Watching the debacle from across the pond, wondering what everyone voting for Trump feared in the alternative. Kamala, extreme leftist? Guess youve never heard of USSR. And even not they were extreme.
People _didn't_ vote for kamala because shes a milquetoast unqualified candidate that represents a party that has lost touch with it's base. It turns out, "just vote (for whoever we decide on at the dnc)." Is not a viable strategy.
Obviously policy matters very little here; personality is king and many Americans love Trump’s personality. It’s why none of the policy arguments do much to sway anything.
People like the man, and they can dislike his policies separately, but they only dislike the policies that really impact them personally in a negative way. They like the man enough to just support whatever less visible policies he has.
I think race, gender, class, and culture have a lot to do with these preferences.
Its more common for right wing parties to elect a female leader than for left wing parties to, so if you look at leaders of countries most women are right wing. So if anything it is the left that has an issue with female leaders, not the right.
If we define "leader" as executive or legislative positions at the federal or state level, definitely not true in the US, by a pretty large margin.
I think there were just a series of events that led to nobody getting excited by D in the election, allowing Trump to win. Especially when you consider that moderates and NPAs always decide the elections.
Inflation was out of control(by US standards) for Biden's entire term. In fairness this started at the end of Trump1 but carried on for years. Will Trump fix it? Who knows, I think most expect tariffs to make it even worse.
Immigration seemed unchecked, which itself probably wouldn't have been a huge issue, but news and social media 'investigators' came out about how much the gov was giving them - money, housing, healthcare, etc. Struggling and newly struggling people got really, really angry about money being spent there. That was a super easy play for R's all election season.
But the nail in the coffin IMO was the debate disaster, CNN turning on Biden as not fit to be president overnight, then last minute odd resignation letter via Twitter. Then injected with a candidate nobody had a say in, to boot.
So in short, a combination of people angry at 'the system' rebelling, and a candidate without much real support. I don't feel like R's won the election as much as I feel like D's imploded themselves. For the sake of not having an uniparty, I hope they rethink things. I feel like Newsom making a more moderate shift is a play in that direction, we'll see.
Just my .02.
Unfortunately it was hard to convince people that was a terrible reason because not countering Trump votes with votes for Harris was just ensuring a Trump win. Which of course meant the same outcome or worse for Palestinians and also awful shit for Americans and other countries that rely on the US.