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Comment by brokencode

7 days ago

I disagree with this. Jan 6th didn’t affect 99% of peoples lives directly. It was clearly bad, but few people saw impacts in their own lives.

Higher prices and a possible recession will affect every person in the country and even globally.

His MAGA base might not blame him, but that’s only like 30-40% of the electorate. The other 60-70% won’t be happy if their lives are negatively impacted.

That's the thing, there is an almost impenetrable media wall that no amount of "this is bad" news articles can get through

IMO the only thing that can get through is actual personal consequences for the voter themself

  • IMO the only thing that can get through is actual personal consequences for the voter themself

    Well, yes. And his approval rating has been steadily declining in tandem with the stock market declines he's caused. If/when prices suddenly skyrocket because of tariffs, you can bet his approval ratings will decline further.

  • That won't work. WaPo, LAT, etc. have run numerous articles where MAGA voters talk about the consequences of his actions to them or immediate family members (getting laid off, losing medical coverage, deportation, etc.) and they say it's worth the sacrifice because they just know that Trump is actually looking out for them and won't let them suffer for too long.

    • There are millions of voters who voted for Biden in 2020 and either sat out or voted for Trump in 2024.

      Not everybody is part of the cult. Many people simply thought Trump would take the economy and prices back to 2019. If he doesn’t, he’ll be punished.

  • Which will be exactly what for the standard middle class person?

    CBS published this list: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/which-products-most-affected-ta...

    What exactly on this list is a day to day item that is going to adversely affect the middle class/blue collar Trump voter enough to cause them to flip their alliance? On that list maybe clothes and shoes. But even still those are generally bought only a couple of times a year and any increase will be griped about in the moment, but come election time will be forgotten.

    There are only four things that will make a middle class voter feel pain enough to re-align their vote. Fuel/energy costs, general food costs, rent/housing costs, and job insecurity. If these tariffs do not adversely touch those areas, they will have little to no impact on switching votes. Also of note, over the last four years those items are the ones that drove Trump back into the Oval Office.

    • You may be right here. The tariffs might not directly cause enough pain for the average person to matter.

      The big unknown still is the impact on the economy and job market. His actions may reduce competitiveness of American companies globally due to retaliatory tariffs and resentment.

      If the tariffs cause a recession, people will punish him for it.

      2 replies →

    • Middle class people also have to buy new cars, maybe want to treat themselves with some foreign alcohol, they still need furniture, coffee is still one of the most traded commodities in the world and americans guzzle it down.

      2 replies →

  • They will blame left, democrats, immigrants, women and Canada for that.

    They will not blame Trump, republicans, conservatives nor anyone who work foe them.

> It was clearly bad, but few people saw impacts in their own lives.

It did though, they just didn't know how to measure it, and it wasn't felt immediately. It was like the flash of light that dazzles before the pressure wave of the nuclear bomb blasts everything (which in the analogy is this moment, now).

What happened on Jan 6, and in the leadup and response to it, was the erosion of democratic norms. Before Nov 2020 they were stronger, and after Jan 6 they were significantly weakened. Our institutions are essentially built on trust, and Trump in his campaign to overturn the 2020 election spent every waking moment for months attacking those foundations. He purposefully eroded people's trust in Democracy for no reason, because there ultimately the fraud he alleged in that election was not found.

That impacts everyone. They just don't feel it in the supermarket; they just have no "democracy meter" that they can use to gauge how healthy their representation is in government. But the reason he's able to do what he's doing now is he because he laid the foundation in 2020.

  • [flagged]

    • What in your mind should have happened differently in response to Jan 6?

      No widespread fraud was ever proven that could have swayed the election.

      Should we have pretended there were major flaws with our voting system just to help you with your feelings?

      Or maybe we should have let Trump be president again for no reason just because you were really upset about it.

      And did you ever wonder why, if Democrats were able to magically steal the election in even red states like Georgia and Arizona in 2020, they didn’t bother to try it again in 2024?

      5 replies →

Don't expect much. Modi's overnight demonetization of Rs. 1,000 bills back in 2016, caused a lot of inconvenience to almost all the Indians for 3/4 months at-least. Demonetization and flawed implementation of GST caused many small scale companies to shut doors.

With media in their pockets they can get away with anything.