[user32489318]

Not American here. Reading your guys replies it almost feels like you are rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance. Doesn’t this enforce their argument and created this situation in th first place?

[bonsai_spool]

> rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance

I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations.

I am unsurprised about the 2024 election and it's exactly what you'd imagine from a purely economic perspective.

The 2016 election, however, has been studied extensively, and it's clear that several aberrations (large contingent of Republican candidates, the first black president, Facebook, Comey) tipped things in a way that you wouldn't expect if voters are acting rationally.

So as someone who genuinely wishes to understand how people think about things, I don't know what's going on here. I can't tell what new lie will be pushed next week to distract us from the recently-disproven lie of last week. Were I outside all of this, I would have very little hope.

(edit: re sibling poster, Trump is not a representative of the median voter but instead a representative of the median electoral college elector. We can't have it both ways, rejecting the popular vote and then failing to acknowledge that our politics represent the electors and not the man on the street)

[mlrtime]

>you wouldn't expect if voters are acting rationally

Here we go again. The "You aren't rational" or "You should vote for my cause if you know what is good for you"

This does not work, it never will. I don't get why people think this is a good way to get people to see your viewpoint.

[bonsai_spool]

I’m not trying to convince anyone. I am happy to engage in a discussion if you are interested in anything beyond platitudes about what will and will not “work”.

[mlrtime]

I'm rejecting your claim that voters didn't act rationally relative to any other human.

No human is 100% rational, doesn't matter if you are Progressive or Conservative, you don't get to claim to be rational and others not (relatively speaking).

[bonsai_spool]

> I'm rejecting your claim that voters didn't act rationally relative to any other human.

Okay

> you don't get to claim to be rational and others not (relatively speaking).

Agreed. However, if someone presents a rubric to explain her actions, any person can assess that rubric and the actions for congruence. This is what I am doing.

[NamlchakKhandro]

> I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations.

same can be said about people on the opposite side.

[bonsai_spool]

> same can be said about people on the opposite side.

This is not true - the things that traditional Democrats supported in 1992 are largely the same things supported now.

The point is not the echo chamber. The point is that the echo chamber has changed the party orthodoxy.

[nailer]

> the things that traditional Democrats supported in 1992 are largely the same things supported now.

No. See Bernie Sanders in 2015 talking about how America needs strong borders and illegal immigrants are used by big business to rip American workers off. See Obama’s speech on the same. See positions on trans identifying males in women’s sports. See open support for hiring based on sex and race. Many democrat positions from 20 years ago are now considered right wing.

[bonsai_spool]

Please find perspectives on each of those from 1992 (the OP mentions a handful of culture wars issues that I won’t reproduce).

You misinterpret my statement when you select hot-button issues of today that were not in the public discourse at that time- and almost none of the things you mention were in ANY public platform at that time.

My point is that the core political planks from then (healthcare for example, jobs for coal workers) are maintained in one political tradition and not another.

[nailer]

I don’t think the 1992 perspectives would have been different from the 2015 perspectives. Do you?

I live in a different western country but was old enough to watch the US news (Tom Brokaw) then. People did actually discuss these things. The consensus was: the border should exist. Tomboys were tomboys. Effeminate boys were effeminate boys. You can’t just have a policy of hiring someone based on their race because that’s silly and illegal.

[1shooner]

> invalidating their stance

This is perhaps true to an extent. But what is also true to an unprecedented extent for Americans is that this 'stance' is almost pure demagoguery. For many, there is no 'stance', their 'stance' is Trump, whether he hews close to a principle or completely contradicts it.

[AndrewKemendo]

Correct.

Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter. Progressive anericans refuse to accept that.

Why they won’t accept that is anyone’s guess.

[pianopatrick]

"median American voter" implies a distribution of views like a normal distribution, with a lot of people in the middle and a few people on extremes. If that is the distribution, then the median is representative of most people. I am not sure that is really a great way of thinking about American voters these days. It seems to me that American's views on many issues are tending to cluster around extremes, with fewer people in the middle. So I am not sure the median is as meaningful.

[AndrewKemendo]

Median does not assume anything about the distribution which is precisely why I use it. Median allows for us to count max total of one category because the variances are so small. Hence why medians can actually demonstrate the underlying distribution instead of commingling amplitude like the mean.

In this case it’s “American Voter” as the category. This is what messes most people up, because they read “American Citizen” but I’m describing only the subset of citizens who successfully vote.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...

Using that number you’ll see what the demographics demonstrate: there are not as many progressive voters as there are “conservative” voters and only 2/3 of eligible voters even cared to vote.

If you zoom out even further and you evaluate which candidates run, then it really does not matter who is voting or not because ultimately who is on the ballot is dictated by a small group of party leaders, who in turn are dictated by whomever has the most money for ad spending.

[yongjik]

The median American voter voted for Obama, and then Trump, and then Biden, and then Trump. They are angry about inflation, hate billionaires, don't want to start a war, and don't know who pays tariffs.

Basically, the median American voter does not have a coherent position. It's futile trying to build a narrative around them.

[bonsai_spool]

That’s not true - the first time in over 30 years that republicans won the popular vote was 2024.

In each of those other elections, most Americans (by millions) voted for democrats.

[AndrewKemendo]

I mean I think that’s exactly my point this concept that there’s some kind of like ideal or coherent version of the American voting public it just doesn’t exist

Donald Trump is an irrational randomly reactive, incoherent person who doesn’t know what he wants other than to just be in charge and to do whatever he wants all the time

If that doesn’t describe the median American voter I don’t know what does

[PlanksVariable]

Were Biden and Obama accurate representations of the median American when they won? Isn’t that a contradiction?

[AndrewKemendo]

No, but they they were somewhat accurate representations of the median American voter (note here VOTER is the key) - less so than Trump, given what he’s been able to get away with.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter

On foreign policy? Probably not.

Like, Biden wasn’t an accurate representation of the median American voter on e.g. transgender kids in school sports. That wasn’t just right-wing delusion.

[AndrewKemendo]

My point is that Trump is actually probably more representative of the median voter than Biden or any other previous president has been.

[JumpCrisscross]

> My point is that Trump is actually probably more representative of the median voter than Biden or any other previous president has been

Why? You haven’t actually argued that point.

[AndrewKemendo]

Because he’s telling Americans exactly how he’s going to oppress and punish them, doing it publicly with no remorse and a patina of lying, and people still supporting