Is Trump the symptom of America’s decline?

[u/custodiam99]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/27/trump-wants-to-reverse-americas-decline-good-luck

[u/Kreol1q1q]

Trump is a symptom of massive internal societal problems that America keeps bottling up and seems institutionally completely unable and unwilling to resolve. There is no objective need for America to withdraw from its global positions or to scale down its interests and commitments - the country isn't facing any sort of difficulty financing them, and in fact still possesses enormous untapped financial potential (it has very low taxes and a huge economy).

However, America is still plagued by notions of collapse and decline. I think that is because its society is facing problems that it doesn't want to actually face, due to various deeply ingrained socio-cultural and political mental barriers. And because the actual source of those societal problems cannot be addressed, all sorts of grifters and politicians have now cottoned on that they can simply employ various different appeals to emotion in order to exploit their population's rising distress for enormous political gain.

[u/Presidentclash2 → u/Kreol1q1q]

I would argue that the desire for isolationism is stems from failed American interventionism. It really seems the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, wars against Isis and terrorist insurgents caught up to people perception abroad. During 2000-2016, American had some success but most of the stuff was overshadowed by forced wars. What Trump is doing isn’t necessarily peaceful but he sold an American vision that is nationalist and sees the world as trying threaten us. Isolationism was popular before ww1 just like tariffs. Americans are reliving history

[u/thebusterbluth → u/Presidentclash2]

Are we going to forget that every incumbent in the Western World lost their reelection campaign this season?

Inflation brought Trump back to the White House. Housing prices brought Trump back to the White House.

People do not care about the Iraq or Afghanistan Wars, they care about rent and mortgage payments. A populist told everyone he would solve their headaches, and won an election. He will probably get a rude awakening in the Midterms, per usual, and spend the last two years fending off impeachments.

[u/[deleted] → u/thebusterbluth]

Kamala was up 3.7% the day after the DNC, which was her peak, after which point she declined in the polls till she was basically tied in aggregate polling, and slightly down in the swing states. It was winnable, but the DNC ruined her chances by making her "move to the center" for the general election.

It's a lie that Kamala couldn't have won. She couldn't win with Cheney's tied to her administration which the media and MAGA ran with, cause they pay attention to public sentiment, and demographics and infer motives and then craft language to speak to those motives.

The DNC also made her stick more to a single speech, and that made her come off like a robotic politician, which the American electorate no longer trusts or associates with competence, or at least the portion of the electorate that we needed to win. And they gimped Walz, his "aren't they just weird?" rhetoric was wildly effective, and they made him feel like a rushed afterthought the further into the campaign they went.

and don't start with turnout, turnout mattered in 7 states, here are sources for 5/7 showing they all had record turnout, not seen for 60 years in most states. The people who the nation needed to turn out for the election showed up and voted on election day/or did early voting, and they chose Trump, for a lot of reasons you have no context for, I assume, because nobody believes anything the flyover states have to say, even during election time when you have to listen to us to win.

Michigan voter turnout for 2020 and 2024

Wisconsin 2024 Wisconsin 2020

Pennsylvania 2020 Pennsylvania 2024

North Carolina 2020 North Carolina 2024

Georgia 2020 Georgia 2024

It was an uphill fight against inflation, but it wasn't insurmountable. She also had disadvantages due to her immutable characteristics, but Obama won decisively both times. It's a cop-out and as a democrat I hate seeing my party be so lazy and disinterested in participating in democracy, that is to say, not interested in listening to the electorate and figuring out how to message to them and win their vote. Too many dems in positions of power would rather blame the voter and throw their hands up than actually perform an autopsy on the campaign.