To this very day I still can't come to grips with the fact that a convicted felon, known adulterer and rapist, blatant tax cheat, racist, got caught stealing top secret gov't docs, facing an imminent sentencing for falsifying business records and under indictment for other crimes he'd probably committed is still tied for a second chance to lead the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. Is there in existence a justifiable prime motivator that compels his supporters to elect to the highest office of the land such a blatantly lying sleazeball infantile narcissist?
Justifiable? Absolutely not. About the only accomplishment of the Trump presidency was Operation Warp Speed, and I seriously doubt he was a champion of it anyway.
But the reality is that there are a lot of low info voters out there, and I'm not referring just to straight-up "deplorables" that will vote (R) up and down ballot no matter what. So for various reasons that we've discussed going back over a year, this is still a 50/50 contest when pure
logic dictates that Trump
should be toxic to most voters.
Note that this kind of problem isn't unique to the U.S. There are strange elections everywhere, and esp. post-Covid when people have "lost faith" in government institutions. As a random example that doesn't quite fit any Western mold, the Philippines elected a
corrupt strongman; and then elected the
son of a corrupt former dictator that was thrown out of office in infamy.
Obviously there are some unique issues for us in 2024, but my overall point is there are
billions of dumb voters everywhere. We're not exceptional in that regard, even if it seems that way with MAGA.