to the specific interests of the ''tribe'' in question. The past several decades in America has seen the elites deftly divide the lower classes (by means of the two-party duopoly catering to this tribalism) so that a pragmatic populism that is nationalistic, economically ''liberal'' and socially ''conservative'', would have great difficulty in seeing that kind of agenda passed.
In California, we are starting to see women getting tired of the Democrats, because they are the ones that deal with the children who aren't in school more than the fathers do. It takes a lot to get people to abandon a political party. It took John McCain working with Ted Kennedy and calling anyone who disagreed with McCain-Kennedy racist to finally get me to quit the party. I never went back, and never gave them a dime since and that was 14 years ago.
When I was young, my state was solidly Democrat on the local level, but since Nixon solidly voted GOP. Since then, the state is now solidly GOP on every level. It is also very poor and heavily economically and politically exploited. Taken for granted. Since my 20's, I have always voted third party, usually based on the issues of the moment.
For me the breaking moment with the GOP was the first Gulf War, on a personal level and for initially personal reasons.
Oh, Trump beat him for sure. However, Trump was not able to stop the fraud. One of Trump's personal flaws--rarely talked about--is that he wants to be liked. So it never really occurred to him how deranged some of the people in Washington really are. The prize to control trillion dollar budgets is hugely significant. So the establishment is rife with dirty people. Trump is used to dirty people being mobsters, thugs, etc. He's not used to thugs in Brooks Brothers suits with Ivy League degrees. Organized crime isn't the Mafia. Organized crime is like the medical cartel. That's organized. In the UK, the government owns the health care industry. In the United States, the healthcare industry owns the government. In the United States, 90% of media outlets are controlled by just 6 multinational corporations.
Nil. More people watched Trump's farewell address than watched Biden's inauguration. Biden's inauguration video got ratioed too, so they took it down. More people went to greet Trump coming home to Florida than went to welcome Biden to the White House. Washington is a positively eerie place right now. I've never seen anything like it in my life. From the UK, I'm pretty sure you just don't get to see it. Like here, if you want to see the Gilets Jaunes demonstrations, you have to watch RT or a streaming news startup, because it's blacked out in the mainstream media in the United States.
He has much more than a majority. Liz Cheney has found that out the hard way.
Trump added to his vote in the 2020 primaries too, even though he was running unopposed. Enthusiasm for him was quite high.
Or his daughter. Neither of them exhibit the message discipline of Trump Sr. though. People who come up with phrases like "Democrats are opening up the borders to illegal aliens while shutting down the schools" may be a bit trite, but they are on message. Trump took that stuff to a whole new level by ensuring that whatever he said it was in line with voter sentiments and politically incorrect.
If they are still destroying small businesses and ruining the lives of retail, entertainment and hospitality workers, I would think so. Almost everyone associated with rioting has financial problems. So as people's pandemic-related financial problems increase, I would expect civil unrest to increase too.
You've been saying that for four years now. It's starting to sound like global warming projections. Always doom, always imminent, all the experts agree, but it never happens.
No older than Biden is now. Although, deep down, we all know that Biden didn't win, don't we?
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