re: #154 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

I have written off 30% of the electorate.

The winning strategy in 2016 was to make sure that their people got out in droves while generating enouth apathy and indifference among the remaining voters to keep them at home.

The big change in 2020 was the disastrous way that the President handled Covid, which got Democratic voters out in record numbers.

In 2022 it was Dobbs and in 2024 it will likely be his multiple indictments/convictions and his thinly veiled threats of instituting fascism.

COVID was the tipping point for way too many white suburbanites for Trump to win back in 2020. Before COVID, they sat in a warm little cocoon of obliviousness, the kind of people who would respond to discussions about the latest Trump scandal or total fuck-up with “Oh, I don’t follow politics” or excuse his actions with “Oh, I’m sure he had a reason.” The ones who are in such denial about reality that they will agree readily that “illegals” getting paid under the table are why wages are so low or that “cheap Chinese junk” is why American manufacturing collapsed. The ones who’ve grown up being told that living to excess is as American as Ma and Apple Pie and anybody who says differently is trying to take all that is “good” in their lives away from them. The ones who slapped yellow ribbon magnets on their bumpers and would ritually belch out “I support the troops!” when confronted with the reality of the “War on Terror” being a slow-rolling disaster.

Then COVID happened, the reality showed on their doorsteps, and the angry little man on TV they’d consented to running their lives had no answers. And suddenly, the only person they could blame was themselves.