How the fuck are you able to make yourself look like an unhinged ego-maniac who just wants to be President for the sake of being President, when you’re running against Trump?

This isn’t a problem of Trumpism, it’s a naturally occurring brainworm in Americans broadly speaking. Trump’s a nasty dim-witted freak, so watching him climb to the top of the pile we’ve been raised to believe was a meritocracy causes all sorts of cognitive dissonance. But everyone running for President (except maybe Mike Gravel) ends up looking like this. The thing that separates the Obamas and Trumps from the Hillarys and McCains is whether cheering for the unhinged ego-maniac feels fun or not.

I’m a European born American. Obama would be right wing politician in my country of birth.

With Obama they just learned how to take a somewhat progressive candidates and bend them into a moderate. It’s the same thing that happened with Kamala, although of course it’s hard to say if either were ever really progressive or if they just used that for votes and didn’t mind discarding it once they got pressured by the party and consultants.

The dinosaurs know they’re marching right, that’s where all the money is (for them).

See Bernie Sanders.

From the business owners to the CEOs, the Democrats are here to hear you. All the people, white or tan, brown people of light complexion as long as they have a 401k and 10 million in assets they will LISTEN

Voter turnout in primaries is pathetic. In 30 states, you have to be registered with the party - i.e.: give them your name and address for fund-raising purposes - to vote. This all works to bias primaries to ‘establishment’ candidates, or at least people well known among party apparatchiks. They are, theoretically, the best way to get progressives or populists into office, but practically, those progressives are fighting demographics and the general apathy of voters under 40.

The same phenomena that let MAGA take over the GOP keep the moderates in charge of the Dems. At least, until someone figures out how to motivate all the young internet revolutionaries to actually go and vote instead of memeing about how useless voting is.

Sort of, sometimes. They can and will heavily disadvantage candidates they dont like. Like when they gave Hillary the questions for debates beforehand but not to Bernie, and let hillary control the funding of races, including her own. And like when they cut new hampshire out of the primary results this year because the New Hampshire dems wouldnt move the date for the primary to when the dnc wanted. So sure you could vote in that primary, but nothing was done with the results. Straight to the garbage can with those ballots.

Russia says they have a democracy too, with votes and everything. Not saying we’re the same, but proving we have “democracy” by the fact that voting happens is not that firm of a thing. Its easily corrupted.

I was going to point out how most of them embrace donnie, who never seems to legitimately laugh at something normal. He does that weird grimace and thumbs-up for photo ops. He does that weird grimace after telling “jokes” that are all about punching down on someone or some group.

Well, TBF, I guess he does do that weird double-dick jerkoff dance that he does to his favorite gay anthem. Maybe he’s really trying to tell the world something there? All that talk about being hawt for his own daughter was some kind of weird compensation?

I disagree. He doesn’t love money. He covets the respect and power that he believes money brings with it and if forever angry that even with the presidency he can’t get the true respect he believes he is entitled to.

And the only way election reform happens is if we get the corporate Dems who like things the way they are (AKA roughly all of them) out of power. It’s damn near hopeless.

Seeing how it’s going in USA rn I don’t trust any judgment coming from the country whatsoever

yeah, one of the reasons the dems are a dead/dying brand currently is because they keep putting in who they feel has earned it the most, not who the population actually likes. That also leads to entire party embarrassment when they fight for that person and they turn out to be an abysmal milquetoast failure like Biden.

AOC - Crockett?

…think of all the cost already sunk into this failure!

Fundraising, state committees, local committees, volunteer

What if those things are not actually essential in modern day politics?

All of the shit that’s current existing that you’ve listed isn’t working. Touch it.

I think most people wouldn’t want to. Unfortunately, I suspect that the Trump Regime only offers two choices: submit to an existence of GOP rule for the rest of our lives, or force the GOP out of existence.

As a very lazy person, I would prefer to coast throughout my life and not worry about much. Unfortunately, that gets harder with each year that passes: the economy is getting worse, RFK wants to send me to an wellness farm, innocents are being trafficked to death camps in El Salvador, and rules that erode liberty for the everyday person are being imposed upon us.

If people like myself don’t get into a “start over” mindset, we might end up paying the price for the rest of our lives.

"I don’t know anything about Project 2025.”

What ever happened to representative democracy?

Political leaders don’t just represent the electorate, they lead it. Political reality has always been shaped by parties and leaders, even if sometimes those leaders aren’t electoral and so we pretend they aren’t political leaders.

For example, MLK Jr was a political leader even if he wasn’t elected. He created political realities through organizing and activism and propaganda and sloganeering and speeches. He didn’t just wait around for the Overton Window to move, he moved it.

Is that manufacturing consent?

Either we use politics to shape political reality or we allow the right wing to do it for us. Fascists will manufacture consent for our extermination if we let them.

It gets the causal relationship between political leaders and the masses backwards.

The Overton Window presupposes that politicians are limited by the electorate in what they can discuss and pursue; there’s a range of acceptable politics which is created by public opinion.

The reality is that public opinion is created by political leaders and politics is the tool they can use to change the range of acceptable opinion.

By getting the causal relationship backwards there is a tendency to tail the masses rather than lead them. Instead of using politics to create new political realities, politicians behave as if they are trapped within the existing political reality by politics. They seem to think politics is something that happens to you, rather than a tool you use to do things.

There’s a range of acceptable opinion, sure, but it doesn’t limit politics. Instead, politics creates the range of acceptable opinion.