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Comment by verzali | Hacker News Reader

Every time he does something petty like this I am reminded that Americans voted for him twice. Not just because he was 'the other guy'. He got through primaries. Twice. Millions of people adore him. America is deeply deeply unwell, and the rest of the world needs to do whatever we can to keep ourselves safe from whatever madness is coming next.

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A little under half of American voters picked him three times... a huge chunk of those ultimately regretted it after the Iran war created inflation (not about the dead Iranians though).

Many of the same people also voted for GWBush twice and regretted that too, for similar reasons.

Those people probably still have their own driver's license and power of attorney.

I think every tv show (your newscasts, SNLs, late nights and analytical ones) every reddit/twitter/other site constantly going "trump, trump, trump" are partially responsible.

Including this post.

> I am reminded that Americans voted for him twice.

Americans voted for him once. He lost the popular vote in 2016 and only became president because of the electoral college.

Americans voted for him twice. The electoral college is how American presidents are elected. If Americans wanted the popular vote to matter in their elections, they've had two centuries to change the system. They haven't, which means they accept the system and its results as representative of the will of the American people.

Americans voted for him once. You're redefining what "winning the vote" means.

"Winning the vote" means winning the electoral college, it always has. The popular vote has never been relevant. The states elect the president, the people don't (not directly) and never have.

Don't try to revise history here. Like it or not - and I personally hate it - and barring actual evidence of fraud, Trump won two elections under the same rules as every other president.

Yes, Trump won both elections. I never said otherwise. I said that he only won the popular vote in one of them (Americans only voted for him once). In the other one, he was selected by a small group, not by the citizenry.

Oldie but a goodie. Still relevant: https://exiledonline.com/we-the-spiteful/index.html

He was just very entertaining. I don't think there's anything deeper than that.

There are no simple explanations in this arena. All campaigns min/max messaging for sought after demographics to maximize votes. One could argue that the collaboration brought on by Elon/X gave the Trump 2 campaign some of the most sophisticated frameworks for data driven, atomized political messaging/monitoring ever seen in federal electoral history. That is a monumentally effective effort to convert and acquire voters-- I advise avoiding such simplistic explanations, especially when they double as thought terminating cliches.

Isn't that a huge problem? Who picks their leader because he is entertaining?

Nobody, but maybe it's a similar phenomena of how people choose brands. Where, people tend to buy brands they recognize most, even if they don't actually know much about said brand or it's quality.

Trump was the name on everyone's lips. Could it be possible that introduced an implicit bias in his favor? Is this a case of "any publicity is good publicity"?

Every US presidential election is baseline 50/50 and ends up decided by a small number of people who are as fickle as all get out and dumber than dirt. They don't vote for anything recognizable as a "reason."

It's not that. Maybe some voted based on entertainment value but it was an ad hoc alliance of:

People who only ever vote GOP

Pro lifers

People who thought he was somehow being unfairly prosecuted for Jan 6 and having crates of classified documents in his pool house

Podcast listeners (people who are heavily influenced by Joe Rogan, Tim Poole, and the like)

People who are ideologically aligned with Stephen Miller

And, drumroll...

Centrists who believed the GOP talking point that Biden was the sole or primary cause of inflation. To their discredit, the dems seemed to have no interest in refuting it.

Dems seemed to be running on a platform of "We're not Trump". That was enough in 2020, after four years of Trump. It was not enough in 2024, after four years of Biden.

Also, Trump just had to say "I'm not Biden".

Which shows how remarkably easy it is to manipulate the American electorate.

Some of the poorest people voted for Trump. He returned the favor by making their life hell.

Yes, America is deeply unwell.

You also have a lot of people with really odd ideals and a lack of common sense. For example, you could have a brilliant coworker that’s very smart and be an excellent developer, and absolutely love Trump.

> Twice.

I was led to believe he actually won 3 times. /s

People withheld their votes from Harris because of her complicity in genocide, and her pledge to continue to enable genocide. It is the number one reason people who voted for Biden gave for withholding their votes from Harris. Genocide is a red line.

Withholding votes from Harris does not mean these voters then voted for Trump. Many boycotted the election. A smaller number voted 3rd party.

Harris probably would have won if she had renounced the pro-genocide policies of Biden and pledged to cease arms transfers to Israel. She only had to win a few swing states, and swing states like Michigan with a sizable population of Palestinian diaspora were undeniably lost due to her doubling down on genocide. Heavily Jewish Zionist "blue" states like New York weren't going to swing Republican, and heavily Christian Zionist "red" states were never going go to the Dems anyway.

It’s a sound theory and would make logical sense. It’s based on how we would hope people would react to such things and actually vote based on what they believe in. However, that’s a very small minority. In reality, most people don’t think that deeply about a candidate.

If anyone thought deeply about Trump, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

I wouldn’t doubt Harris was supporting Israel in exchange for money or returned favors. Trump let Israel do whatever they want. Israel has their hand up every US politician’s ass for decades. Israel certainly won either way.

> In reality, most people don’t think that deeply about a candidate.

> If anyone thought deeply about Trump, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

You said it yourself here: The problem is that one side has more people thinking deeply than the other, and the idiots who vote regardless end up staying unified as a result.

This has "introduction of idiocracy" vibes where the smart people are overthinking things and getting completely overwhelmed.

Great point. One political side hurts itself by thinking too much and disagreeing internally, while the other side benefits from blind loyalty. Very true, because the republicans always get out and vote. The democrats need to do the same, including women voters.

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