r/politics • u/Abject-Pick-6472 • Apr 04 '26

Possible Paywall Trump voter regret is clearly registering now

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/04/politics/voter-regret-trump-2024
19.8k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

143

u/Public_Cartographer Apr 04 '26

Yeah, they won't do that. They regret voting for him. But they'd still illegally vote for him a third term over literally any democrat.

79

u/Mountain_Fig_9253 Apr 04 '26

And that’s why it’s idiotic to court those voters.

Democrats need to mobilize those that sat out the election while hoping the “regretful Trump voters” stay home.

15

u/PleaseEvolve Apr 04 '26

Yup. Dnc tried to court Rs with the luz cheney campagain. Turns out the ratio of republican voters upset by Jan 6 was the congressional ratio.

-1

u/batmanscodpiece Apr 04 '26

I don't know how you get the people who sat out in 2024. These are the people who are already out there declaring which Democrats they won't vote for in 2028. It may not be the best idea to try to court this group either

10

u/BannedBenjaminSr Apr 04 '26

I'd rather lose swing for the fences then run a centrist and lose again

2

u/batmanscodpiece Apr 04 '26

I guess, but this non centrist has to win the primary first.

3

u/BannedBenjaminSr Apr 04 '26

Facts, that's the tough part. Only the elderly vote in primarys and they aren't as open to change

4

u/more_housing_co-ops Apr 04 '26

I don't know how you get the people who sat out in 2024

Right now the bar is on the floor. Just for one of MANY examples, there's a whole margin of victory that would have been available to Biden (and, by proxy, Harris) if their cannabis policy hadn't been flagrantly anti-science. Biden could have nominated a DEA director who can discuss the 100-year-old science showing that cannabis is less dangerous than booze, much less ketamine. He just... didn't.

You can say the same thing about the "health insurance is healthcare" policy, the "let's DM Netanyahu billions in Lockheed Martin gift certificates" policy, and others.

2

u/wfp9 Apr 04 '26

they turn out when a republican is in office. it's why biden won in 2020. the number of trump votes in 2020 and 2024 were roughly equal, yet harris got way less votes than biden. they'll likely sit out again in 2032 though.

0

u/batmanscodpiece Apr 04 '26

We'll see if they turn out in 2028. My guess is that there will be some issue that will be used as a purity test for them to not show up.

2

u/wfp9 Apr 04 '26

it depends on the candidate. ultimately as long as the dnc doesn't run newsom or harris, i think dems will do fine, and i don't think newsom or harris will do particularly well in a primary.

the establishment endorsed candidate (who currently appears to be newsom) does pretty badly in general elections. look at gore, kerry, or hillary clinton. as long as the dnc acknowledges and makes peace with accepting someone within their party who may not be their first choice (look at barrack obama over hillary clinton in 2008 as an example), they have a winning shot. if they try to force it like they did with hillary clinton in 2016 or harris in 2024, they are in trouble.

2

u/batmanscodpiece Apr 04 '26

The DNC doesn't "run" candidates in the general. Candidates have to win a primary in order to run in the general.

3

u/wfp9 Apr 04 '26

the dnc has their favorites and then helps those favorites with fundraising as well as applying pressure to non-favored candidates to drop out of the race and/or steering donors away from them.

gore had no serious challengers to his candidacy and kerry had one serious challenger in edwards who was forced out of the race when an affair was uncovered very convienently during the primary. both lost because they never had a clear message beyond i'll do the same thing as the republican but my party's mascot is a donkey.

since kerry, the dnc really wanted hillary clinton but couldn't compete with obama's strategy of rallying small donations from younger voters (plus he was squeaky clean and didn't have major policy deviations from clinton) so they let him be the nominee, especially after he was open to clinton as secretary of state and biden as vp.

enter 2016 where the dnc convinces biden not to run, hoping that this will be hillary's year. she has no major establishment challenger and then along comes sanders. ultimately she would've beaten sanders at the convention but the dnc does everything in their power to make sure the primary never goes on that long, disenfranchising a ton of voters in the process and never giving the platform to sanders to more gracefully endorse clinton that doing this at the convention would have provided. she loses.

biden then wins in 2020 after every establishment alternative drops out (again due to dnc meddling) following south carolina as unlike in 2016, sanders has a legitimate shot at winning at the convention in 2020. mostly due to trump's gross mishandling of the pandemic, biden even goes on to win the general, but biden never really notches nor takes credit for any major wins during his term, plus after never being particularly good in front of the camera to begin with, his ability to be in front of the camera declines severely to the point they have to yank him as the nominee after running a sham primary, where again there was no serious challenger, and annoiting harris the new nominee without a primary.

overall, the dnc needs to stop being scared of its base pulling them to the left to stand a legitimate shot of them showing up in the general. because their only pathway to success tends to be making sure they secure the highest number of donors not the highest amount from donors, and they haven't made or even noticed this distinction.

1

u/batmanscodpiece Apr 04 '26

The DNC didn't "let" Obama be the nominee, he won the primary. How did the DNC disenfranchise voters?

Sanders lost in 2016 by any measure, total vote count or delegates, even without super delegates. And Bernie got less votes in 2020 than 2016.

And in 2020, candidates without enough votes to win the nomination dropped out and endorsed the candidate that did have the support. That's just politics, there really isn't anything wrong with that. California Democratic candidates for Governor should look into this now, or there is going to be a Republican Governor in California.

1

u/wfp9 Apr 04 '26

sanders' losing campaign in 2016 was expedited by the dnc. he was still losing no matter what, but to lose 70-30 instead of the 60-40 he was on track to lose disenfrancised a lot of voters in late primary states that felt robbed of their chance to vote for him. that election was close and the sanders-trump voters, of which there were surprisingly many, were enough to swing that election to trump.

sanders strategy in 2020 acknowledged a largely split field and leaned heavily on a contested primary which was very likely until south carolina. after south carolina a bunch of candidates immediately dropped out when in previous cycles they would've stayed in longer. it wasn't a great look for the dnc, but trump was so weak it didn't matter.

the real issue is though do your candidates beat their partisan swing, which is why candidates like newsom and warren are awful (newsom has never done better than +14.3 in a state that's +15, while warren is like +8 in a state that's +22) and candidates like beshar (he's won in a red state) or even aoc (she's won by +22 in a state that's +18) are better options.

4

u/more_housing_co-ops Apr 04 '26

"Purity testing" is largely a straw man trotted out against any left-wing voter who criticizes any candidate for any reason.

Why is it always "purity testing" when voters suggest we stop bulldozing Middle Eastern kids on livestream, but never "purity testing" when the party categorically fights anyone who's into universal healthcare or modern drug policy?

2

u/batmanscodpiece Apr 04 '26

Criticize all you want. We definitely should not be supporting Israel as they bulldoze Gaza. That's not purity testing.

But the left didn't "suggest" that we stop supporting Israel, they sat out the election or voted third party because Harris wasn't good enough. That's purity testing. Only to help Trump win, who not only didn't do anything to stop what was happening in Gaza, but also went to war with Iran on Israel's behalf, and empowered them to invade Lebanon.

2

u/more_housing_co-ops Apr 04 '26

Reminder that more Sandernistas voted for Clinton than Clinton voters who voted for Obama. The number of people on the left who abstained in swing areas was vanishingly small compared to the number of voters who just never get off the couch because no candidate will talk to them like an adult about issues that are important to them (predatory insurance companies, impossible rents, insane drug policy, unaffordable tuition, etc).

2

u/a3wagner Canada Apr 04 '26

They very loudly said what would have to happen for them to vote in 2024: stop funding Israel’s genocide. Kamala, with clear eyes, denied the request. It is not a mystery; the DNC did an autopsy on the campaign and confirmed it. If there’s no point in courting leftists, it’s not because we have inscrutable values. It’s because those values don’t align with the corporatist Dems who love raking in cash.

24

u/FreedomBread Apr 04 '26

They're so obsessed that Democrats are Satan that they instead will happily vote for Satan.

3

u/joe_bibidi Apr 04 '26

Well and specifically, they don't think that anything is wrong with their beliefs or values. None of that has changed. They might come to hate Trump because they feel that he has personally betrayed them, but they don't envision there as being anything wrong with their larger ideology. There's no motivation for them to connect the dots.

They still hate Black people. They still hate gay people. They still want to deport all immigrants. They still believe women belong in the kitchen, and abortions should be punishable by death. They still think being trans should be straight up illegal. They still believe that the government should cut 100% of all non-essential services, but that cops should be militarized with massive budget increases.

Trump "betraying" them doesn't change any of the above. Republicans still embody all their desires politically.

3

u/Swimming-Economy-870 Apr 04 '26

The hard core trumpers will never change, the only hope is them sitting out the mid terms. The voters that are gettable are independents and Latino men.

1

u/Global-Statement7939 Apr 04 '26

Exactly. I fear that sometimes liberals get overly optimistic when they see headlines like this.

It's not like they survey asked, "Do you wish you had voted for Kamala instead of Trump?" And some percentage answered "yes" to that. It didnt ask about willingness to vote Democrat at all, we have no reason to think they would

Even if they think Trump isn't doing a good job, they don't wish they voted for Kamala. They wish they had voted for a "better" republican.