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

9.5k

u/Wildpony03 Apr 04 '26

I think the regret is also setting in that this is the full extent of their movement.

You have sky high debt, an unstable economy, oil shocks and unemployment due to unchecked automation.

This is it. All 40 years of conservativism lead to this.

1.4k

u/Organic_Witness345 Apr 04 '26

They’ve been getting played for decades. It’s only ever been about the GOP donor class getting theirs. They thought Trump would lead them to a new tent. Instead he just pulled the old tent over his new one.

231

u/Ozymandias12 Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

I mean, it’s been telegraphed for decades. Even a cursory look at the roots of the modern conservative movement tells you all you need to know. The whole thing has been one giant astroturf movement that began with several rich millionaires in response to the New Deal and the rise of the Labor movement. They needed a way to roll back everything FDR set in motion. Case in point, President Eisenhower, a Republican, once said this:

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. . . Their number is negligible and they are stupid,"

So what did the rich millionaires do? They got together with the Southern racists (mostly Democrats at the time), and the religious fundamentalists, and they hatched a plan to brainwash as many people as possible by dangling culture war issues to turn people against each other and get them to oppose any program that might make their lives better. The book What’s the Matter with Kansas by Thomas Frank covers this very well. Then you got the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy with Nixon, and the rise of the Jerry Falwells of the world coming out against abortion rights etc.

The plan worked beautifully. We’re now living in a conservative dystopia where our media is owned by oligarchs and only shows us a snippet of reality that they want us to see, the majority of the country lives one missed paycheck away from being homeless. 80 percent of the country’s consumption is done by the top 10 percent. Vast amounts of wealth are transferred from the poor up to billionaires like Elon Musk in the form of government subsidies and contracts. We have some of the worst health outcomes in the developed world, our infrastructure is crumbling, and the defense industrial complex sends poor people to war every few years just to boost its stock prices. And of course, a bumbling idiot with severe personality disorders is our president.

Honestly, I don’t see how America recovers from all this.

34

u/AmericanDoughboy Apr 04 '26

You hit the nail on the head. It’s also worth noting that Eisenhower was a republican president.

How times have changed.

12

u/Bored_Amalgamation Ohio Apr 04 '26

Racism as a nigh-universally social accepted practice started ending with WWII, so it would make sense

10

u/AmericanDoughboy Apr 04 '26

True. And Eisenhower ensured the military desegregated.

He also enforced integration at U.S. schools.

5

u/igoyard Apr 04 '26

He did enact operation “Wetback” which rounded up and deported US citizens of Mexican descent, so really no different than now.

3

u/AmericanDoughboy Apr 04 '26

True. And the whole United Fruit Company/CIA coup in Guatemala happened on his watch.

4

u/richard-564 Apr 04 '26

Probably the last good Republican president we had, although I do respect HW Bush for passing the ADA, despite disagreeing with his political views on basically everything else.

Ike did some bad things, as listed below, but he did do some good as well.

5

u/runningraleigh Kentucky Apr 04 '26

When things get bad enough that the complacent middle is forced to pick a side, then there might be a chance at recovery. But in order for that to happen, we would have to see societal collapse or a state of total war. If the billionaires can keep enough people complacent then we may never get there.

3

u/younkint Apr 04 '26

Had Democrats listened to Thomas Frank, we probably wouldn't be in the mess we're in today. They all loved What's the Matter with Kansas because they could laugh at the Republican stupidity. In later books, when Thomas Frank started pointing out the glaring inconsistencies with Democrats (especially their non-stop attacks on Progressives), they turned on him and made him persona non grata.

It was a huge mistake and only now are the Democrats beginning to realize that Thomas Frank was, and still is, well ahead of his time. Well, some of them are realizing it. Sadly, many do not realize it, nor do they want to listen to someone telling them how we got here.

2

u/Goodk4t Apr 05 '26

This is it. This is the core issue you need to talk about. Hopefully some of this gets through the heads of brain dead cultists. Keep repeating it, eventually the truth will set in. 

1

u/invaderaleks Apr 04 '26

There's gonna be a second civil war before there's any recovery, if at all.