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Comment by fastasucan | Hacker News Reader

After seeing this guy become elected for the second time I have come to the opposite conclusion. This is what America wants, and this is what America is. The rest of the world should acknowledge this and act accordingly, and the people of the US, especially the Democrats, should as well.

Pretending like "this isn't us", "this isnt real america" is just keeping them from doing any real introspection.

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No, urban areas voted Democrat once again. If anything, 2024 has really showed the widening divide between urban and rural areas, both in the US and in Europe. Probably everywhere else as well.

While it is true that democrats carried urban centers it is worth noting that their support appears to have eroded somewhat in these areas. Republicans picked up a statistically relevant number of votes there.

If I were a betting man I'd wager that switches like that are purely due to inflation. Shit's too expensive and people think that changing the party they vote into the seat of the presidency is going to change that.

Which is incredibly stupid given Elon just said in the last month that Trump’s policies would cause inflation.

Important to note that it's not what all of us Americans want, it's just what a little over half of the voting population voted for.

Half the voting population who chose to vote voted for.

"A little over half of the voting population" is literally all that matters here! The levels of cope here are astounding.

> all that matters!

Some perspective is called for.

It’s all that matters in the presidential race. But barely over half of the population wanted him as president. The other side doesn’t disappear just because they lost an election.

Talk about really problems with 'democracy' where 51% decides decides to thrust their views on the rest 49% . The concept is fundamentally flawed.

Well in 2020 it apparently didn't matter so you should try and stay consistent.

I'm in the UK and I was just listening to Andrew Neil, a political commentator over here, and he mentioned something interesting. There was apparently a 3 to 2 ratio of Hispanic/Black voters voting FOR Trump. A possible explanation is that the border policies have had an impact on minimum wage workers, of which Hispanic and Black voters are disproportionately a category of. The Democratic Party will have to do a post mortem, but there's likely to be many issues found where the Democrats failed their voters.

In particular, I believe the economic rhetoric Trump used worked very well with many lower income people. I don't remember Harris taking any strong stances there, or maybe what she had I store was not communicated well.

I think this is accurate, a big chunk of the vote seems to be "my bills/food/rent went up when Blue in office, Red says they _will_ fix it, so let's try Red"

Of course not statistical, but seems to be a large trend in discussion

Yeah, I think that's it, or at least a large part of it. People were unhappy and when you're unhappy you vote out the incumbent (and in a two-party system there's only one other choice).

I also think that's the same reason the exact same guy was voted out four years ago. Pretty bizarre if true, so it's probably not the whole story.

Harris promised raising the minimum wage and down payment support for first-time buyers.

Americans (with the help of the media) are just plain stupid and vote against their own interests.

Promises from an incumbent can hit differently. If Democrats were willing and able, they should have done it in the last 4 years. If not, then why promise?

The Biden administration did a lot of student debt relief.

But in the end that doesn't matter is the media isn't willing to talk about that. And people keep listening to those media.

Remember age didn't matter anymore once Biden dropped out? If the NYT hammered Trump the same way they did Biden, the outcome would be different.

I have no doubt Harris would have delivered on improving the conditions for the poor. Unfortunately Trumps rhetoric was simply too effective, perhaps because of what you say in the second sentence.

Harris had no strong stances. At all. Her only one was "I'm not Trump". Which is kind of a loosing strategy when people seem to like him.

*losing

This is the challenge that the Democrats have; the Republicans have a policy that appeals to a significant enough percentage of the population, while the Democrats have to try and appeal to "everyone else". A two-party system is not a democracy, it's a compromise, and only a political revolution will fix it.

Of course, that's also what the Republicans / Heritage Foundation are aiming for, if they have their way they will do away with democracy. Which isn't exactly what I was thinking of.

This is what rural USA wants.

What makes rural America so numerous?

electoral college

It's not that it's numerous (it's not). It's that they have a lot weight because of how the electoral college works.

I think you’re confusing the electoral college with the Senate.

There are two senators per state regardless of population, so low-population rural states have an outsized influence in the Senate.

In the electoral college, each state is weighted by population. It’s unavoidably biased (just by the nature of chunking votes into seats and states) but it doesn’t consistently favor either side.

Each state gets a number of electors equal to their Congressional delegation: Representatives *and* Senators. So the overweighting of small states in the Senate does, to a smaller degree, affect the Electoral College as well (as every state gets two "free" electors).

Good point! I overlooked that. On the other hand, the larger states having large bloc votes plays in their favor.

The electoral college for one. Massively oversized benefit, especially since the house size has been frozen. Basically every level of our government is designed to give small rural areas the advantage. It’s no wonder we are the only prosperous nation without universal healthcare and post secondary education. We give the people who contribute the least to our society free rein to run it.

No, basically every level of our country is designed to balance the voices of heavily populated areas with rural areas. It's completely ignorant of the history of our nation to claim it's intended to give rural areas an advantage, when in fact it is an attempt at compromise. And let's not forget: without that compromise our nation literally would not exist, as the large and small states wouldn't have come to an agreement otherwise.

I wouldn't say people in rural areas do the least for society.

For one, the population is way more spread out in the US than in other countries. There are only 9 cities with more than 1 million people in a country of 350 million inhabitants.

Those are local administrative areas, not cities. Using any reasonable functional definition of a city, the number of cities with a population >1 million is around 50.

They're not so numerous; due to the way the system is set up, they have outsized impact. Wyoming with 500k people has the same amount of influence in the Senate as California with 38 million people.

That said, so far she hasn't won the popular vote either, so that's not what we should be blaming in this election.

My question is, why can't democrats see how bad and average intell. their candidate is? Trump can at least talk, give interviews and all. But other one???

> But other one???

is not a sentence.

OK.

I think they just have a higher reproduction rate. Shorter generations and wider ones too.

Hell I'm from a rural family that voted majority trump. I'm a bud not a stem. I'm also 33 with no kids.

This is also what billionaires and the rich want, which is how you can tell rural USA isn't going to gain anything. But they'll blame immigration or some other issue instead of the people swimming in gold coins, making them work harder for less money year over year.

I'm surprised this take isn't gaining more ground in these discussions.

people keep talking about how "this is what all these Americans want" - bologna I say. They're just voting how they've been programmed to believe.

Find me a Trump supporter that has only researched him from first-hand credible sources and has not been influenced by friends, family, social media, or mainstream media. I would be very surprised if any person like this exists.