Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 5w

Nah people were already missing their lives pre-Trump before the pandemic, and wanting further progress so as long as Biden or someone like that was running he would have lost Only reason Trump won in 2016 was because Hillary was the opposition

1

Anonymous OP 5w

I really don’t think Biden could’ve beaten Trump in the absence of the pandemic, I’ve said since 2020 that Biden didn’t really *win,* Trump lost, and the pandemic is what beat him. Looking at the 2020 General Election, Biden’s campaign was probably the lowest effort winning Presidential campaign of all time. We never really saw that mf out and about giving speeches daily like other candidates, he just let Trump use his daily COVID press conference rope to hang himself with.

1

Anonymous OP 5w

I don’t think Donald Trump would’ve lost to Joe Biden if he hadn’t been going on national television every day talking about bleach injections and shit. The dude beat himself in 2020 by being utterly unprepared for the moment and excising technocracy in key areas in favor of yes-men. I don’t think Joe Biden, whose mind was already slipping in the 2020 primaries, could’ve beaten Trump in the virus’s absence.

1

Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 5w

Exactly, it wasn’t bidens win but more so trumps loss. I’m suggesting that it would’ve happened without a pandemic involved, just maybe not as sensationalized or at the level that it did.

1

Anonymous OP 5w

My main point though was that people lost touch of reality during the pandemic so progress also turned messy. Or people attempted to speedrun it but without a direction so it all pushed people back into the old status quo because it’s familiar and provides an established structure

1

Anonymous OP 5w

I think in the absence of the pandemic, Joe Biden fails to beat Donald Trump if he’s still the Democratic nominee. Just like in February 2020, when they called the primary for Biden, my first reaction was “we’re so fucked, he’s gonna win again” because I think you’re right about a broad appetite for progress, but I also think you’re ignoring that the people with that appetite do not view the Old Guard Democratic Establishment as their vehicle for that progress, for good reason.

1

Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 5w

Before the pandemic, Joe Biden was the avatar of the failing Democratic strategy that’s been going on since Reagan (with that progressive interruption in 08 that happened to be their biggest victory in that period) of “appeal to the good nature of the ‘moderate republican’ because progressives will vote for us anyways” which as we’ve seen with the two non-pandemic campaigns against Trump, is a losing tactic. Because it relies on a delusional assumption.

1

Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 5w

We saw it in 2024, Kamala Harris tried SO HARD to pull in that mythical “moderate Republican” vote that she started parading around a Republican ex-Vice President to go “see? I don’t hate Republicans” but instead of wooing the moderate Republicans, all it did was make her own base go “no you should fucking hate Dick Cheney he’s responsible for unquantifiable amounts of human suffering” and depress her own turnout. Democrats have thrown so many bones to “moderates” and none to their own base.

1