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Comment by Arubis | Hacker News Reader

That particular playbook long predates Trump: campaign on the ineffectiveness and incompetence of government and, once elected, prove it—with ineffectiveness and incompetence. Repeat ad infinium.

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CA has been a one party state minus a couple governors my entire life. You'd think the Democrats would have this place running like a well oiled machine by now.

Why would you think that? No one is saying that the Democrats are good at anything. This is not a algebra, taking something from one side doesn't get added to the other.

Worth mentioning that democrats have their own issues bogging things down, such as internal splintering, state gov fighting NIMBY-aligned local gov, localities throwing tantrums if they’re not included (big factor in the SF ↔ LA rail project), etc.

The oil for those machines would have to be a special CA blend that costs double though.

Yes, it predates trump. But prior to trump, Republican voters would hold their representatives accountable. Today, trump's cult is so brainwashed that they are completely ok with pedophilia, internment camps, destruction of services, destruction of science - literally willing to burn American society to ground so that Trump continues in office.

Their priority is Trump and not America. Which is why no one can take republican voters seriously.

> Republican voters would hold their representatives accountable.

I don’t think that’s accurate, unless it was for a crime they just couldn’t forgive. Debacle in the Middle East? Stay the course and re-elect Bush. Find out a senator had a gay experiment once? Out, so to speak.

You’ve been able to do what you want within the GOP for decades, so long as it’s Old Testament compliant.

I'm going to actually push back on this. Yes, the 2004 election was depressing. But if you take a quick look at George W. Bush's approval rating, you'll see it was extremely low even before the financial crisis in late 2007 [1]. The war in Iraq was really unpopular during his second term. If you look at the electoral map in 2008, you'll also see Obama winning states that we can't even imagine a Democrat winning, because people used to be more open to voting for the other side. Politics in America has changed in a big way, and GOP politics has changed wildly.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ra... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_presidentia...

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