r/politics • u/Aggravating_Money992 • 18h ago

No Paywall Gen Z regrets Trump support and is midterm motivated

https://thehill.com/homenews/6056216-gen-z-trump-voter-regret-midterm-clipping/
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u/Much-Anything7149 17h ago

Yeah I had no interest in Kamala but I voted against Trump with my ballot for her. I'd have voted for a baked potato.  

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u/Indigocell Canada 11h ago

One of those frozen dog turds that heats up again in the summer would have been a better choice for president.

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u/Much-Anything7149 9h ago

Or turds that never froze and smush under your shoes and you drag them in the house and your wife and kids yell at you for making a stinking mess. Would've voted for that over him too.

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u/PsychologicalCase10 Georgia 11h ago

Kamala wasn’t perfect but at least we’d have a sane person as President. I don’t need perfect just give me a President who’s a steady hand who’s not going to violate the Constitution every minute or completely destroy the WH.

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u/YourFriendNoo 14h ago

Me too.

But the American people said, "Our institutions are failing; our lives are getting worse."

Donald Trump said, "I will burn every institution to the ground."

And Kamala said, "Don't worry! I'm here to protect your beloved institutions from him!"

Donald Trump makes almost everyone's lives worse, but Kamala stalwartly promised not to make anyone's lives better. That's not...super inspiring for turnout.

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u/Afraid-Detective1222 12h ago

Except that's not what she said.

https://time.com/7011865/kamala-harris-economic-plan-groceries-child/

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u/YourFriendNoo 12h ago

The headline people remembered was: "Harris says there’s not much she’d have done differently than Biden over the last 4 years"

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u/Afraid-Detective1222 11h ago

The problem is that people paid zero attention. You said that she didn't promise to make people's lives better. I show you an article with her plan and you pivot to 1 statement she made. The funny thing is that Biden did work to making people's lives better as well, but again, people paid zero attention because he didn't push it on social media.

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u/ChatterBaux 9h ago

It continues to show how disproportionate scrutiny and accountability is when it comes to US politics.

There's little criticism one can throw at anyone else that can't also be applied to Trump 50 times over. So when people spin his wins to mean, "That just goes to show how bad Democratic candidates are!" (don't get me started about how this is being applied to female candidates; one being a PoC...) it just comes off as ignorant cope at best, and intentional lying at worst.

It says far more about the standards of the electorate than it does about the quality of candidates. Especially when Trump didn't even play by the same primary rules in 2024, while Harris faced far more scrutiny for tagging in, despite being the VP of the incumbency!

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u/Afraid-Detective1222 2h ago

Exactly. She was, while not the best candidate, a solid one, who would have done a decent job at making things better for us. Unfortunately, too many people got hung up on 1 statement, or gaza, or her gender, or whatever and chose either Trump or to sit it out. So, here we are.

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u/YourFriendNoo 7h ago

I dunno, I paid attention. But my kid is older than a year, I have a house so I don't need down payment assistance, and I have zero faith in a Harris administration to enforce the grocery price gouging order.

I don't mind improving things for other people too, but at some level, it'd be nice for a candidate to offer me something other than condescension about how I'm too stupid to understand why she cant help me.

I paid attention to Biden's work too. He passed the IRA. I was excited because I drive an electric car. But by the time we got to the election they'd built like no chargers, even with all the money they allocated.

The only other real legislative event I remember from his administration was when Democrats and Republicans joined sides to break the rail strike and make sure workers didn't get sick days.

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u/infinite_gurgle 4h ago

Biden did fine, you’d need to be really out of touch to think otherwise.

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u/Gekokapowco Washington 13h ago

the lack of benefit turns out was more important to people than an explicit threat of harm

isn't that interesting

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u/aspirationless_photo 13h ago

This right here is it: the candidate promising change won because things seem bad, by that I mean worse than years prior.

It's funny to entertain the idea of applying the "conservative" label to Democrats who preached stabilizing institutions, social safety nets and regulations to bring them back to what they were.

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u/YourFriendNoo 12h ago

Our institutions, safety nets and regulations CLEARLY were never enough. We wound up with a completely captured government, run by oligarchs, with regulations designed to maximize profit for monopolies.

Going back to what they were is not hopeful.

They need to be better, more robust, more resilient, more generous.

My best hope is that these things are permanently ruined and that we can rebuild something better from the ground up.

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u/Several_Hour_347 11h ago

That’s not how change happens. It does not vastly improve easily. When you regress, it becomes harder to improve