America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent | Hacker News Reader

America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent

theatlantic.com

15 pointstroughway8 comments

this article seems to discount the insane amount of popular votes that Trump actually received, and the impact of COVID. He got 73M votes, compared to 78 for Biden. That's way more than Obama's 69M, the previous record.

I loathe the big orange baby, but would he have lost if the pandemic had not hit? It seems a perfect storm just as much as his election four years ago.

Like many people, the author looks at some things Trump didn't do or fucked up and says "look, he's just really bad at governmrnt" and assumes that would translate into people not voting for him.

But that's not how it works, it takes many, many years of that to convince people that someone is not worth governing after they vote for her/him: people identify with their vote, and it takes a lot to get you to say "well, I suck".

I don't understand why people are talking about these record number of voters in absolute numbers... We need to know the percentage of all possible voters otherwise it's meaningless. What's telling me that the population of the US hasn't grown by 5 million since the last election?

turnout at the 2020 election in percentage is the highest in this century[0], but the absolute number is significant per se in the argument, as it shows that Biden didn't just win because a lot of people abandoned Trump: he actually gained a ton of voters since the previous election.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...

USA population apparently increased by 8 millions between 2016 and 2020, so that's a lot more voters contributing to these numbers… The percentage of people that can vote is more interesting I think.

To me it's like the record of the Box Office that is measured in dollar amount. It doesn't make sense as the ticket price evolves over time and the value of money also changes.

"the percentage of people that can vote" is the number I quoted, 2020 is the highest in a very long time.

Nixon, Reagan, W. Bush, Trump is not a curve towards competence. Nixon got stuff done. Reagan started a movement but bumbled around until Nancy took charge and hired professional help. W started and lost two wars. Populists never know how to govern, so the next tiktok, parlor, youtube star isn’t going to know how to move the levers any better and their entourage is going to be a clown show.

They can win because the American populace is shallow and irrational, but running off the rails is not a competence badge.

> Nixon, Reagan, W. Bush, Trump is not a curve towards competence.

and Biden is ? Oh, boy....

The mindset of people like him is to mindlessly elect politicians into office as long as the mass media (a.k.a. modern propaganda owned by a few individuals) tells them to.

Who cares if the politician is historically a scumbag who has voted for/against things that he currently claims to care about...as long as the media and the liberal mob says so, he's our guy! Forget critical thinking and making decisions for ourselves, who needs that when the media can decide for us!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com