Comment on Why I Haven't Seen Any Trump Supporters In Fediverse (Lemmy and Mastodon)?
sxan@midwest.social 3 months agoI think that your metrics for picking covert Trumpers based upon that appaling debate is incorrect and simplistic.
Well, yeah, it’s simplistic. I’m generalizing.
I watched every second of that shit show and believed that we were doomed for another 4 years of the orange turd.
I agree. Biden had a bad night (and, it appears in retrospect, had been declining for a while). Trump has been a deranged narcissistic sociopath since day 1; Biden was held to a higher standard than Trump. Biden performs poorly, and the heart sunk out of the Democratic faithful. Trump performs poorly, and that’s just par for the course, because all Trumpers care about is hurting liberals.
However, I admit I don’t know what you’re arguing; I think we agree on most of this. The Harris bump was because (as I said) it gave liberals hope that they could win. The bump came from undecideds who suddenly saw an energized, engaged, and competent viable candidate as an option; or people who before saw only two decrepit old white men (The Patriarchy) feebly flailing for control, and suddenly one of the candidates was strong, under 60, female, and a minority!
We’re answering OP’s question why there aren’t more Trumpers on Lemmy. There are; they’re just hidden, and how they respond to the debate outs them. The debate was just an example:
- Non-Trumper: If Joe had a cold, it looks like a staffer gave him Nyquil instead of amphetamines. He’d have paid for the uppers the next day, but it if ever there was a time to push yourself and pay the price later, this debate was it. He was horrible. Trump was his usual lying self, rambling nonsense, and looked like his usual re-animated corpse.
- Trumper: Biden was awful; he’s obviously going senile, unable to answer questions, losing his train of thought, weak.
Democrats are far more critical of their own candidate than Republicans are of their’s, and that’s how you identify the conservative lurkers. They’re there, and they’re not hard to recognize.
slickgoat@lemmy.world 3 months ago
This subsequent post of yours is more substantial in explaining your position and I generally agree with all of your points.
My post was with the absurdist position that critiquing the Biden performance around the time of the last debate made you an enemy of progressive politics. Joe had fired his last good shot in 2016. He’s a good man, a heroic fighter for his age but Trump was always going to steamroll him this time. It doesn’t matter that Joe had a cold, or that he sometimes made excellent policy points, the optics were that he was meandering and frail. It wasn’t that the debate done him in by itself - Obama sometimes had a bad debate (particularly his first one) it was that his performance on the night confirmed what was evident for months. By the time Joe started arguing with Trump about who could beat who in golf the jig was up.
Despite Trump’s own senior moments, despite his atrocious behaviour, despite his obvious lies, the feeling was Joe is doomed. And so was the most important election since last time, and that says a lot. The fact that it is not impossible that he still won’t get in again is beyond worrying. But with Harris there is a decent chance.
I hope that clears up my position? It was more a vent against all those who insisted that we ride the Joe bus over the cliff and disbelieve our own eyes while we did it.
sxan@midwest.social 3 months ago
Yeah, I think we’re on the same page. The Biden administration did good, but we’d come to a depressingly low point in politics.
I’m encouraged that more conservatives are feeling it’s safe to pop their heads out and criticize Trump, and the radical right who’ve been able to hijack the party thanks largely to party policies started during Ronald Fucking Regan’s administration. But if they do it on Lemmy, they’re assumed to be liberals which may increase the perception of there being few conservatives on Lemmy.
Lemmy is still more generally politically Left than American Left, which is, after all, pretty centrist compared to western Europe. This feeds even more into OP’s question about why there aren’t more conservatives on Lemmy: if you look at Lemmy as a European, the pro- Trumpers are neo-Nazis, not conservatives; the center is so far right, anything more right is essentially legally banned in Germany.
slickgoat@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Thats a pretty sophisticated bit of analysis, particularly for Lemmy.
I still find it amazing that the vote will be as close as it undoubtedly will become. I mean, Trump is not only for himself, but he is also plainly destructive. He’s now touting the low-information ‘Joe Rogan vote’. Young white guys who haven’t been following anything.