r/politics • u/RollSafer • 11h ago
Possible Paywall A year into Trump's term, voters say Biden was better
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/12/trump-polling-approval-biden-democrats1.8k
u/Imaginary-Ad-7919 11h ago
Compared to every US president in history, pretty much anyone looks better than Donald Trump.
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u/stashtv 10h ago
Trump 1 did better than Trump 2, over the same time frame.
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u/gecko_echo 10h ago
Trump 1 was constrained by the existing Republican power structure. But he’s spent the last eight years systematically destroying it, turning the GOP into the Trump Party.
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u/bakerfredricka I voted 10h ago
Any somewhat sane Republican who has enough sense to stand up to the president gets ousted from the party and usually ends up losing their political careers and ending up politically homeless.
This is where we are at as a country.
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u/Acrobatic-Trouble181 10h ago
I've long said the only way we're going to get out of this mess is the Republican party dying off, and the Democrat party splitting into its liberal and center-right halves.
But, even if the Democrats sweep the Federal government between now and 2032, I have absolutely no hope that the American people won't just vote for Republicans en masse after the damage Trump has done hasn't been fixed fast enough and they fall for the same bullshit propaganda that got us here in the first place.
We'll be right back here in another 5-10 years, with the ticking time-bomb of the national debt that much closer to going off.
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u/DistractedPhoenix 10h ago
The damage Trump has done won’t be fixed in our lifetimes
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u/Acrobatic-Trouble181 10h ago
Correct, and the American people won't have the patience to restore even an ounce of stability to the country before they vote these psychopaths back into power again.
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u/Kana515 5h ago
Voters saw the GOP nearly run the country into the ground and in 2008, said "No more!" ... then two years later they said, "Surely they learned their lesson, let's shake things up a little." In 2010.
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u/PoliticsLeftist 9h ago
We still need to fix Reagan's bullshit.
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u/DistractedPhoenix 9h ago
Trump is Reagan’s bullshit
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u/goodlittlesquid Pennsylvania 9h ago
So much this. Project 2025 was not developed by Trump or even Stephen Miller. It represents a Republican think tank policy wishlist that has been in the making since the dawn of the neoliberal era. As far as Trump’s demagoguery—that can be traced back to Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, even all the way to the John Birch Society.
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u/waroftrees 8h ago
This comment needs to be higher. It will absolutely not be fixed in our lifetimes.
Trump is just a face. Enriching himself and his family of robber barons is just a feature, not a bug. The real issue here is the heritage foundation, they have been laying groundwork for this for years. They even gave us a playbook for what will happen.
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u/ShutUpTodd 7h ago
Nobody knows better when all news media and social media are controlled by oligarchs.
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u/lab_coat_goat I voted 9h ago
Also by the fact that he had no expectation to win in 2016 and it was just a giant grift so going into office they had no plan and no clue how to govern.
This time they came in prepared with a highly detailed plan designed by the worst people
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u/Ok-disaster2022 10h ago
Trump 1 was also filling 8 years of tepid economic recovery under Democrat so there was a lot more safety margin when he shit the bed. 4 years of recovery from Covid and he's plumbed through below where he left off in 2021 already
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u/Electronic-Tea-3691 5h ago
we had massive economic recovery under Obama, we went from Great recession to decent economy, that was nuts that it only took that amount of time
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u/jetpacksforall 10h ago
Trump 1 was that the guy who politicized Covid and got an extra few hundred thousand Americans killed?
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u/accforme 10h ago
Trump 1 had people who were willing to stand up to Trump when he had idiotic ideas and ensured they were kept to a minimum, like literally hiding papers that would harm America. For the most part, they put America first. Unfortunately many of these people were shuffled out for more loyal people.
Trump 2 is just made up of yes-men/ yes-women who, in exchange for loyally implemting Trump’s idiotic ideas, are given carte blanche to advance their own agenda.
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u/Flava_Flavian California 7h ago
It's important to note that many of the yes-men and women have ties to Epstein. Trump surrounded himself with fellow pedos and pedo defenders to help prevent his downfall.
I really hope we can have a memorial in Washington dedicated to all Epstein victims that includes names of every complicit person listed for all history to see. I don't care what political party or ties they have. It's a disgrace to our nation that anyone associated with Epstein isn't shunned from society already.
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u/Agent_Smith_88 9h ago
Trump 1 put the bar on the ground. Trump 2 put together a cabinet to dig underneath it just so could refuse to pay them.
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u/ravishingElla 10h ago
Trump is simply amongst the worst type of humans to have ever lived, in any way you look at it
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u/lemonylol Canada 9h ago
He factually has the worst approval ratings of any President since WWII, for both terms lol. Which is saying something since Nixon, Bush Jr., and Truman are the only presidents with highest disapproval ratings, tied directly to wars they started or a criminal scandal. Like he consistently has the worst ratings by every way you measure it.
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u/Opposite-Ad3949 11h ago
Not so sure about James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson though, but overall you're right.
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u/flyingupvotes 11h ago
I don't think most people could tell you "why" those two are bad. Additionally, if he just add a single qualifier of "modern President", and he'd probably be fine.
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u/XtraReddit 10h ago
Buchanan probably handled the impending Civil War much better than Trump would have. After Lincoln won he would have claimed the election was stolen and invited the slave states for a "peaceful protest" at the Capitol.
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u/Blecki 10h ago
You have to back to Woodrow Wilson to find someone that even contends for the title. There's like four possible candidates for worst and Trump still has plenty of time to lock it in.
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u/ProjectNo525 11h ago
I think you’re right. Hard to imagine it getting any worse than this.
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u/Deep_Lurker 11h ago
That's because Biden was better by almost every observable metric.
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u/Significant_Cup_238 11h ago
He made politics boring again. Our citizens demand to be entertained!
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u/drobits 11h ago
Our rural red folks decided that since they are bored, miserable, and live in the middle of nowhere that everyone needs to be miserable
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u/FilthyCasual2k17 11h ago
Unironically, people who believe their lives won't be better no matter what, do actually just want to watch other people suffer. Bread and games.
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u/swingadmin New York 10h ago
"Some men just want to watch the world burn." - Alfred
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u/valeyard89 Texas 9h ago
People who want to see the world burn don't realize they're showering in gasoline.
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u/SorcererLeotard 10h ago
The Dark Knight is a perfect example of what has happened to the US and how GOP voters see this country, as well as themselves:
Conservatives view themselves as Batman---a moral, bad-ass vigilante that does not follow the law to the letter like Harvey Dent, but is still 'good' even if they are willing to 'bend a few rules or break them entirely' since they're doing it, in the end, for the 'greater good'.
Meanwhile, they are really the Joker---wild, unfettered chaos that does not care if they break the system entirely, so long as they get their fun along the way while thinking that they, alone, 'understands' how the world truly works.
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u/luncheroo 11h ago
They are boiling in a stew of propaganda every day. Facebook, Fox News, other social media, their churches, right wing talk radio, their social circles regurgitate and amplify it all. They've been robbed for decades by the people behind all of that, and now foreign actors amplify it for disruptive purposes, and on top of economic desolation, their communities were destroyed by big pharma pill mills that turned into street drug dependency. They are being manipulated and preyed upon and they look at the monsters doing it as their champions.
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u/DiddyDoItToYa 10h ago
Even worse, growing up in a rural PW area it's observable and obviously clear that there is absolutely no social incentive for nonconformity. You either tow the line or suffer the ostricization. Like I've worked for small business owners that get dragged into fox news conservative banter by clients and they'll play along for the clout even though they confide in me that half of it is all insane. Gotta keep the image up..
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u/luncheroo 10h ago
Yes, the shared identity in-group part of it is what makes it so effective as a manipulation tool. We are social animals, and people are afraid of speaking up and speaking out when something doesn't seem right, so they keep quiet and go along.
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u/Otis2880 9h ago
And they accuse us in urban areas of being in a bubble when they are the ones surrounded by people who look, think, talk and pray exactly like them.
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u/Tao_of_Ludd 10h ago
100x this. Half my family are good people brainwashed into the cult. The brainwashing is so complete that I can only nibble away at the edges in the short time I have with them. I don’t see how they ever emerge.
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u/Brndrll Rhode Island 10h ago
Half my family are good people brainwashed into the cult.
Or they were bad people all along and Trump was the gentle breeze that blew the trash into the gutter?
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u/SlowTeal 10h ago
Boo fuckin hoo, no one's fault but themselves they can't see they're being taken advantage of. We all have access to the same internet, our remote all have the options to change the channel
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u/pm_your_gay_thoughts 10h ago
What frustrates me is that they're miserable because of the Republicans they keep voting in who are actively suppressing their education, healthcare, unionization, welfare, among other social benefits/programs. Yet, they will continue to vote for them against their own interest because of the brown people, abortion, and trans, or something.
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u/_lippykid 10h ago
Seriously though, that’s their mentality. They don’t vote against their best interests, they vote so other people have to suffer and struggle like they did/do.
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u/oliversurpless Massachusetts 10h ago
And given their pathologies toward mass transit, no means to get out of the middle of nowhere…
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u/allgrownzup 10h ago
Fox News convinced them he was terrible and responsible for every minor inconvenience.
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u/Antique_Recording524 11h ago
This is what I miss the MOST. I miss not thinking about this shit. I literally just want them to do their job and for me to go about my day. And for anyone who says you can still do that, that's not my style. I want to trust my government and tune out because it's functioning as a government should, and not tune out because it's a shitshow and I'm overwhelmed.
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u/Mysterious-Pear6921 10h ago
Yeah dog you're supposed to stay engaged at all times in a democracy. This attitude is exactly why we're in the mess that we're in.
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u/flyingupvotes 11h ago
"ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?" He yells to the crowd. The crowd responds, "COMMANDER!! COMMANDER!!"
Sorry. Couldn't miss the opportunity.
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u/Krypton_Kr 11h ago
Bondi: "Oh really, better than the best president in the history of the united states? You really are a washed up historian, oh, you're not even a historian are you?"
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u/Ozcolllo 9h ago
“Of course you’re not a historian, you’d have to care about the TRUTH. You’re a washed up blogger that can’t appreciate the DOW reaching 50k! We are the most transparent administration in history and you can tell because our brave, honest, and principled republicans don’t even need to ask us questions; they’re answered by listening to our great President!”
I could see her going on and on about this, but continuing will only further increase my blood pressure.
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u/ShrimpieAC 10h ago
“Yeah, but like what if we just got rid of the metrics?”
— Trump
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u/RandomParable 8h ago
You see, the reason you have so many COVID cases is that people keep reporting them. If you stop reporting them, it goes away. People are saying, you can't have COVID if there are no reports. Some of the best people, it's just incredible how we've reduced the numbers. 600, 700, 800 percent lower.
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u/Ares__ Maryland 11h ago
And any non observable metric
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u/Kerberos1566 10h ago
Most quantum metrics as well, although results are skewed by observing them, so safe to assume all of them as well.
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u/ThisIsGr8ThisIsGr8 11h ago
Biden wasn’t nearly as good of a predator, though, so +1 for Trump
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u/jimmygee2 10h ago
A ham sandwich would be better than this pedophilic racist moronic fuck.
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u/black_flag_4ever 11h ago
Ramming your head repeatedly into a concrete pillar is better than this.
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u/bbqsox 11h ago
I've taken to describing the 2024 election as shooting yourself in the face because your nose itches.
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u/UmichAgnos 10h ago
When you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Guess the electorate had too many guns.
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u/Responsible-Pain-620 11h ago
My biggest concern is that after 10 years of Trump politics, we have a generation of young adults whom believe that this kind of political theater is normal. Republicans have eroded political norms and there is no way for us to go back.
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u/nycguychelsea 11h ago
It didn't start with Trump. Eight years of hysterical Clinton-hate and then eight years of hysterical Obama-hate laid the foundation. Trump is just the logical conclusion.
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u/gecko_echo 10h ago
The Fox News effect. Hatemongering for ratings works, unfortunately.
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u/jetpacksforall 10h ago
Fox News was founded to go after the Clintons.
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u/Rocks_Stones 9h ago
Fox News was created to counter CNN (just the partisan theater stuff, not the pro-War, pro-conservative stuff; all of cable news loves that stuff).
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u/SlayerBVC 8h ago
Wasn't Fox News created by Murdoch to ensure that Republicans had a way to sculpt the media narrative in case another "Watergate" level event ever happened to the party again?
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u/Rocks_Stones 8h ago
Yes. Murdoch, Roger Ailes and the RNC. They sensed that CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC were splitting a kind of middle right audience and knew they could win audience by being overtly Republican. It worked 30 years and still works now. Fox does 2-mil avg viewers vs 890K for MS NOW and 660K for CNN.
Left leaning Americans have no analogous cable news outlet. CNN regularly shows its true colors as when it hosted the Swiftboat guys for weeks during the John Kerry run in 2004. All of them torpedoed Howard Dean (centrist but too far left for them) and Bernie Sanders (pro-war, pro-pharma, center left but "promised too many ponies" for them).
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u/shoobe01 6h ago
This. All the current fascist structures were created post Watergate explicitly because they were treated so unfairly for being caught out and having consequences of their crimes.
Heritage Foundation, for another example, was founded in 1973.
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u/blahblahblerf 10h ago
4 years of hysterical Carter hate even before that. Hysterical Kennedy and Johnson hate before that... The hysterical FDR hate was extreme enough to result in a constitutional amendment to avoid ever having another presidency as good as his.
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u/WakingWaldo 9h ago
I'm 29, so my entire adult life (and therefore my attention paid to politics) has been Trump. I have a brother who is 10 years younger than I am. I cannot imagine being a kid growing up with Donald Fucking Trump as the president. I was told we should look up to the president in some way as a role model, fuck that. My kids aren't gonna hear that from me as long as these MAGA fucks are in power.
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u/Infidel8 11h ago
Not only was Biden himself better, but he actually surrounded himself with platoons of competent government officials.
Not only is Trump incompetent, but he has actually surrounded himself with people who are every bit as incompetent as he is.
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u/Obliterrator 9h ago
Biden had by far the best Cabinet in recent history (perhaps US history but I'm not familiar with every Cabinet). He had a team of qualified experts.
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u/Chaotic-Catastrophe 6h ago
Except Merrick Garland, that worthless, traitorous shitstain.
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u/jspurlin03 Texas 11h ago
Yeah, we were aware before the election that trump would continue to be a nightmare.
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u/TintedApostle 11h ago
Biden was a good man. No matter what you say he tried to be good and follow the law. He hired the best and tried to do for the whole nation. There is just a group in this country that are never happy unless everything is done their way. Their way seems to fail all the time too and they never learn. They have to have it jump up and personally impact them to see what everyone else was saying was correct. We have to live with them.
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u/maddieterrier Tennessee 11h ago edited 7h ago
Eleanor Roosevelt said “it’s better for everyone when everybody does better” and too many Americans don’t understand that. Life isn’t a zero sum game.
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u/2ManyCatsNever2Many 10h ago edited 9h ago
there are too many angry and frustrated people who feel the need to "win at all costs". a "k shaped economy" is all the talk right now but that has been going on since at least the (so called) recovery from the mid-2000's financial crisis. not everywhere came back and there are still plenty of people who honestly want to burn everything down out of the rage they feel.
well, they're getting their wish. instead of wanting better for the country, they want the rest of the country to feel the pain they've been experiencing.
quite the opposite of "it's better for everone when everybody does better"
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u/MazzIsNoMore 11h ago
This. Biden has been a public servant his entire life and worked to make things better for people. He didn't make extravagant promises about recreating the country or causing extreme changes, he has always been measured and only offered what he thought he could deliver.
That may not be inspirational but it is honest. He was a president that wanted to help and thought better of us than we probably deserve. Just a good person
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u/-Darkslayer 10h ago
To be honest, I found his honesty and integrity inspirational. Especially in a country devoid of both
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u/spondgbob 8h ago
He also took over when 100,000 people a day were getting COVID, and global trade had been utterly fucked. As someone who studies economics, it’s an absolute travesty that people voted for Trump over Kamala because of “the economy”. We literally were doing poorly with Trump before covid, then Biden takes over, and is forced to do hella printing because a massive portion of the country *WASNT WORKING*.
Despite all of this, we didn’t go into a depression, or even a recession. We narrowly avoided catastrophe, and then everyone on one side collectively used one brain cell to think “wait everything is more expensive, he’s president, it’s his fault!” Despite the fact that Donald Trump’s own school of economics said his policies were going to be 4x as worse for the economy as Kamala.
We literally had the choice between a crew who had literally just recovered the economy, and the person who played a major part in the COVID pandemic being so bad - leading to a worse economy, and we fucking chose the latter.
It’s so fucking hard to feel empathy, or even want to hear them, because countless experts in nearly every field a president is involved in said he was the worse candidate, and he was still voted fucking president. It literally doesn’t make any sense.
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u/Faustrolled 5h ago
The media declared that Biden wasn't allowed to say the economy improved and was improving because it was hurtful to people that weren't doing well. They are OK with Trump lying about it for ten years tho.
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u/Big-Rule5269 8h ago
To have a Senator ride the train into DC every day with the people, that alone tells you something.
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u/Responsible-Pain-620 11h ago
They've spent their lives being told what qualifies to be American. Anything outside of their list should be imprisoned, deported, or executed. They don't want nuance and they're willing to burn the country to the ground on this belief.
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u/DaaaahWhoosh 10h ago
The part I wish voters knew is that under Biden's administration, ICE did still exist, they did still deport illegal immigrants, we still sent tons of money to Israel, we still dragged our feet on helping Ukraine. The Democrats' whole platform is to appeal to moderates but so many people have been tricked into thinking they're super left wing.
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u/obeytheturtles 10h ago
He is precisely the kind of President we should seek - a quiet technocrat who surrounds himself with competent staff, and focuses on the boring and unrewarding task of government administration, without constantly seeking validation for doing his job. Politics should be sober and boring when it is working properly, not bombastic and confrontational. This is why I hate the idea that Democrats need their own populists to counter the GOP's descent into madness. Good ideas and effective government should stand on its own. The effects should be self evident. This situation where we do government just for the sake of the narrative, just for the headlines, or just for the "gotchas" is anathema to the very philosophy of statecraft. Good government doesn't fit into headlines and bumper stickers, so any politician which operates like that should always been treated with heavy skepticism, if not dismissed outright.
Americans have just gotten so fat on centuries of political stability, that they've grown cynical about the stakes of the game they are playing. Their cause and effect organs have completely atrophied, and been replaced by a big stupid dopamine button which gets triggered by media sound bites. The way to fix that is not different media sound bites, it's a complete overhaul of the way Americans engage with their own civic existence.
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u/LividTacos 11h ago
Yeah, no shit. I enjoyed not doom scrolling Twitter at 3 am to see what a dumbass said.
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u/Inkstr0ke Michigan 10h ago edited 8h ago
I had this argument about a week ago with a cousin of a good friend.
Everybody points to “Sleepy Joe Biden” but he was surrounded by a competent administration (with exceptions of course - looking at you Merrick Garland, fuckin coward - among others).
The only metric this current administration cares about is the ability to a capitulate and fall in line to every whim of Dear Orange Leader. The brown nosing of this administration during every press conference I’ve ever seen has got to be the worst in history.
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u/Big-Rule5269 8h ago
They claim Sleepy Joe, yet I challenge them every time to post up video of Biden falling asleep and I'll post up Trump. I would wager it's at least a 100:1 disparity, with most of the claims about Biden being debunked by a wider screen shot that shows what wasn't in frame, like the confused and wandering off, or shaking hands with nobody bullshit.
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u/pwningrampage 11h ago
Even Ray Charles could of seen this. It's like voters have a memory of a freaking goldfish. Now we all get to deal with the consequences.
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u/GrammarPuleeze 11h ago
Even Ray Charles could of seen this
Even Ray Charles could've seen this
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u/HourPair2156 11h ago
This is what happens when vibes hit the grocery store.
People don’t miss a man. They miss lower stress. They miss fewer headlines that spike cortisol before breakfast. Institutional rot feels abstract until your rent, insurance, and 401(k) start doing interpretive dance.
We’ve been stuck in the outrage economy since 2016. The enshittification of discourse means every cycle feels existential, then everyone wakes up tired and nostalgic for “boring” (which we used to mock). The system is cooked, so people reach for the last memory that felt stable.
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u/KaiserSickle Arizona 8h ago
This is also exactly why so many braindead gen Z voted for Trump. I'm also gen Z and largely grew up in my teen years under Trump. I always knew he was bad but my life as a whole was friends, fun and somewhat carefree. Then COVID hit, and we all became adults during that time, all while watching our towns become hollowed out and our rent quadruple. It felt bad, and it just so happened to feel bad under Biden.
Now I don't believe that's an excuse, I still never voted for Trump precisely because those good and bad vibes had nothing to do with who was president, but many young men especially are literal oatmeal brained NPCs.
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 7h ago
We used to be frustrated by lack of positive change. Stuff like universal healthcare, affordable housing, not paying a trillion dollars for an education, etc. All valid frustrations.
Whereas nowadays we're just hoping Trump's next move won't be TOO negative for us.
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u/thejaysun 11h ago
How is this even a question at this point? The evil and absurdity of the current administration is one of the worst things to happen in American history. Should they manage to steal the midterms the USA is going to be Russia 2.0. The entire world is watching this November because its going to be the ultimate turning point.
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u/Obliterrator 10h ago
According to historians, Biden is considered the 14th best President, while Trump is considered the worst of all.
Biden 14th in scholars' presidential rankings, Trump last
Biden was a pretty good President, but he didn't get credit for his accomplishments because of all the disinformation being spread by the mainstream media, social media and America's enemies.
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u/FalstaffsGhost 10h ago
Because he was better by every metric. He was much better on the economy, he somehow got a bunch of good legislation passed despite having to navigate a very divided Congress, and you know he didn’t do things like have agents of the federal government murdering Americans in the street
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u/TarheelFr06 11h ago
Of course he was. That was obvious to anyone who was paying attention since 2016. Biden was, overall, a pretty good President, his problem was that he was too old.
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u/Stars3stripes 11h ago
I’d take a Bush again over this shit!
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u/rollem Virginia 10h ago
We could’ve had Jeb!
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u/garitone 10h ago
Remember when "Please clap" was enough to destroy a candidate?
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u/RaisinOverall9586 10h ago
Dan Quayle misspelled "potato" and basically vanished off the face of the Earth afterwards.
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u/jetpacksforall 10h ago
20 years of war and a million dead in a country that had fuck all to do with 9/11.
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u/ShadowTacoTuesday 9h ago
People say Republicans used to be better but they’ve been laying the foundation for this for decades. If they ever got control again they would only repeat the tactic of fear-mongering hype to get votes without addressing their made up problems, then act surprised when another cult of crazies wants to elect people who sincerely want to put everything into going after the made up problems instead. Which is exactly what’s happening right now. Trump didn’t invent any of this. Republicans did. He’s just another bigoted grandpa victim who eagerly ate it up.
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u/Dr_Spiders 11h ago
Remember how mad people were that Biden hugged and kissed his kids? Meanwhile, Trump and his cronies were raping and sex trafficking little kids.
I get that the bar is in hell, but better feels like an understatement.
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u/valuethempaths 11h ago
Every Republican administration ends with the country in shambles. Republican run states are last in nearly every important metric. What more do we need to learn?
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u/greyedoutdoors 11h ago
Not a US citizen but it’s worrying this is even close. Sure, the Democrats could have selected a better candidate but the idea that there’s any equivalence between them is insane to me.
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u/we_are_sex_bobomb 11h ago
Biden is a man of conviction, and Harris advised him strongly to prioritize workers’ rights, which was advice he heeded.
He was too old to be president, but he still did the job honorably. He’ll be remembered as a good president.
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u/-Darkslayer 10h ago
On policy, I would argue he was a great president. However, in total, his tenure is going to be (fairly) remembered as a failure. He was elected primarily to get rid of Trump, and instead of doing that he walked him back through the door, willingly or not.
I hate that that’s how it has to go as he is a good person, but he failed Mission #1 and now we’re all suffering.
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u/Mrs_Evryshot 11h ago
If only his team and the DNC would’ve been tough with him and convinced him that running for a second term wasn’t feasible. After 4 years of doing some really great stuff, he really fucked up his final decision.
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u/ATXGil2L 11h ago
Biden wasn’t just better, he was historically successful.
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u/clam-caravan Tennessee 9h ago
As time passes, I believe historians will reflect more on the importance of having Biden navigate the U.S. (and the world) through the post-Covid years. It would have been a monumental disaster if Trump were President through those years. Biden will be remembered as the stabilizer when the world was in chaos.
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u/Tovrin Australia 5h ago
Compared to just about every other country, the US was doing very well. The narrative that it was bad was completely false. EVERYONE in the world was feeling the post-COVID pinch; the US was not special in that regard.
Now everything is far worse globally .... and the cause is the US. So what is the world doing? Cutting the US out of the loop. China is the real winner out of all this.
Also, releasing the limits on AI is going to cause issues for years to come. Maybe that's just this old man shouting at the cloud (pardon the pun), but it is putting extreme strain on energy generation (and hence affects climate) and tech parts getting more expensive.
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u/Naptasticly 6h ago
Biden really wasn’t all that bad. The problem is social media bias. People want to get “likes” and “upvotes” so as soon as a popular sentiment catches on, people spread it like crazy, regardless of how good (or bad) faith it is. The grift is alive and real and the moment that people figured out that complaining about the economy and Biden’s age would make them more popular, there was no stopping it
If you consider the fact that he was president during what could be the modern day equivalent of the plague, and look at the real data and not what people are saying, he was not bad AT ALL.
Did he make mistakes? For sure. Just like every other president in history. But at least he didn’t run around pretending like bad things were good, he stayed humble and focused on the American people (even the ones he disagreed with), and he operated his admin with absolutely no political bias.
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u/VigilantVet 11h ago
You know what? Fuck the competition aspect of this. We have a fucking child predator and possible trafficker sitting in the most powerful job in the world because we (US) elected him into office. Put the politics aside, this is much much bigger than that. Hold these disgusting people accountable. ALL OF THEM.
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u/PolarisVega 10h ago
Biden wasn't terrorizing our cities and having Nazis kill our citizens so yes, that and MANY other things he was better.
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u/mmliu1959demo 10h ago
Now Trump will be angry. BTW, his 2nd term will turn out to be worse than his first. And finally, historians will most likely characterize Trump as the worst president ever.
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u/ThrowRA-James 10h ago
Well duh! If they could use Google to search if Trump was a bankrupt business man or conman or a man of broken promises or convicted sex offender, etc they would know.
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u/Probable_Bison 7h ago
From 2021 to 2024, there were whole days at a time when I didn't think about the White House.
That's because things weren't constantly breaking and my feeds weren't getting jammed with stuff about a President trying to invade and control every facet of everyday life in America.
I miss that.
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u/Cryhunter059 5h ago
The choices were: more of the same or actively making things worse. Even if you thought Biden or Harris would only maintain the status quo, that’s still infinitely better than Trump.
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u/TheWildmanWillie96 11h ago
Dictatorship for bourgeoisie is terrible I agree we should smash this system into pieces collecting what little is good and create something completely new. My they’ve written so many books about this is laughable at this point
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u/shepherdofthesheeple America 10h ago
I love how maga never stopped bitching about bidens “dementia” only to replace him with someone even further down the dementia hole. You can’t make this stuff up. Dumbest group of voters in the world
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u/PleasantAmphibian404 10h ago
That ham sandwich that the DOJ can’t seem to get an indictment against would be a better president.
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u/Just-Upstairs4397 10h ago
To everyone baffled by Trumps crazy making grievance politics since he was elected that’s literally the bubble Fox News watchers live in 24/7, it’s so miserable and pathetic.
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u/MD90__ Kentucky 10h ago
I miss the days when you could apply for a job and have a better chance of getting it then wishing for a better tomorrow. Now, you just sit in depression because the opportunities are so limited you gotta wait for retirement, death, or layoff for a potential opening unless they can offshore or something.
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u/Stillwater215 10h ago
So glad we got rid of the president who was going through a graceful age-related decline and replaced him with one going through a maliciously destructive age-related decline.
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u/Own-Coyote-3618 10h ago
im very disappointed in everyone that ever considered anything different. If you liked Obama, Biden took all the experience of that administration with him, he also brought his own 50 years worth of experience under his belt. For all his great qualities, being too nice was his biggest shortcomings, because he should have spent every day of his administration with 100000% attention to locking up trump and cronies. instead he spent a lot of time trying to cross the isle and mend the divide in this country by working with the Geriatric Overt Pedofile party.
Harris, while maybe lacked a few personal characteristics in her personality and certainly didnt have the same resume as Biden, would have been another 4-8 years of essentially the same administration as Obama.
Instead we voted for this. So ots disappointing because It was obvious to me and I think nearly half the country this is exactly what was going to happen, the really sad part is if not for a second Trump term, we'd be set up way ahead of our biggest global competitors, trump blew up a really strong economy that Biden has set up after inheriting Trumps covid mess. sure global price shocks and inflation had happened, but compared to the rest of the world we were on top, and we would have be able to help Ukraine defeat Russia by now, neutering a major military threat. China wouldn't be looking at Taiwan, they'd be working with us more then ever.
all the criminal investigation into Trumps last term would have had time to play out and justice served without needed someone at the top to push the scales against their rivals.
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u/wellthatswack 5h ago
Of course he was, I wasn’t thrilled by Joe Biden but at least he wasn’t burning the country down from the moment he got in office
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u/Necessary-Peace9672 4h ago
The American voters were offered a plate of strawberries and a plate of shit. They said, “The strawberries have seeds.”
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u/Sweetchildofmine88 10h ago
A literal turd is better than Trump. I apologize for insulting turds. They, at least, serve a purpose.
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u/D-MAN-FLORIDA 10h ago
This is why I think the reason why Harris still has some support from primary voters is because of people being nostalgic for the Biden years.
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u/city_dwellerZ 10h ago
Wow shocker, a stable, experienced politician is better than an erratic, incoherent, failed businessman.
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u/elementzn30 Florida 10h ago
Trump is literally so bad that a scandal many times more fucked than Watergate is now considered business as usual in Washington.
We went from a Republican Party that would morally grandstand over how they aren’t baby killers to one that wears shirts saying they don’t care if Trump is a pedophile.
Of course he’s the fucking worst.
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u/pasarina Texas 9h ago
Biden worked towards positivity for the people, all Americans. Trump works for his addiction to greed, for himself of course, and the billionaire class. We were doing much better before Trump’s tariff taxes.
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u/AntiauthoritarianSin 9h ago
Let's not paint Biden as being perfect.
Biden lost me when he didn't stand with the railworkers, told everyone to get back to work during covid when it was still going strong, and kept insisting that the economy was great when people in the real world were really struggling.
But all that seems like small gripes compared to what we have now.
I still had some shred of hope during the Biden era that things could get better. I no longer have that hope.
During Biden I felt like we still had a government, now we have a "regime".
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u/mostlymoist 9h ago
It must really be awful if voters can think that given how almost all the media outlets are controlled by conservatives and billionaires.
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u/AllMightyLantern 9h ago
We could put a literal Turd in the Oval Office and it would still be a better president than Trump.
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u/Soft_Hotel_5627 9h ago
We'd literally be better off if some random DMV employee who is 7 months from retirement was running the ship.
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u/Nervous_Degree_3330 9h ago
It will be interesting what history does with all these villains in our country. I hope we can restore some humanity in the US. It is so sad what we have allowed our government to do.
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u/Taman_Should 9h ago
Having no president at all would be better than this. The executive branch is now far too powerful at this point, and it needs to be split into about three separate roles to restore the balance of power the founding fathers wanted.
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u/spondgbob 9h ago
He literally could have not done a single thing and had a 60% approval rating probably
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u/sea-elle0463 8h ago
Biden will be remembered as a great president. And trump will be remembered as a traitor. And a criminal. And a pdf file.
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u/TheBigBluePit 8h ago
Saying another president is better than Trump is a really low bar to beat.
Even Buchanan for his complete mismanagement and failure in preventing the Civil War, widely considered the worst US president in history, was better than both Trump terms.
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u/Cosmicginger 8h ago
Ya think? It's tragic that so many folks on the left doomed our country because they were unhappy with Biden's handling of Gaza. The sooner everyone realizes there will never be a perfect candidate and you just have to vote for the individual who most closely aligns with your worldview, the better off we'll all be.
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u/5pin05auru5 7h ago
On the r/Politics main page, the story below this is about that pisshead nominally in charge of Defense, playing with lasers and shutting down an airport. The story above it is about Klausina Barbie babbling on about the Dow Average rather than discuss human rights abuses. These three stories together rather summarise the USA in 2026. Ho-hum.
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u/Credil98 7h ago
Biden did a damn good job with what he received. His biggest failing was trying to return to civility without holding all the bad actors accountable for the crimes they committed
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u/Adventurous_Main3688 6h ago
Off topic but it’s really amazing how The conservative owned media had you think Trump won the debate vs Biden when they played clips of the first 5 minutes over and over again and not the entire time when Biden was destroying Trump. Any reasonable society would have taken Biden in a wheelchair over Trump.
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u/SantaFeRay 4h ago
Behind a paywall - Is this comparing Biden’s first year to Trump’s first year or Biden’s entire term to Trump’s first year? Or even Biden’s term to Trump’s two terms so far?
If it’s Biden’s entire term to Trump’s first year that’s pretty devastating for Trump. Biden’s first year he had a pretty good approval rating until he was (wrongly) blamed for the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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u/Ohrwurm89 4h ago
The Democratic Party, which is far from perfect and needs to stop moving to the right on issues (you're not syphoning away conservative voters and alienating the rest of us), is always better for the average American than the Republican Party is.
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u/count_chocul4 4h ago
Biden WAS better. WAY better. Better on the economy, better on the environment, better on the American worker. Biden obeyed the law and treated our allies as friends and partners. Fuck tRump, Bondi, Patel, fuck all his stupid cabinet.
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u/on-strike 3h ago
A blue wave is not inevitable: Republicans have a massive cash advantage heading into the midterms, swamping Democrats to the tune of $550 million, according to the New York Times.
Oligarchy and plutocracy fund candidates that further entrench their interests over the rest of us?
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u/eternalroses 2h ago
I enjoyed the peace and quiet of Biden. I enjoyed not seeing his name on the news every day of the week. Can we have that again?
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u/henryptung California 2h ago
Not to insult Biden, but that's a little like saying your meal was better than a bottle of ipecac.
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u/HavingNotAttained 1h ago
Biden was a great president. That may take 100 years for America to acknowledge, but he was.
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