Comment by root_axis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by root_axis | Hacker News Reader

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> voters didn't want this

Yes they did. Of course they didn't want to be targeted themselves, but the rhetoric was very explicit about what would happen, and they already had a preview of it in 2016 and voted even more favorably for this regime this time around.

> The media silently accepted Trump's lie at face value when he said he knew nothing about Project 2025

Not true. The media was very vocal about it, and it was obvious that he was on board with it.

> Most Republican voters, when told about the actual policies being implemented by elected Republicans, don't believe the reports, and assume that nobody would be enacting such stupid policy.

This isn't true. The recent ouster of Thomas Massie is a clear example of this. However, even if that were true, Republican voters still overwhelmingly prefer this to the alternative (Democrats), and polls show this today.

> Yet the voters keep voting for them.

Indeed. Not sure how you can acknowledge this but somehow believe it's not what the voters want.

There is no contradiction between the points made so far. His base loves it and the majority of americans do not. He won by a marginal victory just like in 2016. The current system favors the Rs and the Rs have worked to gerrymander every state they've controlled since 2010, and they've used everything in their power since the obama years to make sure they control the courts. Poll after poll shows americans don't like Trump (or Biden for that matter or the Democrats) but because of the moment in 2024, Trump took a marginal victory and consolidated power, which Democrats never could do and never wanted to do.

The simple statement that none of this is what voters want if we're talking about a majority of them is just true. To say otherwise is to be ignorant of history since the 90s and the Rs under Newt Gingrich to this day, and how effectively as a party they've consolidated power in America. I'm not really saying it's evil or smart or anything (I do think it was smart and bold). But, polls do consistently show a majority of Americans have never been so pessimistic about the country and their leadership in both parties.

> The recent ouster of Thomas Massie is a clear example of this

How?

The outcome of his election was a referendum on Trump's performance among engaged Republican voters.

I don’t agree that even engaged republicans actually know what’s going on. In my experience some of them are the most hoodwinked - they literally believe that all the immigrants being detained are criminals, that everyone sent to CECOT was a terrorist, that DACA recipients have all been allowed to get green cards and just not bothered to, etc.

It was a referendum on all swing states and on black and Hispanic voters.

First, you're making a big logical error by replacing "voters" with "Republican voters" or the even more narrow, extreme, and unrepresentative group of "Republican primary voters".

If people knew they were voting for Project 2025, why would Trump disavow any connection to it during the campaign? It doesn't make any sense.

> Republican voters still overwhelmingly prefer this to the alternative (Democrats), and polls show this today.

Republican voters care less about policy than about the team. Take key Democratic policies, and present them in polls without the Democratic label, and Republicans support them. Add in the label and they don't support them.

It's not hard to understand that politics is mostly treated as sports-team affiliation these days.

Republicans don't vote for Republicans because of policies, they vote for Republicans because they identify as Republicans.

And, claiming that the Massie vote, of just the extreme primary voters, represents the public's will? That's ridiculous. Massie still got something like 45% of the vote, among that extreme and unrepresentative bloc of voters, after Trump going hard after Massie for trying to release the Epstein files.

The Massie vote is about extremist Republican's subservience to Trump, not about whether anybody actually likes policies. People despise Trump's Epstein coverup.

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